At Defcon every year, we have ~10k attendees, with literally thousands of DHCP leases active, using a combination of Aruba wireless gear, and Cisco switches. We

At Defcon every year, we have ~10k attendees, with literally thousands of DHCP leases active, using a combination of Aruba wireless gear, and Cisco switches. We don't generally have a problem. Good planning is key; we have heatmaps (signal strength predictions) for every venue in the conference, careful AP placement, and a butt-load of security backend to keep things running smoothly, combined with some EXTREMELY talented staff running the configurations and monitoring continuously over the weekend. The network staff shows up a WEEK in advance, and often does a preflight in April to check on any changes in the hotel (we are switching hotels this year, so there is a lot more prep this time around). Not many conferences have a dozen high pay grade network admins prepping for a full week in advance. But you cannot argue with results. The real choke point is probably the 100Mbit link back to the ISP, but we keep upping it every year ;)