Carpenter Oak – Point-to-Point Rural Internet
Rural Internet | Internet Connectivity
As pioneers of exceptional timber engineering, Carpenter Oak creates truly unique frames. Their main yard was established in rural Devon in 1995 after the expansion of its Wiltshire business. One of the most pressing issues they faced was poor internet connectivity while trying to migrate to a cloud system and moving its internal IT structure to G suite.
Challenge
Carpenter Oak tried numerous different but unsuccessful solutions including:
- standard ADSL & bonded ADSL
- FTTC from the local village
- investigation on EFM and leased lines.
However, due to the excessive construction charges from Openreach this method was not feasible for Carpenter Oak.
The only option that offered a semi-stable solution was a single 4G modem that all site traffic would run through. Still, contention to their local mobile mast and download caps were still issues facing them.
“Very rural part of Devon and in the last 20 years we’ve been here our reliance on IT has increased massively to the point where we are unable to function with ADSL connection for our CRM and backup on data. Spoke to Grapevine and worked up a solution based on bringing up a solution across the valley and installed in a few days and allowed us to stay here rather than an industrial estate.”
Paul Semmings- Design & IT manager at Carpenter Oaks
Solution
To resolve this issue, Grapevine proposed a point to point wireless solution. Following connectivity checks, they figured that the property was able to get FTTC 80:20 with a clear line of sight from across the 2.5KM river- this was seen as the perfect location.
Grapevine installed 2x 80:20 FTTC through the house. Then using a wireless point to point link to send this connectivity 2.5 km though the air and up to the yard.
Additionally, they installed two multi WAN Peplink routers, one at the house and one at the yard. These were used so that traffic would load-balance across the two FTTC connections at the house. Meanwhile, the other Peplink would connect the point to point link on WAN1 with the existing 4G modem on WAN2 for failover should there be any issues with the wireless link. The great thing is that this solution brings so much built-in resilience while at the same time delivering great connectivity at low prices.
Results
Carpenter Oaks’s Devon Yard projects have acted as a springboard for the company’s growth and has increased in capacity and staff over the years. This may not have been possible without the fast internet and 4G resilience backup built in.
“Improved internet connectivity on speed and reliability have enabled us to have a cloud based telephone system… Enable us to stay in rural locations without having to move elsewhere.”
Paul Semmings- Design & IT manager at Carpenter Oaks
Deployment
Balance One Core
2x Balance One Core (+high gain antenna)
- Deployed one at the house and one at the yard
- Load-balance across the two FTTC connections
- Using failover to maintain the network resilience
