Cisco Cisco 4G LTE Wireless WAN Enhanced High-speed WAN Interface Card Information Guide

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“With our own 4G hotspot, we can isolate our staff from the wireless congestion you get on a tradeshow floor,”

says Robb.

“The private networking capabilities of Verizon Wireless give them a secure, always-on, reliable connection for

everything from email and browsing to WebEx meetings and video chats. In effect, they can ‘virtualize’ themselves

and their offices, without even going over the Internet.”

Typically, Robb and his team employ a Cisco 819 ISR, combined with Verizon’s LTE services, as a back-up for

core services, including routing, voice, and video, for the duration of an event. “Tradeshow-in-a-box” solutions also

enable Robb and his team to plan for the unplanned and adapt to the unexpected. At the recent Interop

tradeshow, for example, an important customer asked for a private meeting and demo with Cisco technical

marketing engineers off the tradeshow floor. The only challenge was finding a meeting room large enough to

accommodate the group, because Robb and his team had a ready-made way of establishing a high-speed

network on the spot: a Cisco 1900 Series ISR equipped with a 4G Wireless WAN EHWIC combined, again, with

an economical short-term Verizon LTE services package.

The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is another event where Cisco normally “goes big,” as

Robb describes it, with 500 or more employees in attendance. At CES, however, the action for Cisco is not on the

tradeshow floor, but in several meeting rooms. “We’ll reserve three or four floors of one of the large hotels, move

out all the furniture, and turn every guest room into a demo room,” says Robb.

While they ordinarily use the hotel’s built-in copper network for connectivity in the demo rooms, they’ll sometimes

need additional bandwidth for spontaneous demos requested by customers. For those occasions, also, quick-to-

deploy, easy-to-use Cisco 4G LTE solutions come in handy.

Business Results

Since late 2012, Doug Robb and the Cisco events infrastructure services team have saved as much as $4000 per

event by deploying Cisco 4G LTE solutions to meet or supplement specific tradeshow networking bandwidth

requirements. But cost savings actually play a very small role in this story.

Having portable, plug-and-play, high-speed, secure “tradeshow-in-a-box” network solutions empowers Robb and

his team with greater control and flexibility. “We have productivity from the moment we arrive,” he says. “We can

build our infrastructure, test it, and have time to fix what’s broken.

“We also have a viable backup solution if there’s a delay in getting a cable drop from the venue staff or another

vendor, or if there’s a glitch in one of our wired network connections during the run of the show,” he continues. It

all adds up to peace of mind that they’re ready for any contingency.

It also makes other Cisco employees who work the events happier and more productive.