Disastrous 'Pokemon Go' Event Leads To Mass Refunds (techcrunch.com)

thegarbz writes: A Pokemon Go Fest hosted in Chicago and attended by between 15-20,000 people has ended in disaster. The event was plagued by logistical issues resulting in 3+ hour long delays getting into Chicago's Grant Park... Those people who were lucky enough to get into the paid event were greeted with a completely overloaded cell network unable to cope with the number of people trying to get online at the same time. The occasional person who was able to connect experienced a never ending string of game-breaking bugs when attempting to catch the rare Pokemon created specifically for this event.
Gaming company Niantic finally just gave a rare Pokemon Go character to everyone who attended -- though one attendee still called it a "horrible, terrible day." The Kansas City Star reported some people had paid as much as $400 for their tickets -- which had sold out within minutes -- and that some attendees had even started lining up for the event at 6 a.m.

Comments

Capacity planning

[djinn6]

You'd think after running into trouble with unexpectedly high volumes when they launched the game, they'd learn a thing or two about capacity planning. And in this case, they knew exactly how many people were coming and what they'll be doing once here.

I wouldn't ever go to a Pokemon Go event, but if I did, I'd be pissed too.

Re:Capacity planning

[Dan East]

Yes, but they are a software company, not an ISP / cell carrier. They obviously did not consider the fact that the existing cellular networks could not handle that many customers in one small area accessing high bandwidth resources at the same time. Had they alerted the carriers, the carriers could have set up temporary mobile cells for the event, and / or Niantic could have set up their own free Wifi hotspots for the attendees.

Either way, this was a very, very expensive way for them to learn about these kinds of connectivity logistics.

Re:Capacity planning

[known_coward_69]

Do EA or Activision care when they release new games and people can't connect to play? They just feed you some BS and wait it out until people go play the next big thing

Re:Capacity planning

[adolf]

Are software companies somehow immune from hiring competent event planners?

Re:Capacity planning

[OzPeter]

Are software companies somehow immune from hiring competent event planners?

Who needs to hire experienced and competent planners? The cell companies let anyone use their bandwidth and as everyone has a cell phone already, why should we need to pay for someone to tell us that our customers can get on line for free?????

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

They do if they invited people to a localized event and the event itself had outages.

Re:Capacity planning

[whoever57]

In my humble opinion, they are a bunch of shits.

I tried to help some nuns by getting Niantic to delist some Pokemon Go places on the convent's private grounds (at the request of the nuns).

There was construction going on at the time. Despite uploading photos of the construction, showing that the area was dangerous, despite uploading photos of signs and fencing indicating that the area was private, Niantic would not remove the stops from the convent grounds.

Anyone who gets hurt playing Pokemon Go should sue Niantic, because there is a likelihood that Niantic has already been told that the area is dangerous.

Re: Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares what the cell companies do?

Niantic should have set up a bunch of professional grade wifi networks, all tied to a fast fuckjng backbone. This was their event, and their event required a shit ton of network connections. Fix it with temporary wifi. It costs a shit lot less than like a hundred bucks a head to set that up.

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is us. We continue to pay for this shit. Companies release games that don't work and people continue to pre-order the things. If people would stop paying for these things, then they'd have to care about whether or not they work.

But as long as people are willing to pay for games that don't work, companies will happily continue to provide games that don't work at premium prices.

Re:Capacity planning

[JaredOfEuropa]

We've had people walking along train tracks while hunting Pokemon. (The sign reads: "Sprinter to Hoofddorp is cancelled due to a Snorlax on the tracks"). After the railroad complained, Niantic did adjust their servers to exclude railroads, highways, major industrial areas and military installations.

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

There was construction going on at the time. Despite uploading photos of the construction, showing that the area was dangerous, despite uploading photos of signs and fencing indicating that the area was private, Niantic would not remove the stops from the convent grounds.

Anyone who gets hurt playing Pokemon Go should sue Niantic, because there is a likelihood that Niantic has already been told that the area is dangerous.

Niantic pops up a warning saying "don't trespass" and "don't go to dangerous areas" when the game loads. I'm pretty sure they consider that enough to weasel out of any lawsuits. Because, as you point out, Niantic is a bunch of shits.

They've never cared about their portals being valid by game rules (all the Pokemon Go locations were originally portals in another game) and frequently leave blatantly invalid portals up for years. Portals are supposed to be for permanent installations, things that don't move. They accept portals for things like convention show booths and cars, things that haven't been in the submitted location for years. They don't remove them.

One of the rules is that portals can't be in elementary schools. This makes even more sense when they're being used in a children's game. Why would you turn a school into a game location?

Guess if they enforce that rule? Of course not!

The more cynical side of me says that it doesn't really matter. It's not like anyone is physically going to these locations anyway. Most Pokemon Go players these days just use GPS spoofing software to pretend to visit these places without ever leaving their homes. The game is basically unplayable "properly" as the cheaters who spoof and run bots control everything.

And, because as you stated before, Niantic is a bunch of shits, they don't care: the cheaters force the regular players to spend real money to get access to the resources the cheaters are monopolizing. They have a monetary incentive to not care.

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

I've played Ingress now for a few years and been to several of their "Anomalies". It is well known throughout the Ingress community and to Niantic that cell network saturation is completely expected. This is so well know that advanced players will already know their cellphone debug codes to switch from 4G to 3G to get some bandwidth. Some people get a hotspot from a different network provider to have a backup. So, people can't say Niantic was totally caught off-guard. An Ingress event will draw at most two thousand people. Knowing ahead of time that they are expecting ten times that, they should have worked with Verizon and AT&T to bring in mobile repeaters.
But people have seen this same problem for years when going to a football game or car race. Everyone in the stadium checking their online status, saturates the data band.

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

They obviously did not consider the fact that the existing cellular networks could not handle that many customers in one small area accessing high bandwidth resources at the same time.

Of course they didn't consider it. The only thing they considered was the $400 per person they collected.

Re:Capacity planning

[ShanghaiBill]

An experienced event planner would likely have made the situation worse. At a typical event, maybe 10-20% are on their cell at any time, mostly using low bandwidth voice and text. At this event, maybe 80-90% were trying to use the network, and at much higher bandwidths. The normal heuristics would not have worked.

Re:Capacity planning

[thegarbz]

they'd learn a thing or two about capacity planning

What capacity? The launch issues were due to server capacity. These issues were not really within control of the company and had everything to do with the mobile network falling over.

Though they could have co-ordinates with Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile to try and get a shitload of microcells set up. But in general what prior experience was there? When has an event with 20000 people who specifically require mobile data coverage at the same time ever been done before?

