"A lot of the audiences are really respectful here," Simmons said. And with so many movies premiering at Sundance, there will also be security teams looking out for attempts at video piracy, he added. "If somebody was trying to use their phone during a screening, they'd probably get flagged and be hauled aside afterwards," he said.

In addition to the public SSID (service set identifier), there will be a dedicated SSID for official use. Sundance will take advantage of the added wireless capacity to stream live video of panel discussions, the awards ceremony and other events.

Most enterprise wireless LANs are in office settings where density isn't a big problem, but serving a lot of people in a small area is frequently a challenge at venues such as stadiums and convention centers, said Dell'Oro Group analyst Loren Shalinsky. In one well-known incident, at the launch of the Apple iPhone 4 last year, so he could demonstrate the phone. Most vendors have some way of addressing high-density networking, but those solutions vary widely, Shalinsky said.

When the lights go up at this year's Sundance festival, the iPhone app will be back in a new 2011 edition, joined by an Android version, Simmons said. The new apps will provide even more video than last year's. Once the festival gets going on Jan. 20 and visitors hop on, the network management platform will start to provide detailed metrics on where and when people use the network, and on which devices. The Sundance Institute will keep the network and use it at other events, and those usage reports will be fed into preparations for next year's Park City extravaganza.

The IDG News Service