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Answers

Straight answers for producers and coordinators bringing reliable connectivity to festivals, conferences, and booths.

Planning & legal

Venue exclusivity clauses — can I bring my own cellular/satellite?

Cellular and satellite you bring operate on licensed carrier spectrum, which generally sits outside a venue’s Wi-Fi/wired exclusivity clause — but always confirm against your specific contract. We help you present the connectivity plan; the contract language is your call to clear.

Floorplan-to-kit — how do I size it?

Map your zones (stage, POS, press, attendee) to APs, a router, and a WAN mix; we provide a per-zone worksheet on request that turns the floorplan into a hardware and data-plan list.

RF site survey tips?

Pre-scan cellular by carrier and band (InControl site survey) plus the Wi-Fi spectrum, mount antennas high with clear line of sight, and separate carriers for diversity.

Traffic & scale

How do I prioritize POS/gate/registration over streaming?

Put each function on its own VLAN and use outbound policy to guarantee POS and gate a low-latency bandwidth floor, while streaming rides bonding/smoothing. Registration never stalls because someone is uploading video.

Attendee Wi-Fi for thousands of devices?

High-density AP planning with band steering, per-radio client limits, and a captive portal, on a separate attendee VLAN with caps so it can never starve POS or production.

Post-event analytics for sponsors?

InControl usage and Wi-Fi analytics (device counts, sessions, throughput) export as reports you can hand to sponsors.

On-site operations

Weatherproofing and security against theft/tampering?

Weather-rated enclosures and antennas, kits locked in cases or racks, tamper-aware placement, and InControl alerts the instant a device drops off.

What does the AV team need from me?

The VLAN/IP plan, which SSIDs exist, the bandwidth per zone, and the uplink budget — plus Layer-2-over-SpeedFusion if AV needs one shared subnet across areas.

How fast is setup, and can I reuse the kit?

Pre-staged kits come online plug-and-play via bulk configuration, and the same kit redeploys event after event.


Still have a question? Talk to a West Networks engineer — we design and NOC-manage these networks every day. Want the deeper theory? See Peplink University.