Re:Capacity planning

[bruce_the_loon]

Besides sports events? Maybe the upcoming eclipse, reported here earlier. https://science.slashdot.org/story/17/06/27/202250/august-solar-eclipse-could-disrupt-roads-and-cellular-networks

Re:Capacity planning

[meerling]

"Niantic pops up a warning saying "don't trespass" and "don't go to dangerous areas" when the game loads. I'm pretty sure they consider that enough to weasel out of any lawsuits. Because, as you point out, Niantic is a bunch of shits."

Perfectly normal warning, and anyone who goes against it is a stupid shit that shouldn't be playing in the first place. Take responsibility for your own actions.

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the ticket was cheaper. Those $400 were the price paid to scalpers! And now the scalpers can ask for the refund, the final customer can't.

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

So, since there was no previous experience in such kind of events (high attendance, Internet connection required for each customer), the obvious plan was "let's do nothing at all, it will be ok"?

Re:Capacity planning

[r1348]

An experienced event planner would have known that.

Re:Capacity planning

[denbesten]

When has an event with 20000 people who specifically require mobile data coverage at the same time ever been done before?

Not so sure about "specifically require mobile data", but Chicago is very experienced at large events, The Chigacgo Ribfest, with 50,000 attendance happens every June, also in Grant Park. The Air and Water show (1,000,000 attendance per day) happens every August, about a mile north. It is pretty common to see multiple Mobile Cell Towers at these and other large events in Chicago. I'm confident that if all the air and water COWs were brought to Grant Park, there would be more than enough coverage.

I'm guessing that the event planner was either new to large events, new to Chicago or didn't discuss the atypical data load with the mobile providers.

Re:Capacity planning

[Drakonblayde]

While I certainly agree with you, there's not much they can do about cellular capacity. I had the same issue (in the Chicago area, ironically enough) at a music festival a few weekends ago. It's depressing to see full bars and no throughput

I mean I guess they could have probably tried to arrange to get the carriers to install some picocells for the event, but given the number of carriers, that's a logistical nightmare.

Personally, I would have tried to get a temporary internet circuit out there, and hit up one of the WiFi players (Ubiquiti maybe?) to see if they could provide some temporary wireless gear for the event in exchange for some advertising.

Re:Capacity planning

[GrumpySteen]

They hired the guys who planned the Fyre Festival.

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be more acceptable if Niantic didn't place rare rewards in dangerous places. Of course, most players just GPS spoof to get them anyway, but if you're playing the game "properly" Niantic absolutely expects you to go into dangerous places and private property to access certain rare resources. And that's entirely their own dumb fault.

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

Comiccon Just went off without a hitch, it should seems. And it looks to me like everyone was having a good time, the entire time.

Re:Capacity planning

[Applehu Akbar]

A Pokémon Go festival may seem trivial, but this is the kind of stress test that augmented reality needs if we're about to start using it in everyday life. What's going to happen in another summer or two when thousands of tourists pouring into Chicago fire up this fall's new AR extensions to iOS to find bathrooms and ATMs and restaurants?

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

Niantic doesn't control the cell networks. Or park security.

Re:Capacity planning

[redmid17]

What the fuck are you talking about? Do you think the company is that gigantically stupid? They are. I mean they threw a pokemon Go event, but people who get paid for more than you knew the logistics required to pull it off, or at least the basics.

You, OTOH, just no. Stop

Re:Capacity planning

[sysrammer]

I would think an experienced *anyone* who has gone to a high-volume event (sports/entertainment/etc) would have known.

Re: Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

They said the refunds will be handled by contacting the email associated with the account used at the event. When you scanned in the first time they handed you a one use QR code and a cloth patch, when you used an event pokestop the first time it prompted for the we, and when the qr was used you were then tied to the event. Scalped tickets went for about $200 for the auctions I saw.

Re: Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not an event planner, developer, or cellular network engineer, but I could have told them to secure more capacity. It waa widely assumed that they would since it was so obvious they would need it.

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

They did learn.

They learned that no matter how much the game DOES NOT WORK.
People still throw money at them.

Why do it right when people give you money anyway?

Re: Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

None of those typically have every attendee playing an online game at the same time...
No event has ever done anything like this before.

Re: Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

Their event partner sprint had working coverage :)

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who gets hurt playing pokemon. Should just be killed to advance the human race.

You can't pretend we'll be missing anything worthwhile.

Re:Capacity planning

[thegarbz]

Are software companies somehow immune from hiring competent event planners?

Competent in what? Precisely what kind of event has taken place before where 20000 people simultaneously need to use data from the same area. It's easy from the IT sidelines to see the obvious, but given an event with these requirements hasn't happened before, just how were a bunch of "competent event planners" (I hear that's a uni degree now) supposed to know the what they don't know without precedence?

Re: Capacity planning

[r1348]

LAN parties? Hackatons?

Re: Capacity planning

[cfalcon]

No to both. A LAN party may have a bunch of gamers who have cell phones, but the focus is on the LAN. If the LAN is only part of the action- if teams are playing online- then you can be sure the planner will at least have a high speed connection available. Even a hackathon will focus more on local data transfer.

This was truly unprecedented.

And also completely, 100% percent, predictable.

Again, in Pokemon Go, literally all you do is play on their server, through a cell network or a wifi.

You can supply a fucking wifi. You can supply enough wifi. If this is your goal, you NEED to.

Re:Capacity planning

[cfalcon]

> That would be more acceptable if Niantic didn't place rare rewards in dangerous places

They really don't. Not in Pokemon Go at least, I don't know about Ingress.

In Pokemon Go, the world is filled with pokemon spawn points, the majority of which are totally reachable from a road or by walking through a park. Rare pokemon come up rarely.

A decent number of players do use a third party map (like on a website) that is built by using thousands of fake accounts which exist only to report the positions of monsters. The players can then get in their car and drive to the rare pokemon. These are hardly ever in a dangerous location.

Niantic does what they can to stop the maps, but that's not even the big problem with what you posted.

> most players just GPS spoof to get them anyway

VERY few players GPS spoof to get monsters. It's extremely rare, because your account can absolutely be banned for any type of spoofing. Many, many, accounts have been permanently shut down just for this. I'm sure you can find a spoofer one ownedcore who hasn't had any problems, but they are the exception, not the rule- and being a spoofer at all is very rare in this game anyway.

Re:Capacity planning

[adolf]

Competent in...planning events?

Events need to have things. Bathrooms, for instance: Someone needs to figure out how many porta johns to rent. Figuring out the quantity of things like is the job of an event planner.

This event needed bandwidth and none was provided. That's a pretty gnarly failure, and being a "software company" instead of some other type of company does not excuse this guffaw.

tl;dr, this is like organizing an Oktoberfest event and forgetting to bring beer.

Re:Capacity planning

[djinn6]

They may or may not be able to do anything about cellular capacity, it depends on whether the network operators are willing to cooperate. That said, they sure as hell could have set up a bunch of wifi access points at the venue and tell people to use that instead. At $300 a ticket, they could've easily bought one wireless router for each and every attendee.

