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How to Build a Business­Grade Multilocation 4G Wireless Network for a Distributed Enterprise TA Interview White Paper, Copyright © 2014 By Tom Azelby, Managing Partner, Bandwave Systems and Dan Baldwin, Editor, Business Phone News Overview This document is designed to help multilocation business decision makers understand the basics required to either build their own business­grade multilocation 4G wireless network or to intelligently bid the job out to a competent solution provider experienced with 4G wireless wide area networks (WANs). It’s assumed the reader has multiple business locations that have an existing MPLS VPN connecting their WAN, want to augment/replace an expensive MPLS data network or want to achieve MPLS/VPN­like connectivity between their multiple business locations at the least possible price. This was created from a recorded phone call between Tom Azelby & Dan Baldwin in February 2014. Why Build a 4G Wireless Wide Area Network? Most businesses today connect the computers in their multiple locations using either an MPLS VPN (low bandwidth, high price, carrier managed, high QoS/Quality of Service) or a regular VPN (equipment based, customer managed, no QoS) using the cheapest public Internet connection available to them in the “Internet connection hierarchy (ICH)” such as coaxial cable (coax), DSL or local fiber. As 4G wireless gets rolled out to larger and larger parts of the planet, 4G is climbing the ICH to come close to besting coax, the current Internet connection “king of the hill” because 1. It’s Quick to Deploy 2. Requires No “Construction” 3. Offers True Redundancy of Terrestrial Data Connections, and 4. Speed & Price Close to Coax So while many businesses have had just one WAN in the past, 4G’s low price, high bandwidth, ease of installation and redundancy are making business decision makers consider augmenting their main WAN with a 4G backup or even replacing their terrestrial WAN with a wireless WAN if QoS is not an issue and 4G can provide sufficient bandwidth. Do It Yourself (DIY) or Try Out a Wireless WAN Managed Service? All things being equal, most business owners would choose a managed service over a DIY path if they can prove to themselves that the full costs associated with having an in­house employee construct a 4G WAN using capital intensive equipment is more expensive than contracting for the same managed service. Page 1 of 7, “How to Build a Business­Grade Multilocation 4G Wireless Network” Last updated 3/20/2014 Copyright © 2014, BusinessPhoneNews.com & BandwaveSystems.com
The problem is this “proof” is tough to come by. In­house IT employees will tell the business owner they can certainly do it cheaper than an outsourced managed services provider because the employee wants one more reason to keep drawing a W­2 paycheck. Similarly, a carrier or managed service salesperson will etoll the overhead money saving benefits of outsourcing. So how’s a business owner able to create his or her own proof one way or another? Learn what’s involved with building a 4G wireless WAN and then pencil out the in­house costs versus managed services costs. To make this possible, Business Phone News interviewed Tom Azelby and Adil Zaidi of Bandwave Systems, an award­winning 4G wireless network aggregator based in Philadelphia that contracts with multi­location businesses across the US to help them build cost effective wireless WANs to augment or replace their current VPN or MPLS. 4G Network Building is Not Just About Technology, Logistics Play a Key Role Just as anyone can piece together a world­wide network of ham radios to keep a multi­location business in constant voice communications by wandering the isles of RadioShack and asking the clerks a lot of questions, one can certainly build their own multi­location 4G data network using a similar DIY strategy. In deciding between a DIY effort, an outsourcing effort or a combination of the two, a business owner must first understand what’s involved in connecting just one business location to just one 4G wireless network carrier. Once the logistics of mastering a single location are known then a business owner must multiply that effort times the number of different business locations to be connected. To this “if­everything­works­perfect­the­first­time” effort a business owner must then add the costs associated with integrating different 4G providers into a single 4G network as well as special equipment for locations that have particularly challenging physical environments to overcome. To help a business decision maker come up with a “best guess” estimate for how much all this logistical coordinating might take, Bandwave’s Tom Azelby and Adil Zaidi have provided the following “building blocks” information about what they actually do for their customers so their prospective customers can decide if this is something they can indeed do for themselves or whether they should outsource the effort to Bandwave or other company that represents themselves as 4G aggregation experts. The “ABCs” of 4G ­ Amplify, Black Box & Check (also Measure, Troubleshoot, Repair & Repeat) These are the seven basic steps followed when Bandwave deploys a 4G network for their multi­location business customers’ distributed enterprise environment. Following is a description of each step. Measure Available Signal, Speed & Latency ­ You can’t build a 4G wireless network for your multilocation business if you don’t have a 4G signal to start with from a national or regional 4G carrier. Check this website to estimate which carriers provide 4G service to the business addresses you’re trying to cover or check the 4G coverage maps of the individual carriers’ websites. Once you identify which wireless carriers have the strongest signal at each of your locations you’ll want to conduct an in­house “site survey” to measure signal strength of each wireless network in the computer room of each location. This easiest way to do this is to have an employee go to the computer room with his or her own cell phone and then record the “number of bars” the carrier’s signal is producing on his or her phone. Repeat this exercise for each carrier from the roof of the location’s building to record if a significant difference appears for carrier signal strength in going from the computer room to the roof (where Page 2 of 7, “How to Build a Business­Grade Multilocation 4G Wireless Network” Last updated 3/20/2014 Copyright © 2014, BusinessPhoneNews.com & BandwaveSystems.com
