Proactive Wi-Fi Monitoring Solution: ET Network Patrol

eT Network Patrol with Sapphire Eye is a Wi-Fi Monitoring and management solution that provides proactive network monitoring, real-time alerts, and network analytics. It can detect potential issues before they become problems, allowing network administrators to take action to prevent network downtime and disruptions.

Industries could now set custom alerts for network performance issues, such as latency spikes or packet loss, and quickly identify and resolve these issues with the help of eT Network Patrol’s active monitoring capabilities.

Furthermore, industries could now harness granular data on network performance, enabling them to make data-driven decisions on network configuration changes to improve throughput and overall network performance. Read on to discover how 7Signal with Sapphire Eye helped solve a major Wi-Fi Performance Issue at the Milan Expo.

Milan Expo’s Conundrum

Back in 2015, Italy hosted the famous Milan Expo, home to exhibitors across 145 nations and attended by 21 million visitors. The venue for the event, featured 5 thematic areas and over 70 pavilions, covering a massive area of 1.1 million square meters.

Events of this scale often pose unique challenges to their organisers. The problem that the organizers faced was providing a seamless wireless internet experience for the millions of visitors in a vast location.

The construction for the event had not yet started, making it impossible to conduct an accurate site survey before deploying access points in the unique architectural standards of Milan’s buildings.

Telecom Italia was commissioned to provide the wired and wireless infrastructure for the event. They faced challenges such as self-service onboarding, massive surges of users entering and exiting exhibits, and constant Wi-Fi roaming. They needed to deploy a robust and highly efficient wired and wireless network to ensure reliable coverage for Internet Access, VOIP, video streaming, and more.

With an estimated footfall of about 40,000 visitors per hour, Telecom Italia needed an expert to strategize and oversee the Wi-Fi performance for the prestigious event and deliver an outstanding Wi-Fi experience.

7Signal’s Solution

To proactively safeguard against RF conditions, 7Signal was hired to implement its Wi-Fi performance management system at Milan Expo to provide continuous Wi-Fi monitoring and ensure that customer experience did not fall below acceptable levels.

The WLAN implementation at the event consisted of more than a hundred 802.11n and 802.11ac access points, a majority of which were mounted outdoors.

7Signal placed its Sapphire Eye sensors in key locations at the EXPO campus and set service level targets for availability and throughput, the main concerns for highly mobile visitors. Automated weekly performance reports were set up to provide EXPO management with an overview of performance.

Optimizing Wi-Fi Performance With Sapphire Eye

The Sapphire Eye system provided Telecom Italia and the Expo organizers with a complete view of Wi-Fi performance from the end user’s perspective throughout the event. This allowed for the organizations to set a reasonable rate limit of 2 Mbps.

Alerts were received when performance fell below set thresholds of 1.8 Mbps, allowing for quick investigation and resolution of issues. The data collected also helped with making adjustments to the wireless LAN configuration to improve throughput and to track performance improvements over time. Reports from the Sapphire Eye showed that Telecom Italia maintained a connection success rate of over 99.7% and an average download and upload throughput for each user of nearly 2Mbps.