Wireless on the Train: Customized Cisco Wireless and Switching Workshops for Deutsche Bahn

"Thanks to the good support from Fast Lane, we were able to test very realistic WLAN scenarios in regional trains. In the future, our rail customers will have stable wireless connections at their disposal that will meet the major challenges in regional transport!"

Thomas Derlig, Team Leader of Product Development, IT im Zug of DB Fahrzeuginstandhaltung

After the successful introduction of free WLAN on Deutsche Bahn's ICE long-distance routes, various pilot projects in regional and local traffic were to follow. The "IT im Zug" team of DB Fahrzeuginstandhaltung GmbH with its product Colibri was commissioned as a service provider of Deutsche Bahn AG with wireless introduction on several regional and local traffic routes in the regions of Germany North, Northeast, Southeast and Baden Württemberg. As part of the "IT im Zug" project, Fast Lane designed and conducted two special workshops to provide the responsible IT staff of DB Fahrzeuginstandhaltung with special wireless know-how in theory and practice.

To support the introduction of WLAN in regional traffic, DB Fahrzeuginstandhaltung employees were given in-depth insights into realistic and practical concepts in the area of "Cisco Industrial Solutions". Two intensive workshops dealt with various key topics:

• Wireless roaming
• Standards: IEEE 802.11k, 802.11r, 802.11w
• Modulations: 16QAM, 64QAM and 256QAM
• Frequencies: 2.4GHz and 5GHz
• Cisco CleanAir and Channel Planning
• Best Practice Configurations for the Cisco Industrial Switches IE-2000 and IE-3000 as well as for the industrial Cisco Access Point IW3702

In Fast Lane's own test lab, the workshop participants were able to use the following Cisco components in practice and thus depict the "wireless on the train" scenario very realistically:

• Cisco IE-2000-16PTC-G-L
• Cisco IE-2000-4TS-B
• Cisco IE-2000-8T67P-G-E
• Cisco IE-3000-4TC
• Cisco IW3702-4E-E-K9
• Cisco AIR-PWRINJ-60RGD2
  

DB Fahrzeuginstandhaltung GmbH is a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn AG. As a full-service provider for rail vehicles, DB Fahrzeuginstandhaltung offers optimum solutions for the maintenance and repair of vehicle fleets and, with the Colibri product portfolio, an integrated IT infrastructure for all areas of mobility.