Etherlive – Event Technology Experts

Broadband, Cloud Computing, Connectivity, Event IT

The last couple of years has seen a major shift to ‘cloud computing’ driven by a combination of the expectation of connectivity everywhere and the explosion of users wishing to easily share content between several devices. On the whole the use of cloud services such as Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, Sky Drive and cloud hosted business applications such as Salesforce, Office365, Adobe and even Sage to name a few, can be great for companies, providing the well documented concerns around security, data protection and availability are addressed appropriately.

There is, however, a grey lining to the cloud when it comes to events – the impact cloud services have on the event infrastructure. The internal infrastructure in terms of Wi-Fi and wired connections is not the concern, any well designed network should be able to handle that, it is the internet connectivity aspect. The additional loading that cloud services create is having a significant impact on the capacity required and many events and customers are not factoring this into plans and budgets.

Cloud services change the usage characteristics of internet connections, creating much more demand on the upload capacity compared to traditional browsing, this means that ‘synchronous’ connections need to be used where the upload and download speeds are more closely matched compared to ADSL where the download is much faster than the upload. Overall the capacity of the internet connections need to be higher too because everything is going back and forth to the internet. For example a user sharing a 10MB site plan to ten others will generate 10MB of upload traffic and 100MB of download traffic because it will synchronise to each user separately – this may not seem a lot but scale up to a whole site across all users (with multiple devices) and all services and the numbers get very large very quickly. Scrimping on the connectivity for a corporate training event where all 200 users are set to use a cloud service is a recipe for disaster as the user experience will undoubtedly be poor.

Storm — Cloud based services can cause a storm with event internet requirements

Adding more capacity is generally the easiest route but the jump in cost can be higher than customers expect because of the need to move to synchronous and low contention services such as EFM (Ethernet First Mile) and optic fibre. In some cases wired connectivity is limited so additional wireless or satellite capacity is required and these have their own requirements which need to be factored in early on in planning. Newer services like BT Infinity do help in some cases but it should be remembered that although the headline numbers look good these are consumer focused services which come with high contention ratios (meaning a high risk that performance will be much lower than stated at busy times) and there is no guarantee on the service.

Slowly cloud based services are realising there is a need to be able to distribute load and are making available the ability to provide local caches of data which will help over time but we are some way off this being easily available for most services. In the mean time understanding what services are being used and undertaking capacity planning is essential so that the correct level of capacity can be put in place.

Overall cloud services can be very cost effective but as the saying goes there is no such thing as a free lunch!

Knowing your strengths: Hotels & Event Technology

15 Oct 2013

Event IT, Hotel Technology, Hotel Wi-Fi, Venue

Having been around hotels and catering all my life it never ceases to amaze me how good they are at making delivery of massive functions in one room and dinner for hundreds of residents in another look so calm and collected. It’s what hotels are great at. Many have established suppliers who help with the details like laundry, additional staff who they trust to use their experience to bring a better customer experience. We are now reaching the point where a technology partner is just as important.

We asked for some research to be completed which helps highlight the challenge hotels are facing – over 81% of the hotels asked in the phone survey were unable to explain what kind of internet access they had for functions. Imagine that all-important agent exploring venues for their 3 year sales conference for whom high quality internet access for webcasting and the launch of the new cloud based platform are critically important, only to be frustrated at the first turn?

When asked further many of the venues which did know something about their connectivity listed it as ‘high speed’ or that ‘it’s been fast enough in the past’ both of which will cause any IT internal stakeholder to develop a look of panic when the production partner reports back.

Hotels dealing with technical enquiries need a partner they can rely on. Image courtesy of Google.

Demand for IT service has progressed from basic Wi-Fi in hotel rooms and conference facilities to specific needs which need to be addressed—if the customer is looking for their CEO to walk through the latest sales projections online with the board or video-conference with the MD of their European operations (who is reducing her carbon footprint by not flying as much and as a result also seeing her family more) the customer needs to be confident your systems can deliver.

None of these enquiries need be scary, but they do need to be engaged. The best way is to have a partner on hand who can educate the in house M&E team for the basics and then help when things get more complicated.

Our Preferred Partner Program is now starting to gain traction; forward thinking venues are looking at the best investment options to differentiate themselves from others and are prepared for the questions when they are asked from that prospective, tech dependent customer.

Delegate Work Hubs

13 Mar 2013

Conference, Delegate Work Hubs, Event IT, Exhibition, IT, Work Hubs

Etherlive are continuously identifying ways in which we can improve the services which organisers can offer their customers, exhibitors and staff. Many of these people may be travelling for extended periods, have damaged or incompatible IT hardware or be travelling ‘light’ with just a smartphone or tablet device. Our work hub package has proved to be very popular, especially in the conference and exhibition sectors where a fully equipped and secure environment to work and print from is often requested.

A work hub ready for delegates

A typical work hub provides;

Secure printing & copying
Fax
Device charging facilities
Full ‘desktop’ PC access
Desk telephones with low national & international call rates and a pin charging system
Skype booth with webcam and microphone
Wired & wireless internet access
Engineer onsite support

The Etherlive Work Hub creates a flexible, secure, dedicated work area which gives attendees the opportunity to keep on top of business without interfering with the event itself. Work hubs also work well for media and flexible organiser spaces.

By supplying a work hub you will be providing things that your delegates need and offering a service above and beyond expectations.
Please speak to our team now for more information about work hubs.

