Town of Vail

Staying Connected on the Slopes

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People come from all over the world to ski at Vail – more than 170K per ski season. Vail has become a magnet for not only ski buffs but fishermen, general sports enthusiasts and music aficionados. Vail has become a year round attraction where visitors expect to be connected like they are at home. To meet this expectation, Vail stepped up to become one of the early “Smart Cities” – that is, they deployed Wi-Fi liberally across their city and slopes to maintain that always-on expectation. The network does more than just meet the needs of demanding visitors: the city of Vail utilizes Wi-Fi for monitoring parking lots, and ski, riverside, and park areas and to assist first responders and police.

Challenge

The legacy Wi-Fi network, from AT&T, was aging, un-reliable, and difficult to support. The turning point was when AT&T decided to get out of this business and the town of Vail found themselves needing a new Wi-Fi provider. Reliability, high-performance, and a design that could grow were critical decision factors in selecting the new vendor.

After evaluating several different vendors, Vail found RUCKUS® best met the town’s requirements and they deployed a Wi-Fi network that covered some thirteen miles of outdoor terrain that included ski and village areas. To insure reliable connections to the Internet, Vail also installed a fiber backbone for guaranteeing high performance and reliability of the Wi-Fi service.

Requirements
  • A replacement for their existing, under- performing wireless network
  • A reliable wireless network to service the expanding guest and city worker needs for wireless network access
  • A network that could grow to support exploding demand from increased numbers of visitors
Solutions
  • Deployed 120+ RUCKUS 802.11n and 802.11ac indoor and outdoor access points over thirteen square miles
  • Installed 2 ZoneDirector controllers 
Benefits
  • A town and ski area network that sustains thousands of active daily users which includes guest and city workers
  • Satisfied the live high definition (HD) Wi-Fi bandwidth requirements for sporting and entertainment events
  • Built a network that is able to easily grow as their city business grows
To learn more about this project:

 Download the full case study