Police Force Invests in Network Management Solution
Dorset Police has responsibility for a resident population approaching 700,000 people,
spread over 1000 square miles with 170 miles of coastline. It employs 2500 people and operates
from 40 sites. Over the last 18 months the Police force has undertaken a project to replace
network devices from numerous manufacturers with an end to end Cisco solution. Whilst this has
improved the reliability of the network, it has also thrown up some challenges for Andy Davis,
Network Analyst.
"Previously to the network upgrades, we relied on users calling the help desk to advise us
of problems on the network. With such an investment, user expectations were rightfully high
and it was clear that we needed to improve our management capabilities. All servers are based
at our head office site, so in the event of WAN links going down it could create some serious
problems".
Davis wanted to investigate a management solution that would help to reduce downtime by
alerting him when utilization thresholds are approached, or when an error is reported. This
would act as an early warning system and allow the organization to deploy engineer expertise
swiftly and to the right area. As well as looking at servers and network devices, Davis also
wanted to monitor WAN links and ISDN backups.
Three solutions were considered, including Cisco's own CiscoWorks platform, but only one
had the level of alerting that was desired.
"Having used Castle Rock's SNMPc product in a previous role, I downloaded an evaluation
version to see if it could solve our problems. Setup was intuitive and I quickly configured
the system so that it would email me whenever there was a problem or a potential problem
on the network."
UK Castle Rock partner Teneo was on hand to offer documentation and assistance throughout
the period of the evaluation. Having deployed SNMPc Enterprise version 6, the Police force
is now using the Castle Rock product to provide capacity planning information. Creating link
usage reports offers critical intelligence on how effectively WAN connections are being
utilized. This gives the force the ability to make informed decisions about links that can
be upgraded or downgraded, ensuring that budgets are used in a cost effective manner.
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