Crossing Borders Without

Crossing Out Connectivity

Maritime | Wireless Network

A cargo vessel needs to sail back and forth between Germany and the
UK every week. During these trips, the vessel not only needs to cross two
borders, but also the North Sea and along the Rhine. To have a more
constant network uptime, the vessel was looking for a cost effective
maritime connectivity solution, so they approached Peplink’s certified
distributor Frontier BV for help.
Challenge
The biggest challenge facing the vessel is how to stay connected while
passing through different countries and sailing across different waters.
This means that disconnections while roaming are hard to avoid. To
make matters worse, signals are weak when the vessel sails along the
sparsely populated coastline and when it is further away from the shore.

On top of these, it is preferred to not include satellites in the solution as

their involvement will lead to a much higher cost.
Solution
Taking these requirements into account, Frontier BV soon came up with
a perfect solution for the vessel. A simple setup consisting of Peplink’s
MAX Transit Duo, Maritime 40G antenna, and FusionHub would have
them covered.

To begin with, a MAX Transit Duo was deployed on the vessel. The MAX
Transit Duo is a dual-cellular router with redundant SIM slots. This SIM
capacity allows for the concurrent activities of two connections from
different carriers, each of which has another SIM as a backup.

When the router is connected to the FusionHub, a virtual appliance

from Peplink, a SpeedFusion tunnel is formed, allowing for the
implementation of Hot Failover. This patented technology enables the
backup connections to take over when the primary ones fail so that
connectivity is maintained.

Moreover, a Maritime 40G antenna was also installed to improve signal

reception. The Maritime 40G antenna is a high-gain omnidirectional
antenna specially designed for maritime applications. It is capable of
utilizing four LTE/5G channels simultaneously and delivering excellent
performance even in extreme weather conditions – thanks to its IP68
rated case.
Result
This simple yet powerful setup tackled all of the challenges one by one.

The two active cellular connections enabled the vessel to have stable
connectivity while crossing different countries. No more waiting caused
by roaming – when one SIM is disconnected, the other one is already
there. Meanwhile, the redundant SIMs provided a backup for the
network, which further enhanced its reliability. These resulted in 100%
uptime when the vessel was not crossing the North Sea.

Even when the vessel was sailing through the North Sea, the uptime
never dropped below 75%, which was much higher than it used to be.
The Maritime 40G antenna significantly improved signal reception so
that the vessel was under network coverage for a further distance from
shore.

The performance was impressive, and the costs were low. The hardware
costs were lower than that of an electric bike, and it took less to buy the
SIM cards than to refill a tank of gas for a car!

Thanks to Frontier BV’s solution, the crew and clients can now enjoy
reliable connectivity onboard the vessel.
 Deployment

MAX Transit Duo

Deployed to the vessel

Dual embedded cellular modems and 2 redundant SIM slots

Hot Failover automatically and seamlessly switches open session to working connection
Maritime 40G

Omnidirectional antenna with wide frequency range

4 cellular channels and a GPS

4×4 MIMO provides solid reliability under heavy usage

IP68 rated, durable and UV-stable case

FusionHub

Established on AWS in between physical data centers and offices

Enables SpeedFusion technologies

Forms unbreakable VPN connections

Presented by
Frontier Computer Corp. B.V.
Peplink European Distributor

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