Jamuna Future Park- by far the largest shopping complex in
this subcontinent is to house more than thousand shops, premium outlets,
showrooms and food courts. This enormous shopping district required
connectivity for internal operations and functionality. Moreover the incoming
crowd also required access to internet. But no other engineering firm had ever
undertaken such a meticulous challenge.
It was ‘InfoLink’, a network engineering firm, who was awarded the
contract to connect all parts of this gigantic shopping mall in a network to
ensure that the entire network can be controlled and maintained from a single
point location.
Since this was a mammoth project and no other project of
this scale was ever implemented in this country hence InfoLink had a quite
steep learning curve. InfoLink was to do three things: 1. Establish and install all a unified
network. 2. Build and connect kiosk for visitors 3. Maintain and monitor the
high volume network traffic and networking hardware.
Establishing a unified network was a multilevel work hence
the crews where tasked in groups to finish the work within the deadline. There
were many challenges to establish the network and install all associated
hardware. Firstly the network needed to be centralized and controlled from one
single point. To do so, all network hardware was specially configured. Secondly
enormous space was required to be covered with fiber optic cables. And all
cables required to be laid in the ceilings. Since the floor to ceiling height
was 4.42 meter, specialized equipments were required to lay cables at such a
height. Thirdly, the Wi-Fi devices, through which end users could access the
internet, were extremely sensitive to dust. As the network development work
done in the construction phase of the shopping mall, so the devices where
frequently exposed to dust resulting malfunction. Lastly, the 410,808 square
feet per floor made the footwork lengthy and time consuming. To address these
challenges some changes were made in the plan. The device hanging problem was
solved by rearranging the total device plan. The problem of backbone route was
solved by creating a tunnel from the center to Jamuna Future Park pocket gate.
A special cover was used for safety of Wi-Fi devices. High ladder was used for
recovering dead cables and a special high elevation cart for installing the
devices. Even after that some laid cables were not working properly. In that
case, those cables had to be changed.
Kiosk/information booth was another part of the project. An
electronic kiosk (or computer kiosk or interactive kiosk) houses a computer
terminal that often employs custom kiosk software designed to function while
preventing users from accessing system functions. Computerized kiosks may store
data locally and offer the visitors data from the stored memory whereas the
interactive kiosk fetched updated data from the main network storage in real
time. Some kiosks provide free, informational public service, while other
displayed advertisements. In total 25 kiosks are already deployed throughout
the shopping complex. But in long term a
total of 900 units will be deployed. Each would carry advertisement that was
related to Jamuna Future Park. To deploy such a large amount of foreign built
kiosk was lengthy and expensive. So InfoLink came up with with a cheaper
alternative. They suggested the Jamuna authority to go for locally assembled
Kiosk. The kiosk outer-shell and CPU was designed and assembled locally. Only
the touch-screen monitors were imported.
The software for the system was created by InfoLink software development
team. Thus it marked the very first commercial deployment of Bangladeshi
assembled kiosk.
Maintaining and monitoring the extremely high bandwidth-ed
network was another part of the project. For this part of the project,
monitoring cell/NOC (Network operations center) was put up and extra IP
(Internet Protocol) was needed for covering all the merchant clients of the
premises. For client billing InfoLink software team developed billing software
which made total billing process accurate and secured. Besides dedicated internet and shared
intranet, the networking project also involved data connectivity services for
CCTV connection, Branch connectivity, ATM connection, Wi-Fi service for
floating customer and connectivity for mobile users using hotspot voucher card.
The future work of this project involves Wi-Fi network for the rest of the floors, deployment of 800+ new kiosks, enable hotspot voucher card with e-payment options etc. No wonder, projects of these sorts are the embodiment of engineering at its best.
Some facts & figures
13,123 feet
(approx.) 4 Core Fiber Optics used
5,987 feet
(approx.) Cat 6 Shield cable used
Total: 44,000 feet
fiber optic cables used
Total Core Capacity –
192 core and Scalable
Backbone Capacity –
24 Core and Scalable
Wi-Fi Coverage area–
350,000 Sq ft (Approx) ( Only 5th floor)
At a time user – 300
Wi-Fi User successfully tested (supports up to 1000 users).
Coverage area by
Cable – 2,870,000 Sq ft (approx.)
Total number of Deployed Kiosk – 25
Total Bandwidth
Capacity inside Jamuna Future Park – 400 Mbps and Scalable.
Reference:
http://www.thedailystar.net/news/networking-the-largest-shopping-mall-in-south-asia