Re: Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and the original poster is full of shit anyway. It's *easy* to get pokestops/gyms removed, you just need to own the land and be able to show it, not send some pictures of backhoes as some unrelated third party. But hey, they only tell you as much on the FAQ, so maybe that was too much for that dude to bother with.

Re:Capacity planning

[GuB-42]

Poor network coverage is a very common theme at large scale events. As an attendee, this is something that I expect and I plan for it by having everything I need available offline and planning meetups the old fashioned way.
Anyone who have already planned for large scale events should know that too and tackle the problem. This is simple incompetence, either from Niantic or from the event planners they hired.

Re:Capacity planning

[sjames]

Sure, but since their software is utterly dependent on connectivity, you might want them to know at least enough to realize they needed to consult with someone for a big event.

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

> the carriers could have set up temporary mobile cells for the event

Hahahahahahha.

You think if you phone up the carrier and tell them that they'll just drop in a cell tower on a trailier? The only time they do this is when there's *no* reception there, and it's going to be a repeat event site like a concert or festival venue; not when the area is already blanketed. What are they going to do for frequency space? Back haul and all the rest? Those trailers have to relay to somewhere, so they need to install back haul and microwave gear and the rest.

Yeah, look at what Niantic have done with the Ingress community before, they had 40,000 people turn up in Tokyo. I wouldn't say it wasn't a problem, but the mobile network didn't shit itself.

> or Niantic could have set up their own free Wifi hotspots for the attendees

Yeah, once again, what's the back haul? You think Niantic wants to pay someone for 12 months (Min contract) for a one gig back haul for a weekend long event?

You really didn't think about that one too hard did you?

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

Niantic had 40k people turn up to Tokyo, just the mobile networks didn't shit themselves. The cell companies aren't going to do anything unless you give them to a few million each. (I know, I asked for something else)

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

how it is expensive for a company to provided digital virtual goods that will keep paying players playing? it was the cheapest possible outcome. the event proceeds is NOTHING compared to everyday income from in game purchases.

you're all idiots.

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

Having helped organise Anomalies before and seeing the carrier side bandwidth utilisation of anomalies, it's really not that high. It's that the cell towers can only support x amount of users per antenna, and you're putting a lot more people (4k - 5k) in a public place like a park which usually doesn't have office tower density in it (100 - 200).

Also, having spoken to cell company radio planners, network engineers, and others for events in Europe; the carriers, *if* they were going to do anything want a few million and a year notice before they'll do anything. That's why they hard wire stadiums with fibre points and not relay sites etc, just to deal with that amount of people.

Re: Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

Niantic has another game called Ingress, which they have held events for. They should have known better.

Re:Capacity planning

[Gussington]

Yes, but they are a software company, not an ISP / cell carrier. They obviously did not consider the fact that the existing cellular networks could not handle that many customers in one small area accessing high bandwidth resources at the same time.

They are clearly stupid then. I've been involved with similar sorts of events and the first items on the list for any sort of event is power, water, toilets and telecoms.
This company relies on cellular networks for its business and not one person thought to check on capacity requirements?

Re: Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

I spoof. No issues whatsoever.

Re: Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

Tickets officially were $20 each. Any price higher than that you can thank scalpers.

Re:Capacity planning

[Gussington]

An experienced event planner would likely have made the situation worse. At a typical event, maybe 10-20% are on their cell at any time, mostly using low bandwidth voice and text.

What is this 2008? Anyone involved with any sort of event in the last 5 years knows that 99% of the crowd will be on Snapchat, FB, Twitter, Whatsapp, WeChat, Telegram, Viber, Maps, Uber etc It's all data these days, has been for years.

Re:Capacity planning

[Gussington]

Competent in what? Precisely what kind of event has taken place before where 20000 people simultaneously need to use data from the same area. It's easy from the IT sidelines to see the obvious, but given an event with these requirements hasn't happened before

Ok just stop. Have you heard of the Olympics, or any of the thousands of sporting or music events that happen every week somewhere in the world that have more than 20000 people all snapchatting, facebooking, twittering etc? I was doing this in 2010 and 3G (at the time) was on the same list as power, water, toilets and transport. This is a massive fail for a company that's primary product relies on a cellular network to function.

Re:Capacity planning

[AuMatar]

Hell don't forget the Taste of Chicago every July, that draws in almost 2 million over 5 days. There's absolutely 20K people there on the network at the same time. Or the 225K who went to the nfl draft. THis was an event that needs planning, but Chicago puts on 2 orders of magnitude bigger events multiple times a year.

Re: Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

It does not take millions and years to add temporary capacity to a large event at a park. Cell on Wheels is a thing, basically a mobile antenna and base station mounted on a truck, with a generator.

Re:Capacity planning

[Narcocide]

Yes, as far as I can tell.

Re:Capacity planning

[gl4ss]

The cell companies let anyone use their bandwidth and as everyone has a cell phone already, why should we need to pay for someone to tell us that our customers can get on line for free?????

..you only need to tell the cell companies. hell, you can even get them to sponsor and give _you_ strbaight up money.

what you need to do is just tell them that on this day blabla at this place blabala there will be 30 000 people and they will cart some cell-in-box vans over. thats what they do for festivals etc all the time.

what was more than likely was that the event was handled by some social media presentative/pr side of niantic who of course don't understand anything about technology

Re:Capacity planning

[tlhIngan]

Competent in what? Precisely what kind of event has taken place before where 20000 people simultaneously need to use data from the same area. It's easy from the IT sidelines to see the obvious, but given an event with these requirements hasn't happened before, just how were a bunch of "competent event planners" (I hear that's a uni degree now) supposed to know the what they don't know without precedence?

Practically every event ever nowadays. A stadium can hold 20,000+ people easily, and people love to tweet and snapchat and facebook and everything else. And there will be at least 10% of the people who are streaming video and audio commentary during the game, while everything else is bursty.

In fact, we had several festivals already. Not big ones, but since it was aimed at the millennial crowd, there were CoWs (Cells on Wheels) set up around the perimeter. These CoWs are miniature cell towers meant to cover a small area that's likely to have a high density of cellphones. They typically backhaul onto either a dedicated link (if one was put in during construction - so sites like stadiums and arenas and parks will have them) or via a microwave link to a regular cell tower.

All it takes is an event planner calling it in and the big carriers will truck in a CoW with advance notice and set it up. You tell them how many people are there and they'll estimate the number of units and type to bring in (they may bring in more than one and backhaul onto the one with a dedicated link).

This is not new - it's been around a few years and you'll often see them at stadiums until they set up local repeaters inside.

