Franschhoek-based Anthonij Rupert Wines (ARW) is a long-established and successful business producing fine wines. L'Ormarins is the main estate in a group of several farms, which include operations at Riebeeksrivier, Rooderust and Elandskloof at present. In addition to these, ARW recently acquired the operations of Graham Beck's Franschhoek estate, which borders on L'Ormarins.
The business was founded by Johann Rupert's father Anton, who bought several wine estates in the 1990s, including L'Ormarins, which was initially managed by Johann's younger brother Anthonij, who passed away in 2001.
Johann has spent the past few years developing and improving the estate, which includes a state-of-the-art red wine cellar, turning L'Ormarins into one of the better-known wine properties of the 1990s.
The challenge
Having identified a need to extend the CCTV-enabled security network on L'Ormarins to the newly acquired Graham Beck estate, APC was commissioned to provide the best solution for the connection. APC also offered advice on future requirements, such as VOIP and further extensions to the network during its consultation with the client.
While the farms are located close to one another, a public road separates them. This obstacle presented a unique challenge as traditional land-based cable solutions would be fraught with legal and practical hurdles, costly administrative issues and delays.
APC proposed a wireless solution to traverse the road as well as provide other key benefits, including a superior level of reliable bandwidth, adaptability and flexibility through ease of expansion of the network and an offsite management program. The solution would also provide non-line of site coverage, this aspect being critical in order to traverse obstacles such as the public road, property owned by other parties and challenging terrain, all of which would have made a fibre-based solution practically impossible within the short time span.
Our solution
After consulting with the client and designing a solution consisting of point-to-point and multi-point links, APC Solutions sought approval from Vodacom SA to approve the connection, which would consist of 1 x PTP600 300Mbps link and 1 x PTMP430, with two Access points and eight subscriber modules (receivers). A further 1 x PTMP100 would connect the guesthouse. After three months of planning, the project took just one week to deploy and install.
The result
The connection will supply reliable and consistent bandwidth of up to 300Mbps, which will run the CCTV and other IP services between the sites and guesthouse. The network can also be easily expanded to connect future sites and support VOIP, when this facility is implemented in the coming months.
APC Solutions provides a support service to the customer which is enabled via APC's remote access connection to the sites. This connection facilitates seamless monitoring, analysis and digital problem resolution, should this be necessary. In cases where the analysis points to the problem being hardware related, APC Solutions will commission an engineer to make a physical visit and resolve the issue at the site.