Connecting a Drillship to Her Headquarter Using LTE
Offshore ultra-Deepwater drilling company, Pacific Drilling, is one of the youngest and most technologically advanced fleets in the industry. They are committed to delivering the safest, most efficient, most reliable Deepwater drilling performance.
Challenge
In order to maintain connectivity, Pacific Drilling requires a recommendation of the best solution for a drillship that needs to access the company (NYSE:PACD) Enterprise Network, with the need for high data usage across cellular (roughly 1TB/mth). Also, to ensure that the solution will offer low latency performance to enable all their applications (VOIP, Visio conferencing, remote maintenance and data historian) and advanced cybersecurity policies.
Solution
TECHfirm Canarias team recommended an LTEA cellular solution comprising of Pepwave MAX HD4, and two extra MAX BR1s IP67 to maximize the signal reception from the shore and to reduce cable run. Meanwhile, a FusionHub virtual impliance has been setup within the customer data center. Additionally, 6 x Multi-IMSI capable SIM cards were also delivered to ensure a maximum of flexibility (600+ networks available).
Result
Pacific Drilling is now able to use the service in Las Palmas and in the Gulf of Mexico with first-class performances matching perfectly with their fleet digitalization ambitions.
- Bandwidth aggregation between 6 SIM cards (running on four different local providers)
- latency management to exclude from the SD-WAN a connection which latency is higher than 150ms
- use of 256-bit AES encryption VPN to match advanced Cybersecurity policies
Deployment
(Before upgrade)
- allow bandwidth bonding
- latency management
(After upgrade)
- first-class performances matching perfectly with their fleet digitalization ambitions.
- maximize the signal reception from the shore
- reduce cable run
- SpeedFusion end-point at the data center