Skip Links

Network World

  • Social Web 
  • Email 
  • Close

(Comma separation for multiple addresses)
Your Message:

Drive-in ditches MPLS for cellular

Restaurant chain replaces router with wireless AP
Wireless Alert By Joanie Wexler , Network World , 06/16/2009
Sign up for this newsletter now!

Joanie Wexler looks at how enterprises can take advantage of wireless LANs and WANs.

  • Share/Email
  • Tweet This
  • Comment
  • Print

A chain of drive-in restaurants trolling for a new branch office router settled on a lower-cost, higher-performing option: a remote wireless LAN access point with a cellular module.

Checkers Drive-In Restaurants, headquartered in Tampa, Fla., was looking to replace refurbished Cisco 1700 branch office routers connecting its 270 restaurants to an MPLS VPN service. But it wound up ditching the MPLS VPN in favor of an EV-DO Rev A cellular last-mile service from Sprint Nextel instead.

The approximately 2Mbps service is supported by an AP-70 from Wi-Fi company Aruba Networks. It works well, in part, because the network of restaurants is in a hub-and-spoke configuration with the data center, without site-to-site connectivity required.

Antonio Zambrano, Checkers' director of IT, explains, "We had 56Kbps connectivity at each restaurant, so we weren't really getting much performance out of [the network]." The connectivity was fine for point-of-sale transactions, but the company wanted to use the network for other applications, such as video training, which is now successfully under way using the cellular last mile, he notes.

Zambrano explored newer Cisco $1000-and-up branch office routers, which he deemed too pricey for his budget, as well as AdTran NetVanta routers, which he found affordable in the $300-plus range.

Then Zambrano heard about Aruba Networks' remote APs, which can simply bridge the branch office LAN to the corporate LAN across a cellular last-mile link to the Internet. The APs replicate the corporate VPN, access rights and policies at remote sites and are priced competitively with the NetVanta routers, he says.

To do this, Checkers runs a pair of Aruba 3200 WLAN controllers (for redundancy) in the data center. The controller pushes the centralized policies and configurations across the Internet and cellular links to the remote APs.

"We hadn't been looking for wireless, but once we heard about the features and the [Payment Card Industry standards] compliance built in to the Aruba equipment, we had to test it," Zambrano says.

The Aruba AP-70s are not part of the Aruba's newly announced Virtual Branch Network line, but are configurable as an office-extension product. Zambrano estimates that he has saved just under 50% compared with the NetVanta solution and about 75% compared with a Cisco router alternative. The company to date has installed 120 of the 270 nationwide APs.

Joanie Wexler is an independent networking technology writer/editor in Silicon Valley.

  • Share/Email
  • Tweet This
  • Comment
  • Print
Comments (4)
Login
Forgot your account info?

sub-$1,000 solution for real-world business???By Anonymous on June 17, 2009, 5:08 amI think you might just get exactly what you pay for.

Reply | Read entire comment

more bandwidthBy Anonymous on June 17, 2009, 2:05 pmThere is just so much bandwidth and radio spectrum avialable on wireless, as the usage of data grows on these networks, there may be times when they can not connect,...

Reply | Read entire comment

What is the relative network cost?By Anonymous on June 17, 2009, 2:45 pmI am surprised that the article did not take into account the network service cost. I would exxpect that the cellular network including any usage costs would be...

Reply | Read entire comment

business quality?By Anonymous on June 23, 2009, 8:31 amI would like to see how the QOS works over the big I and also the wireless side

Reply | Read entire comment

View all comments

Add comment
Anonymous comments subject to approval. Register here for member benefits.
Have a NetworkWorld account? Log in here. Register now for a free account.

Videos

rssRss Feed