Very Challenging Network Conundrum...

[granthworth]

Hello all,

We seriously need help. I think I have come to the right place.

I work as a project engineer for a medium sized logistics firm working inside two of our customer's facilities. The customer is a big player in a very competitive business segment and therefore has very strict restrictions on network usage inside their facility. Currently, we employ around 44 users on-site who require internet connectivity. Of these 44, the maximum number of simultaneous users in one location is 14. The customer forbids us to access their network connections, with no amount of negotiations changing that situation.

So, for the past 10 months, we have survived off of two AT&T Unite Pro 4G hotspot devices. And it has been hell.

Each of these customer locations has approximately 1500 total employees on-site at any given time and these facilities are within a quarter mile of each other.

The first issue is simply with the number of our employees requiring access. Whatever the intended amount of simultaneous users these devices were designed for, I can assure you it is not 14.....

Also, imagine the speed of these devices during lunch and break periods when all 3,000+ employees are watching cat videos on Facebook or streaming the newest Kanye West "hit"....

Please help. What can we do differently?

 

[IntelFanboy417]

Wow, this is one tough situation. I can only image the money it must cost for the data plans of those AT&T hotspots! This is going to be tricky...

First thing I would look into is getting your own internet line run to the building. If they don't want you using their network, the next best thing would be to get your own. If they still refuse to even have you install your own line, tell the customer's that its impossible to get any work done without it. If they STILL refuse, then wow, your in between a rock and hard place.

At that point, the only thing I could suggest would be adding on to your wifi hotspot network. Since the devices are wireless, you don't have to worry about if the owner of the building approves or not. If you are forced to go this route though, I would definately look into "home" routers instead of the portable ones. The home routers are made for more like your application, not portability.

Something like this might work, AT&T Wireless Home Phone & Internet cell phone from AT&T

The main serious downfall I could see to those home modems however would be both the cost for data, and the fact that they still probably can't handle many more than your already overloaded mobile hotspots.

I really do wish I could help more, but unless the customers allow you to install your own private internet line or use theirs, really your only option is the wireless unfortunately.

One last tidbit of info, maybe its possible to encourage some of your employees to bring their own hotspots for breaktime/lunch hour? This would release the load on the hotspots and probably save you some data costs. I could recommend Freedompop, as you can find some of their equipment extremely cheap, and they don't require a contract. Plus you get 500 MB of internet for free every month. Just watch out for they're coverage area, its not the greatest in the world. They're website is here:

Free Wireless Internet | Free Internet | 4G Wireless Internet - FreedomPop
If your interested also check ebay for "Freedompop hotspots/USB Modems" you could find some good deals.

I really wish I could help more, but thats all I could think of.

 

[granthworth]

Wow, this is one tough situation. I can only image the money it must cost for the data plans of those AT&T hotspots! This is going to be tricky...

First thing I would look into is getting your own internet line run to the building. If they don't want you using their network, the next best thing would be to get your own. If they still refuse to even have you install your own line, tell the customer's that its impossible to get any work done without it. If they STILL refuse, then wow, your in between a rock and hard place.

At that point, the only thing I could suggest would be adding on to your wifi hotspot network. Since the devices are wireless, you don't have to worry about if the owner of the building approves or not. If you are forced to go this route though, I would definately look into "home" routers instead of the portable ones. The home routers are made for more like your application, not portability.

Something like this might work, AT&T Wireless Home Phone & Internet cell phone from AT&T

The main serious downfall I could see to those home modems however would be both the cost for data, and the fact that they still probably can't handle many more than your already overloaded mobile hotspots.

I really do wish I could help more, but unless the customers allow you to install your own private internet line or use theirs, really your only option is the wireless unfortunately.

One last tidbit of info, maybe its possible to encourage some of your employees to bring their own hotspots for breaktime/lunch hour? This would release the load on the hotspots and probably save you some data costs. I could recommend Freedompop, as you can find some of their equipment extremely cheap, and they don't require a contract. Plus you get 500 MB of internet for free every month. Just watch out for they're coverage area, its not the greatest in the world. They're website is here:

Free Wireless Internet | Free Internet | 4G Wireless Internet - FreedomPop
If your interested also check ebay for "Freedompop hotspots/USB Modems" you could find some good deals.

I really wish I could help more, but thats all I could think of.

We are indeed between a rock and a hard place....

Thank you for your suggestions. I will definitely look into it. The hotspots we currently use are seeing around 180GB per month and I will tell you that if our connection was more reliable, it would easily be 3 times that number. We can usually get slightly better reliability using our company smartphones as individual hot spots but the speed is even slower. Also, you can imagine the data charges that would rack up if used consistently....

I would be skeptical of the FreedomPop solution as well just because of the coverage issues we have already with a major wireless provider such as AT&T. I am unsure of the tower situation here but the 4G network is obviously straining.

 

[granthworth]

Well, we have received a resounding NO from the customer. No to accessing their network in any way, shape, or form, and no to installing our own.....

 

[Lexluethar]

Rock and a hard place for sure. My initial thought is if they would allow one uplink you could using something like a Riverbed Steelhead in the remote location and connected a wifi switch to that. Yes that would require one device to be connected but it would be completely segmented from their organization.

If they frown on that idea you are kinda stuck, short of sub leasing an ISP line into that building or one near by you are stuck. I'm not sure what your engineers are doing on site and if it requires them to directly interact with the other employees, but when we have to do long-term remote projects we simply lease an office space nearby and run our own internet into it. There are a lot of moving parts with doing that because you have to get the line leased, know what bandwidth you will need, ect. but it's the best option. We use Riverbed products to then create a VPN connection on local switches in that office. Alternatively we can just suck off the internet connection using local vpn clients but those usually are a suck on bandwidth, having the traffic optimized helps a ton.

Short of those two options you are stuck with getting mifi devices.

 

[IntelFanboy417]

Sorry to hear the owners declined to getting your own cable run, that really makes things hard. Lexluethar made some great points, but unfortunately yeah it seems like your kind of stuck with the AT&T Hotspots.

Also as for the Freedompop thing, if you don't get great AT&T reception, then I take it back, forget about freedompop. They use Sprint, but they're network isn't the fastest in the world and coverage is worse than AT&T.