Download the Case Study PDF - Products Deployed, GWN7602, GWN7630, GWN7664, GWN7664LR, UCM6304 IP PBX, WP810, WP820
Gazi Medical College Hospital (GMCH) is the first private medical College in Khulna, Division of Bangladesh, established in 1986. Its former name was Khulna Surgical and Medical Hospital. Now it is a 500-bed hospital alongside a reputable medical college with 11 different academic departments. It is located in Sonadanga, Khulna, and is half a kilometer away from the main city bus station. It is affiliated with Rajshahi University as well as Sheikh Hasina Medical University, Khulna under the Faculty of Medicine.
The Problem
Previously GMCH was using multiple brands of routers such as TP-Link, Netgear, and Asus for their networking and Wi-Fi setup, but had faced a lot of limitations that hindered the internet connectivity throughout the medical college.
Scalability: TP-Link, Netgear, and Asus’s routers are typically designed for small-to-medium-sized businesses and not for larger environments. When there are many client devices connected, the routers struggle to handle the traffic. This results in performance degradation and poor network connection.
Processing Power: The routers deployed had numerous limitations when it came to processing capacity, primarily because they were not enterprise-grade routers. Large environments such as GMCH require routers with more processing power to handle complex routing, firewall rules, and Quality of Service (QoS).
Limited Feature Sets: While TP-Link, Netgear, and Asus’s routers offer a range of features suitable for home and small office use, they lack advanced enterprise-level features required for larger environments such as GMCH. These features could include robust VLAN support, comprehensive access controls, advanced routing protocols, and in-depth network monitoring.
Lack of Centralized Management: There was no centralized management platform in place to manage the TP-Link, Netgear, and Asus routers which caused a lot of issues, and individually managing each router became a long and cumbersome task. The GMCH team required a centralized management tool or network controllers to streamline configuration, monitoring, and troubleshooting tasks.
Redundancy and Failover: In larger networking deployments such as GMCH, redundancy, and failover mechanisms are vital for maintaining networking uptime. The TP-Link, Asus, and Netgear routers did not offer advanced redundancy options, which are required for deployments of this size.
Limited Security: Robust security features were crucial to protect sensitive data. While the current routers did offer basic security measures, they lacked key features like advanced threat detection, intrusion prevention, and content filtering capabilities, which is crucial in a college deployment.
Support and Documentation: Enterprise-Grade deployments usually are equipped with dedicated technical support and comprehensive documentation, which was not available for the current routers.
Performance and Throughput: The college had heavy and variable network traffic, and the TP-Link, Netgear, and Asus routers struggled to provide consistent performance and high throughput across all devices. This became a huge issue for the college where tasks like video conferencing, streaming, large file-sharing and other important administrative tasks were heavily impacted.
Customization and Flexibility: Enterprise deployments often require a high degree of customization and flexibility. The deployed routers possessed limitations in terms of custom firmware options or advanced configuration settings.
Long-Term Reliability: Enterprise-Grade networking and Wi-Fi equipment is typically designed for long-term reliability and the ability to operate continuously with little to no limitations. Small-scale routers such as the routers deployed at GMCH were not robust enough to handle the demand of large networking setups for a long period of time.
For large deployments, especially deployments in educational institutions like medical colleges, it is necessary to choose enterprise-grade networking solutions from reputable vendors that specialize in providing reliable and scalable network infrastructure. These solutions are designed to address the specific challenges and requirements of larger networks and can offer better performance, scalability, and support.
Provided by Summit Communications LTD.
Summit Communications Limited is one of the largest International Terrestrial Cable (ITC) service providers in Bangladesh providing one-fifth of the total industry bandwidth. By ensuring 99.99% uptime, SComm has secured one of the top positions in the telecommunications sector of Bangladesh as an ITC operator. SComm ITC offers seamless services to its customers ensuring lower latency and uptime not only in the domestic but also International NLD segment. SComm ensures end-to-end network at 99.99% uptime also which creates a difference from other service providers in Bangladesh.
The Need
Due to all the reasons highlighted in the previous section, GMCH were in desperate need to replace their outdated deployment with an up-to-date Wi-Fi access point solution. The following points below highlights the need for the previous solution to be replaced:
Scalability and Coverage: In certain areas of the campus with a higher user density or complex building layouts, Wi-Fi access points can be positioned strategically to give broad and targeted wireless coverage. This helps prevent Wi-Fi dead spots and guarantees a stable connection.
Higher Performance: When it comes to handling many concurrent users and devices, dedicated access points offer greater performance. This is essential in a medical college where students, employees, and instructors use Wi-Fi for a variety of purposes, such as research, online learning, data-intensive work, and large file sharing.
Load Distribution: A single point of congestion that frequently happens with a single router can be avoided by using access points to spread network traffic in a more efficient manner. Load balancing keeps the network’s performance at its peak.
Roaming and Seamless Connectivity: Students, teachers, and visitors can roam through the campus without facing connectivity issues owing to the ability of access points to offer seamless roaming. This is particularly crucial in a deployment like GMCH or any other college deployment where people are often on the move.
Flexibility and Customization: The deployment of access points gives the installation team the ability to adjust and fine-tune the network configuration to suit a plethora of requirements that a college would need. It has features such as Quality of Service (QoS) settings, complex security features, and the ability to implement various SSIDs (Service Set Identifiers) for different user groups.
