Festival and pop-up event WiFi: planning a temporary network

A festival, a pop-up market or a one-day outdoor event needs a WiFi network that exists for a few days or a few hours, often on a site with no cabling, for a crowd that may all try to get online at once. This guide covers planning that network, getting internet to the site, the captive portal sign-in page on the day, and leaving with a list of attendees who agreed to hear from you. Capacity figures come from Cisco Meraki's high-density design guide and connection details from Starlink's help pages, both linked below.

What makes a temporary network different

A permanent venue can watch its network for months and fix what it learns. An event network has to work on the first day after little time to test, often on hired equipment and temporary cable runs, with access points placed where the crowd will gather: entrances, bars, food areas and the space in front of each stage.

Plan at least two networks. The guest network carries the captive portal, with client isolation so attendees cannot reach each other's devices. A separate password-protected network on its own VLAN carries production, the box office, door phones and traders' card terminals, set up as each payment provider advises. Keep that network off the captive portal so tills and door phones never meet a sign-in page.

Capacity planning in principle

Cisco Meraki's high-density design guide splits capacity planning into three steps: estimate the aggregate application throughput, estimate the throughput each device will get, then work out the number of access points. It treats a location as high density once more than 30 clients connect to one access point, and recommends "around 25 clients per radio or 50 clients per AP in high-density deployments".

The first step starts from what people will do. The guide gives typical throughput by application:

Multiply the throughput by the number of concurrent users. The guide's own example, 600 users streaming HD video at 3 Mbps, comes to 1,800 Mbps, and it notes that 1.8 Gbps "exceeds the bandwidth offerings of almost all internet service providers". It calls the result a theoretical upper bound and advises testing the target application on the devices you expect.

For an event, start from the devices you expect online together in each area, the input the guide asks for, and decide what the guest network is for. At 500 kbps a head, browsing needs a sixteenth of the 8 Mbps at the top of the HD streaming range, and per-guest speed limits, where your hardware enforces them, keep the network to the purpose you chose; on CaptiFi they are not yet enforced on TP-Link Omada, Cisco Meraki or cloud-only UniFi. The guide also gives 20 MHz channels as a common recommendation in high-density areas, to reduce the number of access points sharing a channel.

Getting internet to the site

However many access points there are, the internet link is the ceiling for everyone on the guest network. Sites use whatever reaches them: a venue's existing line, a temporary fixed connection, cellular routers or satellite. If you can, run two links from different providers so that one failure does not take the whole site offline.

On Starlink, the help pages raise two points. Residential and Roam plans use carrier-grade NAT and "have a limit of 1,200 concurrent sessions", after which "new sessions automatically cause the oldest sessions to be dropped"; Priority plans include a public IP address and do not have that limit (CGNAT session limits). Every phone on the guest network opens its sessions through the same dish, so an event that could reach that figure needs a Priority plan or more than one link. The dish also needs a clear view of the sky, and the Starlink app's Check for Obstructions tool is for sites where the dish will not be the tallest object (checking for obstructions).

Behind carrier-grade NAT, nothing on the internet can reach a controller on site. CaptiFi works round that with the UniFi Remote Tunnel for UniFi consoles with no public IP and Omada's Cloud-Based Controller for Omada sites on Starlink, and the CaptiFi device needs no static IP.

The sign-in page on event day

Guests sign in with an email address or a phone number on a branded form. Keep it to the fields you will use, the WiFi terms and a separate marketing question with nothing chosen in advance; for an over-18 event, the form can ask for a date of birth with a minimum age. Set the session length to cover the day, or the whole weekend for a multi-day event, so attendees are not sent back to the page between sets, and set per-guest speed and data limits under My Locations, Edit site. Screens and casting devices that cannot complete a sign-in page can be pre-authorised by MAC address on CaptiFi access points and UniFi venues.

Free sign-in suits an event that wants a guest list. A CaptiFi venue can run voucher mode instead, with eight-character codes printed on delegate badges or wristband cards, or sell paid passes from 30 minutes to 7 days into its own Stripe account, such as a weekend pass for traders. A venue runs one of the three modes at a time.

Test the page the day before from a phone at the far edge of the site, and again once the network name is final, with a phone that has never joined the network.

