Dwight Watt - Newspaper Article #420 6/27/2018


Question: Does Sun Trust Stadium have Wi-Fi?

Answer:

Yes, they have Wi-Fi well designed at Sun Trust Stadium, which is the Atlanta Braves new stadium.

Recently I had the opportunity to tour the stadium with TAG (Technology Association of Georgia). Besides seeing things people see on a normal tour they showed us how technology is set up there and showed us the cabling and computer rooms.

When they design Sun Trust they planned to have leading edge technology thru the stadium. They ran 500 miles of Cat 6a cable (which is the leading type of copper data cabling). Many places still install Cat 5e cabling which will not carry as much data as fast. They also put 250 miles of fiber optic cabling thru the stadium.

Their Wi-Fi is using the latest standard which is AC. They did set it up, so it only uses the fastest part which is 5 mhz. Older Wi-Fi worked at 2.4 mhz and if you try using their Wi-fi with an older phone it may not work.

They also included almost 1300 wireless access points (APs) which are where you connect to wirelessly. In your home you usually have one AP. They have a number more in the common areas in the Battery also. They use almost all Cisco equipment for networking and Comcast is their ISP. With the equipment and signal the have they have 200gig bandwidth. Which is flat out amazing but that is by combining several lines and using specialized equipment that is very expensive.

They also ran two Cat 6a cables to each Access Point so when the next standard comes out they will be able to easily upgrade and to offer the fastest Wi-Fi. If everything works as planned their Wi-Fi should handle when the sell out crowd all send out a message that they just won the World Series.