Zyxel Nebula Solution Delivers Fast, Reliable Public WiFi in Wine Garden at the Site of ...

Zyxel_May · June 12

Zyxel Nebula Solution Delivers Fast, Reliable Public WiFi in Wine Garden at the Site of the World’s Largest Livestock Exhibition and Rodeo

Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo™ (HLSR)

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"Nebula really made the deployment, configuration, and administration easy. This was equipment that just started working immediately and hasn’t had any problems. It’s been plug and play and everybody’s really happy with it. It’s exceeded all my expectations."

Allen Rountree, Director of IT Infrastructure
Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo™ (HLSR)

Overview

The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo™ (HLSR) sought to provide reliable public WiFi at its popular Champion Wine Garden, where over a thousand guests gathered daily. However, network saturation caused by the large number of cellphones in use made it difficult for guests to access the internet reliably. Partnering with TCG Tech, Zyxel Networks deployed the Nebula cloud networking solution, delivering high-speed, stable internet access. With rapid deployment and easy management via Nebula, the solution exceeded expectations, enhancing the guest experience and demonstrating Nebula's reliability in high-demand environments.

Challenges

An oasis on the rodeo grounds next to NRG Center, the Champion Wine Garden is one of the most popular spots at the HLSR. The outdoor venue offers more than 75 award-winning wines and live music from rising Texas stars daily throughout the rodeo season.

"We have thousands of people in the wine garden every day and everyone expects WiFi for uploading pictures and keeping in touch with family and friends," explained Allen Rountree, Director of IT Infrastructure at HLSR. "We hadn't provided public WiFi in the wine garden in the past so this was a new challenge for us."

According to Dan Sullivan, President of TCG Tech, guests in the Wine Garden were unable to get good reliable internet access due to the saturation of the internet created by the cellphones of the large volume of people in attendance. "We needed to deploy a network infrastructure that would deliver solid, reliable, high-speed WiFi connectivity throughout the Wine Garden to provide guests with a better Internet experience," he explained.

Solutions

"TCG Tech has been using Zyxel Networks' products for a while and we have been very pleased with their performance," said Sullivan. "Zyxel provided the product at a competitive price point, which really helped make this project possible. Performance and the price point were the key factors in selecting Zyxel for this project."
According to Sullivan, to provide a robust, reliable, and secure public WiFi network for the Wine Garden guests, TCG Tech deployed two USG FLEX 700H Firewalls, four XGS2220 Series Switches, and 26 WAX655E AX5400 WiFi 6 Dual-Radio NebulaFlex Pro Outdoor Access Points.
"The deployment of multiple firewalls and switches with redundancy, and the outdoor-rated access points, were all designed to run at least at 10Gbps to provide high bandwidth for a multitude of users."

Sullivan explained that support from the Zyxel team was key to the success of this project. "From the project's inception we were working with our account rep to source the inventory and get the hardware on-site. They worked with us hand in hand to select the right products and get them air freighted in. We had a very short fuse on this project and the engineers at Zyxel were instrumental in helping us design the project. They were there every step of the way to make sure we were selecting the right products, getting them shipped to us, getting them configured, and getting them deployed to provide the solution for HLSR.

One of the primary reasons that TCG Tech began recommending Zyxel products to their clients is because of their ease of deployment. "We simply take the product, scan the barcode on the side of the box to add the product into the customer's profile, power it up, connect it to the internet, and it becomes an active product in the Nebula Cloud Management System," he said. "From there, it's easy to manage and troubleshoot issues using the Nebula Pro app. Whether using the mobile app or desktop application, we're able to easily troubleshoot issues, monitor performance issues and bandwidth utilization, and manage other key factors that drive the efficiency of that network."

Results

"We were really under the gun because there was a very short window to get the WiFi network designed and deployed and that's where TCG and Zyxel both stepped up," Rountree explained. "They got us the equipment in a very short period of time so we were able to get it configured and deployed quickly. Within a timeframe when most vendors would have still been talking about getting the order placed, we had the equipment shipped to us, deployed, and running. Zyxel really stepped up for us."

"Nebula really made the deployment, configuration and administration easy," added Rountree. "This equipment just started working immediately and hasn't had any problems. It's been plug and play and everybody's really happy with it. It's exceeded all my expectations.

"Rountree added, "Our guests love the WiFi. It's something that they've never had before there, so really a value-add.
It's fast, it's been reliable and they really love it!"

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