On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 1:38 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > > Actually, you may be able to come very close to this. > > At Scale we put in our own firewall, switches, etc throughout the meeting > room floors, so our network is completely separate from the Hotel network, > up until the firewall connects to their router. >
We get to do this because we included it in our proposals from the start and eliminate venues that wont work with us in this fashion. In other markets that may not be as viable, especially if you come in with these requests after the contract has been signed. You also either need an in house team (like SCALE has) or to hire someone to run it for you. Neither are for the faint at heart. > > bandwidth costs vary by location, and in some locations you can't get good > bandwidth no matter what you are willing to pay, but $10K for a T-1 sounds > high. In the same world where generic drip coffee can cost $49/gallon, T1s can still cost $10K. Venues tend to send their pricing high for the whales that come in, rather than for small meetings. If you are creative during the bidding / contracting process and are at the right venue, you maybe able to find wiggle room there, but they aren't just going to offer that to you. Then again some venues, like the Austin Convention Center now just offer free wifi to all attendees as part of your rental. I'm sure they find somewhere else to make up the cost :) Unfortunately that doesn't help the original authors situation, OLF, or anyone else that already has a venue. Once you are at a point where the venue is charging you this much you have to start looking at more creative options. Do you know if they would charge you to bring in an outside line from a 3rd party? Do you know who the local telco company is? The LA Convention Center had worse pricing than 10K for a T1 when we used to run SCALE there. So we would bring in our own T1 for the weekend. I know Pycon and a few other events go this route too when the venue does not have reasonable connectivity (or at least not reasonably priced). Convention centers unfortunately like to charge a fee to cover patching you from the entry point / demarc to the port in the room you are in. Hotels on the other hand tend to be more flexible / cheaper with this. SCALE at the Westin used to bring in our own DSL lines for years, and the hotel did not charge additional fees. , where as the convention center used to charge us an arm & leg for letting them patch our rooms in. Keep in mind that these days a lot of the telco carriers do not allow short term contracts any more. I know for example AT&T no longer does (they did when they were SBC). So you basically pay for the year or some insane cancelation fee, but in the end that could still be cheaper/better than working with the venue. If you planning at being in the venue for multiple years, and can arrange the dates right you can technically make use of that "investment" twice. I think others have mentioned wireless. How is 4G coverage in the area? For the Texas Linux Fest, 2 years back, the venue we could not arrange for the local connectivity. Instead we arranged to have several wireless modems from clear and then load balanced across them. Not ideal, but it worked pretty well when combined with some QoS. I think we had 400-500 people using the wifi and wired drops being routed over our wireless without many complaints. The other wireless ISP types folks have mentioned might be a good option too if you can get line of site. In LA this is usually problematic due to hills, tall buildings, etc. Anyways, just my 2 cents based on having worked with several venues over the last 10 years for SCALE, and 3 years TXLF, among other groups. If we can be of any help feel free to drop us a line. Ilan
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