signal boosting antenna may need to be placed). Record all the signal strength measures for all the different carriers both inside and outside for all your locations and them compile the information to determine which wireless carriers provide the greatest coverage to the greatest number of your locations without amplification. If you have two different carriers that both have the same signal strength to a location then you’ll want to try and estimate the speed (how fast are the uploads & downloads) & latency (signal delay ­ very bad for voice traffic) of that carrier. The easiest way to measure speed & latency of any 4G carrier is by tapping into a “hotspot” created by a smart phone or a MiFi unit of an existing 4G carrier customer and then using a laptop to conduct a speed & latency test using a voice quality speed test site such as http://voiptest.8x8.com/, http://www.ringcentral.com/support/qos.html, or http://www.megapath.com/speedtestplus/ Once a customer measures the possible 4G signal available at all their locations then the ABC steps of “amplify, black box and check” can commence. Amplify ­ Most 4G carriers generally assume that the only thing separating their smart phone customers from the carrier’s 4G data signal is a car windshield. This is why the “heat map” (where the signal is strongest) for 4G carriers seems to follow all the interstate highways. When business customers attempt to capture 4G carrier signal in their computer room in the basement of their brick and mortar building they are in placing quite a bit of building material in the way of the 4G signal that only degrades the signal quality. To overcome signal degradation that originates from distance, landscape curving (not having “line of sight” to the carrier tower) or building material, 4G signal amplification is needed using a little or a lot of the following RadioShack­like extra equipment. successful amplification can increase a weak signal by a third or up to 15 dB. Amplifier ­ An amplifier, as the name suggests, boosts the weak signal of a 4G carrier using special electric engineering magic. Amplifiers are generally placed in the computer room and then plugged into the MiFi or router that uses the 4G carrier signal. Most amplifiers come with token direct connected antennas which can be swapped out for more expensive paddle antennas if needed. Antennas ­ If an amplifier alone is insufficient to boost a 4G signal to a usable level within a customer’s building then one or more internal and external antennas will be needed. An external antenna will usually be placed on the highest outside point of the building to help funnel a 4G signal to and from the 4G carrier signal tower(s) to the amplifier. A “Yagi” directional antenna is used when a single 4G tower is being “pointed at” or an omni­directional antenna is used when a single tower is not being pointed at. One or more internal antennas are often used within a building to funnel the 4G signal to and from the amplifier to the 4G signal users within the building. Dome omni­directional antennas can be placed in a central location on individual floors or directional panel antennas can be placed strategically to cover several floors within a building. Cabling ­ While it may seem that the whole idea of a 4G wireless network is to escape the need for cabling, the use of solid cabling to connect a 4G wireless system amplifier to properly placed internal and external antennas might mean the difference between failure and success of a 4G network. Page 3 of 7, “How to Build a Business­Grade Multilocation 4G Wireless Network” Last updated 3/20/2014 Copyright © 2014, BusinessPhoneNews.com & BandwaveSystems.com
Black Box ­ The “black box” step refers to the selection of a computer appliance that is placed between the 4G carrier’s network and the business customer’s LAN to allow, perform and/or measure the performance of the following functions: Remote Access ­ This allows the business customer or 4G solution consultant to access the black box to monitor, measure and perform maintenance tasks (like switching to DHCP or updating black box software) without a truck roll. Load Balancing ­ Black boxes that can accommodate more than one Internet or data connection can “load balance” system user bandwidth requests over the different connections sending latency sensitive data packets like voice or video over a QoS connection (like an MPLS network) and dumb file transfers over coax or 4G. Auto Failover ­ This refers to the ability of a black box with multiple data network connections to automatically route traffic over a secondary connection if a primary connection goes down. For example if a MPLS carrier connection is interrupted the voice and video that normally goes over the MPLS connection is automatically routed over a secondary 4G or coax connection. Usage Monitoring ­ This is especially important when routing traffic over a 4G wireless data connection because 4G data usage by a business customer is generally “metered” in that the more data that’s used, the higher the customer’s monthly data charges. Signal Monitoring ­ “Can you hear me now?” As every cell phone owner knows, you either have 4 bars of cell phone