At Melita Business project requests come from a diverse array of industries such as financial services, online gaming, hospitality, manufacturing and the retail sector, amongst others. Whilst providing dedicated solutions to each industry, specific projects and designs can create use-cases which are adaptable across other segments and industries. In this project a solution designed for the retail segment was developed in such a way that it could be applicable to any critical network requiring backup over LTE solution whilst maintaining the same connectivity IPs.
Project Brief
A multi-site major food retail network required a low bandwidth internet connection, which however was critical to the business and required continuous connectivity even in cases of off-site fibre cuts and infrastructural accidents. For a business which holds high stock levels of perishable items, any loss of connectivity could result in food degradation leading to wastage, loss of business and billing/stock issues across the whole network.
Solution Design
In order to provide continuous connectivity and the highest Service Level Agreement (SLA) possible, a solution was proposed whereby each end-site (food store) is connected using two mediums; a primary link delivered over fibre/HFC (Melita’s hybrid fibre-coax) network, and a secondary backup link delivered over LTE (mobile). Hence this solution provides the flexibility that, should the primary link (physical cable) go down, connectivity will be maintained over the secondary (mobile) line.
Technical Overview
Whilst the local market provides backup over LTE solutions, a specific requirement for this project was that on LTE fail-over no connectivity changes could happen and no packet losses occur, whilst providing the customer with handover via one port with multiple IPs. Using carrier-grade infrastructure by Cisco, equipment was installed at each end site connecting the customer’s equipment to Melita’s fibre and mobile network. With the flexibility of extendable antennae, and Melita’s 5G-ready mobile network, connectivity could be maintained at below ground server rooms and different environmental conditions. The connectivity segment was designed to maintain backup over LTE considering the available throughput required at each site. Hence even for the backup lines, a specific bandwidth could be committed ensuring continuous connectivity and peace of mind to the end customer.
Get in touch
At Melita, we have built an enterprise network capable of providing multiple connectivity solutions around your business needs. Whether your company is after enterprise-grade dedicated internet or back-up over LTE solutions, speak to us today on sales@melitadatacentre.com to discuss how we can help you with your connectivity.