Event Wi-Fi for a sports event: the IsarOpen 2018 live stream powered by SD-WAN bonding

From 6 to 12 August 2018 the IsarOpen celebrated its premiere: a new ATP Challenger tournament at the TC Grosshesselohe club on Pullacher Strasse, just outside Munich. 32 singles players and 16 men's doubles competed for the title over one week. In the singles final the Portuguese Pedro Sousa beat the German professional Jan-Lennard Struff. The idea for the tournament had been born in February 2017; in November 2017 an ATP representative inspected the venue and approved the event. Ascend from Nuremberg and Vitel GmbH from Unterschleissheim were on board: as the organiser's partners for the network technology and as sponsors at the same time.

A tennis tournament is spread across several courts, and there is a side programme on top: players' party, kids' day, Latin night and the Bavarian morning pint on finals day. The organiser wanted to offer visitors live streams from the other courts, real-time news and its Facebook, Twitter and Instagram channels, available on smartphone, tablet or laptop. That took two things: Wi-Fi across the entire venue and an internet connection that does not depend on a single line.

Via Wi-Fi hotspots on the event site, Ascend and Vitel gave all guests internet access across the whole venue. For the uplink, SD-WAN bonding was used: several lines are combined into one logical connection, regardless of the technology they run on; xDSL, MPLS, cellular or fibre can be combined this way. Because reception comes from several sources, visitors could keep surfing without interruption, even when the connection switched to another network, and follow the rallies on the other courts via live stream. How this principle works in detail is explained in our post Multi-WAN bonding explained in brief; today's solution is described under SD-WAN.

For Ascend, the IsarOpen 2018 was a typical event Wi-Fi deployment: an outdoor sports event with many guests at the same time. Beyond the technology, Ascend and Vitel also supported the tournament as sponsors and so accompanied the first edition of a new sporting event in the Munich area. The building blocks from back then are still the same today: Wi-Fi across the whole venue and a bonded uplink over several lines.

This post is based on the Ascend news item from August 2018 and was revised with AI assistance. The cover image is AI-generated.