Looking back at Zwarte Cross 2019

Jody van Velthoven Inside Sales & Marketing

A major support for a major music event

Festival headliners may be the ones to sell the tickets, but everyone knows no music concert can do without a decent support. So let’s take a peek at the backstage of the last edition of Zwarte Cross festival before the pandemic and the capabilities of the networking infrastructure provided by Extreme and Indicium BV!

Some people attend summer festivals for music, others go on a journey of self-discovery. But if you’re frequenting Zwarte Cross, there’s one thing you can be certain about: expect the unexpected!

Located in Achterhoek, the eastern region of the Netherlands, the festival has become a truly unique amalgam of top artists, motocross stunts, sports, theater acts, and pure entertainment. Think of booging to some Black Eyed Peas hits along with 40,000 other people in one minute, only to be sucked into the largest motocross event in the world in the next second.

An unforgettable experience? Now that’s an understatement.

A little trip down the memory lane…

Since the very first edition in 1997, which saw a total of 1,000 visitors, Zwarte Cross has come a long way, growing into a four-day event with approximately 220,000 guests, more than 30 stages and 165 hectares of pure fun. With the rise of the mobile internet over the years, the connectivity needs of the festival’s attendees have grown exponentially.

As the festival moved into the digitalized world we live in today, the Zwarte Cross management team acknowledged their need to deploy strategic technologies to ensure a smoothly-run event and quality experience for attendees moving forward.

Indicium came up with an idea to offload the users and data to a Wi-Fi network. And that’s how it all began.

“At a certain point in time the event grew so big, the attendees started to experience problems with getting any sort of connection on their mobile phones. It became clear that the 3G and 4G coverage on the festival’s grounds was not enough to support 60,000 people attending the event each day”, says Ronnie Degen, Owner at Feestfabriek AKG BV, the organizer of the festival.

“We asked our technology partners to find a solution to this problem. Indicium came up with an idea to offload the users and data to a Wi-Fi network. And that’s how it all began”.

What started off as a simple deployment, quickly became an advanced network infrastructure comparable to that of a medium-sized enterprise.

“Our initial Wi-Fi deployment from 2015, which only covered the area surrounding the main stage, has evolved rapidly and significantly over the past few years”, adds Kees Brouwer, Technical Services Manager at Indicium BV, who’s been directly involved in the project since the beginning of the cooperation.

“Due to the growing demand, both on the wired and wireless coverage, we’ve seen a steady increase in the number of access points and switches to support mobile ticketing & signing systems, ATMs and security cameras, among others. What started off as a simple deployment, quickly became an advanced network infrastructure comparable to that of a medium-sized enterprise”.

So this is how it all looked like in 2018…

…and here’s the technology behind Zwarte Cross 2019

In 2019, the last edition of Zwarte Cross to date due to the pandemic lockdown, the festival’s network backbone was based on the Extreme Smart OmniEdge solution, which proved to offer reliable Wi-Fi connectivity to 220,000 attendees and supported mission-critical operations and back-of-house systems.

More than 280 Extreme access points, deployed across both festival and camping areas, combined with a curated set of digital tools, allowed Zwarte Cross not only to ensure secure and reliable network access, but also gather valuable insights about the application usage and user behavior in order to drive better guest experience, staff communication and network service delivery.

“Today, the apps are literally everywhere. While typical Wi-Fi visibility is usually limited to the number of connected clients and their IP addresses, ExtremeAnalytics provided Zwarte Cross with valuable insights such as application profiles, number of clients and bandwidth per app, application and network response times or social media tracking”, says Patrick Groot Nuelend, EMEA Solutions Architect at Extreme Networks.

Connectivity, wherever you need it

Today, it’s probably hard to imagine a festival like Zwarte Cross doing without a secure and reliable network access, both for the attendees and the event’s staff. Setting up the network infrastructure for an event like that is rarely a walk in the park – especially when it’s just for a few days. As always, behind every success, there’s a lot of hard work…

“It’s not a regular network. Imagine connecting almost 400 acres of plain field, right in the middle of the countryside. It’s not like you have a data center where you can install all the switches and the infrastructure is here to stay. No, it’s all temporary, just for a couple of days throughout the year”, says Ronnie Degen.

“Our utmost aim is to help people have a good time and the right technology can help enable that. We don’t have time to fix issues. We need automation to fix it for us. And for that reason, I’m really glad we’ve had Extreme and Indicium on our side”.

I’m really glad we’ve had Extreme and Indicium on our side.

“Even in the most challenging and unique environments, organizations like Zwarte Cross require network solutions to support their specific operational needs and meet the expectations of their connected customers”, adds Hans Nolen, Director at Indicium BV.

“Our extensive experience of large-scale technology deployments in the events sector means that together with Extreme Networks, we are primed to support the delivery of even bigger and better spectacles moving forward”.