Week of Innovate is here!

Last week was busy busy ... this week will be crazy busy!  It's pedal to the metal prepping for Innovate 2007 ... attendance is on track to see 1000 church leaders from across the nation descending on Granger Weds-Friday!

We've purchased 6 used Proxim access points expecting many more wireless users this year.  3 "public only" access points have been placed up in the auditorium catwalks (yes, I hit my head hard on a stinking beam) ... giving us 5 AP's to cover the entire auditorium.  That gives us capacity for approx 350 simultaneous users.  We recently learned that our AP4000's drop from 63 simultaneous users per radio to only 27 when WPA clients are connected ... crud, we use WPA for our private wifi.  So we could only handle 50 some users in the auditorium prior.  These new AP's will only allow guest access and thus can handle 60 users each.  We're also adding 2 guest only AP's to our downstairs areas ... and keeping 1 set aside for a spare or emergency coverage somewhere.  So we'll soon have 14 AP's across the building ... and no these are not centrally managed.  That's something we'll tackle when budget time rolls around.  We'll also be looking at other hardware options as well.  Aruba and Meru both look pretty sweet ... I'm so ready for .11n :-)

So now we're bottlenecked by our internet pipe (3Mbps up/down) and our Nomadix guest access gateway.  We've decided to cap guest users to 256kbps up/down ... it's not super fast, but hopefully it will create a better overall experience for everyone.  Our Nomadix is currently licensed for 250 simultaneous users.  We've never seen 200 wifi users at our past conferences, so I'm going to take a small risk and say we're ok for this year as well.  If we have more than 250 we'll see about routing some AP's straight to the sonicwall and out.  Always have a backup plan right ;-)

Here's what's happening in my world this week...

• Tuesday evening the GCC IT Roundtable kicks off with a meet-n-greet-n-eat 4-8pm.  You can still sign-up and come!
  
  • I'm also turning a year older Tuesday ... feel free to send gifts ;-)
• Weds is the Roundtable from 9am-4pm officially ... then we'll order in some food and hang until 8pm.
• Thursday I'm doing an IT Best Practices breakout ... out of maybe 1000 people how many you think will come hear about IT?
• Thursday night is New Community Service and our Film Festival
  
• Friday I'm doing a blogging breakout with Kem and Daryl ... last year this was a packed out room.
• Thurs and Friday I've been asked to be a "concierge" for a large group coming from Relevant Church in Tampa, FL.  They have crunchy music on their website so I think we'll be a good match :-)

This will be an exhausting but great week.  To God be the glory!!

Comments

[Tony Dye]

Wishing I was going to be there! have fun, get rest, drink coffee...

[Scott Gagon]

Rock on for God, brother! Another product line to look at for centralized AP control is Bluesocket. I've been using their Bluesecure Controller for a couple of years and been very happy with it.