Re:Capacity planning

[cciRRus]

VERY few players GPS spoof to get monsters. It's extremely rare, because your account can absolutely be banned for any type of spoofing. Many, many, accounts have been permanently shut down just for this. I'm sure you can find a spoofer one ownedcore who hasn't had any problems, but they are the exception, not the rule- and being a spoofer at all is very rare in this game anyway.

I'm not sure how you derive that. I certainly can't say for all, but over at the gated parks in my area, which closes at night, you get crazy amount of activities at the 4 gyms everyday after midnight. The same for shopping malls that are closed everyday after 10pm. In one particular mall with at least 3 gyms, every late night, the gyms are alive with activities, with different teams taking over each gym very quickly, and each filling them up by 6 unique players.

You cannot get caught by GPS spoofing if you play like a legit player. You use a legit device, and you don't appear miles away in the matter of seconds. I have been spoofing since the game was launched, and along with my friends, we were never caught or banned.

Re: Capacity planning

[bernywork]

And no backhaul.

Yes, this is a thing if the carrier has spare frequency spectrum in that area (They usually don't), a microwave point they can relay to (Probably not, unless pre-planned) or a fibre point that they can connect that cell up to the rest of the cell network (Only for multi-use sites).

If it's in the middle of the country side where they don't have a lot of frequency re-use, then sure, it's one problem less. If it's a frequently used site (At least once a year) then they'll possibly even run fibre. Niantic giving the carriers at best six months notice does not give the carriers enough notice to build the required infrastructure to support a mobile cell.

Re: Capacity planning

[bernywork]

The community organises the events, Niantic gives a liason.

Re:Capacity planning

[thegarbz]

tl;dr, this is like organizing an Oktoberfest event and forgetting to bring beer.

Nope. It's like organising Oktoberfest in a brewery and assuming the brewery will have beer.

All the examples you gave are "standard" event management items. There's nothing "standard" about an event that is expected to have 20000 with active mobile connections. It's not something taught outside of IT, it's not something that is considered for any other event, it's not something that has been experienced in the past.

It's easy to criticize the things you know. Not so much the things you don't.

Re:Capacity planning

[thegarbz]

Ok just stop. Have you heard of the Olympics

Yes I have. Last I heard none of the sports required an active internet connection and none of the spectators could not watch the sports without those internet connections.

I also remember that internet didn't work well, we had stories about it, but in general there were no major complaints from people because there were also no expectations, and certainly no refunds because someone couldn't tweet something.

This is a massive fail for a company that's primary product relies on a cellular network to function.

Agreed. What I disagree with is that it was "obvious" to anyone who is an event planner.

Re:Capacity planning

[thegarbz]

and people love to tweet

Yes because being able to tweet is in exactly the same league as the primary event being unable to take place. Last I remembered when I had no coverage at a sport event I just kept on doing what I paid for which was watching the sport.

Re:Capacity planning

[drinkypoo]

An experienced event planner would likely have made the situation worse. At a typical event,

An experienced event planner would have seen atypical events, that's what makes experience valuable.

An intelligent person would have asked cellphone companies to deploy temporary cells for the event, or even had some partner come in and blanket the park with free Wi-Fi. It could have been an opportunity. Instead, it was a disaster.

Re:Capacity planning

[clarkholmes]

It's not like Niantic doesn't have experience with these kind of events. They regularly have large events for Ingress where thousands attend. Although I'm sure Pokemon Go drew a lot more, I'm also sure they would have expected that.

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, perhaps we are in agreement then, that not everyone practicing a trade is competent nor should they sell their services to others.

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, is there a standard "event planner" curriculum that includes being unresourceful and unaware of technology trends, particularly the technology underpinning the event that you're planning?

Re:Capacity planning

[apoc.famine]

Stadiums, for example, have already fought, lost, and retooled for this war. If you didn't investigate what stadiums did for the Super Bowl the last few years, then you're a failure as a planner for an event like this.

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

It's depressing to see full bars and no throughput

You know what's depressing? A bunch of people getting together for a festival and, rather than having fun and laughing it up, spending all their time fucking around with their phone. Leave your portable television/security blanket at home, nerds. Facetwit will still be there for you junkies after the event.

Re:Capacity planning

[cthulhu11]

You'd need multiple towers for multiple carriers. I also wonder if you'd need for phones' OTA data to be updated to talk to them.

Re: Capacity planning

[r1348]

I just gave two examples of events where bandwidth saturation is an issue, of course they use different kinds of networks.
My job partially covers technical support for events organized by Unnamed Big Corporation, usually I don't even have to raise the issue of bandwidth, it's the event owner that already knows.
I think here we just got a disastrous combination of incompetence and greed, incompetence in predicting an obvious technical challenge, and greed in not limiting (paid) attendance once the issues were clear. The result is so stupidly egregious that made it to /.

Re:Capacity planning

[tlhIngan]

also wonder if you'd need for phones' OTA data to be updated to talk to them.

Yes but it's completely transparent to the user. A phone that's been in use will have an up to date database, but that just means if you're searching for a cell signal, an updated database means you can acquire it really fast and have service in a few seconds.

If you haven't powered your phone up recently, it may have an outdated database that should still work, so it'll try to use it.

If the database doesn't work at all, then it will do a full network search by listening to the control channels to figure out whose networks are available, and consulting the roaming database for compatible network IDs (stored on the SIM card and updated periodically). If it can't find that, it will then connect to a network for connectivity. (The order is the preferred network first, then roaming partners, finally unaffiliated companies providing service. The latter is always a last choice because those companies don't negotiate roaming agreements voluntarily. You usually see them on cruise ships where they can easily ding you dollars a minute and there's nothing you can do - your cell provider is forced to pay the bill).

A full network search can take as little as 30 seconds to a few minutes or more before it can establish a signal. But you don't need an update OTA database for this since all phones are designed to be able to be "cold started" with very little information. Of course, for customer service, the SIM cards you get will typically have the latest database as of when the SIM was made (which isn't that old) so by the time you finish the OOBE application, the phone would've acquired a network signal.

Re:Capacity planning

[tlhIngan]

what was more than likely was that the event was handled by some social media presentative/pr side of niantic who of course don't understand anything about technology

No, PR people know to get planners in. PR people know that they need to set everything "up right" so they don't make a mess of an event (which would be bad PR).

However, it's possible it was handled by a "social media rep" who thinks highly of social media and a disdain for "traditions". So they may think they're immune to the whole "planning" thing.

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

a music festival a few weekends ago. It's depressing to see full bars and no throughput

You were at a music festival. I remember music festivals. You don't need a cellphone. I suspect most people would have had a better time if they'd just chosen to leave the god-damn things at home.

Re:Capacity planning

[brantondaveperson]

I don't know, I expect that they'll have to start talking to each other, or reading maps, or looking at signs. Awful, anti-technology things like that.

