Airport networks, WiFi and all are huge heterogenous, almost chaotic environments with lots of moving parts. Nowhere in the world would you have 300 passenger de-planing at a gate and suddenly joining the WiFi network with really hungry apps that have been waiting for WiFi for hours to download updates and upload photos and videos.
So scaling the WiFi, the distribution network and the internet capacity of the entire airport in a cost effective matter is a challenge. And with smart traffic management from AppLogic Networks, airport networks QoE and costs can be vastly improved.
It’s Not Just WiFi. It’s War.
Airport WiFi is a constant struggle. Because of red tape (regulations, unions, security, etc) upgrades and repairs are slow. You have to live with the access network as-is for long periods of time. Peak usage keeps growing with passenger counts going up, and hot spots across the airports keep shifting due to changing in flights.
The worst days are when passengers get grounded due to bad weather and everybody hunkers down and watches NetFlix.
Having a tool that can help you understand App QoE per App per gate area, building, Access Point, and different class of user is critical. Get to know your weak spots so you can schedule them for upgrade. But until then, you need to manage the traffic. Not everyone can get 4K video on congested APs at congested times.
This is also where heavy user management comes in. After 10GB of downloads, maybe it’s time to throttle heavy users down to 1 Mbps?
And Application Prioritization. The business guy on a Zoom call should probably be prioritized over the P2P user downloading the 600GB Greatest Cat Videos 2025 Collection.
Prioritization can be achieved by shapers, but also by DSCP tagging the packets and having the AP respect the tags for different treatment in the radio.
If your WiFi is not entirely free, either limited by some time criteria, or ad-supported, or paid internet, then you can be sure there is some fraud going on. Passengers will try to tunnel internet over DNS, or share WiFi using hotspots with other users bypassing Ts&Cs and regulatory rules etc. With AppLogic Networks you will recognize this behavior and put a stop to it where needed.
Log everything!
Airport wifi are very commonly used for nefarious internet activities. As such, logging user activities such that you can later go in and pinpoint “who did it” is critical. Who was responsible for the flow at 15:10:10 last Friday from airport IP 5.5.5.4 to 1.2.3.4 port 834? Well, to answer that you need at least port block allocation logs, but preferably flow logs of all activities. So you need a solution that has scalable flow logging. And AppLogic Networks solution excels at this. And, it does CGNAT if you choose to do that too.
Managing the Internet Cost
Large Airport internet connectivity comes in at 5-10 Gbps on a busy day. So the cost of that can be quite hefty. Depending on the provider and the geography and the region of the world, this could easily be $2000 to $20000 per month. So cutting the utilization in half with some smart shaping is an easy win.
What to shape? Well
- Software updates can be slowed down (they can finish at home)
- P2P traffic can be slowed down (it’s probably illegal anyway)
- 4K video sounds a bit extreme on a laptop or mobile phone, shape that to 1080p
Those items alone easily does away with 50% of the peak demand. Airport traffic is very bursty because of the ebbs and flows of travel.
Then, if you reduce peak internet traffic by 50%, that means almost 50% of your WiFi traffic and east-west traffic is reduced too. So you need less firewall capacity, less IDS/IDP capacity, less WiFi capacity etc. You can push capacity upgrades out for years and save a ton of money.
Charge Wherever Possible
It’s not just about passengers and WiFi. You have airlines, retail stores, restaurants, shipping companies, vending machines, who all need good internet. Charge them some for 10 Mbps, and charge them more for 50 or 100 Mbps. Setup and enforce that using your AppLogic system. And make sure airport staff, CCTV, critical IT and operations traffic is monitored for good App QoE and never interupted or congested by other traffic.
TL;DR
An airport is like a small city with a very challenging network situation. Get on top of it by monitoring the AppQoE of all apps, users, device, access points in the network, and control the traffic with smart shaping, tagging, quotas and personalized offers to passengers and corporations. A network under that kind of control runs smoothly, with far less trouble tickets and much lower TCO.
To learn more or to see a demonstration, please contact us here.
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Topics: Quality of Experience, App QoE, App Quality of Experience
