Exhibitor Internet: What to Offer and How to Run It

Give exhibitors their own connections, separate from the attendee WiFi. A booth that takes payments, runs a live demo or streams to a video wall needs a wired drop or a dedicated wireless network, and card readers should never sit on an open guest network. Put the options, the order deadline and the show-day contact in the exhibitor kit, so nobody discovers the network for the first time on opening morning.

This is written for the organizer: the person who decides what to offer exhibitors, writes it into the kit, and takes the call when a booth cannot connect. It is how we plan the exhibitor and presenter drops on the event networks AVP.Live designs and runs for conferences in New Jersey, New York City and Philadelphia, and what we ask a venue when the venue runs the network instead.

Wired drop, dedicated wireless, or the shared network: which booth needs which?

Three kinds of connection cover a show floor, whether it is a trade show or the exhibit hall at a conference. What decides which one a booth needs is what the booth will put on the network, not how big the booth is.

To sort the booths, put three questions on the exhibitor order form:

1. Will you take payments at the booth?
2. Will you run a demo that needs the internet?
3. Will anything in the booth stream or upload video?

A yes to any of them means a wired drop or dedicated wireless. A booth that answers no to all three, and needs only email and messages, can share the attendee WiFi with everyone else.

Streaming is the answer to watch. A booth that streams pushes data out of the building, and venue internet sold as fast can be fast in one direction only. A single 1080p stream sends about 6 Mbps, and we plan for 12 Mbps of sustained upload per stream. For other resolutions, our calculator works out the upload for a booth that streams.

An exhibitor area outdoors gets the same treatment, with weatherproof access points placed for the crowd. Indoors or out, we count exhibitor drops one by one when we design the network, so the answers on the order form feed straight into the plan.

What to put in the exhibitor kit

The kit is where exhibitors learn the network exists. Put these in it, in this order:

1. The options, by name. Wired drop, dedicated wireless and the shared attendee WiFi, each with one line on what it is for, taken from the table above.
2. The three questions. Payments, a live demo, and anything that streams or uploads video. The answers tell you, and whoever builds the network, which booth gets which connection.
3. What to send with the order. Booth number, the devices that will connect, wired or wireless, and whether the booth streams.
4. The order deadline. One date, printed, and what happens to an order that arrives after it. Set it early enough to plan from: a dedicated circuit from an internet provider can take weeks to order.
5. What the shared WiFi is not for. Say plainly that card readers and demos stay off the attendee network. Name the network attendees will see, so exhibitors can tell it from theirs.
6. When to test. A window during setup, before the doors open, for each booth to run its card reader and its demo on the connection it ordered.
7. Who to call. A name and a number for network problems on show day, one for each network if two teams run them, and where to find each person on the floor.

Payments and security: why card readers stay off guest WiFi

There are two reasons, and neither is exotic.

First, an open guest network is one anyone in the hall can join. A card reader on it shares a network with every guest phone and laptop that joins it, including devices nobody on your team has seen before.

Second, a full hall can put heavy demand on the guest network while booths are busy serving attendees. A network that feels fast on a quiet day can buckle with a full house, and a payment terminal on that network competes with all of it.

So we build separate networks by purpose, run by our own crew on our own gear:

• Attendee WiFi for guests, under a network name that matches your event.
• Exhibitor drops, wired or dedicated wireless, for the booths.
• A registration segment for badge printers, check-in tablets and staff.
• The production network for cameras, audio, control and the stream.

Guest devices are kept on a separate network from the card readers and the program feed.

Here is what that is not. It describes how the network is laid out. It is not a security certification, and it is not a promise that every payment goes through. The card reader, its payment service and its settings belong to the exhibitor. That is why the kit asks every booth to test its reader on the connection it ordered before the doors open.

When the venue has an exclusive network provider

Some hotels and convention centers have an exclusive network provider. Find out whether yours does before the kit goes out, because the kit has to tell exhibitors where to order. If it does, the exhibitor connections may have to come from that provider, on its own order form.

Ask the venue, in writing:

1. Is there an exclusive network provider, and does it cover exhibitor connections?
2. Whose order form do exhibitors use, and what is its deadline?
3. May an outside team bring its own uplinks?
4. Who is the provider's contact on show day?

The answers go straight into the kit. When a provider controls the network, we coordinate with them, order what the contract requires, and, where the venue allows it, fill the gaps with our own uplinks. We agree drops, bandwidth and rules with them in writing before load-in. The hotel version of this is on our page about when the hotel's AV provider controls the network, including how in-house providers price internet.

Whoever supplies the connection, ask what it sustains under load, not what it advertises. Our field note on why a venue's fibre tells you little about your stream has the four questions that separate venues. Our site survey is free: we measure the venue's real bandwidth, cellular signal by carrier and sky view for satellite, and find where the building's network lives. That is worth knowing before anyone promises exhibitors a connection.

Who supports exhibitors on show day?

Whoever built the network. The contact in the kit should be a person who can see the network, not a desk that forwards the call.

On the networks we run, an engineer watches the network for the whole event, with failover decided before doors open. The plan behind it is signed off in an engineering review before the show. The uplinks are chosen from the survey: the venue circuit when it passes, bonded cellular, Starlink or a combination, so the event has more than one way out of the building.

When the venue's provider runs the exhibitor drops and we run the rest, settle who answers which call before load-in, and print both numbers in the kit. An exhibitor with a card reader that will not connect at opening should not have to work out whose network it is.

The network is one part of the show. The same crew can run the main stage, the breakouts and the hybrid audience as part of our conference production.

Send us the venue, the dates, the agenda and how many exhibitors you expect, and we will survey the venue for free. The survey notes are yours to keep whether or not you book us. Book a network survey.