Berthon Marina
Installation of Wi-Fi 6 at Berthon Marina, Lymington.
During the busy season, Berthon Marina has up to 250 boats in residence, all with multiple devices connecting to the marina’s Wi-Fi. This was creating a heavily congested network environment and a poor end user experience. Connection speeds were grinding to a halt, with berth holders and visitors frequently being disconnected or simply unable to connect. Card payments for fuel or food and beverage became impossible to process with all the associated customer frustrations and commercial impact.
To overcome these issues, we designed and installed a new wireless solution using the latest Wi-Fi 6 technology.
Wi-Fi 6 incorporates several new technologies to improve network performance and is especially suited in heavily congested wireless environments like busy marinas. It handles data transmission more efficiently and doubles the number of devices it can transmit to simultaneously. It also more than doubles the speed of its predecessor – allowing 9.6Gbps of bandwidth to be shared across all connected devices, compared to its predecessors 3.5Gbps.
Berthon Marina now has 19 new Wi-Fi 6 access points giving full coverage to the entire marina. These 19 access points are supplied by a 1000Mbps broadband connection. To give some context, Netflix only requires 3 Mbps to stream – so there’s plenty of bandwidth to maintain a high end-user experience even at the busiest of times. Our system guarantees a high strength signal within each boat, which means that berth holders don’t need expensive boosters or mobile Wi-Fi dongles.
The new network is extremely secure. Each user is given a unique encryption key and Wi-Fi password connecting them to their own private network, so their own devices can communicate with each other but are kept secure from other users.
Our initial Wi-Fi predictions for the marina were surpassed. The improvement in connectivity across the whole site has created an even better experience for berth holders and visitors. Whether streaming films, browsing social media, replying to work emails, participating in Zoom calls, checking CCTV feeds or paying for goods and services, there’s no drop off, no lag, even at the height of the season.
In addition, the enhanced connectivity opened up new hospitality and general commercial opportunities for the marina.
