WiFi Access for the Kalahari Pocket Protector Brigade

[john crider]

I missed last years CodeMash so apologies if this is a previously
solved problem.

WiFi access (in 2010) with 900 or so geeks was terrible, I imagine
even more so with 1200. Is there anything that we as attendees can do
and/or the Kalahari can do to help us help ourselves? I am not wise
in the ways of public facing WiFi, but I thought I would put the
question out there.

[Corey Haines]

Always have a tethering option as backup. I spent a lot of time
tethering to my phone. Also, a pocket mifi, or something like that,
can come in handy, too.

-Corey

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[Matthew Groves]

Tether to your smartphone.

[Nick Portelli]

Tethering works fine as long as you are not on Sprint. I've never got a good reception there, or even the Sprint tower was bogged down.  I usually plan on not being online. 

Out of curiosity what would to take for wifi to survive a hoard of geeks? 

[Matt Casto]

Wifi for large groups of people is a very difficult, very expensive problem. Its usually not worth it.

Here's a great rant about this very issue -  http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/10/08.html 

< Matt

[Jim Holmes]

We're working hard with the Kalahari on infrastructure, but every year we
get slammed.

It would be really helpful if attendees were courteous and avoided
downloading the iOS SDK, streaming video, grabbing torrents, etc. during
conference hours. There's only so much infrastructure and service work we
can do...

If you have work that's critical and you absolutely require connectivity,
then please do bring gear to tether, use your own smartphone hotspot, or
some similar setup.

Jim

--

[Jason Follas]

It's been a running joke that every year, the Kalahari has upgraded
their infrastructure in response to CodeMash, and every year, CodeMash
finds a way to break their newly improved infrastructure!

This year, there are new access points and routers installed at the
Kalahari. They aren't using a Class C address space (remember that
year??!). There is a huge pipe to the Internet available - like,
bigger than most corporations have. There is no gateway device to
serve as a bottleneck. Bitorrent and other bandwidth hogs will be
detected and blocked. And, I think that CodeMash's website and data
will be cached on the internal network (so wifi requests to
codemash.org _should_ redirect to an internal server).

In addition, we have the facilities to hosts files on a server at the
Kalahari, so if there's some new popular download that everybody is
trying to get, then we can grab it and host it internally (much faster
download for you, plus that doesn't use the Internet bandwidth).

But, I expect that we'll somehow bust their upgrades, and will have
new capabilities to look forward to next year!

Note: Mobile service in the convention center has been unpredictable
in the past - just a warning to those wanting to tether.

[Jay Wren]

+1. I was rather disappointed last year when I heard someone complaining that they couldn't stream 720p video in their hotel room at night. All I wanted to do was check my email and read twitter. I realized that the reason that I could not was a small percentage of attendees trying to stream HD video.

Please be courteous and don't do audio or video or download giant SDK while on codemash network. Take a few hours on Tuesday or Wednesday as your own pre-conf day and think about what kinds of things you may need. rvm install your base stuff. Get the latest linux iso. Grab that new MSDN release.

Then we will all have enough shared data for email, twitter and small repo push/pull to/from github, bitbucket and launchpad during the conference.

--
j

[Jay Harris]

At a few other conferences, we've seen a noticeable improvement to the
"State of the WiFi" when people all disconnect their smartphones from
the WiFi.

Many of us have our phones configured to automatically pick up an open
WiFi when it sees it, since it uses less battery and is often a faster
download. This may be true at home or the local Starbucks, but when 1200
phones are also trying to connect to the open WiFi, then not so much.
Also, at CodeMash you're never more than the nearest wall away from
being able to charge your device, so just bring your charger with you.

I would suggest that we all do everyone else a favor and keep our phones
off the WiFi.
--
Jay Harris

[Jeremiah Peschka]

On this note -

If you know you're attending a workshop or session that may be immediately helpful to you (which I hope they all are), see if the presenter has put together any notes of what you should download to make your life more useful. Last year I attended one of the precompiler sessions and I pulled down the Azure SDK and AWS tools in advance. My life was very easy from that point forward. The same thing has happened to me at a bunch of other conferences, too. Be prepared, download everything you think you need before hand (think of it like stocking up on ebooks before getting on a long flight without wifi).
---
Jeremiah Peschka - Founder, Brent Ozar PLF, LLC
Microsoft SQL Server MVP

[Michael Letterle]

That's funny, because I've always had good luck with my Sprint
connection there. Maybe not inside some of the conf. room, but in the
hallways and my hotel room it's always been fine. The other issue, of
course, is that Sprint doesn't allow tethering by default.

