As one of the very few engineers who's actually done this and still has it as my current primary responsibility (principal engineer for the largest wifi hotspot provider in the world) this comment is correct. It won't happen with consumer grade equipment and also won't happen with autonomous ap's or even open source systems as much as I'd love to promote them. We've found that typically even at high tech events you won't EVER have more than 50% usage unless it's something like an ARIN conference or TED where everyone's getting on the wireless on purpose.
However, I'd guess if you have that many people they don't all have laptops in which case you're talking about cell phones or other handheld devices, probably iPhones, winmo, blackberry's, androids, etc... so you're talking about things that will be quiet most of the time. That said, you can easily expect somewhere in the range of 100 associations per AP with most of them being inactive and the ones that are actually bothering to do something aren't doing a whole lot. In this case you can dismiss a few of the APs and avoid the CCI (co-channel interference) you'll create by having that many AP's in a single location. Take roughly 7 AP's, maybe as few as 5 and make sure you pick something centralized (Aruba, meru though its lower performing, or Cisco) and read EVERYTHING about how to configure the auto-RF management, then ask an expert. It gets really tough but this is much easier an environment that most others where you're talking about not much more density per AP but you have 100k people as close as they can stand.
All of you who are talking about the whole four channel plan bit (1,4,8,11) please just stop. You make my life harder when I have to come into a network behind you and fix it. This idea is dumb and really needs to stop.
Lastly, the most important thing you can do is find low gain directional antennas and study up on the propagation shape, minimize the back lobe by placing it against something that absorbs but does not reflect RF, etc. Basically the perfect network for this would be the 2112 and 1252's (NOT 1142's, those have internal omni antennas and will make matters worse) and don't worry much about the 5ghz spectrum... if you're talking about handhelds there are so few that have 11a or 5ghz 11n radios that you won't get anything from that.
Use this as a good learning experience, and if it goes well and you get everyone connected on the first try... by all means, look up the largest hotspot provider in the world and give me a call, we're looking for people interested in working in this environment =)
As one of the people who actually got this email, I can say with certainty that it was a suggestion. The internal communication pointed out that regulation impacts our jobs and suggested it would be good for the company to agree... everyone at AT&T is well aware that no one's job is in any way impacted no matter what they do with the suggestion. Obviously if someone is looking to move up in the company they'll support the message, but that isn't a statement on net neutrality, thats business.
Personally, I ignored the email but talked to my coworkers about it (we're a network design group so this is spot on with what we do) and that includes management... this is a non topic. Companies get successful because they do whats in their best interests... if you don't like what they do, don't use their products.
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As one of the very few engineers who's actually done this and still has it as my current primary responsibility (principal engineer for the largest wifi hotspot provider in the world) this comment is correct. It won't happen with consumer grade equipment and also won't happen with autonomous ap's or even open source systems as much as I'd love to promote them. We've found that typically even at high tech events you won't EVER have more than 50% usage unless it's something like an ARIN conference or TED where everyone's getting on the wireless on purpose. However, I'd guess if you have that many people they don't all have laptops in which case you're talking about cell phones or other handheld devices, probably iPhones, winmo, blackberry's, androids, etc ... so you're talking about things that will be quiet most of the time. That said, you can easily expect somewhere in the range of 100 associations per AP with most of them being inactive and the ones that are actually bothering to do something aren't doing a whole lot. In this case you can dismiss a few of the APs and avoid the CCI (co-channel interference) you'll create by having that many AP's in a single location. Take roughly 7 AP's, maybe as few as 5 and make sure you pick something centralized (Aruba, meru though its lower performing, or Cisco) and read EVERYTHING about how to configure the auto-RF management, then ask an expert. It gets really tough but this is much easier an environment that most others where you're talking about not much more density per AP but you have 100k people as close as they can stand.
All of you who are talking about the whole four channel plan bit (1,4,8,11) please just stop. You make my life harder when I have to come into a network behind you and fix it. This idea is dumb and really needs to stop.
Lastly, the most important thing you can do is find low gain directional antennas and study up on the propagation shape, minimize the back lobe by placing it against something that absorbs but does not reflect RF, etc. Basically the perfect network for this would be the 2112 and 1252's (NOT 1142's, those have internal omni antennas and will make matters worse) and don't worry much about the 5ghz spectrum ... if you're talking about handhelds there are so few that have 11a or 5ghz 11n radios that you won't get anything from that.
Use this as a good learning experience, and if it goes well and you get everyone connected on the first try ... by all means, look up the largest hotspot provider in the world and give me a call, we're looking for people interested in working in this environment =)
As one of the people who actually got this email, I can say with certainty that it was a suggestion. The internal communication pointed out that regulation impacts our jobs and suggested it would be good for the company to agree ... everyone at AT&T is well aware that no one's job is in any way impacted no matter what they do with the suggestion. Obviously if someone is looking to move up in the company they'll support the message, but that isn't a statement on net neutrality, thats business.
Personally, I ignored the email but talked to my coworkers about it (we're a network design group so this is spot on with what we do) and that includes management ... this is a non topic. Companies get successful because they do whats in their best interests ... if you don't like what they do, don't use their products.