Hope Hotel Boosts Internet Performance on Busy WiFi Network

FALLS CHURCH, Va., Oct. 19, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- The Hope Hotel in Dayton, Ohio has been housing military personnel, students and government contractors since 1990, when an act of Congress initiated it as the first privately owned hotel operating on a US Air Force Base.  With its adjoining Richard C. Holbrooke Conference Center, the Hope Hotel has expanded into business, leisure travel and events, putting a heavy demand on their technology infrastructure. In particular, the guest WiFi was stressed and customers were demanding better Internet.

General Manager George Bleichert needed a smart solution to improve the guest WiFi experience.  His 266 rooms were running nearly maximum occupancy, with guests bringing several devices per room. "With a full hotel and busy conference center, we were seeing thousands of simultaneous devices trying to connect on the WiFi network," said George "and, even with recent increases in bandwidth, the Internet circuit couldn't handle the demand." Active WiFi users were flooding the network during peak hours, when they needed it most. He needed a fast, effective and economical solution.

He reached out to Travis Tangeman, the CTO of HarborLink Network, (www.harborlink.net), a technology solutions provider that specializes in public-facing WiFi networks. "We have seen an explosion in data throughput resulting from cloud-based applications, streaming video and people traveling with multiple devices. We worked with the Hope Hotel to quadruple bandwidth over the past four years, and it still wasn't enough to handle peak load periods on the circuit." Travis noted that "the trend is only getting worse, particularly in public venues where people expect fast, reliable connections, but often encounter slow, congested Internet resulting from unmanaged bandwidth."

To manage the busy, congested WiFi network at Hope Hotel, HarborLink deployed an innovative new technology called "The Governor™" (www.cirrusworks.net). Through some very fast, and intelligent software, The Governor™ solves Internet congestion problems in microseconds, as they arise, by allocating bandwidth among active users on the network. This active decision-engine is far more efficient than simply adding more bandwidth or using traditional traffic shaping tools. Users (guests, staff and visitors) and their applications are too diverse, and devices are too numerous to effectively manage with static rule sets or policies. More significantly, today's data traffic is mostly encrypted, thwarting efforts to inspect packets and prioritize applications. What was needed was a totally new approach to bandwidth congestion. HarborLink brought The Governor™ solution to the Hope Hotel, and the results have been remarkable.

"The guest WiFi experience improved immediately," said George. "Customers are happier and hotel staff relieved of managing service tickets." What is more, the solution paid for itself in a few months when balanced against support costs and additional bandwidth expense.

Travis explained that "The Governor™ uses software to replace costly configuration and management protocols, making it a measurably easier, cheaper and more effective tool for congestion control and bandwidth optimization."

"On the Internet, minutes can be an eternity," said Travis. "Our hotel and retail WiFi customers require simple, effective and cost-sensitive solutions. They can't simply keep adding to costs by upgrading bandwidth every year." In response to the unpredictable, highly sporadic Internet traffic generated in public venues, HarborLink has advised their clients to optimize bandwidth procurement and infrastructure investment by adding The Governor™ technology into the bundled solution. This blended approach preserves a high quality of service and delivers network performance in high traffic environments, for each and every guest.

The Hope Hotel and Richard C. Holbrooke Conference Center is the only privately owned hotel operating on a US Air Force Base. Located in Dayton, Ohio, and open to the public at the No Pass Entrance to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, we are the closest hotel and conference facility to the base and just minutes from downtown Dayton and the Dayton International Airport. For more information, please visit www.hopehotel.com.

HarborLink Network, Ltd. is a leading provider of public Wi-Fi networks in North America, including destination hotels, major restaurant chains, retail establishments, fuel & convenience stores, convention centers, universities, marinas and other venues. For more information, please visit www.harborlink.net.

CirrusWorks is a leader in bandwidth optimization technologies. Their flagship product, The Governor™, provides a simple, cost-effective tool for capturing more capacity from Internet circuits, improving web-based performance for users on busy BYOD networks. For more information, please visit www.cirrusworks.net.

SOURCE CirrusWorks

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