Romulus Global

 Wide-Area Progressive WAN conversion from Frame Relay to MPLS VPN services

Romulus Global, Ltd. was contacted by a customer's division which operates the customer's Wide-Area Progressive WAN system for slot machines to contribute to a common jackpot.  The existing Wide-Area progressive system was primarily a Frame Relay WAN consisting of Cisco 1700 and 1800 series routers deployed in remote casinos, with a remote attached computer polling an RS-485 serial network of slot accouning system devices.  The WAN was configured as a hub-and-spoke DMVPN deployment to provide encryption of all data over the WAN network.  At primary and backup hub locations, headend routers  were attached to 1RU fixed config switches, which supported the communication with application and database servers, as well network management and administration systems.  In the event of Frame Relay WAN failure, each remote spoke router was configured for analog dia-backup to an access server in the backup hub location.

The network infrastructure had been designed and deployed by Romulus Global's principal network architect 4 years prior, and had worked well operationally during that time.  In 2007, the customer was notified by the Frame Relay service provider that the US Frame Relay network was being decommisioned and that all Frame Relay services must be migrated by a specific date in 2008.  The customer wished to migrate its Wide-Area Progressive WAN to MPLS VPN WAN services by a different provider.  In addition to WAN circuit migration, the customer wished to leverage and expand the existing WAN network for a different gaming application, tracking and monitoring of single-site progressives.  The switches deployed at the hub locations were aging and needed replacement in addition to needing additional capacity to support new application and database servers.

 Romulus Globa, Ltd. designed and implemented replacement switch and headend routers and migrated the hub locations over to the new network infrastructure without downtime.  The customer operations team then migrated the remote spoke routers as new MPLS VPN WAN circuits with an alternate provider were provisioned.

Key Design features: 

• Cisco GETVPN (RFC3547) encryption provisioning
• MPLS VPN WAN services
• large-scale dial backup
• split access and distribution layer redundant switching

Key Business Objectives met:

• expand capacity to existing network for additional connected servers
• migrate legacy Frame Relay connectivity to MPLS VPN services
• leverage existing scalable design to provide connectivty for new applications