Over 225,000 attendees across four days, 191 acres of ground, and 156 players battling for the U.S. Open championship at the Oakmont Country Club. Behind its picturesque views of manicured greens and lush fairways, however, an intricate technological infrastructure quietly works to ensure the event runs flawlessly for fans, officials, and players alike.
The underlying technology of a venue has become increasingly crucial to the modern fan experience, which hinges on digital interactions—from ticketing and purchases to social sharing and communicating inside the grounds. For world-class events such as the U.S. Open to fulfill expectations, that experience must be free of familiar frustrations. If ticket QR codes don’t load as fans approach security check, texts fail to send when trying to locate friends, or posting a video clip of a favorite player in real time feels impossibly slow, the experience is devalued. While encounters with unreliable connectivity are common at large venues, the detrimental impact this can have on the consumer’s mindset is significant.
Raising those stakes is the fact that at the U.S. Open, the networking demands are immense. On one side of the grounds, you will find a media reporter providing live coverage of the tournament to thousands of at-home viewers, while on the other, a fan is simultaneously paying for a drink via mobile payment or snapping a photo of their favorite player to upload to social media. Now, scale these experiences up to 40,195 unique devices connected to the network—including 50 vendors, 500+ media reporters, 900 screen displays, and over 40,000 fans—all while supporting three key high-demand and high-congestion areas. Adding to this complexity is a challenging outdoor environment with uneven terrain and limited power sources, all compounded by a tight setup window of just one week to deploy the core networking infrastructure before the event.
Eliminating obstacles to connectivity
As the official technology partner of the United States Golf Association, Cisco faced a significant challenge to ensure the 125th U.S. Open provided a seamless, robust connectivity experience—regardless of the number of users and amount of data traffic surge. With a particular focus on high-demand areas, a total of 550 access points were strategically installed and deployed across the Oakmont Country Club in the week leading up to the event. Key areas included the main admission gates where fans access their digital tickets to quickly enter the venue, the media center where reporters capture and upload content, and the exclusive hospitality club spaces where premier clients expect speedy, reliable internet service.
Cisco Wireless 9179F Access Points are purpose-built for large venues and stadiums. With Wi-Fi 7 support, these access points deliver faster network speeds, promote lower latency, and ensure reliable, high-density coverage across vast outdoor environments like Oakmont. Their rugged design allows them to withstand fluctuating weather conditions, ideal for outdoor events like the U.S. Open.
In the media center, the traditional approach was to install access points on each individual reporter’s desk. This method was inconvenient and slowed down the infrastructure deployment as installation couldn’t happen until the desks were fully arranged. Instead, Cisco chose to get creative by installing the access points overhead on the ceilings of the tents using directional antennas. This not only accelerated deployment but also enhanced the connection experience for media personnel.
Coupled with the CW9179F Access Points, Cisco also deployed Campus Gateway, a cloud-based wireless solution built for large-scale networks that require seamless roaming at scale. Operating like a smart wireless traffic controller, Campus Gateway allows attendees’ device connections to be preserved. As thousands of fans move from one part of the golf course to another, this ensures that each of their devices connects to the strongest Wi-Fi signal without experiencing any degradation of service. From an IT perspective, the entire network can be visualized and managed remotely through a centralized cloud dashboard, ensuring that the team can proactively address network issues before any service interruptions occur.
Assuring end-to-end experience improvements
Beyond the deployment of networking devices, Cisco crafted an end-to-end experience that adapted creatively to the unique circumstances of the U.S. Open. Serving the needs of the people running and managing the network as well as the attendees using it, the ecosystem integrated Splunk’s full-stack observability for real-time network visibility and insights, Cisco Spaces to visually display and track crowd movement and hotspots, and Webex for seamless conferencing and staff collaboration.
The results of this Wi-Fi 7 deployment speak for themselves:
- 82 terabytes of data transferred over the USGA network, including 13 terabytes of fan data
- 40,195 unique devices supported
- 4x faster upload and download speeds in key areas of the course
At the U.S. Open, every swing counts, and so does every connection.
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