We Built an Event Network in <48 Hours. Here’s What We Learned

We built our own event network to support Atmosphere18 so we could showcase our latest innovations to 3,000 attendees. Showing our vision and our products meant running brand-new software and code that has never been released on a production network. We knew we were taking risks, but also we knew it was worth it.

The event network supported everything—registration, keynotes, product demos, educational sessions, and of course, our attendees. We had detailed plans to install about 50 switches, 250 access points and a cluster of mobility controllers—with a team of seven and in less than 48 hours.

通过高低，这就是我们学到的：

1. 1. Be ready for anything.We staged the event network in Sunnyvale to validate our design. When we got to the Mandalay Bay in Vegas, we had some surprises. We pulled the switches out of the boxes and plugged them in, only to discover that a bug in beta code had wiped out the configurations. We viewed the event network as a showcase of how quickly our engineering teams could solve critical issues for customers. They delivered.We also discovered that the documented location of the Ethernet drops in the convention center didn’t always match reality. That meant we needed more switches, longer cables and more time. Fortunately, adding switches was pretty easy, because we used AirWave to create templates and push and manage the configurations. It was a busy 48 hours, but the network was up and running, just in time.

      Our grace under pressure was tested during the conference too. A bug in beta software, related to a specific monitoring use case, caused all of our Aruba 7240 controllers to crash. We saw the problem coming hours before, and we were hoping the conference would close for the evening before anything went down. Our team was in the Innovation Zone socializing with attendees when we saw the crash happen on both the AirWave dashboard and our custom NOC dashboard. We ran back to the war room to investigate. Luckily, it was a rolling crash, and each controller in the cluster rebooted a few minutes apart. Because the controllers were clustered, no one even noticed.

      当NOC仪表板看起来像这样时，我们会更快乐：

3. Get creative when you don’t have total control.谁曾经完全控制？我们与米高梅IT人员合作，在安装过程中访问了接线壁橱。然后，我们收到了一个迟到的要求 - 米高梅IT工作人员在晚上回家后，为在Oceanside宴会厅的注册团队提供以太网下降。我知道我已经计划了这些滴剂，应该准备好使用，所以他们为什么要再次要求它们呢？当然，他们有连接问题，他们不知道为什么。就像任何网络管理员每天收到的任何网络管理员一样，这是一个模糊的问题声明。我们对其进行了疑问，并发现以太网下降被修补到一个智能端口，最小速度为1Gbps，但设备仅支持100Mbps。当然，问题必须在几个小时内解决，米高梅工作人员已经回家了。由于我们无法输入IDF将补丁程序更改为100MBPS兼容的端口，因此我们添加了另一个开关，该开关功能充当媒体转换器。
   Another issue we had was with the ISP uplink provided to MGM, then from MGM to us. We paid for a 1Gbps up/down link but never got close to that bandwidth. Additionally, on the first day, the link was constantly dropping and coming back up. We were not happy. How could we provide stable Wi-Fi without a stable uplink? Using our dashboards, we were able to discover the poor uplink performance and provide proof in the form of speed test history to the ISP. The service provider quickly fixed a connector issue on the fiber.
4. People disappear.的人the best intentions can find it hard to resist 24-hour entertainment in Vegas. I don’t want to name names, but certain volunteer commitments vaporized. There were several long nights for the seven die-hards of the event network team. A huge thanks to everyone who helped out, in both large and small ways!!!
5. The user experience was great.我们知道我们的人群艰难 - 我们的客户和合作伙伴（以及许多Wi-Fi书呆子），我们设计了网络来执行。我们希望人们能够进行Wi-Fi速度测试，并通过网络上下提供100Mbps的网络，即使在Keynote Room等高密度区域也是如此。甜的。
   我们真的不知道我们的下一代热点和Passpoint的实时实验会发生什么。目的是使人们可以轻松地将手机连接到Wi-Fi，而不必进入新的证书。有效。绝大多数与会者都使用该活动Wi-Fi，其采用比我们以前更高。

5. Event networks are a great opportunity to walk in our customers’ shoes.There’s no substitute for real-world deployments and customer conversations. At Aruba, we believe that our employees in headquarters understand the issues faced by our customers and partners, so we create better products and workflows, from the documentation to day-to-day operations.I fed my experience using AirWave for planning and deployment directly back to the product teams. The ArubaOS team hears our feedback on things like AirMatch, Passpoint and clustering. These are great examples of the value we get by building our own Atmosphere network.

最后，不眠之夜值得。