Historically the three counties show grounds had a fibre network around the perimeter of their site with additional microwave point to point links providing access to other area. The valley and relatively rural location of the site is often affected by adverse weather conditions with gusts of winds up to 100 MPH. This meant the microwave links were regularly misaligned or disconnected resulting in access points not functioning on regular bases. The three counties had to look for a more robust and resilient solution to improve service to their visitors and customers.
BDR were invited to help resolve the problem and propose a new solution. Following assessment, BDR solution design team proposed a meshed fibre network to augment the existing ring configuration allowing all locations to be connected via Fibre eliminating the need for microwave links and their alignment issues.
Since the implementation, Three Counties have enjoyed 100% uptime and total satisfaction. BDR engineers replaced all historical access points with enterprise grade cloud managed access points. The solution allows BDR technical department 24/7 monitoring with hot performance of updates, upgrades and maintenance. A great example of this was when three counties needed a new Wireless network transmittion for a recent show, BDR staff configured their network remotely within 20 minutes. Historically such change would have taken 2-3 weeks incurring significant charge.
In designing and implementing such comprehensive and best fit solution for three counties, there was an extensive collaboration between the Three counties IT staff and BDR wireless solutions architects. The designed solution provides both sides with key performance measurements and stats in line with predefined criteria continually measuring the project’s success.
The roll out and implementation had to be planned carefully and sympathetically to the calendar and planned shows. Therefore, a phased approach was taken, the initial phase was implemented in parallel with the existing wireless solution allowing seamless transition for all users and guests. This particularly impressed the key stakeholders at Three Counties.
An on line shared Gannt chart and project plan helped the customer and BDR implementation team both understand the key milestones and critical phases of the project limiting downtime and disruption whilst harmonising resource management on both sides reducing wastage.