On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 10:11 AM, Nick Portelli <portel...@gmail.com> wrote:

--
Michael Letterle
----------//-----------
http://blog.prokrams.com

[Jim Holmes]

Along those lines: we'll have all prerequisites for every workshop available
on a server local on the Kalahari network. (Well, except for certain vendors
who aren't friendly to open downloads of their SDK.)

We'll have info on that up and available shortly, as will we the list of all
prerequisites so folks can get started ahead of time too.

[Rob Gibbens]

Jason,
If the wifi will be redirecting codemash.org requests to a local
cache, will that cache be updated relatively quickly a session gets
updated/dropped and the rest feed has updated data?

> > For more options, visit this group athttp://groups.google.com/group/codemash?hl=en.

[Jason Follas]

I know that was an idea that we brought up to Kalahari's IT staff, but I don't know implementation details.

[john crider]

As I recall AT&T had low speed Edge service that was spotty. Our best
chance at good WiFi is probably to play nice together (tethering, data
plans, using WiFi in sips rather than gulps, etc).

john

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[Mike K]

I was just at Kalahari last week with my family and the internet
access was horrifically slow without CodeMash, so I wouldn't put all
the blame on CodeMash attendees. It seems that Kalahari's internet
pipes are not big enough for the number for people who stay there in
general. There are a lot of people who now stream content, not just
geeks.

[Jason Follas]

You can't compare their normal public bandwidth to the level of service that will be in effect next week. 

Bandwidth is something that they increase for special events (because it's expensive).  The capacity is alreay there - they just need to open the valve.

[Jim Holmes]

+1.

 

We’re paying a hefty amount of money for a bandwidth plusup in the conference venue area.

 

From: code...@googlegroups.com [mailto:code...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jason Follas

Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2012 11:41 AM
To: code...@googlegroups.com

[Jay]

Hi Jim

I was just discussing the problems with WiFi in large venues with a coworker and was telling him how good the connectivity was at this years conference compared to previous years. Obviously the bigger pipe on the back end had a lot to do with it, but, on the front end with 1300 people and probably around 1.5 WiFi devices each (phones, ipods, tablets, laptops, etc) there were probably around 2000 devices connecting in the conference area at any given time and it worked pretty much flawlessly. Is there any information available on how this was setup and what kind of devices (and how many) were used?

Thanks

    Jay

PS: Cudo's on another awesome conference this year...

[Dave Swersky]

Perhaps the kind folks at the Kalahari would refer you to the contractor that set it up.  Generally I would say it was enough access points, distributed evenly throughout the building, and making effective use of all wifi channels.

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[Dianne Marsh]

I believe that the person you have to thank is Matthew Dick, who manages IT for the Kalahari. For each year of the conference, he has worked diligently to support one of the most challenging audiences: multiple devices per person. Each year, he has stepped it up a little more and we've introduced additional challenges of increasing attendance.  This year, Matt and his staff really rocked it in spite of the fact that the new space was only officially opened the day before the conference started!

The Kalahari staff are amazing, across the board. From catering to hotel rooms, and yes ... IT ... they have gone above and beyond every year.

Dianne

[Patrick Steele]

I'd also like to add a big "Thank You!" to Matthew Dick and the
Kalahari IT staff.

For those who may not have known, the Kalahari loaned us a webserver
for CodeMash. We mirrored the entire www.codemash.org site on the
local Kalahari webserver and they redirected all requests on their
network for "codemash.org" to that machine. This made access to the
main site as well as the RSS feeds for all of those mobile apps
super-fast.

CodeMash is not only one of THE best conferences around, it's held at
a magnificent venue that is very tech-friendly!

---
Patrick Steele
http://weblogs.asp.net/psteele