Scheduling the changes so they undo themselves

CaptiFi WiFi Automations, on every plan, put each event-day change on the Planner calendar with a start time and a required end time in the venue's timezone, and each one reverts on its own:

• A splash page swap shows the event design from your library, then brings back your default design.
• A message strip puts up to 200 characters over the page, in your brand colours or green, amber or red, for a stage time change or a weather warning.
• A WiFi name change runs a temporary network name of up to 32 characters, on CaptiFi devices and linked UniFi controllers, then restores the original.
• Tag guests who connect gives everyone who joins in the window a tag of up to 30 characters, which stays on their profile.

Renaming the network disconnects every device, and phones do not join a renamed network on their own, so schedule the rename before the gates open and the revert after the site closes. A morning-of email lists what will run, an alert arrives if anything fails to apply or revert, and anything still queued can be edited or cancelled. For a multi-day event, repeat the automations weekly on the event's days with a Repeat until date. The Planner guide covers each automation in more depth, and a pub showing fixtures has its own match-day playbook.

Capturing attendees with consent

What you can send attendees afterwards depends on what they agreed to and where the event is. The ICO's guidance describes a cafe whose WiFi terms say that handing over contact details is consent to marketing, and concludes: "This is not therefore valid consent" (ICO consent guidance). Ask for marketing consent separately, apart from the WiFi terms. Our guide to guest WiFi marketing laws by country sets out the rules in the UK, the EU, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

CaptiFi records each guest's consent at sign-in. A Tag guests who connect automation across the event's hours marks everyone who joined the WiFi, first visit or fiftieth. Afterwards, an audience with a Guest tag condition becomes a saved segment for an email or SMS campaign, which goes only to guests who opted in. Tag matching is exact, so give each event's tag a consistent name. Email and SMS marketing are on the Growth plan and above.

Tickets, RSVPs and the gate

Events and Ticketing, on the Growth plan and above, gives each venue a public events page. An event can carry up to 12 ticket types, paid or free, each with its own quantity, per-order limits and sales window, under an optional capacity for the whole event, and it can be listed publicly or kept to people with the link. Tickets are held for ten minutes while the buyer checks out, and buyers pay by card, Apple Pay or Google Pay into the venue's own Stripe account. A booking fee on each paid ticket covers card processing, the venue chooses whether the buyer pays it, and free tickets and RSVPs carry no fee.

Each buyer who gives an email address gets an email with one QR code per ticket, and the codes are also on the order page. At the gate, staff open Door check-in on a phone and scan the code or type the ticket number; each ticket admits once, whichever phone scans it, and a mistaken admit can be undone for five minutes. Door check-in is a page on my.captifi.io, so put the door phones on the staff network. Every buyer joins the guest list with a Bought a ticket marker, with marketing consent recorded only if they ticked the box, and automations can email buyers before the event and after it. For a venue with events through the year, the screen guests see after connecting to the WiFi can show the next public event on sale within seven days, except on Cisco Meraki.

Running a pop-up on CaptiFi

Where the site already has a network, the plug-and-play CaptiFi device plugs into it by Ethernet and brings up a branded guest network once you enter its activation PIN, in about five minutes from start to finish, included with a refundable deposit. It is designed for indoor use only, so it suits a hall or a site office, and the hardware FAQ asks you to contact support before moving it to a different venue. Larger outdoor sites can run CaptiFi on their own outdoor access points from the ecosystems on the hardware page.

Each event site is a venue with its own sign-in page and settings, and Copy design on a venue card clones one site's splash design to another, which suits a touring pop-up. Every plan includes one venue and more can be added on any plan. The branded page, contact capture and WiFi Automations are on every plan from Essentials, from $69/mo on the pricing page, with ticketing, email and SMS on Growth. You can set it up ahead of the event with a 30-day free trial.

Sources, checked on 3 October 2026: Cisco Meraki, High Density Wi-Fi Deployments; Starlink Help Center, CGNAT session limits and checking for obstructions; the ICO, When is consent appropriate?; CaptiFi's customer documentation and feature pages. This is general information, not legal advice. Cisco Meraki, Starlink, UniFi, Omada, Stripe, Apple Pay and Google Pay are trade marks of their owners, and Wi-Fi is a trade mark of the Wi-Fi Alliance; CaptiFi is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.