Electricity + Control February 2017

CONTROL SYSTEMS + AUTOMATION

Ster Kinekor is a cinema company based in Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa

Connectivity Not Assured without a Dual Medium Fibre Approach

Brad Fraser, InfoProtect

High levels of cable theft have led to a more advanced approach that has been adopted to reduce loss in connectivity.

T he universal adage that time is money has never been more accurate. In the current ultra-modern age, where technology is driven by daily innovation, any business seeking success simply cannot afford to be offline, or fall behind with its information technology infrastructure. With high levels of cable theft, volatile delivery and frequent loss in connectivity, a more advanced approach is required, ensuring more reliable and consistent connectivity, making businesses more productive, with fewer frustrated employees and customers, and a positive bottom line. When InfoProtect was approached by Ster Kinekor, the entertain- ment giant was experiencingmajor problems with its IT infrastructure and the technology being used. With a constant loss in connectivity, the network was unreliable since both primary and secondary con- nections were copper based. The key is to operate in two different mediums. When both mediums are copper (such as Telkom offers), if there is a problem, the chances are you will lose both connections. However, with fibre as a primary line, and wireless or ADSL as a back-up, the two can run independently from one another. If the fibre line goes down, the client will not know, because the ADSL or wireless line will automati- cally take over. The key is reliability – and for that, fibre is the perfect solution. It is a fast, reliable connectivity medium, which offers a

point-to-point, synchronous connection (meaning that the download and upload speeds are the same). This approach suited Ster Kinekor. The company was looking for a cost effective solution. It had also become imperative that the corporate WAN be upgraded to a highly available, burstable and vendor agnostic fibre solution. The previous WAN solution comprised a mixed bag of 1 Mb Diginet link, with some sites on 2 Mb or DSL. This network was non-guaranteed, plagued by many outages and a great amount of downtime – sometimes lasting up to three weeks on some links. At any given time, there would be about three to four links down. Run- ning at only 80 to 90% utilisation, the network was incredibly slow with no option to increase links. With the understanding that a reliable WAN infrastructure is the vein that carries the life-blood of any organisation, and to tackle these challenges, a dual-medium network solution was recommended and this has eliminated Ster Kinekor’s connection woes. The timelines to switch from MTN and VOX to InfoProtect were very, very tight (be- ing three months). The network was upgraded to a highspeed fibre network countrywide, with the ability to burst up to 100 Mb per site, if required. DSL or wireless failover lines in an ACTIVE /ACTIVE set- up were included so that both links could be used at the same time. With a managed service, Ster Kinekor is assisted with all mainte- nance and ongoing installations as it continues to expand with new

Electricity+Control February ‘17

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