signal or you wish you had 4 bars. A good black box will constantly monitor and report on the available 4G signal. Speed & Latency Monitoring ­ While getting 4 bars of signal is a good start to transmitting traffic over a 4G network, maintaining consistent high speed and low latency is critical to the network user’s network satisfaction. A good black box needs to constantly measure and report on 4G network speed and latency so the customer will know if the 4G carrier has oversubscribed the network to too many other business customers. Black Box Vendors ­ The following is just a small sample of the enormous number of black box vendors that provide widely used black box technologies that business decision makers have used in their 4G networks. Some of these vendors compete with one another while others provide services that compliment one another. The common denominator is all these appliances or software technologies generally “work their magic” in the space between the customer’s LAN and a carrier’s WAN. CradlePoint ­ Wireless networking routers Mushroom Networks ­ WAN aggregation Peplink ­ WAN aggregation Riverbed ­ Data acceleration Silver Peak ­ Data acceleration Talari ­ WAN aggregation WatchGuard ­ Web security and firewalls XRoads Networks ­ Unified bandwidth management Page 4 of 7, “How to Build a Business­Grade Multilocation 4G Wireless Network” Last updated 3/20/2014 Copyright © 2014, BusinessPhoneNews.com & BandwaveSystems.com
Check ­ The “check” step involves all the human interaction required to plan, build and maintain a 4G network by either in­house IT employees of a business or an outsourced “managed service” provider that will conduct and/or oversee the following activities: Network Speed Selection & Bandwidth Management ­ Data speeds from 3 megs down and 1 meg up the way up to 22 megs down by 10 megs up is available to customers over 4G. Unfortunately, most 4G data plans come in different priced buckets such that if a customer over or under­estimates their monthly bandwidth usage the customer will not get the best price for their data usage and at worst be horribly overcharged by their 4G carrier with very recourse. As wireless 4G is metered and other terrestrial data connections like coax, T­1 or DSL are not metered, it’s obliviously very important to make sure that only high priority data packets be put over a wireless data network and all low priority packets be put over a terrestrial circuit or blocked all together. Carrier Administration ­ Network service carriers make every effort to be “above it all” when it comes to solving customer problems. They like to see themselves as pure commodity providers that think, “our commodity is working just fine in the commodity network ­ if you’re having a problem the problem must be in your network ­ not ours”. Because carriers never assume they are creating problems for of their customers, all of their customers must employ some resource with the ability to PROVE to the carrier that something either in their network is not working correctly. This is a critical competency for a customer to have either in­house or contracted from a managed service provider because customers can’t solve carrier problems by merely switching carriers. Most customer’s carrier problems are really half the carrier’s fault and half the customer’s fault. A trained carrier administrator will be able to divine who’s responsible for what part of a customer/carrier integration problem and get it fixed without requiring all the extra problems that come along with switching carriers. Equipment Management ­ In the same way that carriers can muck up a perfectly fine 4G network design, so too can malfunctioning equipment. It’s not without precedent that a black box salesperson will tell a customer that his or here black box will perfectly perform in any possible 4G network scenario fully knowing that by the time the customer runs into some equipment roadblock 9 months into an 4G network deployment that the original black box salesperson will be off working for another company. When checking whether or not you have the proper equipment management experience to deploy a 4G wireless network it’s important to ask these two questions, 1. “Have you previously, and successfully, deployed a 4G network using this equipment and this design?” and 2. “If the equipment doesn’t work, what’s the backup plan?” 4G equipment is often seen as a commodity, and to a certain degree it is as the gear can be purchased from multiple low­cost websites. Equipment becomes very expensive however when you’re paying for the in­house or contract labor to install and troubleshoot it. If you buy cheap 4G equipment off the Internet make sure that you have access to some sort of fixed or “not to exceed” price for the installation, trouble shooting and ongoing management labor. Page 5 of 7, “How to Build a Business­Grade Multilocation 4G Wireless Network” Last updated 3/20/2014 Copyright © 2014, BusinessPhoneNews.com & BandwaveSystems.com
