NetVanta Routers Enable Cost-effective VoIP Migration
The Hutchinson Credit Union has a long and rich heritage of serving the people of Hutchinson and central Kansas. Established in 1948, it has experienced significant growth over the years, including the addition of several new branch locations. As Hutchinson Credit Union prepared to open yet another branch location, the benefits of transitioning to a Voice over IP (VoIP) solution soon became apparent.
VoIP Simplifies Work Flow
The migration to VoIP required the credit union to have a robust and dependable network infrastructure in place. This resulted in the evaluation and purchase of new network hardware including access routers.
Hutchinson IT Manager Zack Clobes explained that the addition of VoIP service mandated that the credit union have routers with QoS capabilities because of the priority that must be placed on voice traffic. After much investigation, Clobes decided to deploy NetVanta 3305 and 3205 routers at the credit union's host and branch locations.
“When we started looking at devices that offered QoS, Cisco naturally surfaced to the top, but they were extremely expensive,” Clobes said. “We have other ADTRAN equipment in our network and soon began looking at the NetVanta routers. We were surprised to find that they offered the QoS functionality we needed at a fraction of the cost of the Cisco solution.”
Using a VoIP server at the corporate host, Hutchinson has IP phones throughout their network and at each of the branches. “The big advantage of the IP system is three digit dialing between branches. I simply dial a three digit extension and I am talking to someone across town,” said Clobes. “It also allows us to have quick turn up for new locations. We just plug in the IP phones, and we are ready to go.”
Clobes noted that he did not realize how essential QoS was until he started making daily backups, resulting large data transfers across his network. Every morning approximately 10 GB of data is pushed between the Credit Union's branches and corporate. “With this type of large data transfers, we depend on QoS to prioritize voice traffic and make sure customer calls and credit union transactions continue uninterrupted,” he said.
CLI Makes Installation Easy
Clobes noted that both he and Hutchinson Network Administrator Dusty McMannis felt ADTRAN’s Command Line Interface (CLI) was an added benefit. They found the NetVanta CLI easy to use, making installation simple. “The CLI fit well for me,” said Clobes. “I am a programmer at heart, and found it very easy to use. Most vendors offer a Web interface that is very limited, ADTRAN's CLI let us do everything we needed to.”
NetVanta Selection Results in Cost Savings
Clobes noted that upon further evaluation the NetVanta 3000 Series routers had all the features they were looking for at a price that was far less than the competition. “The cost difference was enormous,” he said. “The NetVanta 3000 units were around $1,000 each fully configured, where the Cisco boxes were $5,000 to $8,000 and would have still required a firmware upgrade, which meant purchasing a hardware maintenance contract at an additional expense.”
NetVanta Features Pave the Way for Future Enhancements
In addition to using the NetVanta QoS functionality for VoIP applications, the availability of Virtual Private Networking (VPN) offers great opportunity for future network enhancement Clobes explained. “We are looking at opening additional branches within the next year,” he said. “We are currently evaluating VPN as a backup solution via our high-speed Internet connection. In addition, we are examining the possibility of migrating to VPN as the primary connection between the branch and host. We like the fact that the NetVanta products provide that kind of flexibility for us.”
