The folks at Chautauqua County Home nursing facility recently received a “fat pipe” on their relatively small budget with Patton (News - Alert) Electronics’ IPLink Inverse Mux.

 

In the past, the facility considered rates of 300 to 400 bits per second as “Blazing speeds” achieved through a single T1 connection.

 

The problem for the home was the low-speed microwave link to county headquarters – where all the clinical, financial, e-mail and Internet application servers reside — was jamming up operations, causing headaches for the staff at ever mouse click.

 

It was only after much frustration that the job fell to Gary Hemmer, personal computer specialist at the nursing home, who decided he needed a fatter pipe.

Besides the timing issues, the reliability of the old T1 circuit was also a concern as weather conditions, such as rain and snow, degraded the microwave signal quality even further and on occasion broke the connection.

 

“We had T1 issues on a weekly basis,” said Hemmer. “When the T1 would go down I’d get a barrage of phone calls.” So, along with more bandwidth, Gary needed redundancy to ensure survivable communications.”

 

Although it became apparent there was a need to smooth operations with an upgrade, capital equipment costs had to be kept low. Since the county owns a T1 microwave network, leveraging that resource would help to control ongoing expenses, said Hemmer.

 

“In today’s economy we want to give county residents the biggest bang for their tax dollar we can,” said Hemmer. “We have to be mindful of expenses.”

The solution, after a search by Hemmer and senior PC specialist Don Schultz, was to find a suitable Ethernet over T1 multilink

 

In the end it was Patton’s IPLink Model 2888 Inverse Mux that bonds up to 4 T1 (or E1) circuits into a single high-speed channel at up to 8 Mbps. Employing Multi-Link Point-to-Point Protocol (MLPPP). In addition, Patton’s Inverse Mux builds a transparent Ethernet bridge with load-leveling and self-healing redundancy.

 

“The equipment is working flawlessly,” said Schultz. “We’ve seen at least a 70 or 80 percent increase in speed. Patton’s Inverse Mux has made a world of difference.”

 
One benefit, notes Hemmer, under the previous system when the T1 went down he received get a barrage of phone calls. “Now if a T1 goes down I would never know it.”

 

Hemmer says the setup turned out to be quite simple once he explained their application to Patton’s support specialist.

 

Today, operations at the 216-bed facility are running smoothly. Patton’s Inverse Mux solution provides a reliable 4.632 kbps transparent bridged Ethernet connection over three bonded T1s with the Mayville, NY headquarters 40 miles away.