The City of Napa Boosts Bandwidth for up to 100 Mbps over Copper with Actelis Networks

Table of Contents

Background

Napa Chooses Actelis to Modernize Communications Network in California’s World-Famous Wine Region.

The City of Napa, located in northern California’s world-famous wine region, requires secure, high-availability bandwidth for voice and data applications including emergency response, law enforcement, traffic management, and other public services. The number of broadband links required, as well as the bandwidth delivered over those links is ever increasing as automation, telemetering and surveillance use continues to grow. For Napa, it had become painfully clear, the city’s bandwidth needs far outpaced its legacy telecom infrastructure. City administrators looked to Actelis for help. 

The Challenge

Maximize Bandwidth. Minimize CapEx

The bandwidth constraints for the city of Napa had reached the breaking point. The city needed a much faster reliable connection with Napa County than the existing legacy circuits could provide. “We had a long list of must haves including a scalable solution with faultless reliability and vault solid security,” said the systems administrator for the city of Napa. “But we had a short list of line items in the city budget so initially we used slow T1 connection devices.”

The legacy T1 solution maxed out at a transmission rate of only 1.5 Mbps over two copper pairs. The city of Napa needed much faster data communications, but the T1s would not scale to deliver adequate bandwidth. Napa not only needed more bandwidth, it also needed to minimize its capex investment and operational expenses. This led to a search for a reliable Carrier Ethernet solution that could leverage the existing copper cable plant as a simpler, quicker, and less costly alternative to investing in fiber. 

Customer’s Requirements

Customer Requirements – Scalable Bandwidth with Faultless Reliability and Vault Solid Security

  • High speed, secure connections
  • Using existing copper infrastructure
  • Economical alternative to fiber with easy migration to fiber when available
  • Quick, easy deployment and management

After considering several options, the City of Napa chose Actelis Networks hybrid fiber-copper solution. Actelis provides high speed broadband by logically bonding multiple copper pairs into secure, fiber-performance links.

Solution

Immediate Connectivity Delivering 10-20x More Bandwidth

“There was a long list of deciding factors behind choosing Actelis that lined up ideally with our wish list,” said the Napa systems administrator. These came down to the unmatched combination of speed, security, and high availability the Actelis solution delivers, along with seamless integration with the City’s existing Ethernet LAN. Add to that, Actelis long reach, simplicity of installation, and ease of maintenance.

“We saw the Actelis solution as ideal to increase speed, bandwidth and reach, so we moved quickly to deploy Actelis’ ML600 EADs” said Napa’s system administer “We found that we had more than one copper pair connecting us with the Napa County offices, so we utilized  all available eight pairs for up to 100 Mbps service.”

Actelis Benefits

The Actelis solution also provides the County of Napa with high-speed access into the City of Napa’s computer-aided vehicle dispatch system. The allows the County Sheriff’s Office to communicate with police cars patrolling the community. Because of California Department of Justice regulations, access to vehicle dispatch and control must be restricted to authorized personnel within the county on an as needed basis.  This is just one of the reasons private and secure connections are essential.

Conclusion

Actelis helps System Administrators Modernize, Digitize and Protect Napa’s Communications Network

Actelis Networks delivered on the city of Napa’s long wish list, boosting bandwidth transmission by a whopping 20x using its existing twisted pair copper. The Actelis hybrid fiber-copper network model provides a clear upgrade path if or when the city chooses to deploy fiber in the future.

“We can now exchange data with the County at lightning speeds,” Napa’s system administrator said. “Mission accomplished.”

Related products

Actelis Networks ML2000B

ML2300 Aggregation Switch

High density aggregation platform, supporting up to 256 pairs, and up to 128 links. Multiple aggregation interfaces. 

ML638 Ethernet Switch

Compact Hybrid Fiber-copper Ethernet switch. Bonding up to 8 copper pairs.

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