We try to be transparent in everything we do, here at Country Connect. Our customers enjoy the fastest broadband available – no speed limits. We don’t impose silly bandwidth caps, and we don’t have small print written in an ancient lost language. So let’s talk about the Super Fast Wireless Technologies we use to bring super fast wireless broadband straight to your home.
Background
Country Connect benefits from over 50 years of combined network expertise. Our technical team have built enterprise grade networks for some of the world’s largest companies, where reliability and speed are crucial. You don’t build half-baked networks once you’re used to working to government standards!
Options
When our founders built the network we all know and love today, they had a decision to make; which manufacturer’s technology would be best?
It’s always best to stick to one hardware and software provider when you’re building something which has to be reliable. That means making the wrong decision on day one would have repercussions for years into the future.
Cloud Management
The network we were to deploy had to have cloud management. Here at Country Connect, we’re no stranger to hosting servers, making sure they’re reliable and secure. We’re more than happy to run this type of management software in our own private cloud, as well as being able to take advantage of public cloud environments.
Our team is based from our office in Llancayo, but we need the ability to maintain our network from wherever out technicians happen to be. Whether that’s from the middle of a field where our latest repeater station is being installed. or just at home on the weekend. So whatever we chose had to include a cloud management application.
Meraki
Cisco Meraki wireless hardware and their bundled cloud management suite was considered. Meraki were bought by Cisco back in December 2012, and since then, their product has come a long way. Their cloud management dashboard offers a huge level of control and customisation.
But on the down side, each device needs it’s own software license before it will do anything at all. These licenses are very expensive, and must be renewed every year. This means high operating costs for the network, which would ultimately have to be covered by our customers. That wasn’t the right solution for our vision of making rural broadband cheap, reliable and fast.
Unifi
Unifi is a product by Ubiquity, and they’re a global company which have enjoyed explosive growth in the past few years, due to the awesome networking kit they make!
They take a slightly different approach to the cloud management dashboard, in that they let you host it yourself. This means we have complete autonomy over our network controllers. It also cuts costs, since we’re already used to hosting super reliable server infrastructure, so we don’t need to pay another company to keep the lights on for us.
We use Ubiquiti’s Unifi network kit throughout our whole network. From the big network switches and routers at the core of our network, to the relay links spread right throughout South Wales. We even give our customers high quality Unifi wireless routers to use at home or work.
To find out more about our whole home broadband, check out our blog post about mesh networks. There you will find out how our whole home broadband provides a strong and reliable Internet connection anywhere at home or work.