Wi-Fi 6 at BottleRock Napa Valley

A premium experience

BottleRock Napa Valley, part of the Live Nation festival portfolio, is more than a showcase for the world's top musical acts. It also features the region's finest wines, food, and craft brews, helping to create an authentic, world-class experience that embodies the luxury and ethos of California wine country.

"BottleRock has been around since 2013 and has gained a reputation for being one of the most premium festivals in the world," says Jason Scoggins, chief revenue officer of Latitude 38 Entertainment, which produces BottleRock Napa Valley. "People expect a VIP experience when they come to Napa, and we pride ourselves in delivering that kind of experience within the festival grounds."

BottleRock regularly features more than 80 bands on five music stages. Celebrity performances and chef demonstrations are showcased on a culinary stage. Dozens of wine cabanas allow attendees to sip and mingle with their favorite vintners. And so, it only made sense that in 2021, BottleRock tapped Cisco to help it become the first Live Nation event to deploy a free, festival-wide Wi-Fi 6 network for attendees and vendors.

"We had the opportunity to do Wi-Fi in the past but were always very reluctant to do so. It's not an easy lift for our production team to put together," Scoggins explains. "But we have the right partner in Cisco. With their help, we deploy a Wi-Fi 6 network that has a significant impact on the fan and vendor experience."

A superior network

BottleRock's wireless network is built with more than 50 Cisco network switches and 182 crowd-facing Cisco wireless access points, including Cisco Catalyst 9104 Stadium Antennas and Cisco Catalyst 9124AX Series access points. The network delivers all of the benefits of Wi-Fi 6, including higher data rates, more network capacity, reduced latency, and improved power efficiency compared to previous iterations of the wireless standard.

According to festival organizers, the network performs flawlessly.

"The fact that we don't hear anything about Wi-Fi going down is one of my favorite parts about the festival," Scoggins says, "because that isn't the case for other festivals."

The network is monitored and managed with Cisco Catalyst Center, a powerful controller and management dashboard that helps prioritize applications, services, and users to optimize network performance.

"One of our biggest fears in doing fan-facing Wi-Fi was how it would impact our point-of-sale and back-of-house operations," Scoggins says. "But the network has no problem supporting both attendees as well as vendors."