Dunedin IT have been working with the Scottish Wildlife Trust for some years, helping develop their IT strategy and trying to enhance the experience of both staff and members. Initially focused on the head office infrastructure, they have increasingly been looking at improving connectivity at some of the more remote sites. Dunedin IT offers a complete IT stack from connectivity and voice, cyber security and consultancy, to day-to-day IT support.
The Scottish Wildlife Trust has many remote sites like the Loch of the Lowes where communication is a challenge. This site is famous for its visiting pair of Ospreys, amongst a wealth of other wildlife. Loch of the Lowes struggled with the stability of their connection to the outside world. Video streaming from their nest webcam was problematic, as was accessing the organisation’s systems required to run the site. According to Emma Castle-Smith (Visitor Centre Assistant Manager at Scottish Wildlife Trust) numerous internet outages meant the livestream frequently failed, and it could take them hours to post a pre-recorded video online. As a result, the technology wasn’t helping people connect to the reserve remotely – in fact, it was just the opposite and the outages often meant they struggled to provide a good experience for those who were onsite.
Our partner in Scotland, DunedIn IT, provided a custom-made solution for the Scottish Wildlife Trust. The location meant that cabled technology would never be able to deliver the speeds and stability required, so they looked to mobile connectivity. By combining the POYNTING XPOL-2 antennas with a Peplink Balance 20 and Robustel R1520-4L unit the multiple 4G connections from different networks, along with a single DSL, smoothed out any bumps. Bandwidth is closely monitored and managed to send different traffic down the appropriate connection for its needs. In addition, they provided Wi-Fi coverage across all the visitor areas of the site.
With this solution Jamie Clague (IT Director) and the team at Dunedin IT were able to provide fast and reliable internet for all staff as well as visitors and they are also now able to stream live footage of their famous pair of Ospreys in their nest to nature lovers everywhere.
To read more about this project and to see beautiful footage of the osprey pair and their chicks have a look here.
“Life is much smoother now in terms of operations because we don’t have internet that drops out. We wouldn’t be able to operate if we didn’t have good internet.” Emma Castle-Smith – Visitor Centre Assistant Manager – Scottish Wildlife Trust
