Background of Qatar Petroleum Industry
Qatar is now in a festive mood with the FIFA World Cup 2022, which is scheduled to take place from 20 November to 18 December. It has been a long since Qatar hosted such a grand event, so all sectors of the country are now preparing for receiving football players and visitors from around the globe.
It is widely known that Qatar thrives on its petroleum industry. Qatar Fuel (WOQOD) is an oil and gas company that is exclusively responsible for the distribution of fuel needs within this country. It owns over 100 petro stations across the country, serving 3 million residents. With a lot more vehicles running around during the World Cup, petro stations are expecting growing business while also concerned about whether existing networking facilities would be sufficient for the continuous operation of each site. What if cameras, POS or other hand-held devices suddenly lose connection?
Although fiber connection has been installed in each petro station, in face of such huge prospective traffic, the company is seeking a backup plan that offers uninterrupted, always-online connectivity.
Challenges
- The 100+ petrol stations are scattered around the country, each constantly receiving visitors from around the world. Thus, fast and reliable connectivity for POS machines and other handheld devices for staff on site is a top priority.
- Traditional connectivity relies on wired Internet access, and link failure can lead to business disruption and create losses for petrol stations.
- Without enough IT professionals on each site, in the case of problems with onsite devices like fuel nozzles and liquid meters, the customer has to send technicians to the site, which is inefficient for operation and maintenance.
- The fueling process and staff operation on-site need to be monitored, but video data transmission often disrupts or delays due to insufficient bandwidth.
Solution
InHand Networks helps address the WOQOD’s challenges with its Cloud-Managed Network Solutions, including edge router ER805 and SaaS service InCloud Manager.
At each petro station, fuel nozzles, liquid meters and POSs are connected to the ER805 through high-speed Wi-Fi, enabling fast transactions and monitoring of onsite operation status. Onsite cameras are connected to the ER805 via Gigabit Ethernet ports. On the other side, collected data from the site are then sent to the InCloud Manager for analysis and management. High-bandwidth, low-latency 5G networks of the ER805 ensure stable data transmission, especially video data, making it easier for technicians to monitor vehicle movement and staff operation.
The InCloud Manager offers IT staff a visualization interface to monitor the network status of each station in real-time, identify problems accurately, and quickly deal with network failure. They can also remotely maintain the cameras and nozzles of each station anytime anywhere.
Why Choose the 5G SD-WAN Edge Router?
Stay at the forefront of the ultra-fast 5G era
The ER805 5G cellular router delivers unprecedented high-speed, low-latency connectivity to onsite applications, especially devices that consume large band-width (such as cameras). Transmission of videos and other large-size data are made easy, giving customers lag-free networking experience.
Multiple redundancy mechanisms ensure “always-on” connectivity
The ER805 features multiple uplinks and 600Mbps firewall throughput, applicable to most business scenarios. Dual-SIM failover and failover between wired and cellular networks reduce the risk of network failure, making reliable connectivity for WOQOD across stations.
Remote maintenance made easier
The InCloud Manager enables remote deployment and management of routers without IT staff on site. With the cloud connection function, technicians can build a VPN tunnel to the station within a few minutes, carry out out-of-band management for devices behind the routers (such as POS, cameras, nozzles, etc.) anytime, anywhere without changing existing network architecture.
Intuitive management and diagnostics
The InCloud Manager offers multi-dimensional visualization interfaces, giving IT staff more insights into the network operation status. Rich diagnostics functions including tcpdump, traceroute, ICMP, etc. help IT staff quickly locate problems and shoot trouble.
