ACME's cloud-based ticketing platform for the Point of Sale requires a strong, hi-speed internet connection to ensure peak performance. We recommend the following:
A stable, high-speed internet connection from a land-based Internet Service Provider
For stationary, high-volume use at the Box Office, ACME recommends land-based ISPs rather than cellular ISPs as they provide more consistent capacity and are less prone to interference or environmental factors. The speed of the connection should be sufficiently fast to handle the volume in your venue. As a general rule of thumb, we recommend a minimum of 10 Mbps of internet bandwidth for up to 3 workstations with an additional 2 Mbps per workstation above 3.
When a wired connection isn’t practical, a 4G LTE or better cellular network is a good alternative. This would mainly be for low-volume, short-term, or fully-mobile environments. When using a cellular environment, you may see some connectivity issues depending on the strength of your signal.
A wired connection to all hardware
While the ACME Point of Sale is designed to perform exceptionally well in both wireless and wired environments, we recommend a wired setup whenever possible. We have found that wired connections in a segmented environment are much more stable and less prone to disruption caused by radio interference, environmental factors, and a sudden surge in connections to the wireless network. Networking switches can also be deployed to accommodate ethernet connections for the sales terminal and peripherals. The following compatible devices can be configured for an ethernet connection:
- Apple iPad
- Epson TM-T88V and T-88VI Thermal Receipt Printer
- Ethernet credit card reader (e.g. Ingenico Lane/3000)
- BOCA Lemur Thermal Ticket Printer
An isolated network for all Box Office equipment
Because the ACME Point of Sale relies on a fast and stable connection to the internet for peak performance, ACME recommends a fully segregated network for your box office devices. The only equipment that should have access to this network is equipment used for ticket sales (iPad, ticket printers, receipt printers, card readers, and other box-office equipment).
This is especially important if you choose to run on a wireless network. Personal devices connected to the wireless network can generate unexpectedly high traffic - especially from background downloads, audio or video streaming, and other high-bandwidth usage activities. For this reason, we encourage allowing connections only via MAC address rather than username and password authentication. Wi-Fi passwords are easy to share and hard for a device to forget.
A restricted network
We have seen many instances of poor app performance in the box office caused by users streaming audio or video throughout the day. Depending on how many users are connected, these seemingly innocuous activities can cause issues where the Point of Sale slows simply because there is too much traffic on the network. For this reason, we recommend blocking sites like YouTube, Pandora, Apple Music, NetFlix, Hulu, and other streaming services from being accessed on the Box Office network.
A prioritized network
Almost every action at the Point of Sale requires an API call to an ACME or an ACME Partner's server. To ensure that traffic makes it through, we strongly encourage you to prioritize traffic to the following domains:
.acmeticketing.com
We also strongly recommend you prioritize traffic to the IP addresses of your network-connected devices whenever possible.
Network diagnostic tools
Because network issues can be difficult to isolate and diagnose, we strongly recommend installing monitoring tools on your network. These tools can help you find network or connection-related issues that can have a big impact on the performance of the Point of Sale system.
POS Config Settings
In addition to the configuration of your local area network, ACME also recommend configuring your POS terminals to the maximum allowed time to make API calls to our backend and other connected peripherals You can change this setting by taking the following steps:
- Log in to ACME Backoffice and navigate to https://backoffice.acmeticketing.com/app/pos/list
- Select the POS Config you wish to edit
- Under the Description tab, modify the value for API timeout (seconds): to 60 (System maximum)
- Publish the POS Config to save the changes
- Repeat these steps for any additional POS Configurations you have for your terminals
See our guide Troubleshooting Peripheral Connections (IP) for steps to resolve connectivity issues.