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Massive-MIMO technology promises many-fold improvement in the capacity of wireless mobile networks by scaling up the number of base station antennas. Hence, it has become a key technology for upcoming fifth generation (5G) mobile networks. Previous work has mainly focused on building proof-of-concept systems to show the feasibility of massive-MIMO and its benefits. However, much work remains to demonstrate the performance of massive-MIMO in at-scale dense deployments. In this paper, we present our experience in building ArgosNet, a scalable multi-cell campus-wide massive-MIMO testbed. The goal of ArgosNet is to provide scalability, programmability, and ease of deployment for this technology in realistic large-scale environments. We present the design choices we made in architecting ArgosNet and provide details in how they helped us achieve these goals. By characterizing the performance of …