It is now the fourth time in a row that I had the opportunity to be portion of the Cisco NOC staff for Cisco Are living EMEA.

If we go even even more back again in time, I had the likelihood to go to Cisco Are living for the Technical Layout Clinics back again in London and Berlin.  The tension was on the shoulders of the NOC team who experienced to supply a doing work Wi-Fi network with so a lot of random customer products linked. I did not envy their situation (whilst I admired it). I notably remember a bug from smartphone vendors in Cisco Dwell London that was repeating the event SSID as a own hotspot, resulting in a lot of issues to other shopper connectivity. This was the 12 months the CiscoLive SSID went from fully open up to a pre-shared crucial SSID to protect against that variety of dilemma.

Conclude of 2017, the NOC workforce invited me to be aspect of the Wi-fi Controller team for Cisco Live Barcelona 2018. I recognized immediately largely for the sake of being part of the Cisco Live celebration, which I think about a privilege. I found out considering that then how environment up a substantial situations network is this sort of a exclusive endeavor and will test to give some insights into specific alternatives and conclusions.

The Planning

All over summer the yr right before the event, the 1st conferences start off. We set up a workforce and make positive we have the finest individuals for the work at every single situation. This is the accountability of Remco Kamerman, the Cisco Live NOC crew guide and really significantly the only fastened workforce member considering that he recruits the rest of us. Some men and women from the computer software engineering teams, some salespeople, and some CX people today (TAC, Customer Good results, and Qualified Solutions): team members are not picked for their task position but for their abilities. If you are 1 of the major individuals in your engineering, odds are that you presently know a great element of the NOC crew for acquiring labored with them all over the 12 months considering that they are the leading individuals also.

Mapping Insanity

We get the location ideas and event blueprints early on but they keep shifting until eventually the incredibly final day (less and a lot less as time goes by of study course). This is the challenge of the design and style individuals in the staff (Professional Companies and Program Engineers largely) who have to do a wireless layout typically by on the lookout at on a regular basis altering designs. A couple of website visits ended up arranged to get a experience of the location. I was there on the first day the creating crew started out developing for the event and can testify that the range of physical variations the venue goes by way of in just a couple of times is unthinkable if you are not used to these functions.

Maps are an important part of handling a wireless network. We could leverage the interoperability involving the venue maps on the RAI Key Infrastructure appliance, the Cisco DNA Heart we applied for the event, and the Ekahau style software we applied for the structure. Maps were being cross-imported between those people 3 sites so that we could have the right maps for layout and day-to-day administration.

Keynote Style and design

A precise problem was the keynote place which consisted of 4500 chairs all-around a central stage in an empty corridor. 50 9104 stadium antennas were being applied to supply coverage from the trusses. Mounting these APs/antennas required pretty close collaboration with the keynote spot establish crew as there are specific times wherever the truss is down and accessible and then introduced up (soon after which you require a scissor raise to accessibility it and you want to stay away from that as considerably as achievable for efficiency)

The Establish Up

The bulk of the NOC workforce consists of persons in fact physically making up the network. That needs deploying hundreds of switches during the venue and the cabling that goes with that with out anything at all obvious to the naked eye. It also involves deploying hundreds of wireless obtain details in various sites. They can be on poles, partitions, or ceilings, and mounting elegantly and proficiently gets an art.

Identical to the Fira Barcelona, we inherited around 400 Wi-Fi obtain factors from the RAI Amsterdam venue. They had been awesome adequate to permit us handle their entry factors for the duration of the function. This way, we really don’t have to deal with two independent wi-fi networks. A very good part of the location APs ended up Cisco 9120s with directional antennas mounted on the very higher ceiling (as properly as some 9104s in a person Hall) which are excellent for providing standard coverage.

Certainly the RAI hosts a great deal of diverse reveals that have nothing in widespread (Cisco Live was concerning a horse exhibit and a pregnancy-linked exhibit) and their Wi-Fi community demands to stay stable among occasions. Having said that, due to the fact we are Cisco and we are ready to deploy a community just for our personal function, we could increase access details at the ground amount and be improved oriented for certain purposes (in general, the shut the AP is to the consumers, the superior, if you can afford to pay for it). We understood the significant-density places and much more sophisticated ground locations where supplemental protection would be welcome and that’s what our layout consisted of.

Event Wi-Fi Alternatives

Traditionally, the primary SSID is WPA2 PSK SSID and the firm prints the essential on the party badge everybody wears. We included EduRoam help for our education buyers to have an SSID their machine previously understands and can link to, making use of their education and learning qualifications. We also extra OpenRoaming, in which your device automatically connects to the Wi-Fi as shortly as you enter the venue if you by now experienced an OpenRoaming profile put in on your product. If you didn’t you can put in a single from the CiscoLive function app. Personally, I put in an OpenRoaming profile on my Iphone after my neighborhood supermarket produced a profile for me from their app. My telephone immediately linked, in a secure and clear method, to the venue as before long as I arrived with my profile from my neighborhood supermarket many thanks to the RAI also having an OpenRoaming SSID even ahead of Cisco arrived onsite.

