Emergency VPN link over 4G

On March 20, 2020, a nation-wide lock-down was announced to contain the spread of Covid-19. Meanwhile, a major food distribution warehouse became isolated. In fact, an outage with their main Internet link disconnected them from their main office.

Certainly the loss of internet would have had a catastrophic impact for a large UK supermarket chain if IT AND GENERAL and its sister company XCommNet did not intervene.

Later the same evening we were called out. Then, after a conference call with the customer we designed our solution. Firstly, we provided a bonded 4G router to establish a reliable wireless Internet link. Secondly, we deployed a pfSense appliance (Netgate SG-3100) capable of different VPN and Network options. Additionally, we worked overnight to configure the equipment and restore connectivity with the main office.

Finally, after a few hours, the emergency VPN link over a 4G Internet was up and running. Consequently the connection between the warehouse and the main office was restored.

In the end, the impact for supermarket chain was reduced to a minimum. Furthermore our customer had plenty of time to work on restoring the failed Internet link.