intlx Solutions' engineers have designed and implemented a solution to establish a secure, reliable network to ensure wired and wireless access for key support groups during the Boston Marathon since 2015.
Established in 1887, the Boston Athletic Association is a non-profit organization with a mission of promoting a healthy lifestyle through sports and especially running. The Boston Athletic Association has organized the Boston Marathon since the event’s inception in 1897.
Part of the organization efforts involves setting up a command center for key groups involved in the marathon to perform their duties including the Boston Police, Boston Fire, MA State Police, Homeland Security, The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA), American Red Cross and more than 20 other local, state and federal agencies.
While working out of the BAA operations center each groups' team members need a secure way to get online in order to stay in communication with other team members by accessing the Internet, including their network resources back at their offices.
Working with the BAA, intlx Solutions was able to design and configure a secure, fully redundant network infrastructure that allowed these groups to remain online while supporting the Boston Marathon.
We verified that users needed secure wired as well as wireless internet access while supporting the Boston Marathon. In addition, on-site technical support would be needed throughout the event to ensure live monitoring of all connections as well as any direct user issues that may arise.
Our team recognized that by utilizing multiple carrier connections and HA features of the FortiGate and Juniper products, they could create a solution that would deliver high speed secure access while being able to withstand any one piece of equipment having an issue.
Using multiple FortiGate 200 firewalls, intlx Solutions configured a highly available Firewall solution that eliminated any single points of failure. This would make sure that if any particular piece of hardware were to fail during the event, there would be a backup solution component ensuring application traffic would continue to flow.
The operations center now has a network that is secure and reliable. The network allows for both wired and wireless clients to connect and access network resources safely and securely. Throughout the Marathon, intlx Solutions was on-site providing monitoring and technical support for the network for the duration of the event.