Vail relies on a fiber network for public Wi-Fi, security cameras, and essential communications, but terrain challenges and fiber cut incidents made expansion difficult. To extend fiber’s reach without trenching or disrupting tourist areas, local ISP Aspen Wireless deployed Siklu’s mmWave solutions, providing high-speed, interference-free connectivity.
Vail is an alpine village in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. With more than 5,200 acres of terrain, it is one of the largest ski resorts in the world. The area hosts concerts and music festivals for large audiences year round. Almost two million visitors from all over the world flock to the area annually to enjoy the resort’s luxurious amenities and Colorado’s alpine powder snow.
Issues such as security, capacity-rich Wi-Fi, and environmental aesthetics are of the utmost importance to residents and visitors alike. With social events taking place simultaneously in multiple locations, maintaining connectivity and communications between first responders, volunteers, and town officials is complicated but essential for ensuring public safety. The town has underground fiber infrastructure that connects the town’s buildings (e.g., city hall, visitor center, and fire station), parking lot machines, and surveillance cameras, while delivering high-speed public Wi-Fi. Vail also has a pavement heating system under the main sidewalks. All these pose challenges when considering expanding connectivity via traditional wireline or fiber trenching.
THE CHALLENGES
Near-impossible fiber trenching | Future-proof capacity | Slow problem resolution
The reach of the municipal fiber network needed to be extended, but in many locations terrain challenges made laying fiber a physical impossibility. The town also suffered from fiber cutoffs from time to time. These issues had been impeding the essential 24/7 operation of the video surveillance network, greatly hindering the communication flow and compromising site monitoring. In addition, these problems consumed heavy OPEX and took a long time to resolve.
Aspen Wireless, a local ISP, realized that due to difficulties in expanding the fiber infrastructure, mmWave wireless was a perfect candidate to extend the existing fiber footprint. The solution would need to be interference-free and have plenty of capacity for future needs – new higher capacity Ruckus Wi-Fi access points and HD 4K video cameras being such examples.
Siklu’s multigigabit mmWave products were chosen for this role. In addition to addressing capacity needs now and in the future, the chosen solution had to meet requirements such as:
- Reliable performance year-round
- Reliable performance year-round
- Quick and easy installation to minimize tourist impact
- Non-utilization of the 5 GHz band, leaving that frequency for high-speed Wi-Fi
- Low profile and minimal aesthetic impact
THE SOLUTION
Siklu by Ceragon EtherHaul PtP | Outdoor dual-band Wi-Fi access points | Multi-sensor panoramic cameras | Megapixel network cameras
While many wireless technologies provide fast and simple installations delivering hundreds of Mbps, Ron Braden, Vail’s IT Director, decided to ‘go gigabit’ – even over wireless connections. Jim Selby, CEO of Aspen Wireless Technologies, Inc., selected Siklu’s cost-effective, discreet Point-to-Point (PtP) EtherHaul 600 and EtherHaul 1200 mmWave radios to deliver interference-free Gbps with low latency to future proof Vail’s Wi-Fi and CCTV services. Aspen Wireless deployed the links within days and was impressed with the ease and speed of the installation. Braden added IP cameras to improve video quality and coverage.
The need for an aesthetic look without compromising CCTV quality or the newly enabled wider coverage led to deploying multi-sensor panoramic cameras from Arecont Vision and megapixel network cameras from Axis Communications. All the above-mentioned, market-leading gear was integrated by Aspen Wireless to create a reliable network ready to handle today’s and tomorrow’s challenges. Projects such as this are never the work of one person or even one company. It took a team of partners, each an expert in their domain, to execute the plan properly.
THE RESULTS
Quick and easy installation | Reliable year-round performance | Minimal aesthetic impact
Today the Vail mmWave network utilizes 60/70/80GHz frequencies for wireless backhaul, with the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz spectrum left free to service end-user Wi-Fi devices. The network reaches speeds and performance beyond expectations, with wireless backhaul capacity soaring from 20-50 Mbps to multiple Gbps.
New cameras have improved video quality from low-rate standard resolution to multiple megapixels at 30 FPS and 4K video at 20 FPS. Ruckus ZoneFlex™ 7762 outdoor dual-band Wi-Fi access points and ZoneFlex 7782 Series carrier-class 3x3:3 2.4/5 GHz outdoor APs feature integrated antennas with patented BeamFlex™ technology for unprecedented performance in high-density, high-capacity applications; they perform at top throughputs of over 100Mbps per end user device, while apps run without a snag.
Recently the Vail Police Department and Fire Department were added to the network. With these applications acting as an anchor to build out the mmWave network, additional use cases have arisen. Applications such as connecting freeway signs, temporary event connectivity, and the backbone serving as a backup should fiber cuts occur are all applications not originally thought of but are now running on this network.
Shortly after project deployment, an optic fiber was damaged when a heavy-duty tractor drove down the main walkway. Luckily, Jim Selby from Aspen Wireless immediately suggested deploying a Siklu EH-600T, link which he had kept as a spare to resolve communications. Within a few hours after site approval, the link was deployed and communication restored.
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