BROADBAND COMMUNITIES is the leading source of information on digital and broadband technologies for buildings and communities. Our editorial aims to accelerate the deployment of Fiber-To-The-Home and Fiber-To-The-Premises.
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MAY/JUNE 2014 | www.broadbandcommunities.com | BROADBAND COMMUNITIES | 23 throughput, reliability and backup options. Te ZyXEL Unifed Treat Management Gateway balances the loads over the two Internet connections. "We started from the ground up. We used the ZyXEL app that enabled me to plan our entire system and install access points to provide the greatest coverage," says Moench. "We wired everything from scratch, including new CAT 5e cables throughout the entire building." REDUCING CONGESTION AND INTERFERENCE To handle congestion, Moench increased the number of access points to 30. To address the specifc problem of visitors traveling in herds, he confgured the system so that after 25 devices are connected to any access point, requests from additional devices are shifted to another, nearby access point. Te shift is nearly invisible to users, who might, at most, experience "a possible hiccup for a fraction of a second," Moench says. By using the content fltering capability of the Unifed Treat Management Gateway, the Mart can shut down certain applications (Netfix and Dropbox, for example) during trade show hours. Tis eliminates most continuous data streams and reserves access for more typical on-and-of users – for example, visitors emailing photos of merchandise to colleagues back in the ofce. For a short-term solution to the problem of signal interference, Moench used dynamic channel selection, which helps use radio frequencies more efciently, and he reserved several channels specifcally for tenant Wi-Fi systems to keep them separate from the general building Wi-Fi. In the longer term, Moench is encouraging tenants to use the 5 GHz channel Wi-Fi band, which would give them many more channel options for their networks. Te 5 GHz band is less useful for the buildingwide network because in that channel range, signals do not travel well through metal shielding. The ZyXEL Wi-Fi solution used in the Minneapolis Mart includes a WLAN controller, a unifed threat management system, Ethernet switches and 802.11n access points. The Minneapolis Mart is one of the premier wholesale showroom facilities in the Midwest. BBC_May14.indd 23 5/29/14 9:16 AM