Background

Mission critical workforces and vehicles in fields of law enforcement, fire fighters, ambulance, public transit and rescue teams are often working in remotely hazardous areas where network signals might be poor. However, they have become highly dependent on wireless networks in order to perform their works right. For instance, ambulance staff needs wireless networks to send the video images of the patient to the dispatching hospitals in order to prepare the right treatments. If they experience poor signal or interruption to their network communication, they cannot perform certain duties.

Today, mission critical workforces frequently spend significant amount of time with their vehicles and require various devices to stay connected and perform their duties. Therefore, it is essential to establish a reliable multi-network communication platform for mission critical vehicles to ensure the bandwidth for critical file transfers.

Requirements

Since mission critical vehicles cannot risk being disconnected, the reliable platform shall provide multiple network standards including 3G, 4G/LTE, Wi-Fi and WAN to meet various communication needs. In case of network failure, the platform must support failover links as backup plan for signal dead-point to assure communications between vehicles and control centers are consistent. If a network link is experiencing outage, other links can recover the traffic routing and conduct load-balancing.

Several technological requirements are to be met in order to provide a reliable communication platform for first responders:

Multiple Network Connectivity

The platform must provide various networking I/Os including RJ-45 ports and PoE ports to connect with wireless access points to function as Wi-Fi hot spot and IP cameras for around-the-vehicle surveillance.

Wireless Connectivity by Sockets

To enable 3G/4G/LTE wireless network, the platform shall be accompanied by mini-PCIe sockets compliant with the required standards so that wireless module cards can be applied. Once the modules are installed, the platform will serve as a powerful gateway and router.

High Processing Capability

A high-performance architecture integrating server-grade processor and DDR4 memory can accelerate security measures like VPN and encryption.

Lanner Solutions

For optimal performance and flexibility, Lanner’s server-grade modular network appliance NCA-5510 can serve as mission critical communication platform. NCA-5510 comes with Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3/v4 series CPUs, DDR4 memories, multi-purpose module slots for RJ-45 LAN modules, PoE modules, or mini-PCIe carrier module for wireless connectivity compliant with 3G, 4G/LTE or Wi-Fi.

The modular and scalable NCA-5510 can offer multi-network connectivity and act as a failover or backup link. In this scenario, two of NCA-5510 ‘s module slots can be installed by two Lanner’s NCS2-MINIPCIE carrier modules that offer 2 mini-PCIe slots each. Thus, there is a total of 4 mini-PCIe slots for wireless module cards in 3G, 4G/LTE and Wi-Fi specifications. Once all the modules are installed, NCA-5510 can function as a powerful router and gateway in area network as well as in control center.

The other module slots of NCA-5510 can be used for Lanner’s NCS2-POE401 modules, which provide 4 PoE ports each. The PoE ports can be connected with IP surveillance cameras or wireless access points so that a Wi-Fi hotspot is available for mobile vehicles.

With the uses of multiple networking modules, NCA-5510 can ensure reliable network communications for first responders by providing multiple network channels to function as failover links. These links serve as backup to resume communication between vehicles and office, as well as recovery and load balancing to ensure uninterrupted connections.

Besides failover links, NCA-5510 is empowered by high-performance, server-grade Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3/v4 series CPUs and DDR4 memories to run VPN and multi-network security measures, such as encryption in case a hacker attempts to interrupt the link.

Featured Products


NCA-5510

1U High Performance x86 Network Appliance for Enterprise Firewall, UTM and IPS.

CPU Intel® Xeon® E5-2600 v3/v4 series CPU (Haswell/Broadwell-EP)
Chipset Intel C612 Chipset

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NCS2-MINIPCIE01A

Wireless NIC Module for Lanner x86 Network Appliances

CPU None
Chipset None

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