Introduction
Unitec, New Zealand is a major tertiary education provider that offers post graduate and degree level study, as well as vocational education and training to more than 50,000 students.
Unitec Has around 55 full time IT staff members that manage a network of approximately 4,000 connected nodes, seventy five percent of which are workstations. There are also approximately 300 to 400 wireless laptops configured to connect to the Unitec wireless network .Staff and students are tied together through a variety of Metropolitan Are Network (MAN), Local Area Network (LAN) and Virtual Private Network (VPN) Solutions.
Challenge
In an effort to enhance the Bachelor of Nursing program, Unitec and Waitemata District Health Board (WDHB) opened a joint venture Practice and Simulation center (or Sim Lab).
The Waitakere Hospital is designed to give nursing students detailed clinical experience using human patient simulators in a simulated hospital setting. Designed to replicate a hospital environment, the centre includes an operating theatre, intensive care, conference room, computer suite, interview rooms
And an audio visual control room .WDHB uses the Sim Lab for training medical, nursing and allied staff .In future, both Unitec and WDHB will practice clinical simulations together.
The Waitakere Hospital is located just over a kilometer away from the Unitec campus and was not part of the Unitec campus and was not part of the Unitec network. There are no way for the 450 nursing students to access Unitec resources from inside the Practice and simulation centre until a robust data, voice and video connection from Proxim joined the two sites. Nursing students rely on the Unitec network to connect to secure web based central server and upload the clinical details they capture via their hands help PDAs.
Unitec set out the following criteria to evaluate proposed solutions to link the hospital and Unitec networks:
- Cost-effective to minimize administration and setup costs
- Long distance connection that was stable secure and robust
- Minimum throughput of 10Mbps
- Future proof and scalable that was proven in the educational environment
Solution
Unitec considered a number of connectivity solutions to bridge the networks between the hospital and Unitec including ISDN, leased lines, broadband, laser links and finally point to point radio links. Most telephone carriers have ISDN and leased lines as part of their high speed connection portfolio. Although reliable, long term use of either of these solutions was not feasible due to the substantial setup costs and recurring maintenance fees.
A broadband connection was investigated. However upon further review it was concluded that broadband, though cost-effective, had a limited upload speed that would be not be able to support the high definition data transfers between the two institutes.
Prompted by the shortcomings of the traditional wired approach, Unitec began to explore wireless alternative. To that end, Unitec looked at the feasibility of establishing a laser link to deliver the required bandwidth within budget .The distance between Waitakere Hospital and Unitec’s closest connection point in one kilometer .Although fast, the laser links provided a connection that was only reliable up to a distance of 450 Meters.
This made Unitec look at long range wireless products. The long term cost of deploying a wireless point to point solution extremely attractive and would provide the coverage and throughput was required.
Tsunami Quick Bridge .11 5054-R Product
- Hop in a box solution includes two radios with integrated antennas outdoor rated
- Also includes Ethernet cables mounting hardware, power injectors and documentation
- Pre-Configured software defaults and easy to use graphical user interface eliminate guess work during installation
- Audible tones to ensure antennas are properly aligned
Proxim Tsunami QuickBridge® .11 5054-R was recommended as it is a user installable wireless point to point s it is a user-installable wireless point to point Ethernet bridging solution that enables buildings with direct line of sight to communicate at up to 54Mbps .This is an ideal solutions for campus networking and last mile access.
The QuickBridge® units were configured to extend Unitec’s internal and wireless WLANs to the hospital. The built-in VLAN functionality made it very easy to configure and incorporate the solution into Unitec’s existing infrastructure.
Proxim Wireless distributor in New Zealand LAN1 oversaw the installation and conducted a site survey to identify the overall placement of network elements and the surrounding RF environment LAN1’s experts were on hand to investigate any special concerns and provided network deign recommendations.
Benefits
Scalable connections exceeded throughput expectations
The distance between Waitakere Hospital and Unitec’s closest connection point was one kilometer .In connecting the two locations ,Unitec was seeking at least 10Mbps connectivity speeds with the lowest latency ,no interference and highest uptime available .The QuickBridge® link provided necessary bandwidth to support the transfer of clinical data.
Waitakere Hospital
“We are concerned with the potential risk of wireless threats but we were reassured by the fact that the QuickBridge® units included ample security feature to meet our requirements .The throughput ,low latency and stability of the link have all exceeded my expectations and the team have time to focus on new projects “- Glen Nummy, network Engineer, Unitec.
Proxim products have proved themselves by being consistent since installing and link remained connected at the full 54 Mbps data rate in both directions, exceeding expectations. Once the connection to the hospital was up-and-running, Unitec team was considerable impressed with the throughput achieved.
