Case Study #3

Sales and Distribution Organization

The Challenge:
A Sales and Distribution Organization was utilizing ISDN lines to provide backup at all of their 100+ facilities in the event that any “leg” of their WAN failed. On any given day, 1 or 2 WAN connections were typically lost.  When this happened, it required having local personnel dial-in to implement a solution, which resulted in lost production time. In addition, the data speed of the backup ISDN lines (128 Kb) was slower than the average speed of the WAN “legs”.

The Results:
In addition to negotiating a price that was slightly less than the ISDN arrangement utilizing the at&t wireless network, RAK Consulting developed a solution that involved a wireless network node at each location’s router.  This wireless network node would automatically connect to the organization’s network via a router connection in the corporate office utilizing the wireless 4G network in the event of a dropped WAN connection. Upon repair of the dropped connection, the wireless connection would automatically terminate and switch back to the WAN.  A benefit of this arrangement was that the data speeds of the wireless connection were greater than or equal to the existing WAN connection.  While this solution was cheaper than the existing ISDN solution, it had the additional benefit of being seamless to the personnel (they were unaware that the WAN connection would go down) which resulted in increased productivity and no down time.