Centralized Management: Through a network controller or cloud-based management software, access points can be managed centrally from one platform. The entire Wi-Fi networking setup can now be configured, monitored, and troubleshooted easily via a single interface, which was not the case with the traditional router setup.
Redundancy and Reliability: Network redundancy and greater dependability are ensured by using multiple access points with failover mechanisms. There will be less network instability if multiple access points can maintain connectivity if another access point is facing some issues.
Security and Segmentation: By utilizing a large network of access points, it gives the ability to construct network segmentation using VLANs to divide various user groups and departments. By isolating traffic and limiting access to important parts of the network, this helps in improving network security.
Wi-Fi 6 Technology: Modern Wi-Fi access points, such as those that are equipped with Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), provide better performance, efficiency, and support for new technologies. This helps in network futureproofing as equipment and software develop with time.
Cost Effective: It is more cost-effective to strategically deploy access points than buying numerous expensive routers, which was done for the previous deployment. Access points enable network scalability based on actual demand.
In environments such as a medical college, where dependable and high-performance connectivity is crucial for academic and research operations, employing access points in conjunction with a router offers a more robust, scalable, and effective Wi-Fi solution. It enables the network to be customized to the unique requirements of the organization and guarantees a better user experience for everyone on campus.
Why Grandstream
A mix of Grandstream’s Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 access points were deployed in various areas of the Gazi Medical College and Hospital along with a UCM IP PBX and Grandstream’s WP Wi-Fi Cordless Phones. A total of 30 GWN7602’s, 20 GWN7630’s, 6 GWN7664’s and 4 GWN7664LR’s were installed across the campus to provide seamless network connectivity in all areas of the college. In addition to this, Grandstream’s UCM6304 IP PBX was deployed, which supports 2000 extensions, along with 20 WP810’s and 5 WP820’s.
Cost-Effective: Grandstream’s access points are great options for small to large-sized scale deployments because they are viewed as cost-effective options whilst providing enterprise performance and reliability.
Easy to Manage: Grandstream’s access points often provide intuitive management interfaces that make it simple for network managers to configure, deploy, and monitor for any network issues post deployment.
Centralized Cloud Management: GWN.Cloud offers cloud-based management features that make it possible to remotely configure, monitor, and update the firmware for numerous access points via a single interface.
Wi-Fi 6: Wi-Fi 6 provides faster performance and better support for managing many devices at once, making it ideal for a college deployment. The GWN7664 and GWN7664LR access points that were deployed offer Wi-Fi 6. Integration with
Grandstream IP PBX System: Grandstream’s access points provide smooth integration and interoperability with the Grandstream’s UCM6304 IP-PBX system and wireless phones that were deployed which was the WP810 and WP820.
Reliability: Grandstream’s products have a reputation for being dependable and steady in performance, which is essential for upholding constant and uninterrupted network connection.
Wide Range of Models: Grandstream provides a wide range of different access point models that are made to accommodate various settings and usage scenarios, giving network operators the option to pick from a variety of models that is evidenced from this deployment, which includes the GWN7602, GWN7630, GWN7664 and GWN7664LR.
SSIDs: Grandstream’s access points provide network segmentation for various user groups or applications while upholding network security by supporting numerous SSIDs. This is an essential feature when it comes to a college deployment that has different users like students, faculty, and visitors.
Security: Grandstream access points frequently have advanced security features like WPA3 encryption and MAC address filtering to assist with safeguarding the network and the network users.
Guest Network Support: Grandstream’s access points support deep customization for guest networks, which allows visitors of the college connect to the internet at the campus without having access to the primary network’s resources. This is important as it protects the sensitive data that is being shared.
Quality of Service (QoS): Grandstream’s access points have Quality of Service (QoS) settings, which ensures that crucial programs have proper network connectivity along with lag-free performance.
PoE Support: All Grandstream access points are equipped with Power over Ethernet (PoE) Support, which makes installation easier and eliminates the need for extra power outlets.
Sleek Design: Grandstream access points have a clean and discreet style with a white casing, making them appropriate for a variety of indoor settings as they can easily blend into any environment and a variety of outdoor settings as well.
Captive Portal and Hotspot Features: Grandstream’s access points have a captive portal feature that enables network administrators to create personalized splash pages for guest authentication, data gathering, and user engagement.
Competitors Considered
There were different competitors that offered their access point solutions to GCMH such as Unifi, Netgear and TP-Link. However, after careful consideration the team at GCMH decided to go ahead with Grandstream’s access points primarily owing to the brand reputation, wide range of access points and the cost effectiveness that the Grandstream brand has.
The Result
The administration team at GAZI Medical College is extremely satisfied with the networking deployment. There was a massive requirement to upgrade the traditional router setup that they initially had, and Grandstream’s modern access point setup has aided the college in revamping their network setup. Now, the management at GMCH along with students and staff no longer have any issues with network performance and have few complaints to the IT team at the college. GMCH also uses GWN.Cloud as their deployment controller, allowing them to manage the GWN7602, GWN7630, GWN7664 and GWN7664LR from a single interface and from any location in the world.
Grandstream’s Wireless IP Phones (WP810 and WP820) are used throughout the hospital by all the hospital staff. These phones provide seamless Wi-Fi roaming to ensure constant communication, and the access points deployed delivers large coverage ranges for these devices.
The GAZI Medical College Board of Trustees has already decided to include Grandstream’s access points in a brand-new facility that is in development. They strongly believe that Grandstream’s access points are the only brand of access Points available in the Bangladesh market at a decent price while also providing top-of-the-line quality and reliability.