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EUROPE’S LARGEST TECH event is having WiFi trouble.
Dublin’s Web Summit is being held in the RDS and there are reports that the WiFi has been very slow for the entire day.
CEO of the Web Summit, Paddy Cosgrave, says technicians are working on the problems.
However, management at the RDS are defending their technical setup stating that:
There was a disruption of approximately 25 minutes this morning associated with firewalls servicing the network.
“This was resolved by the RDS technical team on site who are supporting this world class event.”
At one stage a show of hands was needed to try and ascertain how many people were still affected:
The Summit brings together innovators in online technologies together from all over the world.
Cosgrave apologised twice about the poor WiFi to the 22,000 visitors.
CEO of the RDS, Michael Duffy, said:
The wifi has successfully responded to the exceptional demands placed on it. This is an unprecedented wifi density compared to similar European tech events.
“In an event of this complexity and scale, variations in wifi coverage can arise due to the unprecedented user density and the specific nature of wifi technology and devices.”
Over 16,000 devices were connected to the WiFi at the RDS today but some people reckon this is still just plain embarrassing:
While some used the connection problems as a chance to get in some puns with actress, Eva Longoria, speaking at the tech event:
Duffy added that, “We will continue our efforts to optimise wifi connectivity in the areas of highest density and are working with the Web Summit to ensure the best possible experience in a highly demanding environment.”
Fingers crossed for day two tomorrow!
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No web at the web summit. Facepalm.
Scarcely ‘Irish’ – happens all over the world at tech conferences. Standard effup. We don’t need the self-hate.
I think it’s slightly worse than you would expect but it’s not unheard off. You but 5000 people in a room all on Wifi on maybe 3 channels and there is a limit to what you can do. Lots of conferences still have individual Ethernet lines in Press areas. Far more reliable.
As pointed out elsewhere.
Happened at Apple’s launch of iPhone 6 and they had only a fraction of the people and a budget this crowd wouldn’t see in ten lifetimes.
Béal bocht on overdrive.
Want to talk about a real issue. The lack of start ups in Irish Tech sector and the over reliance on multi-nationals because too many people here haven’t the self respect to stand on their own feet and work for themselves.
Just wondering Seany. Have you tried standing on your own 2 feet and working for yourself in this country?
I do, and trust me, its not a great little country to business in.
I do.
It is tough alright.
The State fights the little guy.
Going to be tough for the Irish straps who have paid to present at this and depended on WiFi access to demo their offerings.
While the lack of any access in the morning was pain for visitors without data roaming, I found the two apologies to be fairly unprofessional and websummit taking none of the blame themselves.
Anyone presenting should be Davy enough to have a back up plan like, tethering their phone or having a demo version on a laptop.
Thank you for saying this- I really dislike the whole “you’d only get that in Ireland” stuff.
Exactly any major conference or event experiences such problems.its overload simple as that.
Seanie – despite the talk there’s really no help or encouragement to start and run a small business. The banks don’t want to know you and the government just want tax. You’re really working against the system to employ people. I
Must have an Eircom contract
Same happened last year…you think they’d have learned from then
Is John Tierney in charge?
Actually due to the disastrous RDS wifi in 2013 Paddy Cosgrave of the websummit tried to take over the wifi setup for 2014 but the clueless old farts at the RDS wouldn’t let him.
So the RDS insisted on setting it up themselves again this year, and charged €400,000 for the pleasure. That’s the fee for wifi alone this year.
What an embarrassment and a ripoff.
I was at it today. Complete clusterF by the RDS. It was impossible to connect at all until after lunch and after that it was still dodgy. The CEO of the RDS is talking through his hat.
It wasn’t as if they didn’t expect that # of attendees either…. tickets sales have been well known for weeks.
Considering most attending were foreign (and therefore on roaming while here) having no wifi was amateur. Paddy was very cutting about it on stage.
They’ve been at other conference before, this won’t be the first time it happened, will not be the last.
Have a bit of self respect for yourself, even a smidgin.
