Vyatta Connects Citywide Network for Portland, Texas

Belmont, CA – 2009-05-27 05:00:00 – Vyatta, the leader in open networking and network virtualization, today announced that its open routing and security software has been adopted to connect and protect the offices and emergency services of the city of Portland, Texas. Using Vyatta, the city created a Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) supporting voice and data at every city facility. And thanks to the low cost of Vyatta—about 1/25th the cost of a solution from Cisco—the new network infrastructure did not cause heartburn for city officials.

 

"Vyatta is the heart of our citywide network," said Terrell Elliott, detective sergeant and IT manager of the Portland, Tex. Police Department, "and Vyatta offered us a cost-effective solution that didn’t compromise availability or security. I could easily see us spending well over $250,000 for Cisco equipment to replicate what we did here for less than $10,000, and Vyatta's open networking software offers the flexibility to meet both our current and future requirements."

 

Located along the Texas Gulf Coast, Portland, Texas has 17,000 residents. When the local police department was challenged with migrating network connectivity to the statewide Texas Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (TLETS), which provides online access to the drivers’ license, vehicle registration, and criminal history databases, Elliott needed to gut the existing non-IP networking systems. To find a cost-effective solution for enterprise-class routing and security, Elliott explored open source networking and selected Vyatta as the only solution to provide not only secure, economical TLETS integration, but also end-to-end routing and security throughout the city.

 

In addition to installing Vyatta at the network core, Elliot installed Vyatta routers at three line-of-site microwave connections and in each of seven patrol cars. Said Elliott, "Vyatta not only performs the routing function, but also provides firewall, content inspection, and VPN for TLETS and other software, such as the Automated Vehicle Location system, that goes out to the cars." Mobile communication will eventually extend to all fire and emergency medical vehicles as well.

 

Elliott also installed Vyatta routers at each city location including the Public Works Department, the Community Center, two fire stations, and the library. Together with the central router at the police station, Vyatta routers manage the full range of services including Internet access, public and secure Wi-Fi, VoIP telephony, a video surveillance system, and an intelligent building access system. Layers of redundancy ensure availability.

 

By selecting hardware based on the performance needs of different network nodes, the City was able to use the same Vyatta software for the entire infrastructure instead of managing a network with different classes of routers, VPN appliances, and firewalls. This single system approach enabled Elliott to minimize the learning curve, while the flexibility of Vyatta's open networking software ensured the city will be able to meet all its future requirements.

 

"The recession hasn't eliminated the need for government agencies to invest significant dollars in keeping pace with evolving regulations and technologies, but Vyatta goes a long way toward softening the financial hit," said Kelly Herrell, CEO of Vyatta." As the City of Portland has found, Vyatta offers all the functionality and security demanded by the most critical network tasks at a fraction of the cost of Cisco and other proprietary network vendors, enabling more money to be saved for other vital city services."

 

Vyatta is disrupting the networking industry by delivering a software-based, open-source, network operating system that is portable to standard x86 hardware as well as common virtualization and cloud computing platforms. Vyatta software provides a complete enterprise-class routing and security feature set capable of scaling from DSL to 20Gbps performance at a fraction of the cost of proprietary solutions. Thousands of physical and virtual infrastructures around the world, from small enterprise to Fortune 500 customers, are connected and protected by Vyatta. For more information, please visit http://www.vyatta.com.

 

Press Contact:

Melissa Neumann

Eastwick Communications

650.480.4036

melissa@eastwick.com

 

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