Mole Valley Farmers

We brought in a new, upgraded WAN solution that uses Cisco Meraki SD-WAN technology to enable easy growth of the existing network and to propel Mole Valley’s IT infrastructure into the future. This solution would also link sites in even the hardest-to-reach geographical locations.

The introduction of software definition within the routing means all connections are available at any one time, and the decision on which is used is done dynamically on a packet-by-packet basis, taking account of bandwidth latency and jitter at that precise moment. This means that the network is inherently resilient and can failover between connections even midway through a voice call without interruption, which was demonstrated at our workshop facility before the solution was signed off.

Our data centre has remained a central part of the new solution, as well as being the operations hub for our own ethernet cloud service. The data centre also provides centralised breakout to the internet over multi-homed bandwidth and a direct interconnect to Gamma, providing SIP call traffic, which is then distributed over the network to individual branches. Mole Valley is assured of a fully secure and resilient data network capable of routing voice with full end-to-end call quality as QoS is assured.

Additionally, multiple leased lines of varying bandwidths create a high throughput resilient network. Up to 1Gbps ethernet access direct circuits connect the two HQ offices and data centre in triangulation. This core leased line design gives Mole Valley the ability to host services at each of the three locations to maximise redundancy.

On top of that, an MPLS network with DSL tails was provided to many of Mole Valley’s shop locations. Private DSL is also utilised on a failover basis for larger shops and offices as an alternative to the primary leased lines.

Because of the SD-WAN functionality, non-wired technologies like 4G are also used both for resilience and in locations when new acquisitions require instant connectivity during the deployment phase.

Internet access is channelled via the data centre meaning that there are a reduced number of penetration points which simplifies security, compliance testing and protection against malicious attacks. End-user web access is then proxied and protected by Cisco ASA PCI-compliant failover firewalls.