*Update* Ronald McDonald House - Memphis
Since 2006 when the first facility-wide installation of a unified Wi-Fi network at the Ronald McDonald House in Memphis, Tennessee was completed, the system has seen extensive use. "In fact, the network saw considerabaly more traffic than expected" stated John Fleskes, CEO of Cetacea. "The users on the wi-fi system just kept needing more." Originally the system was designed to handle use by the house staff and what was intended as a "few hot spots" where families could login and get email. Today the use is constant. Staff and email are just a small part of the traffic seen. Intense research, distance schooling, gaming and support chats are also now part of the "norm" at the RMH-Memphis.
Cetacea engineers went back to work and designed an upgraded network that should suffice everyones needs for years to come. After a period of analysis, our engineers determined that a central point of control was required to allow simple addition of new users while giving their network administrator the tools he required to maintain such a critical system. Ultimately deciding on a what changes were to be made, the RMH got a little more than a network facelift. We added a large BSC-2200 network controller provided by the great people at Bluesocket. Also we added five Cisco brand ethernet switches and eighteen access points housed on Cetacea's patented ERMASystems® antenna panels. Racks were installed to house the added equipment in the main server room and two secondary IDF's. We added all new gigabit interconnects and just for fun we threw in a new Dell server.
Installations were handled by the FieldOps teams at Cetacea. Configurations were done by Rozell Henderson, RMH Network Administrator.
Update 7/10
With all the new capabilities available at the Ronald McDonald House-Memphis being enjoyed by guest and staff one critical component was still missing, bandwidth. The added capabilities brought on new demands and the current system was already fully taxed even before we began this latest round of upgrades.
Today Cetacea is proud to announce they are the providers of a new 50Mbps Business-Class DSL service to the RMH-Memphis. This service will be provided to the RMH indefinitely and completely free.
This amount of bandwidth has the capacity to handle all current traffic, added hospital services, gaming and video while leaving room for every added user to experience near instant response from the internet. Now emails can turn into live video chats, spreadsheets become real-time distance learning and streams of information replace waiting for access.
Note from Cetacea CEO John Fleskes,
This latest upgrade nearly concludes our initial vision for what current technology could do for the Ronald McDonald House - Memphis. It has taken several years to acquire the knowledge of their requirements and determine the best course to fruition. Without the gracious patience of the staff and families at the RMH, this would not have been possible. We thank them all for their assistance in answering our many questions and allowing us to probe into their daily routines. We'd like to also thank the two four-year-olds which so cleverly assisted us in building our user experience. Guys, come see us when you’re 21, we may have a job for you!
