China National Convention Center is located in the center area of Beijing Olympic Park and is near the Bird's Nest and Water Cube. It covers an area of 12 hectares and has a floor space of 530,000 square meters. China National Convention Center has the convention and exhibition area of 270,000 square meters. It is the largest convention center in Asia.

China National Convention Center

China National Convention Center

On November 19-20, 2015, the annual Global Internet Technology Conference (GITC) was held in China National Convention Center. As the largest technical summit with the most mature resources, GITC 2015 set a record for participant quantity again. Approximately 200 technical leaders appeared in the conference, more than 500 leading enterprises in the industry participated in the conference, and the headcount was as high as 13,000. By virtue of mature service experience in "wireless network for tens of thousands of users", Ruijie Networks provided a high-quality Wi-Fi network for the conference site and was highly recognized by the sponsors and guests.

48-hour Top-speed Network Task

The task of wireless network for tens of thousands of users is familiar to Ruijie service team. After Ruijie has successfully deployed the wireless network solution for the "Computing Conference 2015" and "Sunning Summer Party 2015", the wireless solution for GITC 2015 should be successfully deployed once the conditions are ready. However, there were only three days left from the time the wireless service team entered China National Convention Center to the time the GITC was held.

All network cables and optical fibers needed to be re-deployed in the new environment, involving 104 AP positions, 12 power distribution rooms, and one equipment room on three floors. It took a full day to merely unpack devices, transport them to the conference site, lay out cables, and install electric wires. In addition, the construction progress relied on the overall work arrangement, which left less time for subsequent technology commissioning and optimization. Finally, the team overcame various difficulties and completed AP deployment and optimization within 48 hours. Then, what strengths should the "athletes" have in this race against time?

Careful planning, adherence to principles, experience in adapting to changes, and powerful devices are all indispensable.

Sticking to Deploying and Optimizing Each AP

At 4:00 A.M. on November 19, 2015, the deployment of the entire wireless network was basically completed except the APs to be deployed in the corridors on the 4th floor of China National Convention Center. Much time would be saved if the number of APs to be deployed there was reduced or the APs were deployed without optimization. In order to achieve perfection and ensure that every participant enjoys the excellent Internet access experience in each direction, all members of the Ruijie team withstood fatigue and tiredness, deployed and optimized every AP. It is this persistence that ensures construction to be conducted according to the preliminary planning and prevents wireless access bottlenecks prior to the commencement of the conference.

Before the conference began on the first day, the long queue from the sign-in booth on the first floor to the gate of the main conference site on the fourth floor is beyond expectation. Thousands of people in the queue jammed the channels. The early appropriate planning plus persistence under the short construction period eliminated any adverse impact caused by the unexpected situation.

Emergent and Ordered Handling of Unexpected Situation

Not just GITC 2015, but conferences of different scales and types may experience the headcount change and temporary conference adjustments. In this case, the Wireless Intelligent System (WIS) plays an important role. With Ruijie WIS, engineers monitored the wireless network access changes on the first day in real time.

In the afternoon of the first day, the main conference site was not put into use. All participants went to the six branch conference sites on the third floor, and there were conferences underway in different time periods. As a result, the headcount and flow were beyond expectations. In addition, the GITC had 58 exhibition stands in three exhibition areas. Especially in the exhibition area on the third floor, merchants held various lottery drawing and interaction activities continually. Consequently, a large number of users moved and gathered together very frequently, and hundreds of users often surrounded an exhibition stand to participate in the QR code scanning, mobile phone shaking, and WeChat interaction activities. The WIS found the heavy load of APs on the third floor very rapidly. In order to ensure user application experience, the service team immediately supplemented three APs. In comparison with the supplement of three APs, the emergency occurring in the evening on the first day was a real challenge.

In the evening on November 19, the layout of the main conference site was changed completely and became the banquet hall. As a result, the early network deployment was completely removed. In such an emergency, Ruijie service team first recovered the devices, and organized a temporary meeting to determine the re-cabling, installation, and commissioning solution. If the previous 48-hour deployment was called a "preliminary", the subsequent work was a real "final". A simple Ruijie solution was worked out late at night. At 4:00 A.M. on November 20, a wireless network solution that adapted to the changes at the main conference site was deployed. It ensured the normal application of the conference on the second day.

Winning Time via Product Combinations

GITC 2015 was not the largest conference served by Ruijie in 2015, but raised great challenges that kept Ruijie service team rushing all the time. Ultimately, the network performance at the conference was good, the multi-point test showed that the speed reached the rate limit during the conference, and the network was stable all day long. The number of peak online users reached over 1930 on November 20, the accumulated number of users in two days was more than 5000, and a single AP served a maximum of 130 users.

Ruijie wireless product RG-AP520-I was used as APs in this GITC. In addition to 802.11n, 802.11ac, MIMO and implicit beamforming technologies that substantially raise the network throughput, RG-AP520-I uses rich intelligent scheduling mechanisms to meet the requirements for high-density user access, which include "X-sense 3" smart antennas, fair time scheduling, low-speed STA control, antenna arrays using vertical polarization and horizontal polarization. Antennas are greatly improved specially for the 5 GHz band, so that customers can fully enjoy 802.11ac performance advantages from a long distance. The actual performance shows that the product optimization ensures user experience, and the high-performance STAs can enjoy 802.11ac high-speed access at 94% of time, reflecting an excellent effect brought by X-Sense3 to 5G signal optimization.

It’s definitely not enough to just use APs for the high-density wireless network application. Ruijie also adopted RG-N18010 as the unified core user gateway for wired and wireless networks inthe GITC. This core switch has a super authentication speed, allowing 100,000 STAs to be online simultaneously and completing the authentication of 1,000 STAs in one second. It also offers a powerful Web noise reduction function, and ensures the pushing of the authentication page within several milliseconds.