Electricity + Control February 2017

he universal adage that time is money has never been more

accurate. In the current ultra-modern age, where technology

is driven by daily innovation, any business seeking success

simply cannot afford to be offline, or fall behind with its information

technology infrastructure.

With high levels of cable theft, volatile delivery and frequent loss

in connectivity, a more advanced approach is required, ensuring

more reliable and consistent connectivity, making businesses more

productive, with fewer frustrated employees and customers, and a

positive bottom line.

When InfoProtect was approached by Ster Kinekor, the entertain-

ment giant was experiencingmajor problems with its IT infrastructure

and the technology being used. With a constant loss in connectivity,

the network was unreliable since both primary and secondary con-

nections were copper based.

The key is to operate in two different mediums. When both

mediums are copper (such as Telkom offers), if there is a problem,

the chances are you will lose both connections. However, with fibre

as a primary line, and wireless or ADSL as a back-up, the two can

run independently from one another. If the fibre line goes down, the

client will not know, because the ADSL or wireless line will automati-

cally take over. The key is reliability – and for that, fibre is the perfect

solution. It is a fast, reliable connectivity medium, which offers a

point-to-point, synchronous connection (meaning that the download

and upload speeds are the same). This approach suited Ster Kinekor.

The company was looking for a cost effective solution. It had also

become imperative that the corporate WAN be upgraded to a highly

available, burstable and vendor agnostic fibre solution.

The previous WAN solution comprised a mixed bag of 1 Mb

Diginet link, with some sites on 2 Mb or DSL. This network was

non-guaranteed, plagued by many outages and a great amount of

downtime – sometimes lasting up to three weeks on some links. At

any given time, there would be about three to four links down. Run-

ning at only 80 to 90% utilisation, the network was incredibly slow

with no option to increase links.

With the understanding that a reliable WAN infrastructure is the

vein that carries the life-blood of any organisation, and to tackle these

challenges, a dual-medium network solution was recommended and

this has eliminated Ster Kinekor’s connection woes. The timelines to

switch from MTN and VOX to InfoProtect were very, very tight (be-

ing three months). The network was upgraded to a highspeed fibre

network countrywide, with the ability to burst up to 100 Mb per site,

if required. DSL or wireless failover lines in an ACTIVE /ACTIVE set-

up were included so that both links could be used at the same time.

With a managed service, Ster Kinekor is assisted with all mainte-

nance and ongoing installations as it continues to expand with new

High levels of cable theft have led to a more advanced approach that has been adopted to reduce loss in connectivity.

Brad Fraser, InfoProtect

CONTROL SYSTEMS + AUTOMATION

Connectivity Not Assured

without

a Dual Medium Fibre Approach

Ster Kinekor is a cinema company

based in Sandton, Johannesburg,

South Africa

Electricity+Control

February ‘17