River Valley Cooperative, USA
Service Providers | Internet Connectivity
River Valley Cooperative is a member-owned organization that serves farmers in Illinois and Iowa by increasing overall efficiency and productivity.
They connect allocations to its central office for applications such as email servers, accounting database, and financial programs. Due to their centralized hub, they are able to enhance their members’ farming operations and help them to adapt to changes in markets and technology.
“The Peplink Balance has proven to be reliable, and provides the versatility to do what we may want to do at each location.”
Todd Phillips, Network Administrator at River Valley Cooperative
Challenges
Network connectivity can be complex and costly. Especially as the number of locations grows. To combat this, River Valley Cooperative wanted a simple, low cost solution that could also improve network reliability. As the Network Administrator at River Valley Cooperative, Todd Phillips searched for solutions to replace its existing radio-based network.
“What we need is something that can reliably provide VPN, load balancing, and failover,” says Todd. He had looked at some load balancing brands but found that the upfront costs could be expensive. Meanwhile, other firewall devices lacked the network connectivity and VPN features that they demanded.
Solution
Todd ultimately decided to deploy Peplink Balance since it met all of his requirements while costing less than other options. He explains that, “The Peplink Balance has proven to be reliable and provides the versatility to do what we may want to do at each location”.
River Valley Cooperative’s decided to deploy a Balance 710 in their central office. At the same time, Balance 380s became standard equipment at all of their other locations. By using Peplink Balance, locations with limited DSL and Cable gain the flexibility to use wireless links such as 3G and Satellite as backups. As for larger sites, extra links can be easily added as the bandwidth demand rises.
With Peplink Site-to-Site VPN Bonding, all of the links will be bonded to form a redundant connection and achieve maximum reliability. Thanks to this, employees are able to maintain a reliable and secure connection to the central office at all times. As a result, they are able to keep up their high service standards.
Result
Todd is also very satisfied with Peplink’s support services. “I’m impressed that Peplink has been very responsive to requests I’ve made to improve their firmware,” he says. Due to this positive experience, River Valley Cooperative continues to deploy Peplink Balance units at each site. All for the goal of expanding its VPN network in providing the highest level of services to all of their members.
