Ideal network connection for Germany’s largest hotel

The Estrel in Berlin’s Neukölln district is Germany’s largest hotel. Apart from more than 1,125 rooms and suites, five restaurants, three bars, a summer garden with a jetty for mooring boats, and a modern fitness and wellness zone, the hotel also has an adjacent Congress & Exhibition Center. It was expanded in September 2015 when the new Convention Hall II was opened. The self-supporting hall with a ceiling span of 75 meters and a total area of 4,600 square meters accommodates up to 5,000 guests and also sets standards as regards IT thanks to a cutting-edge fiber-optic network. 230 micro-switches from euromicron’s subsidiary MICROSENS are integrated in floor boxes and ensure that all terminal devices are connected smoothly to the network.

Since September 2015, the new Convention Hall II at the Estrel Congress & Exhibition Center in Berlin has offered companies and associations an attractive location for conferences, trade shows and events. As early as the planning phase, great importance was attached to meeting the growing IT requirements demanded by modern large events: Live video streaming or stands with their own WLAN and direct access to a high-speed network were to be readily possible. “Our customers expect top quality from us in every respect. In particular, IT services are a major factor in choosing an event location,” is how Mario Gärtner, Head of IT at the Estrel Berlin, underscores the importance of this aspect.

Planning of the IT was therefore accorded a great deal of importance in designing the new Convention Hall. And it soon became clear that the Estrel Berlin had to take new approaches in this field: Whereas copper wire-based cabling has been previously used, this technology would not have made technical or economic sense given network segments with a total length of more than 100 meters like in the Convention Hall. It goes without saying that customers were still to be able to access the network via standardized coper cable with an RJ45 port.

These requirements led the Estrel Berlin’s IT team directly to the Gigabit Ethernet micro-switches from euromicron’s subsidiary MICROSENS. These switches can be installed in the dado trunking or floor box quickly and easily and also meet all criteria in relation to network management and security:

• Voice over IP capability
• Power over Ethernet
• High bandwidths
• VLANs can be set up easily
• Customized and fast configuration of the switches using a central management system

Technical implementation

The cable network in Convention Hall II has the following structure: Two wiring closets accommodate a total of seven central layer 2 switches with 10 Gbit/s uplinks, via which the new micro-switches are connected in a star topology. All the switches can be configured and monitored centrally using MICROSENS’ network management platform. This quick and easy means of configuring the components is of huge importance, in particular in event management, since conversion times are often very short and the requirements are diverse. Without an extensive and user-friendly network management system like MICROSENS NMP, the Estrel Berlin’s seven-strong IT team, which is also responsible for complete IT support for the hotel, could not overcome these challenges.

Internal training prepared staff for fiber-optic technology and the MICROSENS switches in good time. As a result, commissioning went smoothly and the components have been working without hitches since day one. For Mario Gärtner, that is confirmation that MICROSENS was the right choice: “At the very first consulting meeting, the sales executive gave us very competent advice and in the further course of the project we always received quick answers to our questions. Quality and reliability are taken really seriously at MICROSENS.”