City of Milwaukee Streamlines and Secures Critical Operations with Fabric

The City of Milwaukee, Wisconsin covers 100 square miles on the western shore of Lake Michigan, with a population of 600,000 people. The city became Extreme's first Fabric Connect customer globally in 2011. Their city-wide fiber backbone with multiple carrier connections distributes network resources to more than 100 buildings and 7,000 city staff. The Information and Technology Management Division, including three dedicated network managers, maintain the city’s IT infrastructure and systems for multiple departments, all on separate virtualized networks. The vast network includes more than 500 switches and a recent extension of the fabric network to over 700 traffic cabinets.

Challenges

• Unify existing packet and circuit-switched networks into a single environment to reduce complexity and convergence times
• Increase network resiliency
• Reduce provisioning time and effort
• Streamline network configuration and simplify management

Extreme Solutions

• Extreme Fabric Connect
• ExtremeAccess™ Platform 1400 Series

Results

Enhanced Mission Critical Services

• Emergency services on separate, virtualized networks increase security and resiliency for Police Department, Fire Department, EMS, Water Works, and more
• Simplified management of multiple video surveillance networks including connected traffic lights and freeway cameras, Public Works, policing, and events
• Rapid extension of network connectivity for COVID-19 test sites and isolation unit for those in need

Strengthened Government Resilience 

• Major incidents like fiber cuts are non-issues, eliminating any impact to connectivity or network services
• Empowered to develop a “crash kit” using the small and cost effective ExtremeAccess Platform 1400 for rapidly extending the network in emergency or other on-demand scenarios
• Ability to perform quick service adjustments and quickly deploy surveillance solutions for the police department and national events, like the Democratic National Convention (DNC)

Increased Operational Efficiency 

• Simplified network has enabled IT to grow their network and expand services without adding resources
• Hyper-segmentation keeps network traffic separated for various local agencies and partners, while optimizing service delivery and security