Have you ever wondered how innovation happens and where to find support for it?
Peplink is a company that inspires innovators. I run a company that aspires to innovate with the solutions and services they supply to customers.
Recently we had a challenge and had been looking for a solution with several companies that supply Wireless Access Points (WAPs) and cloud management of those WAPs. We had received a business lead via one of our valued supply chains, though after a persistent & patient nine (9) months, the end client had said enough and told us either we find a solution or we loose the business.
##Customer’s Requirements:
- Splash pages that are modern dynamic across PC & Mobile platforms
- A captive portal that works with authentication via:
) Social Media:
) . Facebook
) . LinkedIn
) . WeChat
) . Twitter
) . Google+
) Email
) Guest Accounts
) SMS - For that Captive portal, data to be reliably and securely captured and analysed as well as the raw data to be able to be synced out to the existing customers database that consists of tens of thousand customers.
- Customisable for every site (initially 12, potentially 60+) (each site has their own unique social media, and some shared social media)
- Entire system and equipment to be 100% remotely managed
- Entire system to be fully remotely monitored
- No extra PC/Servers or access to existing PC/Servers at the sites allow
- Be able to support existing site connections (such as ISBN/DSL/ADSL) and be NBNCo connection ready (high speed services such as FttP, FttN, VDSL)
- Support new VoIP services being rolled out.
Each site was originally going to just have one 3x3 MIMO WAP from the company that originally gave us the business lead. Each site now is looking at:
1 x Balance ONE router
3 x Pepwave AP ONE Enterprise WAPs (depending on site size)
1 x 16/24 Port PoE Switch
So some of the winning factors of the Peplink equipment and services was:
- The ability to centrally manage:
) VLANs
) Firmware
) SSIDs
) Captive prortal
) Network Access
) Network Performance - We have found no one else has a better offering and platform (and we have tested the Big C with the M product).
Though the greatest thing about Peplink is their willingness to look at the customers potential and innovative ideas and then take on an innovative approach to work with those potentials, not just for the benefit of that customer, though with the benefit for all other customers.
Here is just one of the things Peplink innovated with us successfully (and is still evolving in collaboration with us).
Peplink has allowed us to implemented Unicode v6.0 Emoji’s (published in 2010) into the required SSID working with a cloud based management and Captive portal services.
Here are some images of the test SSIDs
Image of SSID as seen on PC
Image of SSID as seen on iPhone
We are so excited to read that these features will begin rolling out to Peplink customers during January 2017 and very proud to have been a part of the story.
Here is the timeline from our perspective of the development:
02 January 2017 Raised enquiry with examples and business opportunity details
12 January 2017 Supplied from Peplink access to preliminary release to demo and test for customer
That was only ten days, WOW.
Also during that time extensive debugging was done with the Peplink Support & Engineering team, it is so refreshing to work with a manufactures team that actually are willing to work with innovators to find ways to professionally help customers in a manner that will benefit many.
If you have questions, then reach out to the team here at Peplink, I’m happy for them to filter questions to us if you have some.
Marcus 
