According to Thomas Moats Jr., assistant athletic director for IT at Tennessee, the just-finished stadium network saw a peak throughput surge of 31 Gigabits per second when the two legends walked onto the field together, a number higher than any previous acknowledged recording at big events like Super Bowls or Swift concerts.
But when it comes to one of country music’s biggest stars coming out for a mid-game rendition of “Rocky Top,” escorted by probably the school’s biggest-ever football star, you might expect a record-type surge of selfies and videos from the sellout crowd of 100,000-plus fans.
“When Peyton came out with Dolly, every cellphone in the place went up, and it was awesome to see,” Moats said in a recent interview. “We were monitoring it, and the network held together, without any problem.”
Finally bringing Wi-Fi to fans
The big moment, Moats said, was a kind of culmination of a years-long process to answer one of the biggest beefs of the devoted fans who regularly fill the 101,915-seat stadium. Originally constructed in 1921, Neyland Stadium is the sixth-largest college football venue in the U.S., according to the school. And for most of its life, connectivity for fans has been a challenge — until now.
“Fans have been calling for Wi-Fi for years,” Moats said. In the past, the school may have tried to weigh a ROI for Wi-Fi deployment, but in the e
