Farayand Virtual World

* ExpoCentreSharjah Rolls Out Wireless Technology

Symbol mobius axon system provides easier management

Symbol mobius axon system provides easier management. The ExpoCentre in Sharjah has installed a wireless local area network (WLAN) throughout its 128,000 square metre complex to compliment its voice over IP (V0IP), enhance its lead retrieval solutions and facilitate the delivery of value added services to exhibitors and visitors.

The network, which was deployed in just 30 days, allows users to access both voice and data services free of charge. The solution also provides device and user flexibility. For example, exhibitors or visitors with laptops or PDAs can access the internet, while the centre’s NetVision Phones and NetVision Data Phones can operate on both the WLAN and traditional analogue lines.

“ExpoCentreSharjah is covered by 100 access points, which are both inside the buildings and outside. The WLAN is all built with Symbol technology and operates at 2.4 GHz and speeds of 11 Mbit/s.

Whoever has a laptop or a PDA… can access the network directly to browse the internet or their e-mail,” says Khoder Hawilo, IT Manager, ExpoCentreSharjah.
“The centre also has V0IP and the [IP] phones work on the wireless LAN. When users are working within the wireless area there is seamless coverage and when they go outside they go over [the] Etisalat [network],” explains S. Feroz Mede, product manager with the ExpoCentre’s project partner, Bond Communications.

With such a vast area to cover and a large number of access ports, the centre’s IT department opted for Symbol Technologies’ Mobius Axon Wireless System. The solution enables ‘thin’ access points to be controlled centrally through a switch, which saves both time and energy in terms of management.

Furthermore, by removing the features from the access points themselves, they become less bulky and expensive, while the central switch affords greater features and functionalities to users.

“The technology is state of the art,” claims Mehta. “It is based on switching technology, rather than the standard access points. There is no individual management of access points, you have a [central] switch which manages all the access ports,” he adds.

Additionally, the Mobius switch comes packed with security features, which has further eased the burden for the centre’s IT staff. “We’ve got multiple security solutions with the Mobius system. We have the emerging standard, 802.11i and Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP).

We have also built in an authentication scheme, 802.1x, which is becoming the standard for wireless security framework and ETLS, which is Transfer Line Security and similar to what is used by web browsers,” says Ray Martino, general manager & vice president, network products, Symbol Technologies.

This also simplifies the access process for users and, as such, it is simply plug & play. “We are not providing any passwords to users. Visitors or exhibitors can just access the network directly,” confirms Hawilo.

While PDA or laptop users obviously need the necessary wireless cards, ExpoCentreSharjah is providing PCMCIA cards to those visitors that do not have these capabilities already installed in their devices.

“What we are trying to do at ExpoCentreSharjah is make it a lot easier for customers to come in and do business [immediately] and that is where the technology is playing a key role.” Khoder Hawilo-ExpoCentreSharjah

“Anybody carrying a device that has got a wireless card built in is automatically connected to the network when they switch on their device that doesn’t have a card we can give them one for a nominal price,” says Fasahat Ali Khan, deputy director general, ExpoCentreSharjah.

For the ExpoCentre, the WLAN is part of a broader initiative to facilitate the activities of exhibitors and visitors by providing them with greater and easier access to information.

As such, some of the V0IP phones also double as barcode readers for exhibitors, which enables them to record visitor information by scanning their badges.

“What we are trying to do at ExpoCentreSharjah is make it a lot easier for customers to come in and do business [immediately] and that is where the technology is playing a key role. The important thing is to get exhibitors and visitors closer together and this is what we hope to do with the value added services,” says Hawilo.

OTE Group Upgrades Network

OTE Group has deployed Foundry Network’s Fastlron chassis with Gigabit and Fast Ethernet modules. Designed and deployed by Hwan IT, the network infrastructure delivers the high availability and performance the Oman trading group requires for its HP servers to run its SAP R/3 enterprise resource planning (ERP) application effectively.

The foundry solution replaces OTE’s Layer 2 network, which was built around switches from various vendors. “The big motivation for this project was our ERP implementation,” confirms Dileep Somani, group manager for IT at OTE Group.

“We planned to implement SAP R/3, but it [needed] a highly reliable and scalable network that had to be up and running on a 24x7 basis…We were putting the new servers in for R/3, but we did not have the central switch that we needed for SAP,” he explains.

The Oman-based business opted for Foundry’s Fastlron solution due to its combination of reliability and cost effective pricing. “We chose Foundry for its features,” says Somani.”[Another] important reason for selecting the solution was the price/performance ratio. While other vendors provide 64 G/bits/s backbone speeds, Foundry offers 256 G/bits/s speeds, thus delivering four times the performance for the same price,” he adds.

In addition to improving the resilience of OTE’s network, the Foundry Fastlron chassis has boosted security and management for the trading group as it facilities the running of a virtual local area network (VLAN) environment, which means user and production traffic can be transferred separately.

“We wanted to implement a VLAN concept so the broadcast traffic was not going to the SAP servers. It also ensures that they [the servers] are on a different local area network [VLAN] to the users,” explains Somani.

“The Foundry solution allows us to do this, as well as streamlining the network by giving us the proper IP addresses and so on,” he adds. Furthermore, the trading group’s new infrastructure has improved availability and greatly reduced the time it takes for the IT department to switch networks in the event of unplanned interruptions.

“Life has become easier because network performance has improved, as has redundancy. Before, we were getting lots of maintenance calls about things not working and people not being able to connect to [the network].This has been greatly reduced,” explains Somani.

“The Foundry switch…provides true non-blocking wire-speed switching speeds,” he adds. Moving forward, OTE’s IT team has plans to improve the redundancy of the network yet further by automating the switch over between the primary leased lines and the secondary dial up connections.

“As of today, due to financial constraints, we switch it over manually within about five minutes, but we will start looking at this [making the process automatic] sometime next year,” explains Somani.

Another project topping OTE’s 2004 agenda is improvements to its network management software. Currently, the trading group uses a freeware application to monitor the network from a central location.

“We are not using any specific management tool at the moment, but we are using a freeware application instead…This allows us to do the basic things, such as monitor traffic, and assess the network’s status and condition.

It also allows us to perform basic maintenance operations, but it doesn’t give us the loads or the facility for automatic switch over,” Somani explains. “However, when we have the budget next year we will go and purchase a good network management software,” he says.
(Source: Gulf News)