In a perfect world, a business customer’s 4G data network will be operating perfectly (and continue operating perfectly) at the conclusion of the initial ABC steps. But we know this rarely happens so the following TRR steps follow the fun ABC steps. Troubleshoot ­ Certainly the only thing that any IT manager can count on is the fact that a system that works flawlessly one day will stop working anther day for no apparent reason. While an ongoing requirement to troubleshoot networks keeps IT managers employed, extensive and unplanned troubleshooting can quickly drain an IT department’s labor budget. The trick to quickly fixing 4G networks is to know in advance what is most likely to break or malfunction. Having prioritized and written troubleshooting steps available to users and first level help desk techs can quickly remedy “what’s broke” and what needs to be done to get a broken network correctly functioning again. If you plan to do your troubleshooting in­house, make sure your help desk techs get properly trained on all equipment and carrier gear and networks. If you outsource your troubleshooting make sure you check the outsourced providers customer references to see how well they respond in a crisis. Repair ­ While experienced troubleshooters can quickly isolate a problem point in a 4G network, repairing the broken component or network node can be a completely different problem. If you are managing all your equipment yourself, make sure that each critical site has spare equipment onsite with the training to swap out broken equipment. If you use a managed service for repairs, ask what the turn­around time is for advance replacement of broken gear and what their troubleshooting requirements are before they will ship an advance replacement. Many gear vendors will only ship and advance replacement after exhaustive troubleshooting has proven a piece of gear is broken. If you don’t have troubleshooting resources at remote sites, make sure your gear vendors will ship first and troubleshoot when they get the gear. Repeat ­ All the information above details the myriad of steps to complete a successful 4G deployment at just one site. Once one site is up and working all your other sites must then be migrated onto the 4G network. The key then to successfully deploying a multilocation 4G network for a distributed enterprise is to have the in­house or outsourced ability to efficiently repeat these steps over and over and over without using up all your savings in higher overhead. Bandwave System Case Studies ­ Following are quoted highlights from just a few 4G wireless WAN network projects that Bandwave has managed for multilocation distribbuted enterprise customers. #1 Large Freezer Warehouse Operation Spread Across USA “The reason that they contracted with us to do 4G is they run on an AT&T MPLS network. Part of that network's job is to keep monitoring the freezers because they do I think 80% of the seafood across the country. That's their statistic. So basically their concern with their Internet connectivity is those freezers have to be at a certain temperature all the time or they'll lose a ton of money. “The backup to the AT&T network is our 4G product at all of their warehouses. And it's failed over because we monitor it and we're always watching these connections. It does happen, and their network and the monitoring of those freezers will failover to our 4G. Now, if it was catastrophic, which we haven't seen, there's a third layer of backup for them which is satellite. But 4G is the player in their day­to­day operations making sure that those freezers are monitored if the main AT&T connection goes down.” Page 6 of 7, “How to Build a Business­Grade Multilocation 4G Wireless Network” Last updated 3/20/2014 Copyright © 2014, BusinessPhoneNews.com & BandwaveSystems.com
#2 Large Food Facilities Manager “Probably one of the largest in the country, Fortune 500. They're going into Department of Corrections facilities which requires a lot of paperwork and government approvals. Logistics are really key here, but the bottom line with this case study is they were on a short window. They were trying to get coax into all of the facilities, but to do the site surveys, the timing, the pricing, the construction costs because it's Department of Corrections these facilities are somewhat remote. “They came to us when they were going down to the wire so they're doing a third party circuit insert meaning they can't use the Internet access within the facility. They're not allowed to touch it. They're bringing in their own people, their own contractors, their own networks.“They had about 10 days to do it, and when they came to us we were able to execute. We had them up and running on their given date.” “So two things on this case study are if you're a large client, you're on a tight deadline, and you need to do a third party circuit input where you don't own the facility you can come to Bandwave and we're the experts at doing that. You're better off trying not to do that by yourself, but if you come to us we can execute that plan for you.” #3 Transportation and Distribution Center “These are big warehouses that are shared by some of the biggest retailers and trucking companies. They're like centralized points where they're transportation hubs. A lot of multiple companies will need to access space within theses giant warehouses. Traditional wire line connections are very expensive. Once again, it's a third party connection input. We're putting 4G in there to transmit shipping tickets, work orders and so these remote warehouses are definitely a target for us.” “They have these warehouses where they keep their equipment. They're out in cornfields. They don't have a lot of data usage, but all the work is now network central lines that they have to have. They have Internet access at these very remote facilities that have one little office and they're storing a bunch of trucks in there.” Bandwave Systems’ Manged Services Pricing We hope this document has helped you understand what’s involved in deploying a multilocation 4G wireless WAN for a distributed enterprise and how resource intensive it can be on your internal staff. By comparison, Bandwave can provide the entire managed solution for you company for just $129 to $189 per location per month which covers everything including installation on a 5 gig plan. For special pricing for your 4G network planning, installation, testing and management, contact your authorized Bandwave Systems solution provider, call 888­396­7182 or visit www.BandwaveSystems.com. Page 7 of 7, “How to Build a Business­Grade Multilocation 4G Wireless Network” Last updated 3/20/2014 Copyright © 2014, BusinessPhoneNews.com & BandwaveSystems.com