Having a carrier-class core network with high bandwidth, low latency, superior reliability and with the option to upgrade capacity in the future, is of the utmost importance to telecommunications service provider WIRUlink.
The company offers Internet, telephone, VPN and last-mile carrier solutions to businesses, home users, CCTV monitoring companies, VoIP providers and other service providers. The entire network and its infrastructure is owned and managed by WIRUlink, eliminating reselling services from other network providers, and giving the company full control over the level of service it can offer customers.
Riaan Maree, technical director at WIRUlink explains that with the network footprint rapidly expanding and the fast-growing customer base, it was necessary to invest in the right infrastructure that will not only meet the current needs, but also provide the capacity to grow without replacing equipment in the foreseeable future.
“To increase capacity, reliability and quality of service to WIRUlink customers, we needed to look at higher end carrier-grade backhaul equipment.”
Jan Keyser, head of products at wireless IP convergence company MiRO, says that WIRUlink, like many service providers in the industry, needed a very reliable backhaul product to serve its core network with stable and reliable throughput
“The 5.8 GHz network was saturated and prone to increasing interference, which had a negative effect on the service available to WIRUlink’s customers. The company therefore required a solution in the 17 GHz space and MiRO was able to provide products that address the issues derived from their varied needs.”
Maree elaborates that over the last seven years, WIRUlink has used solutions from various wireless equipment manufacturers. While most of the non-carrier-grade equipment was cost- effective and served its purpose when the WIRUlink network was first established, it was nevertheless not very scalable and could not handle the load required to offer a reliable and viable alternative to the incumbent operators.
Keyser points out that when MiRO was assigned the distribution rights for SIAE Microelettronica in February 2014, they approached WIRUlink to offer a feasible solution. Maree adds that WIRUlink conducted its own research and discovered that SIAE had been named as Supplier of the Year by Vodafone worldwide for a number of years. In addition, SIAE has a South African office in Midrand, should third level support be required.
Prior to implementation of the system, WIRUlink sent two of its wireless engineers to SIAE for full certification to ensure that they had a comprehensive understanding of the radios and their features. This also assisted in guaranteeing the correct implementation of the solution, and eliminated the need for additional changes at a later stage.
“As a trial phase, we linked three of our high sites (two links) using SIAE AlfoPLUS 17 GHz radios with 200 Mbps full-duplex capacity licences. The first link is 13.5 km away and we used 90 cm antennas. The second link is at a distance of 7 km, for which we used 60 cm antennas. We are achieving 213 Mbps full duplex (simultaneous upload and download) when testing UDP (user datagram protocol) throughput and 197 Mbps full duplex when testing TCP (transmission control protocol) throughput,” says Maree.
Maree points out a number of benefits the company has derived from implementing the SIAE solution from MiRO. Latency was reduced from 3 ms to under 1 ms, per hop. Interference has been drastically reduced and there has been zero drop in throughput since the installation in June 2014. There is now virtually no jitter, which results in a high-end voice service offering.
He continues that the high MTU (maximum transmission unit) sizes enable the company to run a full MPLS (multi-protocol label switching) network and the ability to offer VPLS (virtual private LAN service) layer2 carrier transit services to other network providers.
Any changes in the link quality are monitored around the clock using SNMP (simple network management protocol), providing WIRUlink with the ability to prevent downtime on the network by fixing potential problems before they negatively affect the customer experience.
“After deciding to install and test the SIAE radios to link three core sites, we sent the GPS coordinates, tower heights, as well as required and minimum capacity and uptime (99.999%) to SIAE, who then provided a full software link path analysis at no charge. This helped us to determine what size antennas were required, the capacity we could expect and the effect of rain on the system,” says Maree.
The WIRUlink core network installation teams and SIAE AlfoPlus certified WIRUlink staff did the onsite implementation from physical installation, configuration and alignment to testing. The implementation, for two links (four radios) at three locations, took four days and included the laying of outdoor CAT6 shielded cable, mounting of brackets, hoisting of radios into position, configuration, alignment, as well as configuration tweaking and testing.
“In order to build a reliable high-capacity carrier-grade network for voice and data services, it is advisable to make use of tried and tested equipment that is used by international carriers such as Vodafone. Although the equipment comes at a premium, the benefits it provides far outweigh the initial cost,” says Maree.
As a result of the success of the SIAE system from MiRO, WIRUlink is currently planning for six additional SIAE AlfoPLUS point-to-point link installations which will be implemented on the WIRUlink core network in September and October 2014. This will provide increased capacity, lower latency and very high reliability, all essential elements in offering exceptional service to the company’s rapidly expanding customer base.
Keyser says that MiRO offers a wide range of communication hardware in the ISM and licensed space.
“MiRO offers a range of after sales support ranging from technical support to troubleshooting and planning for further growth. The key to finding the best solution is relationship building, planning, training and supported implementation. We invite WISP, ISPs and all system integrators that work in the wireless implementation industry to consult MiRO so we can assist in finding the optimal solution.”
