Australian Law Enforcement
Law enforcement agencies across the country require highly secure and reliable voice and data communications while on the move. Traditional 2-way radio telephony traffic has substantially increased, and in parallel, enforcement data plays an increasingly vital role
To ensure encrypted voice and data is delivered effectively and securely to all enforcement members, a converged IP and TDM transport network infrastructure needs to be deployed to provide sound coverage to all fixed and mobile devices. This network architecture must deliver extremely high service availability, with ultra low latency and jitter, supported by equipment and path redundancy.
For over 10 years, CommTel has designed, supplied and installed many Mission Critical IP and TDM systems across Australia, to meet the increasing communications demands from homeland security departments, emergency services organisations, and electricity utilities.
The Challenges
CommTel has designed and delivered a new converged IP and TDM transport network for a major law enforcement agency.
Our customer had a requirement to upgrade from an analogue mobile voice communications system, to a digital system supporting both voice and data. CommTel was selected to design and deliver the underlying transport network, which would meet their immediate needs while having sufficient scale and flexibility to meet their future corporate requirements.
Of greatest importance to our customer is a transport network with sufficient redundancy and resiliency to deliver an end to end service availability exceeding 99.999% under all conditions. CommTel developed the overall network topology in close consultation with the customer. We assisted with the overall geographic positioning of sites and assessed suitability to deliver the best long term coverage for all fixed and mobile devices.
The delivery of mobile voice and data services was spread across three remote and separate geographic regions. By working closely with a Tier 1 carrier, CommTel was able to extend the transport network so that each of the separate regions behaved as if they were a single network. Given the critical timing, reliability and security requirements between each of the geographic regions, this involved a sophisticated layer 3 network design to be implemented.
As part of our overall solution, a fully integrated, open management system was deployed, managing all the network equipment on a single platform.
Innovative Solutions
In order to build a network that can deliver highly deterministic, low latency and low jitter services, the Layer 3 IP traffic was delivered over an SDH infrastructure.
The 3 layer delivery allowed CommTel to provide end to end E1 (TDM traffic) via SDH while maintaining low end to end delay, in parallel Layer 3 multi-service distribution switches are used and interface on the SDH as he means of delivering a deterministic WAN service via to the 24 port L2/L3 MPLS high capacity GE switch.
Our expertise in executing the above architecture allowed CommTel to provide an exceptionally resilient and redundant loop topology. In the event of any failure, all IP and TDM traffic is rerouted within 50 milliseconds, thereby maintaining service availability.
Since the transport network uses fibre, microwave and 3rd party managed services, there are significant complexities to consider when building a highly resilient network. This is particularly the case with microwave radio links, subjected to environmental radio fading. The redundancy and resiliency mechanisms in the network need to be capable
of coping with a fading radio environment while still
delivering an ultra-high available service.
CommTel fully engineered and tested the solution,
ensuring that the complex MSTP and VRRP (Provides Layer
3 resiliency) Layer 3 implementations behaved robustly under a range of failure scenarios and mechanisms.
As the overall system demands ultra high availability, our
network management system continuously monitors alarm
and performance parameters. From our management
platform, we have a single view of the entire network,
across a range of equipment technologies and vendors.
As the overall system demands ultra high availability, our
network management system continuously monitors alarm
and performance parameters. From our management
platform, we have a single view of the entire network,
across a range of equipment technologies and vendors.
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About CommTel
CommTel Network Solutions Pty Ltd is an Australian owned, locally based, Value Added Reseller specialising in the provision of Industrial and Carrier grade communications systems and related technical services.
Unlike most other communications systems suppliers who primarily focus on the Carrier sector, CommTel’s core focus is providing exceptional quality products and services to the non-Carrier market focusing on the dedicated/industrial network sector (i.e. power utilities, oil & gas, transport, mining etc). This strategy has enabled CommTel to develop a large base of small to medium sized customers that offer regular, low risk and reliable business.
Since is inception in 1998, CommTel has continued to grow, develop its product range and add to its customer base. Today, CommTel is considered by the industry, as the leading supplier of communications systems and equipment in its field, which in itself is proof of customer satisfaction and confidence in CommTel’s capabilities.
