How the U.S. Open Drives Cisco's Connectivity Innovation

CNET

a day ago

At the 2025 U.S. Open in June, more than 25,000 golf fans will scan their tickets each day and spread out over 191 acres at Oakmont Country Club near Pittsburgh. They'll be looking at over 900 screens displaying course information and scores. They'll be shopping with over 50 vendors, each collecting data and processing payments. The whole time, they'll be posting photos and videos on social media–as will nearly 500 members of the media updating their audiences in real time.
At other sports championships, all of that happens in a stadium that has likely hosted a big game before. But at the U.S. Open, a sprawling golf course must be temporarily outfitted to handle massive demands for electricity and connectivity that constantly shift with the action.
In seven years as the Official Technology Partner of the United States Golf Association, organizer of the U.S. Open and the U.S. Women's Open Presented by Ally, Cisco has pioneered high-density network solutions to deliver reliable, secure connections even at challenging large-scale events. At the 125th U.S. Open this year, new network technology such as Wi-Fi 7 and Cisco Campus Gateway will be integrated with cloud-based solutions for powerful real-time visibility to address staffing, security threats and network issues.
Keeping the crowds online, wherever they roam
Almost everyone has experienced the frustration of a big concert or sporting event where networks are so overwhelmed that you can't send a text. Keeping tens of thousands of fans online is a challenge even in ideal conditions, but especially on the sweeping geographic scale of a top golf event. Organizers must deliver power and connectivity to an area roughly the size of 300 football fields, which means using generators to reach far-flung corners of the course and laying miles of tactical fiber that can withstand being trampled by fans and run over by golf carts.
The challenge of connecting the U.S. Open isn't just that there's a lot of ground to cover. It's also that the fans are covering a lot of ground, sometimes all at once.
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"Whoever is the hottest player at the time will inevitably get this following around them that gets larger and larger," said Cisco Distinguished Engineer Matt Swartz, who has worked on big sporting events including several Super Bowls and the Olympics. "From a wireless perspective, building in capacity to handle a moving hotspot with that much demand is challenging and something that's very unique to golf."
The U.S. Open has been a staging ground for innovation at Cisco in response to the challenge of high-density Wi-Fi. At the 2019 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach Golf Links, Cisco launched the first-ever course-wide Wi-Fi network, and since then has focused intently on the bottlenecks in scaling networks. They've developed new antenna technology and worked with the USGA to study demand patterns to get the right number of access points in the right places.
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This year at Oakmont, Wi-Fi 7, the latest generation of wireless technology, will be deployed at the U.S. Open's main gate and inside the Cisco Media Center, including the brand-new Cisco Wireless 9179F Series Access Points for stadiums and large venues. These new access points offer better speeds, increased capacity and more reliable performance, delivering Wi-Fi 7 and WPA3 standards to the tournament for the first time.
Cisco is also deploying its brand-new Campus Gateway to create a seamless roaming experience across the grounds. Cisco Meraki is popular for its easy-to-install device infrastructure and its cloud-based control panel that allows clients to visualize their entire network–including wide-area networks (WAN) and any Internet of Things (IoT) devices–from an intuitive, centralized dashboard. Campus Gateway scales Cisco Meraki for larger sites like university campuses or golf courses by tunneling traffic back to a central location, allowing seamless roaming without the problems of stretching a single virtual local area network (VLAN) over a large area.
Outstanding visibility, both on the ground and in the cloud
To keep the U.S. Open's technical infrastructure running smoothly, it's crucial to be able to visualize what's happening on the grounds in real time and isolate incidents quickly. This year, Cisco's network tech will be integrated with powerful new network visibility solutions that make that less like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Splunk, acquired by Cisco in 2024 and making its U.S. Open debut this year, will ingest the streams of data flowing in from the championship and display real-time visual dashboards that can be used to locate connectivity and security issues. With its powerful filtering capabilities, organizers can use Splunk to drill down into fine-grained parameters, like access points without any users connected, which might suggest they're offline or that their antennas are blocked.
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"The power of Splunk is that you can literally ingest any type of data and turn it into a powerful asset for operational excellence," Swartz said. "For the same set of data, it'll give you multiple ways to display it. You can tailor it to what's important to you."
Cisco Spaces – a solution that turns physical environments like office buildings, retail stores, hospitals and even golf courses into 3D dashboards – is part of the mix this year as well. Cisco Spaces offers the ability to display where crowds are moving and crucial equipment is located, making it a valuable piece of the overall visibility deployment. Using connection data from cell phones, cameras and tracking devices attached to important assets, organizers can monitor when to deploy more staff to hotspots like the tournament's merch tent.
Global interactive connectivity for fans and staff
Webex by Cisco, a cloud-based videoconferencing solution that integrates everything from conference-room calling devices to mobile calling, has been at the heart of Cisco's partnership with the USGA over the past several years. At the 2020 tournament held during the COVID-19 pandemic without fans on-site, Webex, integrated with Meraki access points, provided fans with an unprecedented digital experience that included one-on-one chats with players and a front-row seat on the first tee. Now, it offers an efficient way for tournament IT staff to troubleshoot throughout the grounds during the event, when cell service can often be unreliable.
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The experience of 2020 continues to shape how Webex powers communications at the U.S. Open, helping the USGA bring media from around the world close to the action while reducing the tournament's carbon footprint.
Learn more about Cisco's network solutions
In its seven-year partnership with the USGA across the U.S. Open and the U.S. Women's Open, Cisco has gone from building the first course-wide Wi-Fi network on a professional golf course to introducing brand-new Wi-Fi 7 technology. With new hardware and cloud-based visualization tools, the 125th U.S. Open in Oakmont will showcase Cisco's most comprehensive solutions for high-density connectivity and security.
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"When we talk about the U.S. Open, the U.S. Women's Open, we have one shot to get it right," said Anthony Santora, the USGA's managing director of IT. "Whether on the course, the gates, our leaderboards, food and beverage, our fans, everything, we're all connected these days. I trust Cisco because it allows us to achieve not only the speeds, not only the scalability, but the security of all of our products."
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