When people in Phoenix and the surrounding areas need emergency help, they dial 911 and are connected to the most appropriate 911 call center based on their location. In 2014
alone, there were more than 2.5 million wireless 911 calls for police, fire and medical assistance across the Maricopa region. Over the last five years, more and more of those 911 calls and their associated applications have been migrated over a Talari SD-WAN.
Emergency Dispatch
Without Fail In 2010, Maricopa Region 911 (MR911) deployed a Talari SD-WAN to bring real-time, packet-level intelligence to the network that connects 25 Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) and its two data centers to ensure that emergency calls are not impacted by underlying network issues. In addition to improved WAN reliability, MR911 has realized benefits including increased network capacity, lower costs and the ability to build a converged WAN that is the foundation for its move to Next-Generation 911 (NG911). At the time, MR911 used frame relay for its primary network with IPSec VPN as a backup.
The frame relay was generally reliable, but when there were troubles, it could take up to eight seconds for the routers to transfer traffic to the IP VPN—an eternity for emergency
services. Talari’s intelligent networking technology facilitates quality-based routing, not just policy-based routing. Latency, packet loss and jitter are measured on each path to create a comprehensive and intelligent real-time view and to allow Talari’s patented technology to micromanage the network quality. Network problems are detected and traffic is proactively redirected in milliseconds. “If a WAN link goes down, the call-takers are unaware,” says Dave Dansevicus, 911 Integrated Systems Administrator at MR911. “The peace of mind and visibility we get with Talari is invaluable in terms of knowing we are going to deliver those calls without interruption.” Dansevicus cited a recent issue where a
service provider reset a switch in its core network, which could have caused problems for half of the PSAPs.