Telecommunications | Sprint

BlueCat Networks Keeps up with Sprint’s Explosive Growth

BACKGROUND

In 1899, Cleyson L. Brown organized the Brown Telephone Company in Abilene, Kansas. The company’s evolution over the next century created the industry innovator we know today as Sprint. By 1986, Sprint led all U.S. telecom companies by completing the first nationwide, 100% digital, fiber-optic network. Sprint charged into the 1990s with pace setting moves for both consumers and businesses: The company that gave America pin-drop clarity also became a global leader in voice and data services, and went on to become the only nationwide PCS network in the United States.

Sprint is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying two robust wireless networks offering mobile data services, instant national and international walkie-talkie capabilities; and an award winning and global Tier 1 internet backbone. Today, Sprint reaches over 157 million people by operating the nation’s largest mobile broadband network and continues to expand its high-speed network, which is expected to reach 200 million people in the U.S. by the end of 2006.

OPPORTUNITY

Generally speaking, Sprint leverages its industry-leading wired and wireless networks by teaming with its alliance partners to develop joint solutions that provide complementary capabilities, a strong brand within the marketplace, and proven track records in their respective fields. As such, it made sense several years ago for the company to deploy servers manufactured by its partner, Cisco, for their immediate DHCP requirements. However, over the years, the DHCP servers had proven problematic – delivering low security and limited functionality. Managing the exponentially increasing number of IP blocks for DHCP was very difficult, and there was little or no redundancy in the system to ensure service availability.

With the company’s relentless drive to set new standards of excellence, Sprint realized that their ever-expanding network had evolved beyond what the existing servers could effectively manage. They had come to a point where they needed an easy-to-manage, next generation solution that would better compliment and support the expansive scope of their international network.

SOLUTION

After an exhaustive search, Sprint selected the Adonis 500 Dedicated DHCP Appliance from BlueCat Networks - a secure, dependable, and highly available appliance that offered Sprint a centralized location from which to manage all DHCP services. Of pivotal importance to the company was the Adonis Management Console (AMC). The AMC is a feature-rich, comprehensive suite of tools and wizards designed to help network administrators securely configure, deploy, and administer dynamic IP address distribution. Furthermore, the Adonis 500 delivered exactly the type of detailed yet intuitive information on dynamic DHCP leases and IP blocks that Sprint was looking for: convenient tabular and graphical views of the status, type, lease start and end times, hardware address, and client hostnames per IP address in each block. All DHCP resource data was available in a centralized location, and could be gleaned without ever having to stop the server.

Sprint also securely protected their DHCP in the event of a disaster by configuring two Adonis 500 units for automatic failover. Paired Adonis 500 appliances (one active, one passive) enable simplified DHCP redundancy and guaranteed that a passive DHCP appliance always remains synchronized with its active partner, even if the passive DHCP appliance is unavailable.

IMPACT

Quincy Dan, a Solutions Engineer for Sprint, reported being “very pleased with the appliances…they’ve made my life easy, and I don’t say that lightly”. Generally critical of claims made by hardware manufacturers, Dan was pleasantly surprised at how easy overseeing and troubleshooting DHCP services actually became, when using the Adonis Management Console. “Hardware manufacturers typically overstate their capabilities. BlueCat delivers,” said Dan. Network management is now virtually error-free, so administrators can rest assured that dynamic IP address distribution is being reliably automated by the appliances. With the new Adonis appliances in place, Sprint will continue to reap the benefits of secure, centralized administration of critical DHCP and IP address services for years to come.