01
Client Profile & Background
A large-scale mining company operating in Kalimantan Timur, Indonesia, manages a site spanning over 5,000 hectares with more than 2,000 employees and hundreds of heavy equipment units. The company extracts coal and minerals 24/7, relying on a centralized control room to monitor operations, including conveyor belts, haul trucks, and environmental conditions. The existing network infrastructure, deployed over a decade ago, consisted of a flat Layer 2 topology with limited redundancy. The site had two main data centers connected via a single fiber link, and Wi-Fi coverage was sporadic, causing frequent disconnections for mobile devices used by field operators. The company sought to upgrade to a networking solution that could support their growing digital transformation initiatives, including autonomous haulage systems and real-time video analytics for safety compliance.
02
Technical Challenge
The mining site faced several critical technical challenges. The legacy network experienced an average of 12 hours of downtime per month due to fiber cuts and equipment failures, directly impacting production. Latency between the control room and remote mining pits exceeded 200ms, causing delays in telemetry data and remote control commands. The network lacked segmentation, exposing operational technology (OT) devices to potential cyber threats from the IT network. Additionally, the existing Wi-Fi infrastructure (based on consumer-grade access points) could only support 50 concurrent devices, far short of the 500+ devices in use. The company needed to support bandwidth-intensive applications such as high-definition video surveillance (over 200 cameras) and real-time GPS tracking for 300 vehicles. The challenge was to design a network that could withstand harsh environmental conditions (dust, vibration, temperature extremes) while providing deterministic performance.
03
Implemented Solution
Intilogy designed and deployed a comprehensive network upgrade using a multi-vendor approach. The core network was built with Cisco Catalyst 9300 switches in a redundant stack configuration at the main data center and a secondary aggregation point. For wide-area connectivity between the mining pits and the control room, we deployed Ruijie RG-IS2700 series industrial switches with fiber optic links and wireless backup via 4G LTE. The wireless network was overhauled with Ruijie RG-AP840-I outdoor access points (IP67-rated) supporting Wi-Fi 6, providing coverage for over 10 km². For security, we installed Fortinet FortiGate 100F firewalls at the network edge and implemented OT-specific segmentation using VLANs and firewall policies. The solution also included a centralized network management platform (Cisco DNA Center) for monitoring and automation. To ensure high availability, we implemented dual-homed connections with automatic failover using OSPF and BGP routing protocols.
04
Results & ROI
The network upgrade delivered significant improvements. Network uptime increased from 98.3% to 99.99%, reducing monthly downtime from 12 hours to just 4 minutes. Latency between the control room and remote pits dropped from 200ms to under 8ms, enabling real-time remote operation of autonomous vehicles. The Wi-Fi network now supports over 800 concurrent devices with seamless roaming, improving field operator productivity by 30%. Security posture improved with segmentation and firewall policies, reducing the attack surface for OT systems. The company achieved an ROI within 12 months through reduced production losses (estimated $2M per year) and lower maintenance costs. Additionally, the new infrastructure enabled advanced analytics, such as predictive maintenance for haul trucks, which further reduced unplanned downtime by 20%. The solution is scalable to support future expansions and additional IoT devices.
