SUCCESS STORY Meskwaki Bingo Casino Hotel
Company Size
1,000+
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- FastIron SuperX Series switch
- FastIron GS Series switches
- IronView Network Manager
Tech Stack
- 10-Gigabit Ethernet
- Gigabit Ethernet
- Virtual LANs (VLANs)
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Customer Satisfaction
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Networks & Connectivity - Ethernet
- Networks & Connectivity - Network Management & Analysis Software
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Services
- System Integration
- Training
About The Customer
The Meskwaki Bingo Casino Hotel in Tama, Iowa, is the largest full-service casino in the Midwest. It boasts more than 400 hotel rooms and offers a variety of gaming options such as slots, poker, craps, roulette, keno, a racebook and bingo. Located in the heart of Iowa, the Meskwaki Bingo Casino Hotel is within driving distance of a number of major cities, including St. Louis, Kansas City, and Minneapolis/St. Paul. With 1,200 employees, Internet access to more than 400 hotel rooms, and wireless connectivity throughout the casino property, Meskwaki Bingo Casino Hotel needed a robust network to handle a variety of traffic and to give the casino the flexibility to grow and add new technologies in the future.
The Challenge
The aging Meskwaki network was in sore need of an upgrade. For the last 10 years, the casino had been adding networking infrastructure arbitrarily whenever a bottleneck appeared in the network. The resulting LAN was a mish-mash of products from multiple vendors that consistently experienced performance issues—and kept the 10-person IT team constantly busy. Simple jobs, such as running network usage reports, would take 30 or 45 minutes to complete, and the toll on the network was huge. The hotel’s network was also vulnerable to spam, and there was even one incident of someone spoofing its IP address. Meskwaki needed a complete network overhaul, and Kranig chose Brocade to introduce advanced networking technology throughout the casino property. Kranig and his team wanted to beef up security, address traffic bottlenecks and performance issues, and streamline their switches.
The Solution
Meskwaki selected Brocade based on the equipment’s rich feature set. Kranig was impressed with the switches’ Power over Ethernet, availability, scalability, and advanced virtual LANs (VLANs) features. Price point and the company’s excellent service and support also weighed heavily in the decision-making process. Meskwaki deployed a Brocade FastIron® SuperX switch in the core, 24 FastIron GS Series switches at the network edge, and IronView Network Manager (INM). Meskwaki Casino is using INM to monitor network usage and to look at traps to make sure viruses and other malware cannot infiltrate the network. For the first time, the casino has wiring closets, fiber, network monitoring tools, and more—all provided through the Brocade-based network. The casino network handles traffic loads from numerous applications, such as office productivity software like email, human resources, and financial software to specialized gaming and casino management applications, which absolutely have to be running 24/7, 365 days a year.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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