Cornell’s Stadium-sized Wi-Fi Upgrade
Cornell’s Stadium-Sized Wi-Fi Upgrade
The Cornell School District stadium
Meta Mesh recently installed free public Wi-Fi at the the Cornell School District stadium in Coraopolis. You might ask yourself how does that work? How do you cover an entire stadium with Wi-Fi? Lets go through it step by step.
Step 1: Find an Internet Connection
The first thing we need is a connection to the Internet. Thankfully, we already have one nearby. We installed our equipment at the top of the Coraopolis water tower back in April, and it’s the center of our network in Coraopolis. The water tower has powerful radios which wirelessly connect to our main Internet connection at the Cathedral of Learning over 12 miles away. The water tower is right up the hill from the stadium, giving us a very strong signal to work with.
The Coraopolis water tower (right) and the Cornell School District stadium (left).
Step 2: Connect to the Internet
Now that we have an Internet connection within reach, how do we connect to it? How do we use that to make a Wi-Fi network that covers an entire football stadium? It all starts with the radios.
At the top of the water tower we have specialized radios and antennas. These radios send out our Internet signal to multiple receiver radios at a time. This is how we distribute Internet to homes in Coraopolis and Neville Island, and it’s how we’re able to connect the stadium as well.
Focusing on the stadium again, the first piece of equipment we had to install was the receiving radio. To get the best signal, we installed the radio as high as possible on one of the light poles. You probably didn’t notice it in the first picture, but if you zoom in you’ll see a few white objects. Our receiving radio is the little white dot on the left pole, about a quarter of the way up.
Step 3: Install a Stadium-Sized Network
Now that we have an Internet connection, how can we spread that around something as big as a stadium? There are many ways to accomplish this, including using mesh Wi-Fi. We wanted to build something strong and reliable, so we used Ethernet and multiple high-powered outdoor Wi-Fi access points.
The receiving radio on the left pole is connected to the rest of the stadium network by a long Ethernet cable. That cable runs from the radio into the press box at the top of the stands, where the rest of the network equipment is.
Inside the press box we installed a few pieces of equipment, including a router and a small Ethernet switch to power the outdoor Wi-Fi access points. From the press box, we ran Ethernet cabling back to the light poles, and down into the locker room.
We used that cabling to connect the outdoor access points on both of the light poles, which allow the network to cover out to the far edges of the field. We also installed an access point inside the press box to give everyone in the center of the stands a great Wi-Fi connection. We added one more access point below the stands, in the locker room to make sure coverage was good there as well.
Step 4: Enjoy the Fast, Reliable, Free Wi-Fi
Thanks to the receiving radio, we’re able to take our Internet connection from the Cathedral of Learning, transmit it to the Coraopolis water tower, and then re-transmit it to the stadium. From there it feeds the rest of the stadium network, where we use Ethernet and a few strategically placed access points to cover the entire stadium. Thanks to the powerful outdoor access points we installed, the entire area is covered in fast, reliable, and free Wi-Fi.
We believe everyone deserves to be online, even the visiting team.
Thanks again to Cornell School District for the opportunity, and for being a great partner with Every1online. Go Raiders!