What are the Wi-Fi requirements for the app?
Hotels and Conference Centers all package their Wi-Fi/network solutions differently. You will have to work closely with the network vendor at the venue. You will communicate these high-level points to them:
- Touchpoint apps will use much less bandwidth than the other activities your attendees will perform. These activities include checking email, downloading attachments, and surfing the web. Therefore, you need to work with the venue to understand the number of attendees you will have on site and the requirements needed to serve their general Internet needs.
- If you are utilizing live polling, you will want to work with the venue network provider to understand how many simultaneous users they can support. You will want to estimate the peak number of simultaneous live poll users you will have. You will want to be assured that the venue will be able to connect these users. These connections will use very little bandwidth. The venue will need an active connection.
Details
Touchpoint app is not expected to be the main user of bandwidth at your conference. Once Wi-Fi is made available to attendees, attendees will use it to send and receive email. Attendees will also browse the web and watch videos. This usage will typically outweigh usage by the app.
For people downloading the Touchpoint app at your conference, rather than at home or at the office, the iOS app is typically 10MB. The Android app is typically 5MB. When the app is first opened, an initial sync of data occurs. The initial sync tends to be larger than subsequent syncs. The initial sync is still fairly small bandwidth-wise. For a conference with 1,500 attendees, the initial sync of data would be less than 1MB.
After the initial sync, the app uses caching and other technologies to minimize duplicate syncing of data. Subsequent syncs could be anywhere from 2K to 100K. The value depends on how much data changed. Subsequent syncs require small amounts of data.
For comparison purposes, the average single web page in 2015 is more than 1,600K. According to Web Performance today, therefore a sync for the app would often be an order of magnitude or two less data than one of your attendees visiting a single web page.
If you are providing presentations within the app, those presentations can be anywhere from 500K to 5MB or higher. You should plan for bandwidth needs accordingly. In Touchpoint, a presentation only downloads and opens in the app when the end user clicks on it.
Live Polling
If you use live polling or want people to access presentations during sessions, you will want to ensure that the venue has a sufficient number of “access points”. The venue requirement applies to each conference room. The requirement applies even if the venue has common areas. A venue with only one router and 1,000 people’s devices trying to find it at the same time could be problematic. The venue might tell you it offers X megabytes of bandwidth. The number of access points still matters.
You will talk to the venue about bandwidth. You will also talk to the venue about how many access points can be supported for simultaneous usage. In one experience, one business router can support 150-200 people. The support capacity varies widely based on the devices the venue employs. The venue should ensure it has enough routers available based on the number of access points each router supports. The venue should also ensure router capacity matches the number of people expected at the event.