Student Dormitories House Reliable Connectivity Through an MSP

A managed service provider (MSP) from southeast USA partners with residential areas and hospitality services to provide bulk internet, cable, and voice services. For one of their projects, this MSP worked on a mass student housing deployment, covering several locations.

THE CHALLENGE

The student housing operator reached out to the MSP for a connectivity solution for their dorms. They first asked for a temporary connectivity solution while the dorms and residential halls were still under construction. Then, once construction finished, they wanted a permanent connectivity solution manageable by the MSP.

This student housing needed to set up and manage connectivity networks in various locations, which is why they turned to an MSP for help. And since several devices will be purchased, they were hoping for an affordable solution.

THE SOLUTION

At the MSP’s data center, they deployed two SDX Pro routers in high availability mode. During construction, MAX BR1 Pro 5Gs were mainly used for connectivity. SpeedFusion tunnels were established in between the BR1 Pro 5G routers and the SDX Pros. This allowed for bandwidth to be aggregated for large bandwidth use, or for Hot Failover to take place when the primary connection was not stable.

Once all dorms and residential halls were constructed, they installed Balance 310 Fiber 5Gs, SDXs, and MAX BR1 Pro 5Gs according to the physical size. Similarly, they established SpeedFusion tunnels in between all the devices in the residential area and the data center.

FLUENT ECOSYSTEM

Using these devices in the residences offered flexible connectivity, with up to 3 options: cellular, Ethernet, or Wi-Fi as WAN. Thanks to SpeedFusion’s Hot Failover, users didn’t experience any interruptions even if Ethernet connectivity was suddenly unavailable.

Now working with more locations and pleased with the performance of Peplink routers, this MSP installed Balance 2500 routers in their data center as another set of end points. They then deployed more MAX BR1 Pro 5Gs and dozens of MAX BR1 Minis to provide cellular connectivity to a few of their clients.