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The Open

 

 

 

 

 

 

Objective

Since 2009, SUT has been the network service provider and project management team for The Open Championship, one of the oldest and most prestigious golf tournaments in the world. In 2017, the 146th Open Championship, held at Royal Birkdale Golf Club in Southport, England. The wireless deployment requires an extensive and complex wireless outdoor set-up to provide attendees with wireless capabilities and support the The Open App, which included features such as real-time video streaming, video highlights, up-to-date leaderboard scores and an interactive course guide. Wireless connectivity would also need to be shared by the multitude of on-site outlets and successfully process a diverse set of technical requirements. In addition to the connectivity to all press, partner and concession outlets, payment processing, and seamless connectivity back to the Royal and Ancient headquarters. Vendors included: CCTV for the Home Office, BBC, ESPN, R&A, Reuters, AP, Getty Images, and OpenGolf.com. 

 

Expected Attendee Network Usage

230,000+

 

Strategy

Deploy a world-class wireless infrastructure to support 230,000+ attendees, staff and media outlets across four days. Ensure the bandwidth is properly divided while maintaining a stable and usable network. Integrate a quality of service (QoS) network that utilizes industry standard applications (SolarWinds and Cacti) to measure the quality of the individually partitioned networks. Design voice traffic to have precedence over other traffic on the network, as there were over 400 VoIP phones to be utilized by the various outlets.

 

Tactics

  • Division of the network into various VLANs to ensure adequate partitioning of bandwidth.

  • Utilization of extensive security protocols with latest intrusion prevention systems to protect wireless against potential security breaches.

  • Optimal AP placement to withstand outdoor interference and provide seamless roaming wireless to support attendee engagement.

  • Traffic usage was monitored over the course of the event so slight changes could be made to the policies to support high demand areas on the network. For example, the photo and press networks were given additional bandwidth immediately after a popular participant finished at the 18th hole.

  • Based upon the voice activity of prior years, the average number of concurrent voice calls dictated adequate amount of voice-allocated bandwidth.

 

Results

SUT successfully provisioned a stable, usable network to support over 92,000 unique users, 10,200+ concurrent Wi-Fi users, totaling 230,000+ attendees over course of event.

 

  • Users were never met with slow speeds or dropped connections.

  • This diverse set of technical requirements did not experience latency issues, including:

    • Uploading photos and text to various media outlets.

    • Processing credit cards from the various point-of-sale terminals.

    • Broadcast of high-definition video to over 300 outlets.

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