From The New York Times:
The problem is that Wi-Fi was never intended for large halls and thousands of people, many of them bristling with an arsenal of laptops, iPhones and iPads.
Wi-Fi is meant for homes and other small spaces with more modest Internet demands, says Ernie Mariette, founder of Mariette Systems, which installs conference Wi-Fi. "You´re asking a technology to operate beyond its capability."
Conference organizers and the Wi-Fi specialists they hire often fail to provide enough bandwidth. Many depend on the infrastructure that the hotels or convention centers hosting their events already have in place.
Companies that install Wi-Fi networks sometimes have only a day to set up their equipment in a hall and then test it. They must plan not only for the number of attendees, but also the size and shape of the room, along with how Wi-Fi signals reflect from walls and are absorbed by the audience.
Let’s see how it works at Lotusphere in January. Perhaps there need to be some areas during the OGS with network cables to plug in to, to complement the Wi-Fi network?.