Re: Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

So are you saying that there is no one on Earth who could possibly have predicted and catered for such an event? All the IT people, all the network engineers, all the ISPs and cell providers in the world, all the event planners whose sole fucking job is to plan for events like this that they've held many times before, none of them could have possibly handled this better than the guy at Niantic who posts vague announcements on their Twitter every 6 months, and a couple of no-name "YouTube personalities"?
Fuck you. Why do you keep defending Niantic? Do you work for them? They fucked up, seriously, and it's not the first time they've done so, nor will it be the last. They've held events like this before. They knew how many people were coming. Not only did they not prepare for the cell data load in Chicago, their servers were having problems globally too, and that's not the first time either.
Any competent event planner would have known this would happen, and either have the experience to deal with it, or know the type of people who can advise. Hell, event planner isn't even some prestigious job, it's a 6 month community College course. Any idiot with some common fucking sense could have seen this coming.

Re:Capacity planning

[adolf]

But these things are done.

49% of the attendees at the last Superbowl used the in-house Wifi, with over 27,000 connected simultaneously at one point.

It's not unprecedented, and it certainly was not unexpected.

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess would be that cellular coverage is the last thing on the minds of the average event planner. They are worrying about the logistics of ticketing, admission, any guest speakers, catering, and that sort of BS. Cellular is just something people take for granted is always there and probably something not thought of at all. Even if they were to set up WiFi APs for the event, I don't want to imagine what that infrastructure setup would have looked like for 15-20k users. With finite wifi channels and average APs maybe only able to handle a couple hundred clients if you're lucky, they would have probably needed hundreds of APs all stepping all over each other with the limited spectrum available.

Id highly suspect that the errors users were receiving were likely due to the spotty connectivity and the app it self not gracefully working with that sort of condition.

The types that are sill playing pokemon go these days are the obsessive type, that are always playing it. At least that's what i see of the handful of people in my circle of friends still playing that game. So they would have been logged into the app/servers whether they were 1000, 100, or even 1 mile away, still creating the same load on the severs as they always see

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure there is no tower database in your phone involved at all. All cell towers broadcast a carrier ID, as soon as your phone see a carrier ID that matches your carrier it is going to try to latch on. Even if it isn't your carrier's ID it will try and latch on and then verify with that carrier if it can roam on that tower. This is also how the cell tower spoofing/sniffing devices that the spooks use work. If they know their target is on a specific carrier they will broadcast that carrier ID and then try to locate themselves close enough that their phone prefers the signal strength of the spooks fake cell tower over the real one.

How do you think international roaming works? Do you really think that a huge database of every cell tower in the world in constantly pushed to your phone?

Basically your phone powers on, it starts scanning all the frequencies it can possibly use for your carrier tower id. If that cannot be found it tries whatever alternate tower ids are available and them confirms if roaming is or is not possible

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference between this event and just about any other sporing event, concert, or other festival is you aren't expecting the event attendees to be on their phone using mobile data nearly 100% of the time. If I am going to a sporting event, concert, or other festival I am primarily there for the show maybe post a couple pics and a check in on social media. These don't even have to go though in real time, if the network is saturated these posts, checkins get buffered and then go out whenever coverage is available.

The only kind of people going to sporting events, concerts, festivals and constantly on their phones, live streaming, etc are attention whores, bragging about where they are, looking for validation from their 2000 "friends" that their life is cool. The kind that start freaking out if their post doesn't get likes within seconds from "friends" that they have never even met in real life. These are the kinds of people that aren't even there for the event, they are there for a social media photo op.

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all COWs are even run by the carriers. They can be a 3rd party either broadcasting carriers IDs on their behalf, or just operate as a 3rd party cellular provider allow open roaming on to their network and hand the traffic off to the specific carriers once its leaves their back haul. This is quite possible to do, and has been done at BurningMan. Look up "camp papa legba" on youtube

As for WiFi. That would have probably been an even bigger logistical nightmare. With limited WiFi channels and the density of coverage that would be needed to cover 15-20k people when you consider an average AP might handle a hundredish people. If you attempted to setup that density of wifi coverage with the limited channels available, id be willing to bet the entire wifi network would be unusable before a single attendee ever arrived with interference from all the neighboring APs.

Re:Capacity planning

[Gussington]

What I disagree with is that it was "obvious" to anyone who is an event planner.

Based on the numerous comments in here it seems obvious. But I'm not sure what the qualification is for event planning, is it to not know anything about planning events?

Re:Capacity planning

[bernywork]

Using FCC assigned frequency at burning man probably won't get you into trouble (Unless someone complains), using it in the middle of chicago, probably will.

Re:Capacity planning

[Anonymous Coward]

They were actually licensed if you watched the videos

Wow

[skam240]

Wow, I cant believe people still play Pokemon Go.

Re:Wow

[thegarbz]

Why? The game has been continuously developed to the point where you now need to form teams and have group battles. They keep making changes to the gameplay in an attempt to keep it fresh, and judging by the fact that pretty much every event is a sellout in minutes it's working quite well.

I can't believe people still play Counter Strike.

Re: Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe people play any games..
What a huge waste of time.. when you could learn some useful skills in the real life, waste your time playing some useless game.

Re: Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

At the end of your life you can think about all the useful stuff you've done in your life.
I'll think about the countless lives I've lived, and worlds I've seen.

Re:Wow

[skam240]

Because it was the ultimate fad game. When it first came out I'd see countless people walking around outside waving their phones around. A dozen or so restuarants in my area (and i live in the burbs) even gave discounts to various factions as a means of bringing in business. Fast forward to today and my teenage neice and nephew dont have a single friend who still plays and literally every person who i knew who played no longer does.

Re: Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet it's still one of the most popular mobile games. Your limited experience versus millions of monthly active players and 20k people willing to go to a live event....

Re:Wow

[thegarbz]

When it first came out I'd see countless people walking around outside waving their phones around.

Of course. The initial start was an incredible fad. Now it just settled back down to the usual fan base who play the most popular current game in a 20 year old franchise. It has a healthy user base just like any other popular game on the market you don't see people play.

Fast forward to today and my teenage neice and nephew dont have a single friend who still plays and literally every person who i knew who played no longer does.

Congratulations. I also don't know anyone who plays WoW so that must not be a thing anymore either right?

You should take public transport sometime. I see people literally everywhere, even when I was in the USA 3 weeks ago, so it's not just a EU thing.

Re: Wow

[thegarbz]

At the end of your life you can think about all the useful stuff you've done in your life.

I'll think about the countless lives I've lived, and worlds I've seen.

Wow are you implying that humans are capable of only doing one thing and it's an either or choice? Man your brain is limited.

Re:Wow

[skam240]

You "see people literally everywhere"? Good for you, so do I.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe people still play Counter Strike.

