A highland estate began an ambitious project consisting of three hydro schemes. These were all to be linked by SWA fibre cabling, and Hydrocomm were asked to complete the network installation. This included providing suitable communications solutions, SIP telephony, and a managed Wi-Fi solution for the guest accommodation across seven properties.
Completing the fibre works and the provision of satellite communications for remote access and monitoring were the main focus, with high speed internet access for the holiday homes being the secondary objective.
The nature of the project included an extensive fibre network backbone, which included linking buildings across the breadth of the estate. This not only provided high speed network interconnects, but is also utilised for the HV switching in the three hydro schemes. We were able to utilise this topology to install 4G (LTE) industrial grade routers at either end of this fibre run, allowing us to provide data via these connections to the entire estate network. By utilising two separate mobile networks we were able to provide active connection failover, and with both 4G routers connected, we then bonded the connections to provide speeds of around 100Mbps to the holiday homes on the estate.
Additionally, two satellite broadband connections were installed, with the first was dedicated solely to the hydro schemes. This allowed remote monitoring to take place, and utilised the solid reliability of satellite to allow the equipment at all three schemes to communicate remotely. The second connection was provided as a third tier failover for the internet connection in the holiday homes, ensuring connection to the internet even in the unlikely event of failures on two separate masts and mobile networks.
Finally, the two satellite systems were linked. Essentially the the system providing failover for the holiday homes can also do the same for the hydro satellite system, ensuring there is ample redundancy for all the systems installed.
