West Basin Municipal Water District is a wholesale water agency that provides imported drinking water to 17 cities and unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County throughout its 185 square mile service area. An innovative public agency, West Basin is a recognized leader in the production of recycled water, conservation and education programs. West Basin remains committed to being an innovative leader in the water industry by exploring new methods and technologies that enhance reliability in the region’s water supply.

Wired internet was not available at a key location due to right-of-access restrictions.

When Oliver Perez, the head of IT for all West Basin locations, was faced with the challenge of getting connectivity within the factory where the rights-of-access was restricted, he started researching 4G LTE options. Connectivity needed to be robust enough to support real-time applications such as VOIP and video surveillance, as well as support cloud-based applications such as their ERP system. “I know 4G LTE by itself was limited in what it can support. That’s why I researched specifically for a device that can intelligently combine several of those LTE SIMs.”

Mushroom Networks’ SD-WAN with broadband bonding for LTE modems.

Oliver Perez, head of IT for West Basin recalls, “I was able to bring up a network purely based on bonded LTE practically overnight with flawless performance for all of our Internet applications.”

“Once I proved Mushroom Network devices can handle even the most challenging networks, I decided to upgrade my other locations to Mushroom Networks as well, where we use wired as well as wireless. Mushroom Networks devices are very easy to install, flexible and scalable”, added Oliver.

Mushroom Networks’ cognitive SD-WAN technology has the ability to understand both the network conditions as well as the traffic on the network and therefore can make intelligent decisions to self-heal and shield network problems from the applications. Mushroom Networks’ Virtual Leased Line tunnels are able to steer packets away from problems in real time without dropping the ongoing sessions and therefore optimize the end-user experience for applications such as VoIP, video, UCaaS and many other applications that are served via private or public clouds. According to Oliver, Mushroom is a must-have networking technology. “I was so impressed with the technology, I requested ExpoIT to look into and join Mushroom Networks’ reseller program”, added Oliver.

Instant WAN Connectivity Using Affordable LTE Modems:

West Basin was able to leverage Mushroom Networks’ LTE bonding technology and bring instant connectivity to a critical facility.

Boost in WAN Performance:

Truffle appliances were used to bond two or three WAN circuits, both wired and LTE wireless per site, from various carriers. The overall WAN metrics improved both for mission-critical applications such as VoIP, video surveillance, and ERP, as well as best-effort traffic. This provided better Internet service as well as excellent cloud-based services.

Boost in WAN Reliability:

Since Truffle appliances are capable of self-healing and intelligently responding to network problems and then routing around those issues, WAN reliability was greatly improved.

Reduced WAN Cost:

Being able to bond together cost-effective LTE modems allowed West Basin to avoid costly MPLS buildout and delays.

Quick Return on Investment:

The capital expenditure was recovered quickly.

When Oliver Perez, the head of IT for all West Basin locations, was faced with the challenge of getting connectivity within the factory where the rights of access was restricted, he started researching 4G LTE options. Connectivity needed to be robust enough to support real-time applications such as VOIP and video surveillance, as well as support cloud-based applications such as their ERP system

West Basin was able to leverage Mushroom Networks’ LTE bonding technology and bring instant connectivity in order to avoid MPLS installation delays. Because of the success of the initial deployment, West Basin enlarged the scope of the project to leverage Mushroom Networks’ SD-WAN solution for interconnecting their branch offices. Once the devices were in the network, they self-optimized and operated without human intervention.

Mushroom’s solutions that combine wired transports such as fiber, DSL, Cable, MPLS, T1, and/or wireless transports such as cellular, 3G, 4G, LTE or satellite, are available both as turnkey hardware as well as software on virtual machines.