That's probably because you sucked at it.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on my experience with taking a look at it recently, people don't. Bots do.

Everything around here is blatantly controlled by bots. You'll frequently see accounts that are clearly randomly generated names like "ogwe5813" putting lores on Pokestops so that their non-throwaway bot accounts (who still have garbage names) can farm up Pokemon. Every gym is full of blatantly botted Pokemon. Regular players don't stand a chance against the bot armies.

So, yeah, people still "play." Just, not people who don't cheat.

Re: Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, people still play. I went to a few raids today where there were 50-100 people. People of all types, races, and ages. It appears to mostly be nerdyish men around age 30, some younger kids and some older folks... you'll even see a really attractive girl every great while.

I enjoy it mostly because it's something to do when you're out and about. I don't understand the people who put a bunch of money into the game.

Re: Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

mostly be nerdyish men around age 30, some younger kids

sadlol

Re:Wow

[Daetrin]

That must be the tagline for the "Seventh Sense" movie that never got off the ground, "I see people".

Re:Wow

[martinfb]

I can't believe people EVER played Pokemon anything!

Re:Wow

[martinfb]

...and most voted for Trump; thinking he was a token!

"A fool and his money..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah.

Re:"A fool and his money..."

[denzacar]

And nothing of value was gained.

Re:"A fool and his money..."

[rudy_wayne]

attended by between 15-20,000 people

Niantic gave a rare Pokemon Go character to everyone who attended

Doesn't sound very rare to me.

Re:"A fool and his money..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Over a population of 65 million players...

There is another kind?

[Zero__Kelvin]

Is a disastrous Pokemon Go event like a spherical basketball?

If it's the weekend...

[Anonymous Coward]

..it's Fash the Nation!

Re:If it's the weekend...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're that into fashion, you must be a raging homosexual.

Sigh.

[ledow]

Moreso than the organisation of an event (which is hard), I am much more disappointed in tens of thousands of people turning up to chase virtual characters around a park on their phones AND PAYING FOR THE PRIVILEGE.

Honestly, that's much more in the "what the fuck has the world come to" area than someone who couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery.

Re:Sigh.

[Scutter]

Must be pretty easy to see them all from your high horse.

How is this event any different from, say, Comic-Con or any other fan fest? Just because it's a video game you don't happen to like? Newsflash: People like enjoying their hobbies and sometimes that involves paying money to do things related to it.

Re:Sigh.

[0100010001010011]

Comic-Con or any other fan fest

Or professional sporting event, theater, concert, etc.

Re:Sigh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking millennials. Idiots through and through.

Re:Sigh.

[thegarbz]

As opposed to what?

Thousands of people turning up to watch a group kick a ball around?
Thousands of people going to a shopping centre on sale day?

Frankly I'm more disappointed in the 100s of thousands of people who are vegetating in front of the TV or "disappointed" in their fellow people Slashdot.

Re:Sigh.

[zantafio]

indeed. In a country where barely half of the voters show up to the polls, it's amazing there are people willing to pay hundreds of dollars, leave at the crack of dawn, travel long distance, wait several hours and all that to chase a virtual cartoon character. But when it is time to vote.... screw that, let's stay home.

Re: Sigh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen, brother.

Re:Sigh.

[Anonymous Coward]

do you really want these morons diluting your vote?

fuck 'em. I'm glad they stay home.

Re: Sigh.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Guys? Didn't you hear me? Stop having fun!"

Re:Sigh.

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know they are the same people?

Re: Sigh.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Stop liking things I don't like!"

Re:Sigh.

[HanzoSpam]

They don't vote because they no longer believe in democracy. Especially millennials.

Re:Sigh.

[Anonymous Coward]

It involves new fangled "cellular phones" which the basement dwelling slashdot crowd still thinks will never take off (since they can't get good reception underground) and are only used by Yuppies not red-blooded Americans who use copper cables as Ma Bell intended.

Re: Sigh.

[Anonymous Coward]

The government should be capable of providing that assistance to everyone.

Re: Sigh.

[Anonymous Coward]

If we lived in a democracy it would be different. But we don't. Votes don't count, they will redefine the thing you voted for to mean the opposite. Examples: The Patriot Act(completely nationalistic, redefining patriotism to its opposite) and ACA(redefining "affordable" to "you'll buy it or get fined regardless of how high the price gets)
Corporations are allowed to police themselves and buy laws that legalized their oppression. Examples: NDA,NCA. You aren't allowed to say your employer raped you because it makes the bad company look bad.

Re:Sigh.

[thegarbz]

But when it is time to vote.... screw that, let's stay home.

Are you surprised? Why not describe the two events:
a) a group of devote fans have the opportunity to participate in a rare event with like minded people to do something in their hobby that is effectively limited to this one opportunity (there was apparently all sorts of special things you get at this event). On a weekend no less.

vs.

b) a group of people who don't give a shit about politics get to cast a vote about which turd smells the least shitty with the wonderful promise that regardless of what they do, they will be smelling the shit for the next 3 years. Oh and you need to fit it in with your workday.

If voting weren't compulsory in my country, and I had the options you guys had, you wouldn't have been able to pay me to get out of bed and vote. Well maybe on a Saturday and only if there was no queue and I was going past the polling booth anyway.

Re:Sigh.

[Gussington]

Must be pretty easy to see them all from your high horse.

How is this event any different from, say, Comic-Con or any other fan fest?

Nothing, they are all equally stupid. Now running around a field with a ball, that is the real deal...

Re: Sigh.

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound pretty sociopathic yourself.

Re: Sigh.

[Anonymous Coward]

A bunch of grown men, women, and all of the other genders dressing up as cartoon characters or aliens is pretty pathetic, too. This goes beyond just being a hobby. It many cases such behavior appears to be a symptom of an underlying mental illness, for example. Such people should seek medical assistance.

Yep. Exactly the same goes for baseball, football and any other team sport where people dress up and do stupid things together for no good reason.

Assuming you are consistent.

Which you are not, of course.

TL;DR: You are a fucking hypocrite.

Re: Sigh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I catch virtual cartoon characters.
And I voted.
For Trump.

Re:Sigh.

[DNS-and-BIND]

Show me on the doll where the sportsfans touched you.

Re: Sigh.

[Anonymous Coward]

3/10 - must try harder

Re: Sigh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you mean you wish he was a hypocrite, so that you could easily dismiss his point? I'm willing to bet he'd have the same attitude towards the body-painted beer-swillers at a ball game. I'd agree with him to a point. Folks that get really involved with the hobby of being a fan/spectator aren't likely reaching for their full potential as sapient beings, due to the opportunity costs of heavily investing in an incorporeal fantasy world. On the other hand, time enjoyed is not time wasted.

Meaning of "disaster"

[PopeRatzo]

I'm very disappointed in this story. A flaming airship crashing into a crowd of 10,000 people is a disaster, not the failure to catch a rare pokemon.

