Network Communications News (NCN) November 2016 | Page 12

ON T HE CASE
Pilot scheme

Fused together

Motorola’s digital radio system,
MotoTRBO Capacity Max, has
recently been deployed at London
Gatwick Airport, having been
installed by authorised channel
partner Servicom.
As London’s second airport,
Gatwick demands a reliable radio
system to ensure that its staff can
communicate efficiently and manage
an airport that sees more than 4.6
million passengers a month.
That’s no easy task, but the
With airports much in the news recently,
MotoTRBO Capacity Max system
Servicom has delivered a comms up-grade to Gatwick.
has been up to the challenge. It
brings enhanced voice and data
communications to 1,300 users both airside and groundside and doubles the capacity of the existing
analogue network that had been deployed.
In addition, airside and groundside teams at Gatwick will be able to take advantage of Capacity
Max’s powerful data performance with new applications. These include TRBOnet Plus, a dispatcher
application that enables voice recording, mapping and event logging in the control room and
iBeacon indoor positioning, which allows alerts to be sent to individual radios based on location.
With the new system, central controllers can dispatch the closest employee to an incident, saving
staff valuable time.
Other built-in functions include settings for lone workers, geo-fencing to create restricted areas
and automated escalation protocols, which will bring upgraded safety and security capabilities.
As the hardware is connected to Wi-Fi, software updates can be sent to equipment quickly and
with less load on the radio network.

The Can can
ANSecurity has helped Canterbury College implement
a Ruckus Wireless solution designed to meet the
growing need for BYOD and high capacity network
demands of an educational environment.
The college is constantly looking at ways to
enhance its IT to improve the teaching and learning
experience. With 95 per cent of students also using
their smartphone on campus, the expectation of
reliable Wi-Fi was not being met and the number one
complaint to the IT helpdesk was issues with the quality
of the Wi-Fi connection and drop-outs in service.
ANSecurity carried out a virtual site survey on
the campus for free, identifying key blackspots and
mapping out where APs needed to be placed for
maximum coverage. Canterbury College also needed
a solution that could handle the capacity requirements
for its 1,600 laptops and BYOD devices used by up to
2,000 students on site at any given time while ensuring
future proofing when it came to upgrading or scaling
out of the network.
Based on these requirements, ANSecurity
installed a Ruckus Wireless solution, including
Ruckus R500 wireless APs using adaptive antenna
technology and automatic interference mitigation
to deliver consistent, predictable performance even
in a busy classroom or dining hall. ANSecurity also
provided a Ruckus SmartZone 100 controller, which
immediately gave the IT team advanced visibility into
the behaviour the network.

Genband has announced that Fuse 2
Communications has selected its solutions
both for deployment in its own network
and for resale to its customer base.
Kandy Business Solutions (formerly
Nuvia) provides a suite of market ready
traditional, mobile and web optimised
clients that can be rebranded and resold
in a multi-tier model. The feature set
and multi-site management capabilities
make it suitable for both SMBs and
enterprises. Providers can further
differentiate their offer with Kandy
Wrappers, easily deployable turnkey
solutions including Visual Attendant,
Truckroll, Two Factor Authentication
(2FA) and more.
Genband’s cloud enabled Session
Border Controllers (SBCs) promises to
provide a range of benefits, including
robust security, simplified interoperability,
advanced session management and
carrier-grade reliability, enabling high
levels of service for applications such as
SIP Trunking, VoLTE, VoWi-Fi, RCS and
OTT. The Real-Time Session Manager
(RSM) helps ensure consistent reliable
delivery of session based VoIP and rich
media services.

Fast learner
The University of Birmingham has implemented a research data network based on a
number of Brocade VDX switches running the company’s VCS Fabrics to improve the
speed of research data transfer across campus.
As both the number of data intensive instruments and the compute resource
required by the university’s research teams has increased in recent years, streaming
data across the university’s existing campus network was causing issues with the speed
of access to information. The research computing team was challenged with enabling
research data to move out of its secure facilities, across the campus network and into the
university’s central storage servers for research teams to access. With research so integral
to the university, the team chose to deploy Brocade VDX 6740 and 6740T Fabric switches
running VCS Fabrics to address this challenge and meet research data requirements.
Brocade VDX switches leverage the cross-domain workflow capabilities of the
company’s Workflow Composer to deliver network automation, enabling integration with
other IT services tool chains. The Top of Rack (ToR) VDX 6740 series switches, deployed by
the University of Birmingham, support 1/10/40 GbE ports. With fabrics for Layer 2 and Layer
3 networks, the switches also deliver open standards support and extensive scalability.
The University of Birmingham's research
abilities have received a shot in the arm.

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