High Availability Private Network (
HAPN
™)
Network Upgrade Case Study
ABC, Inc. 1 (ABC) is an insurance adjusting firm with 10 locations in the Southeast including their headquarters office in Nashville, Tennessee. ABC utilizes their network for data transfers and email between the branch locations and headquarters, Internet access, and VoIP phone connectivity between their offices.
NetDiverse is a communications provider with service offerings that include Dedicated Internet Service, High Availability Private Network (HAPN™), MPLS, IP-VPN, Local and Long Distance Phone Service, Managed Firewall Service, and Managed Router Service.
In ABC’s first meeting with NetDiverse, ABC outlined their original network environment, service experience and issues. There were three primary issues with their original network that needed to be solved without
significantly increasing their monthly costs. Over time the needs list became longer but these were the three key requirements of ABC:
Significantly Improve Service Availability
o Branch Sites had experienced days, and in some instances, weeks of downtime due to T1 circuit issues.
Significantly Increase Speed
o Branch Sites were limited to 1.5Mbps of bandwidth which was shared between voice calls, Internet usage, and data transfers between the corporate and branch offices.
Service Provider Managed Routers on site and Service Provider Managed Firewall(s)
o By improving network speeds and reliability, ABC expected to be responsible for managing all of the routers and firewalls necessary to implement a new network. Their desire was for the Service Provider to manage all of the routers and firewalls.
[This space is intentionally blank – Original Network information begins on the next page.]
1 ABC, Inc. is a fictitious name, but all other aspects of this case study are accurate. NetDiverse may provide a prospective
ABC, Inc. Original Network: (provided by Windstream Communications)
ABC Original Network (See Figure 1) Attributes of the original ABC Network:
IP/VPN allowed for carrier managed Quality of Service (QoS) for VoIP calls between offices. This improved flexibility for call routing and some cost savings.
IP/VPN allowed for better security controls to the Internet by forcing all traffic
destined to the Internet to route through the corporate firewall.
Disadvantages of the original ABC network:
No redundancy Each site was connected with a single circuit, including the corporate location. This
resulted in long outages when T1 circuits failed.
Slow speeds The same 1.5Mbps from each remote site was used for voice, connectivity to corporate
and for Internet access. The corporate office had a shared 10Mbps circuit used for Internet, Voice and branch to corporate data transfers. Needless to say, the end users were dissatisfied with these speeds.
Client Managed Firewall The original provider did not provide Managed Firewall Services to the client
resulting in increased time spent by ABC IT staff managing their corporate firewall.
No Client VPN Services The original provider did not provide Client VPN Services. Insurance Adjusters
were either not accessing the corporate network at all, or were doing so at a cost to network security.
High prices for Voice Services ABC’s voice network took advantage of office to office VoIP connectivity,
but their connectivity to the Public Telephone Network was suboptimal.
NetDiverse and ABC Network Planning Process:
First, NetDiverse and ABC met to discuss ABC’s goals for the network. The goals expanded beyond the first three goals of: Increasing Network Speed/Throughput, Improving Reliability, and Provider Management of routers and firewalls.
Expanded Network Goal List for ABC.
Maintain or improve VoIP QoS between sites
Maintain security and control access to and from the Internet through central management
Significantly increase speeds for remote branches for Data Connectivity to the Corporate Office (Email, File Sharing, Intranet use)
Increase speeds to the Internet for all users, especially for Cloud Services
Increase reliability with dual carrier connections to each office
Improve Voice reliability
Enable network QoS for additional real-time applications like video conferencing
Ensure data transfers between ABC locations are encrypted when traversing public Internet connections
Client VPN for remote users to access the network while in the field
Management of all network routers and Firewall(s) by Service Provider
Service Quality Guarantees
After finalizing the goal list, NetDiverse and other carriers provided quotes2 for this service:
NetDiverse’s quote included increased throughput (speed) at every site, improved reliability, improved security, improved service guarantees, full management of all routers, and a project plan for conversion. Although priced slightly higher, NetDiverse was selected as the new Service Provider for the ABC network as the other providers’ proposals did not meet most of the network requirements.
Project Implementation:
Once NetDiverse was selected to replace the network, they developed a project plan for network conversion. The following factors were taken into consideration during the implementation process:
Any required Network Upgrades to the NetDiverse Network (Added a fiber optic 100Mbps circuit to ABC’s HQ locaton)
Termination dates for the original contracts with the original provider
Reasonable schedule for turning up MPLS (IP/VPN) network
Reasonable schedule for turning up broadband Internet connections
Managed Router and Firewall deployment
Encryption Plan
Two small upgrades of the existing phone systems
Plan for PRI to SIP Trunking (VoIP) conversion
Telephone Number Porting
Plan for fax conversion
Implementation of dedicated SNMP management servers to monitor the network from the private side and public side of the network
Forced failure testing (ensuring traffic re-routes appropriately during any circuit failure)
Placement of network analyzers at each site for ad-hoc testing
2
NetDiverse, Level 3, XO Communications, and tw telecom all provided quotes to replace the Windstream network for ABC, Inc. NetDiverse provided the only proposal which provided any significant increase in network throughput/speed,
Figure 2
Comparison of the Original Network and NetDiverse HAPN™ Network
Original Network New NetDiverse HAPN™ Network
Total Throughput at Corporate 10Mbps 100Mbps Total Throughput at Branch
Locations
1.5Mbps 20-50 Mbps
Reliability - Corporate One non-diverse carrier TWO DIVERSE carriers (Cable and Fiber)
Reliability - Branch One non-diverse carrier TWO DIVERSE carriers (Broadband and
MPLS-IP/VPN at each branch) Guaranteed VoIP QoS Inter-Branch
to Public Telephone Network X
Managed Firewall/Security X
Managed Client VPN X
Traffic Shaping X
Managed Application Prioritization X Automated (Time of Day) call
routing X
Web and Phone Portals for
managing call control X