To be honest, I was hoping for the former.

Re:Meaning of "disaster"

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up. A bunch of children and immature neckbeards failing to capture a cartoon pig-dragon is not a "disaster".

Re:Meaning of "disaster"

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, if it's got PopeRatface Oy veying, it can't be all bad!

Re:Meaning of "disaster"

[hcs_$reboot]

Disaster: "a sudden event, such as an accident or a natural catastrophe, that causes great damage or loss of life "

Maybe some pokemons lost life?

Re:Meaning of "disaster"

[rudy_wayne]

A flaming airship crashing into 10,000 people who have paid to play Pokemon Go.

I would pay to see that.

Re:Meaning of "disaster"

[thegarbz]

not the failure to catch a rare pokemon.

If that's the "disaster" you got out of this story then you need reading comprehension skills. How about a $400000 event ending in not a profit, but rather a $200000 additional loss as everyone needed to be refunded and also compensated?

Re:Meaning of "disaster"

[thegarbz]

Or maybe an accidental oversight caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses for Niantic.

I can think of far lesser things that qualify for the title of disaster.

Re:Meaning of "disaster"

[Anonymous Coward]

How about, that's not a disaster either, that's just plain awesome.

Re:Meaning of "disaster"

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares. Video games are trash.

Re:Meaning of "disaster"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm very disappointed in this story. A flaming airship crashing into a crowd of 10,000 people is a disaster, not the failure to catch a rare pokemon.

To be honest, I was hoping for the former.

First world problems

Re:Meaning of "disaster"

[CanadianMacFan]

Still not a disaster. Nobody died. Company won't go out of business because of this. And even if it did the company makes a game.

Re:Meaning of "disaster"

[Hognoxious]

As a systemd evangelist, I'd have expected you to have a much better idea of what really constitutes a disaster.

Re:Meaning of "disaster"

[thegarbz]

Thanks. I'm glad we got your clear definition of disaster meaning someone dies or an entire company goes out of business.

Every other dictionary and definition in the world didn't make it clearly as black and white as you did. We have you to thank for clearing up the entire english language. I am in awe just to even be speaking to you.

Re:Meaning of "disaster"

[thegarbz]

As a systemd evangelist, I'd have expected you to have a much better idea of what really constitutes a disaster.

Interesting. You don't know how to accurately define disaster ... or the meaning of evangelist. Maybe English isn't for you. Have you tried a less complicated language with shorter words?

Re:Meaning of "disaster"

[EvilSS]

Should have kept reading: "1.2 An event or fact that has unfortunate consequences." https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/disaster

Re:Meaning of "disaster"

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut the fuck up, your cover has already been blown. You're obviously a Pokemon loving faggot who fantasizes about getting raped by Lennart Poettering while Squirtle gives both of you a golden shower. Young Japanese dropouts (and with their working culture you can't really blame them) have an excuse to play such garbage. A supposedly grown man like you doesn't. Now go out there and try to catch a life!

Re:Meaning of "disaster"

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a $400000 event ending in not a profit, but rather a $200000 additional loss as everyone needed to be refunded and also compensated?

That's not a disaster, that's justice! Mobile gaming companies like Niantic purposely engineer their games to be addictive. You're like a smoker that says, "Oh, I just smoke because I want to." Idiot.

Organized by Ja Rule?

[HalAtWork]

Seriously though, this many people in one location, can the cell towers handle that, as well as any kind of cross interference?

Pokemon Gone

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotta shaft em all

Re: Pokemon Gone

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear you liek Mudkipz.

Dead?

[_KiTA_]

Not bad for a supposedly dead game.

Of course you were.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you were.

Once again your fake liberal 'tolerance' and 'empathy' are exposed for the arrogance and narcissism they actually are.

Re: Of course you were.

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting worldview you have there. It's your birthday. Someone gives you a calfskin wallet. How do you react?

Fine Niantic

[Anonymous Coward]

They need to be fined for this crap.

Should we be surprised?

[Herkum01]

It is a cell phone based game. I play in the suburbs which has reasonable coverage, but I have period network issues with the game. There cannot be that many people in my area that are impacting the network so it has to be the game.

Add in REAL network congestion, of course this is going to be disaster. The part I don't believe is that people actually PAID to go to this!

Did they hire Ja Rule to run this or what?

Re:Should we be surprised?

[thegarbz]

This week it's definitely the game / server load.
Normally though, I don't hear about much of a problem (I don't play but everyone else in this house does).

Why get together for an online game?

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole point of online games is that the participants don't have to be in the same place. So why bring tens of thousands of people to one location just so they can play an online game that they could have all played from separate locations?

Re:Why get together for an online game?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why go to a concert when you can just stream or play the music file on your own home? It's about the experience of course. If you read about the rules of the game and how the meeting was supposed to work out, you will understand. Also, you can collect money selling entrance tickets.

In this case, a shitty one due to bad planning.

Re: Why get together for an online game?

[that this is not und]

This is a GPS oriented online game.

Refund?

[Anonymous Coward]

These nerds spebr money and a shitty day, anl all they got was a value entered in a database. Does not sound like a refund to me.

Re:Refund?

[Anonymous Coward]

They had what they deserved: nothing of value. Just like they have no value themselves.

Re: Refund?

[Anonymous Coward]

Reductionist utilitarians say the sound of one hand clapping is "cl"

$100 in game cash does not = $100 real cash

[Joe_Dragon]

$100 in game cash does not = $100 real cash

Re:$100 in game cash does not = $100 real cash

[Anonymous Coward]

Fine, repeat with 20 dollars. Same fucking thing. This was supposed to be a big advertising event too, so that also was screwed up.

Brainwashed idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

People which attend these events and pay $400 for a ticket are nothing else than brainwashed idiots. Children starving all over the world and they spend $400 to catch an invisible character in a pathetic mobile game.
Pathetic...

Re:Brainwashed idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

Versus someone who buys a bottle of wine for $400 or spends that on a single meal.

Re: Brainwashed idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

I took my wife and kids. The tickets were $20 originally, they sold on eBay for about $200ish. I didn't see any go for $400 (some may, but 200 was far more common). They said they are refunding to the email associated with the account ($20) and 100$ worth of in game credit. There were challenges that participants had to complete and unlimited (free) raids and a lot of extra spawns so if you wanted to you could catch Pokémon the whole time. It sucked that a bunch of people couldn't get online but We had a good time. I mostly just walked around enjoying how excited the kids were to be able to catch lots of Pokémon. It was like when a very accelerated version of when we go out and walk around and play but without worrying about traffic or if the police were going to hassle us for standing outside of a church battling.

I think they should have lots of these events.

Re: Brainwashed idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

The children of ticket scalpers need to eat too.