All good and well being cutting, but these boyos have a rep of wanting everything provided to them free or as cheap as possible, and using in house bodies or volunteers instead of proper event management company.
So perhaps pay the dollar that goes with big events rather than throw the soother out of the pram when cutting corners inevitably backfires
I don’t think that it is the RDS at fault here, they provide the venue not the IT infrastructure
how much were the tickets again? 22,000 at it? so you have to pay a fortune hoping you’ll bump into someone who will make you rich, hopers.
don’t complain about Irish Water so if yis are forking out on this inflated 3 day rat race.
Brian, the RDS IS providing the IT infrastructure. In fact they insisted on doing so, not letting Web Summit organisers bring in outside help.
They were charged €400,000 by the RDS for the wifi this week alone.
Well done Cliodhna. Pick on some nobody Twitter person claiming ‘its so Irish’ that there are Wi-Fi problems. And then stick it in the headline of your article. And wait for the usual cackle of Journal commentators claiming what a dump Ireland is.
Meanwhile Apple had the same problems at the launch of the iPhone 4 (with a much smaller audience).
He deserved it, what an ignorant Cun 7.
Did he come out with “such a Yank thing” about the Apple Wifi issue.
He was pulled up on his ignorant attitude.
Less of the self loathing Irish bashing. It could happen anywhere.
it shouldn’t really happen with those ticket prices though, in all fairness. robbed!
The Irish thing is thinking stuff like this is only caused by the Irish. There is regular complaints about WiFi at CES in Vegas for example.
Also pretending that the world is laughing at us.
Lot of people have Zero self respect in this country.
Exact same thing happened last year dunno why anyone is surprised
WIFI has a habit of dropping when you need it most. I feel sorry for the poor techies who now have to face the wrath of the organizers for what is no more than a technical glitch.
Happens all the time
Maybe upc are supplying free wifi…..
Complaining about UPC is almost as boring as the headline “The Most Irish Thing Ever”. It’s cheap and trite. Nothing wrong with my 200 MB broadband from UPC and I don’t know anyone who has problems with UPC nowadays, since they fixed the bad customer service they inherited from NTL.
Easy there folks. I don’t know who runs the network at RDS but I can tell you right now that my tweetdeck search for ‘conference wifi’ is filled with people complaining about WiFi at conferences WAY smaller than this. All day, every day.
Why do I have that running? I consult/design/build/manage event WiFi networks and have done for over 7 years.
Of course, the failure is embarrassing for the organisers and venue while being frustrating for the attendees. It being a global audience accentuates this.
Getting this many people (especially a tech audience with phone/tablet/laptop each) is incredibly hard. Not impossible but not far off. The problem is RF physics in a large open space. It’s like a busy road at rush hour x 10. There’s only so many lanes (WiFi channels) and they’re all full. No one moves, no one can get on and everyone just sits there getting ever more irate.
David Burke was partly right to identify that there are only 3 channels (lanes), that’s correct for the 802.11bgn 2.4GHz frequency. The 5GHz 802.11an (they probably aren’t using 802.11ac) has way more but less range and not every device supports it, although that’s beginning to change. Problem is that the way devices choose what frequency to connect at is, well, not very smart. To get them to go on the 5GHz highway you basically have to whack a barrier on the 2.4GHz road over and over until their dumb ass gets it and tries to go the other way, the fancy tech term is band steering. If you get overly aggressive with that some devices just won’t connect at all.
I feel for the tech team trying to resolve the issue.
It’s possible that the WiFi worked ok but the comment from the RDS boss about the firewall problems sounds dodgy tbh. For that many people in one place I’d provision multiple Gigabit connections to the Internet, all with hot standby failover hardware and links. I’m sure that’s in place and doubt that is the root cause although it’s possible. Troubleshooting a cable connection is child’s play, green light good, no light bad. Troubleshooting WiFi makes the search for Bin laden look easy.
Advice : Anyone who wants to demo anything at a tech conference with 100% reliability should pay for a cable connection.
Observation : 3g/4g won’t cope with that density of users without a serious amount of in building infrastructure. It’s called DAS (distributed antenna system) for those interested. No idea if the RDS has much of it.
