Norwegian Roads Agency Deploys Hardened Wireless Network NPRA upgrades roadside monitoring stations to Cisco wireless machine-to-machine gateways for remote manageability, reliability, security

1. Norwegian Roads Agency
Deploys Hardened Wireless Network
NPRA upgrades roadside monitoring stations
to Cisco wireless machine-to-machine gateways
for remote manageability, reliability, security.
Business Challenge
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Electronic devices generate heat; often, they generate enough heat
Customer Name: Norwegian Public Roads to threaten their own proper operation, even to shut themselves
Administration
Industry: Government (NPRA) down. So for most network managers worldwide, maintaining a
Location: Headquarters in Oslo, Norway, plus sufficiently cool environment for their equipment is a constant
five regional data centers and hundreds of remote
sites concern. But not always, and not everywhere.
Number of Employees: 6,200
Norway is one of the northernmost countries in the world. From
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
● Standardize wireless routers in unmanned Kristiansand in the south (at 58° latitude) to Honningsvag, the
roadway monitoring stations in extreme
climate
country’s northernmost city (71° latitude), is a drive of 1400 miles,
● Gain remote manageability to reduce or 2260 kilometers. So Norway’s countrywide network of roadways
maintenance and service costs
traverse a range of climates from cool, to cold, to very cold indeed.
NETWORK SOLUTION
From April through September, monthly average temperatures
● Cisco wireless Cisco ISR 819 Machine-to-
Machine (M2M) Gateway, in hardened form range from 49° F (9.4°C) in April to 71° F (21.7° C) in July; winter
factor
averages (October through March) are mostly in the 20° to 30° F
BUSINESS RESULTS
(-6.7° to -1.1° C) range. Lows below the freezing point can occur in
● Reliable, remotely manageable roadway
monitoring and traffic enforcement network all but three months of the year anywhere in the country, and in the
● Reduced network maintenance and service
far northern reaches of Norway winter temperatures can plunge well
costs
below freezing. In short, only about 30 percent of the time is the
Integrator Partner
● TDC, a Danish telecommunications service average ambient temperature across Norway within the normal
provider with operations across Scandinavia operating range of typical networking equipment.
The Norwegian Public Roads Administration (NPRA) manages the
country’s roadways. To carry out its mission, the agency maintains a
countrywide WAN that monitors the roads for everything from weather conditions to traffic patterns, to accidents,
and other incidents. The network includes mostly automatic tollbooths, video surveillance cameras mounted in
Norway’s numerous tunnels, and hundreds of unmanned roadside monitoring stations, variously equipped with
temperature and rain sensors and still and video cameras. Data collected at all these sites is transmitted in real
time to the NPRA’s main data center in Oslo and five regional offices. There, says Sigurd Mytting, senior network
architect at the NPRA, the data is used for a variety of purposes.
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2. “We use it for emergency response, of course,” he says, “as well as for everyday things like traffic light control and
traffic flow monitoring. We pass on data about snowfall to our road-clearing contractors.”
“On certain roads, we use roadside cameras to detect and photograph traffic violations, and we issue citations
based on that evidence,” Mytting says. “We also place camera signs on these stations to warn motorists they’ll be
caught on film and cited if they’re speeding. So they enforce speed limits in two ways.”
Much of the agency’s network is fiber-connected, but hundreds of its roadside monitoring stations are located in
remote areas and mountain passes where wireless is the only option. Some of these stations are housed in small
enclosures with other equipment, but most are mounted in very compact waterproof casings supplied with
electricity and placed on poles by the side of the road. In addition to sensors and a camera, of course, each station
has a router to connect to the network.
“Over time, we’ve deployed more than 30 different types of routers designed for harsh environmental conditions,”
says Mytting. Unfortunately, the agency found, when the devices failed, it was necessary to send a technician in a
truck to restart or replace it. Given the remote locations of many monitoring stations, that kind of maintenance
could be costly.
“As part of a larger effort to get more and better control of our entire network,” says Mytting, “we decided to
standardize our remote stations on ruggedized wireless routers that could not just withstand harsh operating
environments, but also restart themselves when necessary.”
Network Solution
®
Although the new Cisco wireless Cisco ISR 819 Machine-to-Machine (M2M) Gateway, was still in preproduction at
the time, the NPRA and its telecom service partner, TDC (a Danish firm that operates across Scandinavia), were
able to see one of the units. With its small form factor, extensive 3G and 4G management capabilities, and dual
SIM capability, the 819 M2M Gateway offered a feature set that the agency could confidently use as a standard.
Another key factor: the 819 M2M Gateway would be available in a hardened form factor (with industrial-grade
components) that meets IP40 standards, meaning it operates reliably in temperature ranges between -20° and
40°C.
“There are other vendors with hardened wireless routers, but no one
else offers a solution that’s so easy to manage as the Cisco device.”
— Sigurd Mytting, senior network architect, Norwegian Public Roads Administration
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3. “There are other vendors with hardened wireless routers,” says Mytting, “but no one else offers a solution that’s so
easy to manage as the Cisco device.”
“The dual SIM card support offered by the Cisco 819 was important as well,” he says, “because in Norway, we
have two major telecommunications companies, which use different SIM configurations. So we have the flexibility
to use one or the other for cost considerations, or even to use both as a way of ensuring failover connectivity.”
Accordingly, the NPRA and TDC entered into a four-year contract in 2011, under which the telecom service
provider is deploying and will maintain an initial deployment of some 700 819 M2Ms. Only about 120 were put in
operation before the harsh Norwegian winter called a halt to the deployment.
Business Results
PRODUCT LIST
“We expect to install the rest in the second quarter of 2012,” says
Routing and Switching Mytting. “Eventually, we envision that we’ll deploy 2000 or more,
● Cisco wireless 819 Integrated Services Router
Generation 2, or ISR G2, in hardened form and use them in more and more ways.”
factor
“For example, we’ve discussed the idea of a mobile unit, combining
a video camera and 819 wireless router, that could be dispatched to
an accident to provide our operations center with a full view of the situation in real time.”
In the meantime, although it is too early to measure, the NPRA expects the Cisco remote routers both to increase
revenues from traffic citations and to reduce operational costs in several ways.
Aside from its ruggedness, which alone makes it more reliable year-round in Norway’s extreme environment, the
manageability of the Cisco 819 will reduce maintenance and service costs. “We can script the device to restart
itself and, if it loses the IP address of the network, to restart the built-in modem,” says André Olsen, the project lead
for the NPRA’s telecom partner TDC.
As Olsen says, the built-in global positioning (GPS) capability of the Cisco 819 M2M Gateway provides excellent
security for remote locations.
“You don’t want anyone to be able to break into a box, grab a router, and use it to connect to your network,”
he says. “With the Cisco 819, we can monitor the device and, if we detect any kind of movement, s hut it down.”
For the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, the Cisco 819’s GPS, with its integrated time function, delivers
additional benefits. “The devices give us accurate times for all incidents and traffic violations,” says the agency’s
Mytting. “If a motorist claims he’s not guilty of a violation because he was somewhere else at the time, we have a
time-stamped photo to prove that he wasn’t.”
For More Information
To find out more about Cisco Machine-to-Machine Gateways, go to: http://www.cisco.com/go/m2m.
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