Re:Brainwashed idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

yea life sucks dont it, maybe those parents of the starving children can get off their worthless ass once in a while and that problem would be solved

Duh?

[lorien420]

Clearly none of these people have ever tried to use their cell phones at an outdoor festival before. You can't do networking events at public parks because you can't add your own wireless infrastructure. I'm surprised that this didn't occur to anybody when planning this.

Re:Duh?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are portable cellular tower trucks. You have to arrange with the carriers in advance though.

Re:Duh?

[Areyoukiddingme]

You can't do networking events at public parks because you can't add your own wireless infrastructure.

Rental of portable wifi access points specifically designed for events are available from half a dozen different vendors I found with a very cursory Google search. You most definitely can add your own wireless infrastructure, and I bet deployment happens in a matter of hours, just like the cellular tower trucks mentioned by the other poster. Might even be cheaper, given the phone company's penchant for overcharging for every byte.

Re:Duh?

[Anonymous Coward]

And your uplink to the internet is going to be what exactly?

Re:Duh?

[Areyoukiddingme]

And your uplink to the internet is going to be what exactly?

I'm assuming they use point to point wireless for backhaul, which runs at up to 866 Mbits/s, commercial off the shelf. That plus a brick of batteries in the base allows 100% unwired deployment, which is faster, safer, cheaper, and easier than running wires for either power or data. Neither wifi access points nor the point to point wireless data systems are high power devices, so batteries are perfectly acceptable.

If I were designing such a station, it would have a cylindrical steel base with a locking access door, behind which are a couple hundred pounds of easily removable lead acid batteries. The batteries should have enough energy storage capacity to power the electronics for a week, and double as anti-tamper weight so people don't knock over, move, or otherwise mess with the device. A hollow steel pole would rise up from the center of the base to a height of 4 meters. At the top of the pole would be mounts for a fancy MIMO antenna wifi access point and up to three point to point wireless devices, all in IP67 waterproof cases. The mount point for the wifi would be fixed. The mount points for the point to point devices would be ball and socket joints with screws to pin them down.

Deployment would happen in four stages. First, a deployment plan would be created for the venue in question, and the requisite number of poles configured with between 1 and 3 point to point antennas. Any of them with direct line of site to the uplink station would only need one. Those acting as relays for more distant stations would have two. Only the most difficult of venues would require deployment of the triple link station. Then my crew would use a 2 wheel dolly with fat all terrain tires to deploy each station. They'd also have a 4 wheel wagon with fat all terrain tires, in which the batteries for the base would be transported. A third guy would carry a step ladder. They'd haul all this stuff to each predetermined location, set down the base, install the batteries into it, and the guy on the step ladder would climb up and adjust the point to point antennas to aim in the correct directions to link to either another of these stations or to the uplink station that has wired access to the Internet. I'd have at least three step ladders, and guys to wield them. There would be some custom firmware in the wifi access point that allows a smart phone to connect to it and retrieve signal strength from the point to point antennas, so the guy aiming them could be sure he has them aligned properly.

The stations would run 24/7 during their deployment, both to be sure the network is ready for each day and as a security measure after hours to detect if someone is tampering with or attempting to steal the equipment. An optional fillip would be an IP security camera on every station, aimed to capture footage of anyone messing with the station. A possible additional feature would be a ring of security cameras aimed to capture footage of the venue for additional safety if the event organizers desire it. That costs extra, 'cause I'd have to deploy the security trailer with all the monitors and the cadre of people trained to watch them.

This is what I came up with after a few minutes' thought. I expect the people who already provide the commercial services have thought of all that plus a few more things besides.

this is one strike against net neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

hey thousands of idiots will pay $400 to chase things around using data from OUR cellphone network? ahem, please pay up.

This game is just disguise for sex with childs

[Anonymous Coward]

We called the police on this big crasy fat walking back and forth by the road, and he did get arrested. The police found childsporn on his Pokoman toy. After, he was crying to them with his face redding, and smacking his bald in the police car shouting "I'm so stupid". Its too bad for his decision, but I'm glad there is one less of bald homosexuels.

Re: This game is just disguise for sex with childs

[Anonymous Coward]

When I were a lad we had proper trolls, these days they don't know they're born. Not enough typographical errors or spelling mistakes to draw people in, coupled with easy, well worn cliched targets. 2/10 must try harder.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

> To be honest, I was hoping for the former.

Why do you hate Japanese people so much, man? I know your dad was in WWII, but that was long ago and most people around now weren't even alive then.

Re:Why?

[PopeRatzo]

Why do you hate Japanese people so much, man?

Here's a photo from yesterday's Pokemon Go Fest in Chicago. I don't see any Japanese people.

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbo...

a ticket Lottery does a lot to stop scalpers /fair

[Joe_Dragon]

a ticket Lottery does a lot to stop scalpers / make it fair to over over meany different time zones.

I think they're just overwhelmed

[rsilvergun]

their first game bombed. They put a Pokemon skin on it and it was the biggest mobile game ever. They weren't prepared for that.

First Trump, now this.

[Anonymous Coward]

we truly are devolving...

Giant con

[Anonymous Coward]

... Gaming company Niantic finally just ...

... realized they can't sit in their executive chair, stroke their white pussy and laugh maniacally. It sounds very much like Niantic made everyone pay for joining a flash mob with Niantic providing nothing more than some digital creatures for the mob to chase and a scoreboard.

Wow...

[SeattleLawGuy]

Get a demand letter from a lawyer. If it persists, go to court. They will settle pretty much immediately unless they are idiots--both because of the risk of bad press and because of the cost. It's just easier to delist the places.

(Lawsuits are a bad way to resolve things except for when they're not.)

These people need almond flavored Kool-Aid

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we should host a Pokemon Go event near the edge of the Grand Canyon. Place a bunch of legendary birds just in arms reach over the edge and let Darwinism continue the thinning of the Go cult.

Really?

[nospam007]

Stupid companies with stupid products attract stupid people and act stupidly.

How is that news for nerds? Or even stuff that matters?

Good Grief!

[Anonymous Coward]

I cannot begin to comprehend the kinds of person that would PAY for this nonsense! Some people paid $400 to go use their phone in a park. I weep for humanity.

Cell Network????

[superdave80]

Those people who were lucky enough to get into the paid event were greeted with a completely overloaded cell network

They were hoping to use the existing CELL network to handle this mass of people/smartphones??? What idiots. I can't believe they didn't arrange for some local wifi hotspots to be setup for an event like this.

resulting in 3+ hour long delays

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, because if there is one thing Pokemon people have it's a lack of free time...

1st world problem.

[dddux]

Oh how horrible this must be for us "1st worlders". A Pokemon event got ruined by the ISP. What a disaster. /s In other more important news, there's far more important news to care about.