Wireless network serves 13,000 scouts and staff at JubJam100

LONDON, UK, Wednesday 21st July, 2010—More than 13,000 scouts and staff, ten days of exciting land, air and water scouting experience—the Dutch Scouting organisation, Scouting Netherland celebrates its 100th anniversary with the biggest scouting camp in Europe in 2010. A huge wireless network will cover the entire 60-hectare camp area, ensuring efficient internal processes and providing broadband Internet to staff and participants. The wireless LAN technology used is provided by German networking specialists LANCOM.

The wireless network at JubJam100 is as versatile as the camp itself: The infrastructure is designed to be truly multi-purpose. A total of 11 outdoor access points provide WLAN coverage at strategic locations where lots of scouts come together or where staff are at work behind the scenes. The network is primarily used for logistical purposes; for example, to order food online for the 13,000 people in the camp, maintain the JubJam100 web site, upload video news by ScoutTV, and enable streaming of the camp’s own live radio station, JubJam-FM. The remaining bandwidth is left to the scouts for their personal Internet access – either via the camp’s Internet café or the easy to log-on wireless hotspot.

To ensure that there is sufficient bandwidth for all applications and users, JubJam100 has opted for WLAN technology by premium German vendor LANCOM. All access points in the camp are outdoor models with special housings and integrated heating and cooling, making sure that the network works reliably no matter what the weather conditions are. They feature two 54-Mbps radio modules, one of which is used to set up a wireless backbone, while the second one supports the radio cells for the network and hotspot.

All internal and external applications run on the same infrastructure, securely separated by means of virtual networks. The hotspot functionality, as well as the entire network management, is provided by a LANCOM WLAN Controller installed at the control room on the campsite.

“Thanks to our high-speed wireless network, we are able to combine such a traditional activity as scouting with the latest information technology”, explains Remko Welling, Network Administrator at JubJam100. “This is a fundamental requirement today, where young people are used to having Internet access and staying in touch with their friends and their social networks no matter where they are—even in a scouting camp.”