Sundance Film Festival Selects Ruckus Wireless for Third Straight Year to Boost Wi-Fi Experience

Ruckus Wireless, Inc. announced today that for the third straight year, its patented Smart Wi-Fi products and technology are once again powering the Wi-Fi services being offered at the internationally renowned Sundance Film Festival, which is expected to attract an estimated 45,000 patrons over the event's 10-day run.

Taking place January 17-27, 2013, in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah, the Festival will feature an expanded, high-performance public Wi-Fi network enabled with the latest Smart Wi-Fi technology from Ruckus Wireless. Festival organizers are using the Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi network to support their own mobile applications, offload data traffic from the local cellular network, and to provide high-speed Internet access to a growing number of moviegoers armed with mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

Offered as a free service to Festival attendees, the high-speed Wi-Fi network is being made available at 15 official festival venues, including indoor and outdoor theaters in multiple cities. Many of the venues include wait list tents and ticketholder queues outside, where moviegoers will be waiting for the next showing, and can access Festival content over the Wi-Fi network while they wait.

"Mobility is a key theme at this year's Festival, and our Wi-Fi network will take center stage," said Justin Simmons , associate director of Technology Services at Sundance Institute. "Not only do we expect to see a sharp rise in the number of mobile devices in use, we'll also be live-streaming many events this year for people to watch on their handhelds."

Additionally, with the prevalence of social media, people are sharing more photos and videos then ever before at the Festival.

Simmons noted that to give patrons the type of experience they expect at a high profile event such as the Sundance Film Festival, they needed a robust, carrier-class Wi-Fi network capable of supporting the high-volume demand.

"Deploying our own infrastructure gives us more control. That said, we really needed a carrier-class Wi-Fi system that delivers the concurrent capacity and high-speed experience that users are now demanding. Conventional Wi-Fi systems aren't designed for power users. Ruckus has continually proven to deliver a reliable wireless experience to our visitors. And they can never to seem to get enough."

The entire Wi-Fi network across all Festival venues includes 100 Ruckus ZoneFlex indoor and outdoor access points (APs), comprised of: 66 ZoneFlex 7962 and 14 ZoneFlex 7363 802.11n dual-band indoor APs; 18 ZoneFlex 7762 802.11n outdoor dual-band APs; two ZoneFlex 2741 outdoor 802.11g APs, and; two long-range ZoneFlex 7731 802.11n point-to-point bridges for backhaul. A new ZoneDirector 3100 wireless LAN (WLAN) controller with a 100 Mbps connection provides central management at Sundance Institute's data center for all of the remote sites, eliminating the need to have individual, local controllers at each site.

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