Opinion : In my experience to date there are very few conferences that plan for and allocate adequate budget to the underlying WiFi infrastructure. It’s something I’m obsessed with changing/improving.
Wishing the team tasked with getting it back on track the very best. They’ve got a long night ahead and engineering in these situations with no sleep and thousands of people watching/waiting is…….ugh…I’m getting flashbacks.
Oh, and I wrote this not so long ago.
http://www.forgesp.com/9-reasons-why-wifi-sucks-at-your-event/
The Taoiseach said: “The Web Summit builds on our fast growing reputation as a really strong global player…It is in recognition of Ireland’s status as digital leader and location for business and innovation that brings the Web Summit here.”
Well there ya have it, straight from the horses mouth.
This has what to with Enda Kenny?
Bit ridiculous at this stage, he to blame for the death of christ too?
Think most people attending will be only too aware of the limitations of wifi so won’t be giving out about Irish tech abilities. So is it really embarrassing? Shouldn’t be
People who are there no the story. They go to these things.
People who are embarrassed are just losers who have low self esteem.
Sounds a bit like the mystical Dublin Free WiFi that never works…
It’s a bit of a joke what actually happened but in fairness there are sometimes just limits on the density of people using WiFi in one area.
Maybe the delegates should have tried talking to each other rather than tweeting and FB’ing…… Telling us all that they are there!
It’s an embarrassment but it certainly isn’t an Irish thing, major conferences like LeWeb, TechCruch and the Apple events have suffered from failing wifi.
Mostly it’s a case of bad network configuration or bad RF management.
Paddy is partially right in blaming the RDS as it’s their network of Xirrus wifi arrays installed by Eircom apparently that seems to be causing the problem.
But the same thing happened last year and the year before.
That makes it also the fault of the Web Summit organisers who keep using the same venue without running a comprehensive audit on the wifi network beforehand and tying a performance clause with a severe financial penalty into the contract.
Well said!
At 500 euros/ticket for 3 days at the event where it is all about connection!
The problem is not new, solutions are around, just go and get them!
And if the RDS doesn’t play along, threaten to go elsewhere, then see their attitudes change :)
Was at the event today and don’t think the Wifi was that big an issue…
It meant more techies had to go back to the stone age technology of using their voices to describe their offerings… not really a bad thing.
#happenedlastyear #oldnews
Up there with “Hookers Busy after Tech Conference”.
The same story can be translated across every country where ones like this are held.
Unlimited Data was fine.
Two words, pissup, brewery!
The web and wifi are two separate technologies.
No, no. This is the most Irish thing ever http://websummit.net/pub-crawl :D
European Silicon Valley and cannot even get wifi right, epic fail as usual.
Absolutely cringe worthy :*(
Why.
Is your experience of this so limited that you think it would be newsworthy or remarked upon by anyone who goes to these conferences.
They are used to it.
Your lack of self respect is cringe worthy.
This happens at tech shows and conferences the world over, but by all means let’s turn it into more than it is and cause some real damage.
To be honest Cosgraves comments that the mics picked up in the interval were far more embarrassing. Also he shouldn’t have kept drawing attention to it, needed to be said once or twice but to go on that way was equally as unprofessional as the RDS cock up
At least with the hardware you can kick it but with software and wifi all you can do it is f…..g curse it!
An interview at the Web Summit with Group Political Editor Fionnan Sheahan and Mr Enda Kenny where he said;
“I am not inclined to hold a referendum. I do think it is important here that we should look at the question of strengthening the law. Obviously no political party in Dail Eireann has a proposition to privatise Irish Water. It is already enshrined in law. It will not be privatised. I can’t see any party anywhere wishing to put forward that proposition,” …why is it not mentioned in this report? Enda ruled out holding a referendum,our great leader said no!
FG also said no one more red cent to Frankfurt. Personally I don’t believe a word from them. All of a sudden there are problems with Irish Water not the government Muppets who set it up… If only Michael Collins was alive today!!
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