Bandwidth Circuit Redundancy For Live Events

The dreaded spinning wheel. The cute T-Rex Dinosaur Game on Google Chrome. The feared yellow triangle with the exclamation mark.  We've all been there. When an Internet outage strikes at home or the office, it can be inconvenient and annoying. At a live event, it's downright terrifying to be an exhibitor during a sales demo, an executive on stage, or an event staffer working the registration desk. You stand there and smile helplessly while someone frantically troubleshoots the WiFi outage behind the scenes. There is a better way.

Bandwidth Redundancy

While there are many causes for network outages, a best practice at live events is to give yourself multiple paths out to the Internet to overcome this risk. These multiple paths or bandwidth circuits create redundancy - eliminating the single point of failure risk inherent when you have only one Internet Service Provider (ISP). Many consumer and enterprise class routers now use scripts to automatically fail-over between bandwidth circuits or providers. In this blog post we'll review a few examples of how you can create bandwidth redundancy to mitigate the risk of a network outage crippling your next live event.

Exhibit Booth Networks

Exhibitors have several options when it comes to ordering Internet connectivity at hotels and convention centers. Each venue typically has an in-house IT vendor like Encore or Smart City Networks - but these are only one option. Many exhibitors now bring their own cellular hotspots, turn their phone into a WiFi hotspot, or rent 5G hotspots from companies like Trade Show Internet. Regardless of which method you choose, you should always have 2 paths out to the Internet.

At TSI, all of our 5G rental solutions now include (3) cellular carriers for triple redundancy - Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. TSI's 5G Internet Kit uses an algorithm to test the signal strength of each cellular carrier and select the single best carrier. If that carrier's network goes down, the kit's router will automatically switch to another available carrier. We also have the ability to change the cellular carrier and speed test each carrier -- indispensable tools to remotely support our exhibitor clients. TSI's 5G Football and 5G Mega Internet Kit both use a cellular bonding router with (3) SIM cards, providing triple redundancy by using all 3 cellular carriers at the same time. If any one 5G carrier is slow or unavailable, the other 2 carriers pick up the slack. The network experience is smooth as the 5G bonding function seamlessly handles the Internet traffic behind the scenes.

Live Event Networks

When deploying a large-scale network for hundreds or thousands of users, TSI recommends the same best practices when it comes to ISP selection and carrier redundancy. From a practical standpoint, we might source a 1 Gbps fiber-optic bandwidth circuit from Spectrum or Comcast, with a secondary fail-over bandwidth circuit from another ISP. We may even use Starlink or bonded 5G as a secondary or tertiary bandwidth source, depending upon the location. TSI's enterprise routers are configured with fail-over scripts to automatically switch between ISPs within seconds when an outage is detected. Other advanced best practices include separating groups of users by VLANs and prioritizing certain critical VLANs to continue operating during a bandwidth impairment situation. For example, preserving the production and point-of-sale VLANs while temporarily disabling a courtesy guest WiFi network will allow the critical functions of the event to run until the primary bandwidth circuit is restored.

Conclusion

The military adage "two is one, and one is none" is particularly true when it comes to single points of failure at live events. By choosing more than 1 ISP and utilizing a fail-over plan within your network design, you can elevate the level of professionalism and likelihood of success at your next event.