We absolutely preferred to preserve the variety of SSIDs available as lower as probable to prevent confusion and to hold the wifi network effectiveness to the greatest possible, but the usefulness (and the safety!) of OpenRoaming and Eduroam convinced us to give these as added services.

Wi-Fi 6E

This 12 months, we wished to offer you 6ghz Wi-Fi as 6E is the newest coolest point. The issue is that providing this across the full occasion would have meant purchasing hundreds of 9166 obtain factors. This is not attainable as we prioritize purchaser deliveries for the to start with time on a new gadget. It would also have meant replacing all the venue APs which is impractical for us. We then included the entire Conference Village hall with the 40 9166 we experienced. The obstacle with this hybrid strategy is that Wi-Fi 6E involves WPA3 and we did not want to make the major SSID WPA3 nevertheless.

Even if the CiscoLive populace is usually nerdy (it is a compliment these days I consider) and very well equipped, you wouldn’t imagine some of the older devices that link to the community and WPA3 help is just not at 100% but we believe that. We experienced to make a independent WPA3 SSID which was broadcasted both of those in 5Ghz and 6Ghz (but 6ghz remaining only out there in the Meeting Village) for compatibility causes.

Legacy and “Bells and Whistles” SSIDs

As a standard rule, is fantastic exercise to have some type of legacy SSID and some type of additional executing SSIDs with far more bells and whistles. Some years back, it intended we delivered a Cisco Reside Legacy SSID which existed on 2.4ghz, though the 5Ghz was the most important and “cool” SSID.

In Cisco Dwell 2023, we entirely gave up on 2.4ghz and the CiscoLive SSID was only accessible on 5Ghz.  This meant the primary CiscoLive SSID essential to have the most compatible configurations to make certain all the clientele could connect and that meant offering up on some excellent Cisco attributes (like Device Analytics) for the sake of greatest compatibility. I predict that extremely shortly, the WPA3/6Ghz SSID will grow to be the most important SSID and the 5Ghz-only/WPA2 SSID  will be the legacy one. Maybe far too early for that to transpire subsequent 12 months but why not 2025?

How the Party Went

Keynote and 6ghz

The event went quite well in general. During the keynote or the party, throughput checks returned surprisingly superior final results. The 9104 antennas had been seriously amazed by their nicely-outlined coverage place with incredibly tiny leakage outside the house of the coverage way. This really assists with channel reuse in a massive location hall.

It was a fantastic surprise to see extra than 60% of the Wi-fi purchasers utilizing Wi-Fi 6. However, only a few dozen supported 6E. We anticipate a sharp boost by following yr, but it will remain a minority of clientele. There had been a pair of 802.11n shoppers but seriously not quite a few.

The top simultaneous consumer depend was close to 13 500. It is a little reduced than the very last celebration in Barcelona. We be expecting the occasion to mature by next calendar year considering the fact that this was the to start with just one put up-Covid.

Hardware and Program Criteria

It was the initially Cisco Stay we ran 100% on the Catalyst 9800 in EMEA and 100% on Cisco DNA Center. Indeed in 2020, they had been there but we however had 8540 WLCs in the community. We ran the 17.9.2 CCO software and only experienced small difficulties to report. As is turning out to be extra and more commonplace, most of the time we expended troubleshooting was on interoperability problems with certain system styles and characteristics. Entirely disabling 2.4Ghz was a wonderful plan mainly because we recognized an greater usage of Bluetooth amid the attendees and the Wi-Fi network would have disturbed all all those Bluetooth products.

Not every little thing was ideal though, it can in no way be in such a large party with so lots of new technologies. But I’m happy we retain bettering year following calendar year. There are usually places of criticism when the customer density is greater than what we predicted: there were some really profitable periods in Devnet theater or World of Options and connectivity was subpar throughout those occasions. We’ll make positive to come up with an improvement system for up coming calendar year to make that greater.

Conclusion

The enormous duty to operate these a network is made bearable by the simple fact the NOC workforce is filled with awesome individuals. In that workforce,  just about every opinion to make items improved and smoother is welcome and the goal is to constantly increase yr above calendar year. It’s usually sophisticated to juggle among checking the network from the NOC and heading to a area for some actual physical Wi-Fi troubleshooting. Cisco DNA Center was definitely a massive enhancement on this point exactly where Assurance allows us triage issues immediately. It also aided us slim down difficult locations instantly and dispatch engineers appropriately.

2023 was the yr exactly where we automated a lot of the deployment but that is a total story to tell.

 

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