Event Wi-Fi Capacity Estimator

Every week somebody asks me some version of the same question: "How much Wi-Fi does my event actually need?" This calculator is the back-of-napkin math I run in my head before any real design work starts — the same arithmetic behind festival builds, surf-tour broadcasts, and a certain very busy burger restaurant. Punch in your event, get a planning-grade starting point.

Fair warning from an engineer: this is planning-grade, not deployment-grade. Real designs need a site survey, RF modeling, and eyes on the venue. But this will tell you whether you're talking about four APs or forty, and whether your internet circuit is a garden hose or a fire main — which is exactly what you need to know before you talk to anyone (including me).

How this math works (and where it breaks)

The model is simple on purpose: attendance × a venue-specific take rate gives associated devices; a peak-activity fraction gives concurrently active clients; active clients × per-client bandwidth plus POS and broadcast allowances (with 30% protocol overhead) gives backhaul; associated devices divided by a realistic per-AP client load — with headroom and a spare — gives AP count. Where it breaks: venues with heavy walls or metal, crowds that surge to one location at once (halftime, headliner walk-on), and anything involving 2.4 GHz-only IoT gear. That's what surveys are for.