Denver Airport Pioneers Fast & Free Wi-Fi

DIA provides free WiFi access to the Internet throughout the airport in Jeppesen Terminal and Concourses A, B and C.
Your wireless device should automatically detect and connect to DIA’s free public wireless network The airport's service set identifier (SSID) for free public wireless access is DIAFREEWIFI. Note: SSID is case sensitive, use all capitals if enetering the identifier manually.
If you do not automatically connect or if you are having trouble making a connection, call (800) 986-2703 for 24-hour customer support.
Additional information about DIA’s WiFi service is available at aiport information booths.


The Denver airport is a large-scale case study of free Wi-Fi in airports. About 50 million passengers pass through the airport annually, with as many as 165,000 per day during busy times of the year, according to airport spokesman Jeff Green. Now that Wi-Fi is free, there are 7,000 to 8,000 connections to the network per day, according to Winston. To link all those free users with the Internet, the airport at first bumped up its "backhaul" to 5Mbit/sec. but later found that wasn't enough. It now has a 10Mbit/sec. connection just for the Wi-Fi users.

Denver may be the first U.S. airport to deploy a public Wi-Fi network with IEEE 802.11n Draft 2.0 capability. The new technology, which the Wi-Fi Alliance is certifying for interoperability because the final 11n standard has been delayed, is designed for higher speed and longer range than previous versions. DIA's network also supports earlier versions of Wi-Fi.

The airport turned to Meru Networks Inc. for its infrastructure, partly for ease of management, Winston said. AT&T fixed and upgraded access points and bore that cost itself. As the carrier left the picture, DIA knew that it would have to handle firmware upgrades and other changes to the approximately 60 access points in the 53-square-mile airport.