Cisco powers U.S. Open with secure event networking

Cisco provided the network, security and observability infrastructure used by the United States Golf Association to run the U.S. Open, supporting connectivity, crowd operations, ticketing, merchandise and digital services across the tournament site.

The setup was used at the 126th U.S. Open Championship at Shinnecock Hills in New York, where the USGA built a temporary network across a large event footprint rather than relying on a permanent stadium-style environment. The deployment included nearly 600 Wi-Fi 7 access points, 120 Meraki security cameras, Cisco switching and firewall equipment, and Splunk-based analytics and observability tools.

The USGA said the environment had to support tens of thousands of spectators moving around the course while also handling operational systems and rising volumes of user-generated content from fans, media and influencers on site.

Temporary build

Unlike a major arena with fixed infrastructure, the U.S. Open requires a network to be installed and configured for each event. That network then has to support a high-density crowd spread across hundreds of acres, with demand shifting as spectators follow groups around the course.

That creates a different set of requirements from a traditional sports venue. Coverage has to move with the crowd, and network capacity has to absorb spikes when a large number of spectators gather around a leading player or a key moment in play.

Rob Neumann, Director of Sponsorship Technology at Cisco, said the challenge centred on maintaining connectivity for fans moving across the course.

"One of the biggest challenges for us here is providing that connectivity for fans that move throughout the course," said Rob Neumann, Director of Sponsorship Technology, Cisco. "And with our latest Wi-Fi 7 products, we're able to achieve that."

Neumann said usage patterns at golf events have also changed as more people create and publish content from the venue rather than simply consuming it.

"There are more people now uploading content than there are downloading content at golf events," said Neumann. "A lot of that is the content creation folks because all these influencers and everyone else are basically wanting to publish their content on site."

Cisco said Wi-Fi 7 gave the USGA additional headroom for those demands, with the newer standard intended to improve speed and capacity in dense environments.

Operations view

The USGA also used Cisco and Splunk tools to give its IT team a unified operational view of the event network. From the organisation's mobile command centre, staff monitored connectivity, device performance, security and operational feeds across the site.

Anthony Santora, Managing Director of IT for the USGA, said the command centre dashboard gave the team a single view across the network footprint and helped them respond quickly to issues as they emerged.

The camera deployment formed part of that operational layer. Video feeds from Meraki cameras were shared with law enforcement and USGA operations teams to monitor movement around the site, including road traffic, bus queues and concession lines.

"In terms of the cameras, we deploy them everywhere," said Anthony Santora, Managing Director of IT, USGA. "The operations teams use them to monitor things like how much traffic is out there on the highway, how long does it take for people to get off the buses? Are there too long of lines at concessions? And they're making real-time decisions as a result of what they're observing."

Cisco said the combination of networking, cameras, security and observability allowed the USGA to use the same environment for fan-facing connectivity and for internal event operations.

Resilience focus

Christian Rodriquez, Senior Manager of IT Operations at the USGA, said resilience and redundancy were central to the organisation's infrastructure requirements given the outdoor conditions and the need to keep services running throughout the event.

"Cisco's all about the resilience, the redundancy," said Christian Rodriquez, Senior Manager of IT Operations, USGA. "The way Cisco builds their access points, the way they build in redundancy before we even configure anything is just phenomenal. These solutions are out in the field. You see the weather conditions they're in. And we never have environmental-related issues. From the hardware to the technology to all the configurations. Honestly, why would we not use it?"

Santora said the quality of the wireless experience had been noticeable enough that users were contacting the IT team to praise it rather than report faults.

"I'm getting calls like: 'What's going on with the Wi-Fi here? It's blazing, it's amazing,' " said Santora. "I said, 'Oh my gosh, this is the first time I ever got called for a positive reason.' "

AI layer

The event also highlighted the role of AI in both operations and fan services. The USGA recently launched Rules AI, a digital assistant integrated into its mobile app that answers golf rules questions in plain language. The organisation said the tool was trained on more than 25,000 verified rules queries.

Santora said Cisco AI Defense was being used as a security layer around that application.

"AI Defense is our first - and last - line of defense," said Santora.

He said the USGA was also looking at agentic AI tools from Cisco to help tune the network, identify issues and recommend optimisations for a small IT and security team managing a large event footprint.

"We're super excited to be leveraging AI to tune the network and find problems or optimize things," said Santora. "And we're looking to do more. Agentic tooling like this can give us expert level recommendations that we might not otherwise have."