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Wi-Fi Requirements

When you are arranging the WiFi for an event, your requirements will depend on what will be happening during it. When it comes to bandwidth there are no requirements set in stone for an app, but if interactive features such as live polling are taking place, we recommend having a minimum of 15KB (upload bandwidth) per-attendee, so for 500 attendees, we would recommend having a minimum 7.5MB (500x15 = 7500KB = 7.5MB) upload speed. But, this will be based on each attendee voting on a question at precisely the same time, which is incredibly unlikely to happen, so a bit less wouldn’t necessarily be a problem.

Things more likely to affect the performance of WiFi are attendees using the connection in demanding ways, such as streaming video, sending images or backing up their devices. The activity feed feature within our app platform allows photos to be uploaded, which can use significantly more data than live polling or a live Q&A.

The app itself will be a 3-10 MB initial download, (when an attendee accesses the app for the very first time) but if the app has been promoted to attendees prior to the event, a lot of attendees will already have the app downloaded on their device before the event starts. Then it will be a question of the app generally working (browsing the agenda, speaker profiles, sending messages to other attendees and receiving alerts etc) and for all of this, as a general rule of thumb if you can get the BBC News website up and running smoothly on the venue WiFi, the app will work fine. 

  • Ensure there are sufficient access points for all delegates to access the WiFi concurrently. Some delegates will be accessing the WiFi on more than one device e.g. phone and tablet
  • What is the delegate experience when logging onto the WiFi? Best experience is a named SSID with password rather than logging in via browser
  • Ensure the WiFi DOES NOT disconnect after a certain amount of inactive time or attendees will have to keep signing in
  • There needs to be enough bandwidth for delegates to comfortably browse the internet and send and receive emails. Some venues might restrict bandwidth to each device, in this case a minimum of 3Mb per device is required
  • Hardwired internet connection accessible from the AV desk (dedicated minimum of 3 Mb up and down)
  • AV to provide a smooth switch unit to transition seamlessly from the slide laptop to the CrowdComms show laptop
  • Space at the AV desk for CrowdComms onsite resource or your resource managing polling / Q&A and space on the table for two (2) laptops

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