Warehouse Branch Houses Connectivity Bridging Back to Headquarters

Warehouse Branch Houses Connectivity Bridging Back to Headquarters

A Thai dealer and distributor of automotive spare parts has been expanding its operations globally, making them a trusted corporation both domestically and globally. With the scale of their business, they operate with 1 headquarters, 1 warehouse zone with 4 different buildings, and 3 separate stores. As the team works across different locations, they wanted to upgrade their branch connectivity, beginning with the warehouse.

Challenge

The company outlined their connectivity issues and requirements for the warehouses. The warehouse internet mainly services the smart devices used such as scanners and forklift tablets for inventory management. Their foremost requirement was for the connectivity solution to cover the large physical area of the warehouse, and be able to operate smoothly despite the rows of tall racks that may act as obstructions to the signal.

Since they have 4 different locations within the warehouse zone, they needed a cost-effective solution. Despite the fluctuating user density, they needed the new setup to cater to a large number of users without needing to purchase connectivity devices excessively. Furthermore, as these locations need to coordinate with each other, the solution had to incorporate all connectivity devices under one network.

Solution

With the help of Peplink’s Thai partner, they deployed a wide selection of Peplink devices to the headquarters and warehouse. At the headquarters, a Balance 580 was installed along with a SpeedFusion Engine and an aircard to enable up to 3 cellular connections. A firewall was also installed to help with filtering traffic within the network and blocking out unauthorized access.

At the warehouse zone, a Balance 580, SpeedFusion Engine, and an aircard were also deployed. 4 SD Switch 24-Port Ruggeds were connected to the Balance 580 to help power access points across the warehouse, which were installed on warehouse walls and roofs.

With these devices deployed in different locations, a SpeedFusion tunnel was created between the headquarters and the warehouse. This created a secure line for the company and allowed them to utilize SpeedFusion technologies such as Hot Failover and Bandwidth Bonding.

With Hot Failover, any traffic on the primary MPLS line would seamlessly transfer to one of the LTE lines in the event of the MPLS line dropping. And when Bandwidth Bonding is used, the bandwidth of the MPLS line and 3x LTE connections are aggregated into one mega-bandwidth channel for larger file transfers.

Inside the warehouse, the 4 Switches power up 19 AP One Flexes, 9 AP One Enterprises, and 22 AP One AXes. These were selected as they come with built-in directional antennas that help focus signals especially in the warehouse where tall racks act as obstructions. The AP One AX is also Wi-Fi 6 capable which allows for less interference and faster speeds.

Result

Using the SpeedFusion technologies available, all devices in the warehouse experience minimal downtime and are always connected back to the headquarters. Thanks to this large-scale Peplink deployment, all angles in the warehouse are covered with stable connectivity. This deployment maximizes the AP devices’ coverage that a device per rack was no longer needed, reducing hardware costs.

Additionally, with the built-in AP Controller in all AP devices, the Thai company can easily scale and manage their network. The performance of this deployment proved to be so effective that the automotive spare parts distributor plans to further deploy Peplink in other warehouse branches and stores.