A Step Forward for Mobile Coverage at Events

Chris Green

04 Mar 2013

Event IT, Festival, Mobile, VoIP, Wi-Fi

One of the most common requests we get is ‘Can you fix the mobile phone coverage at my event?’ It may be a simple question but the answer is not. There are many factors involved – signal coverage, network capacity, availability of mobile wireless spectrum and the cost of temporary masts to name a few. For events held at a temporary site like a festival the permanent infrastructure put in place by mobile operators is simply not designed to deal with 10,000 or more attendees descending for a short period.

The current approach for bigger events is the deployment of temporary mobile masts but this is not generally a good solution as the masts are costly to deploy, require separate masts for each operator, do not offer much additional capacity and have limited spectrum available for use. The result normally being that experience during the event remains poor.

Some operators have offered small ‘femtocells’ which provide a small area of mobile phone coverage using a broadband connection, however, they have been very limited in terms of how many users they can support and have to be registered at locations to be used. They also require all users to be pre-registered which limits their usability.

Becoming a thing of the past?

These on-going challenges with mobile coverage at events makes the announcement last week by O2/Telefonica about the launch of TuGo all the more interesting. On the surface it looks like another VoIP app like Viber and Skype but the difference is it uses your existing mobile number so it doesn’t matter to the caller whether you are on the normal mobile network or a Wi-Fi network. With Wi-Fi coverage at events under the control of the organiser this finally means that “mobile” coverage can be extended across event sites either just for crew or for attendees too. This can be scaled up or down based on need and tied to existing provision for event production teams making it far more efficient than having large mobile masts.

There is a catch as the Wi-Fi voice minutes used do count against your normal voice minutes but given the way most mobile contracts are structured these days this is not such an issue considering the potential for improved coverage. At present only O2 have launched an app to do this but hopefully with the pressure from services such as Skype and now TuGo the other operators will follow suit and offer similar services.

Maybe at last we will see mobile operators see Wi-Fi as an extension to their offering rather than a competitor.

Temporary Event Internet

27 Feb 2013

ADSL, Connectivity, Event IT, Festival, Fibre, Satellite

Having an Internet connection is an essential requirement for most events but many venues, especially greenfield sites, are in locations where a permanent Internet connection does not exist. This is often compounded with poor cellular coverage or limited capacity such that it will not operate effectively once the attendees arrive.

To overcome this Etherlive offer a range of Temporary Event Internet services – delivering temporary Internet connectivity to any location in the UK and overseas.

Our systems are customised to suit your event’s needs, offering a range of connectivity options and speeds including bonded-3G, Ka satellite, low contention ADSL and Annexe M services, right up to multi-Gigabit fibre connectivity. The connectivity can be delivered into the production compound or installed at a nearby location and then transmitted wirelessly onto the site.

Etherlive have a dedicated provisioning team who have significant experience working with service providers such as BT Openreach, Colt and Virgin Media, ensuring that services are installed on time and to the correct locations.

Once your event has temporary Internet, Etherlive provide a range of wired and wireless networking solutions to distribute and manage services. The core network can also be used for additional services including;

Call us now if you need any more information on how we can deliver temporary Internet for your event.

When the Lights Go Out

Chris Green

18 Feb 2013

Event, Event IT, Festival, IT, Power, Technology, Wireless

A $500 million event that happens once a year watched by 111.3 million people, supported by some of the world’s biggest sponsors, is put on hold for 30 minutes by a power outage. When this kind of failure can happen at the Super Bowl it’s not surprising that those who run and support events are kept awake at night worrying about what can go wrong – you only get one chance to get it right.

Power outages can happen to the biggest and best events, no matter what the location and with just about everything relying on power to some degree it’s important to look at how to mitigate any issues if the lights do go out.

The first step is to identify what power you have and the risks associated with it (it’s very easy to take for granted especially when in a permanent building), closely followed by identifying what services rely on it. From a technology point of view this list can be very long – access control, internet, telephony, two-way radio boosters, ticket systems, CCTV, Wi-Fi to name a few.

Each service should be reviewed for impact and with this information decisions made on whether to employ mechanisms to minimise risk. It’s also important to understand the interdependencies, for example a decision may be made to have a back-up generator for Event Control but if the phones and radio communication cease to function due to power loss elsewhere on site then the operation could still be impacted.

These days box offices and entrances struggle to operate without power as they rely on real-time ticket scanning and electronic payment. In these key areas it’s important to not only have a power backup plan but also a contingency plan to continue operating if the power plan fails – even if that involves manual checks over the radios or using runners.

Events don’t have this option

Many events now rely on a network for many of their systems – from ticketing & phones through to CCTV. That network needs to be designed with redundancy and power failure in mind. All key points should be protected by a monitored UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) – the monitoring is important so that central control knows if power fails how long the battery within the UPS can continue to operate for, especially as it can take some time for a power issue to be diagnosed and rectified on a large site. For critical areas, such as servers and core networking, the UPS needs to have a significant operational time which may involve the ability to ‘hot swap’ batteries to extend run-time indefinitely.

Modern VoIP telephones, CCTV cameras and other network equipment can be operated using PoE (Power Over Ethernet) which means they take their power from the network itself rather than a mains supply. The benefit of this is that the power required can be centralised and protected with a UPS so that the impact of local power outages in cabins and offices can be minimised.

Events will always have to deal with the unexpected happening – it’s part of the excitement and challenge of the live industry but sensible planning and preparation can minimise the impact.

The Achilles Heel of Wireless

04 Feb 2013