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Network components

Data Pandora
Data Pandora

Com1 assists different public institutions and companies, ranging from governments to sectors such as health and education, in the broadcasting of their events by providing secure connections between all network components, systems and services. Based in the Netherlands, we work for clients and projects such as Formula 1, the Port of Rotterdam or Red Bull Mediahouse’s Wings for Life World Run.

STARTING POINT

Increasingly, devices will need to connect to the network wirelessly. While a wired connection is certified for use, this is not possible with a wireless one.

Moreover, because of this, network stability is often underestimated, when almost all ICT solutions depend on a secure and stable connection.

Com1 has extensive knowledge in the design, analysis and implementation of wired and wireless infrastructures.
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This is also essential in challenging environments such as the healthcare and logistics sector, public areas and environments with a very high user density, such as a stadium or a festival site.

PROJECT’S CHALLENGE

Com1 provides managed services and event IT. In both sectors we are responsible for the configuration of IT and therefore also for its stability. Especially in the case of events, the need for a flexible monitoring solution is self-evident.

The Eventkit Com1 is composed of six different core-pods, each with different purposes. All of them facilitate secure connectivity, but three of them have a subset of video and streaming equipment that provide IPTV to events. One pod has at least one VMWare cluster, one of switches, one of firewalls and one of storage. Depending on the event, there are between four and fifteen virtual servers running. To these core-pods we can connect edge-pods or distribution-pods, which are switches for 1/10/40GB distribution. At the event, customers or third parties connect their equipment that also needs to be monitored.

We provide network connectivity and support for a wide range of events, both small and large:

checkĀ  World Formula 1 broadcasting (2004-2019) for multiple stations such as RTL Deutschland, Ziggo Nederland, MTV3 Denmark, Viasat Sweden, FoxArgentina, ORF Osterreich or BBC UK.

checkĀ  Wings for Life World Run (2013-2019) for Red Bull Mediahouse in Austria.

checkĀ  4-day march from Nijmegen (2013-2019) Camp Heumensoord for the Dutch Ministry of Defense.

checkĀ  24H Series Races (2014-2019) In Europe and Dubai.

WHY PANDORA FMS?

Many monitoring solutions were not flexible enough for our work. Each event is different and the setup time is usually very short – configuration can vary from a few hours to a few weeks.

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A downtime of any of our critical systems could cause production stoppages in certain processing plants, resulting in substantial economic losses for the company.

Monitoring for this reason is critical for us, because if the adaptation of the monitoring system takes more time than the event itself, we have a problem.

In addition, we work with a subset of broadcast equipment that is not normally available in monitoring systems. That is why Pandora FMS is so useful in this regard, as it easily adapts to any infrastructure.

We have used different monitoring programs to see if they could work with what we do, but we were not convinced, as they did not adapt to our equipment or our events. In the past we tested FortiSIEM; although graphically it was very good, it did not live up to expectations: it was not flexible enough and did not support non-standard hardware. In addition, FortiSIEM took too long to monitor and created risks for our configuration and events.

DIFERENTS CORE-PODS

VIRTUAL SERVERS

“Our team is very satisfied with the different functionalities of Pandora FMS. We have been able to see how the software has adapted to our needs in a matter of days after any request. Its flexibility is what we value the most!”

Bas Sanders, CEO of Com1 B.V. Netherlands

RESULTS AND BENEFITS
OF PANDORA FMS

The features of Pandora FMS that we appreciate the most are the high flexibility it provides to our networks and system needs and, of course, the short amount of time it takes to monitor.

Implementation was quick and easy. The information provided to us in the official documentation was more than enough. Our team has worked with multiple solutions, but in most aspects Pandora FMS has obtained the highest scores.

Without this monitoring solution, we would have had trouble detecting outages or cable or equipment failures, and it would have been impossible to report on system performance and usage.

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In addition, Pandora FMS’s high level of support helped us implement the software, so they made it even easier for us.

Our team is very satisfied with the technical expertise and flexibility of the Pandora FMS team and its Pandora FMS software. We have experienced first hand how the tool has adapted to our needs in a matter of days after any request.

The flexibility of Pandora FMS is what we value the most!

“With Pandora FMS we achieve a faster monitoring in terms of configuration time, reduce incident resolution times and achieve greater flexibility in our different events.”

Bas Sanders, CEO of Com1 B.V. Netherlands

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