Key Features of QuickBridge®.11 5054-R
- Delivers 1.5 to 54 Mbps data rates
- Supports 5/10/20 MHz channels designed to mitigate radio interference in unlicensed frequency spectrum's
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Know more on Tsunami® Quick Bridge.11 5054-R
- High-capacity, WiMAX QoS
- Complete “hop-in-box” ensures easy installation and quick return on investment
Unitec tests showed that a return data trip between the two sites had a latency of only five milliseconds. Nursing students and staff were thus able to experience real time access to the Internet and Unitec resources, with access speeds comparable to than on campus.
At Present, the connection supports eight simultaneous users, with an average of 2 Gigabytes (excluding broadcast traffic and wireless protocol overhead) of data passing over Waitakere City, The QuickBridge® link prepares Unitec to meet escalating IT challenges as plans are put in place to offer extended access to third nursing year students. There are also plans for Unitec lecturers to run live, high-resolution simulcasts to Ohio University.
To one hundred and forty additional PDAs which will operate inside the Sim Lab. There are also plans for Unitec lecturers to run live, high-resolution simulcasts to Ohio University.
Applications of QuickBridge®.11 5054-R
- Backhaul to a Central POP
Avoid expensive installation and recurring charge of a second wire line backhaul to a remote virtual POP
- Leased Line Redundancy
Eliminates recurring DS-3 leased line charges with one time installation charge of QuickBridge®.11 link
- Repeater
Extend distance or overcome path blockage by adding point to point hops
- High-bandwidth Last Mile Access
Deliver TLS (Transparent LAN Services) to corporate parks
- Inter-POP Redundancy
Avoid downtimes caused by a wire line backhaul failure
Secure and Robust
Unitec was concerned will the potential risk of wireless threats but QuickBridge® units included ample security features to meet their requirements.
Security features of the QuickBridge® system include the Proxim’s Wireless Outdoor Routing Protocol (WORP®) that eliminates unauthorized access to the network and advanced encryption that protects over-the-air transmission of sensitive medical and student data.
As a further precaution, a switch managed by Unitec and a firewall were installed at the remote hospitals end of the link. By keeping the hospital and Unitec networks self contained, the risk of a cross network security leak was reduced.
Reliable and Uninterrupted
The QuickBridge® system enables high bandwidth connectivity with hundred percent uptime. Furthermore, the Proxim solution is highly stable and requires minimum maintenance.
Initially there was a concern that interference from external and surrounding sources would affect the reliability of the link. The Tsunami QuickBridge® does not use the crowed 2.4 GHz spectrum. Instead the system utilizes the public 5GHz spectrum which allows the use of more non-overlapping in channels, the changes of radio interference in unlicensed frequency spectrum's.
Cost Effective and Easily Manageable
The Tsunami QuickBridge® has enable Unitec to establish a wireless link between the two sites in a cost effective manner.
Compared to the monthly cost of a high speed fixed data circuit e.g., ISDN lines, this wireless solution easily quantified the savings.
The solution was powered by PoE (Power over Ethernet) Further lowering installation cost.
Waitakere Hospital
As soon as the link was up and running, Unitec was able to easily manage the network and configure it remotely.
Summary
Proxim’s Wireless Solutions have given Unitec the power to vastly enhance its teaching capabilities .The ability to use applications from inside the Practice and Simulation centre while having access to Unitec’s superior resources is a huge benefit for nursing students.
The educational institute installed a pre-configured wireless LAN extension between the Waitakere hospital and its West Auckland Waitakere campus alternatives. Offering all the benefits of a 802.11 54 Mbps solution, the Tsunami QuickBridge® .11 5054-R delivered unbeatable performance, range and throughput in an outdoor campus environment.
Proxim Wireless provided Unitec a complete solution that looks to the future .Third year nursing student that looks to the future. Third year nursing students were now able to access the Unitec network from within the Sim Lab via PDA’s and there are plans to use the QuickBridge® system to run live to Ohio University from the Sim Lab.
Background
Proxim Wireless Corporation (OTC Markets: PRXM) provides Wi-Fi®, Point-to-Point and Point-to-Multipoint 4G wireless network technologies for wireless internet, video surveillance and backhaul applications. Our ORiNOCO ® and Tsunami® product lines are sold to service providers, governments and enterprises with over 2 million devices shipped to over 250,000 customers in over 65 countries worldwide. Proxim is ISO 9001-2008 certified.
Unitec based in Auckland is split over the two campuses; the central Mt. Albert campus and the West Auckland Waitakere campus. Over 65,000 students from more than 80 countries study at Unitec’s two campuses. |
