More Brazil IP Communications Stories

Aruba Networks reportedly announced Santos-Brasil of South America has deployed Aruba’s all weather outdoor Aruba Wi-Fi network across its nearly 600,000 square meter Tecon de Santos container terminal at the Port of Santos.

Officials at the company claimed that the complexity, quantity and requirement of internet connected devices had clearly outgrown the existing Proxim Network, and Aruba was selected after careful market research and taking feed-back from one or two un-named of Aruba’s existing customers. Aruba authorized partner Synergy Tecnologia deployed the network at the Tecon de Santos container terminal.

"Our legacy network consisted of stand-alone access points, all running one common SSID, and equipped with high gain directional antennas," said Ricardo Abbruzzini Filho, IT Manager at Santo-Brasil. "The lack of coordination among access points, coupled with coverage gaps resulting from the directional antennas, resulted in low network availability, high levels of network congestion, and limited roaming capability. While state of the art at the time of installation, the Proxim system had run its course."

Aruba said that Santos-Brasil operates three berths, 16 ship-to-shore container cranes, one mobile harbor crane, 34 rubber-tired gantry cranes, 23 reach stackers at the port, and has more than 500 Psion Teklogix (News - Alert) ruggedized handheld and vehicular computers to and from which mission critical data is transferred for smooth, uninterrupted and profitable logistics operations to take place.

"The technical documentation, network simulations, and reference customers provided by Synergy (News - Alert) Tecnologia were sufficient for Aruba to be selected without a pilot deployment," said Filho.

The company claims that the proven capabilities and features of its AP-85 Outdoor Access Point (News - Alert) and Adaptive Radio Management technology were the critical factors finally clinched the deal, and eventually together with its Aruba ANT-90 outdoor dual-band, down-tilt omni-directional diversity antennas, Synergy Tecnologia was able to demo the fail safe, near zero latency and always on solution that Santos-Brasil was in urgent need of.

Officials said that Aruba and Synergy installed access points and antennas on 40 meter poles to complete the outer infrastructure of the network, and two Aruba 3200 Mobility Controllers were used at the central hub to manage the entire system with Aruba's policy enforcement firewall and wireless intrusion detection system to guarantee security.

Aruba says its AP-85 has dual, high powered radios that deliver up to 200mW (23dBm) for wide area coverage, weatherproof enclosure and ATEX Zone 2 safety rating, temperature rating from -30 to +55 degrees Centigrade, and front side mounted high intensity data, signal, are easily seen from a distance for users to check RF signal and link alignment and checking status.

"Aruba's outdoor solutions offer best in class wireless coverage for trouble free roaming, and client to core encryption to protect the integrity of data, voice, and video transmissions," said Fernando Lobo, Head of Aruba South America. "Our 3D antenna modeling and coverage tools take the guess work out of selecting and situating antennas. Whether you need to cover a massive food storage warehouse, blanket a container port, or need FIPS 140-2 secure coverage of an airfield, Aruba offers a wide array of access points, antennas, and tools to make the project successful."

A recent Dell’Oro Group report titled, “First Quarter 2009 Wireless LAN Report,” said that Aruba holds the third spot worldwide.