Delivering a Unique Festival User Experience
Published: September 20, 2018
Located in Achterhoek, the eastern region of the Netherlands, Zwarte Cross is one of the largest annual outdoor music and sports festivals in Europe. The event has grown immensely, from the 1,000 attendees recorded at the 1997 launch to over 220,000 total attendees at the 2018 festival, which took place from July 12th – 15th. The festival now includes 33 stages, and spans a distance of 160 hectares across three villages. The growth in attendees drove the need for more supporting staff and functions. In total, there are now 32 different caterers and 40,000 jobs (including suppliers) that are responsible for running the festivals operations. As the festival grew and evolved the technology and communication needs did as well.
Challenges
- Purposely designed and deployed network solution for temporary event
- Ability to offer connectivity with limited mounting options and lack of fiber
- Reliable Wi-Fi connectivity and improved mobile experience for festival goers
- Support of event management assets and back-of-house staff
- Visibility and understanding of network performance and usage
"Besides the wired and wireless network, we were able to leverage the analytics solutions. For example, we had quick insights into how much bandwidth was being used, how many access points were active, how many clients were connected and how they were using the network. Based on this information we were able to quickly track and solve network issues in the build-up to and during the festival."
Extreme Solutions
- Extreme Wireless™
- ExtremeSwitching™
- ExtremeGuest™
- ExtremeAnalytics™
Results
- Over 10,000 unique attendees connected to network
- Over 3,000 concurrent Wi-Fi user 6TBs of data transferred from Day 2 at festival main stage
- Support of central festival functions, including ticketing, point of sale, and internal communications
- Overall quality, consistent wireless experience for guests and festival staff