From Flat Network And Hope To Segmented, Monitored, Modern.
A transportation infrastructure operator rebuilt its entire data center and office network on Cisco Meraki. Unified topology, VLAN segmentation, dual-site VPN, and backups that actually run.
The Situation
What They
Were Up Against.
A transportation infrastructure operator ran a flat network across a primary data center, a corporate office, and a remote field office. Years of additions had left them with mixed-vendor gear, undocumented VLAN configs, and a backup solution that everyone assumed worked but no one had tested. After a near-miss event that exposed the lack of segmentation, leadership greenlit a full overhaul.
Why They Called Us
The Fit.
They needed an architect-led engagement, not a reseller. Tech Critic was vendor-neutral about the design. We recommended Cisco Meraki because it fit their existing operational maturity and remote-management needs, not because of partner incentives. We also brought experience with the specific operational uptime constraints of transportation infrastructure: scheduled cutover windows had to align with non-peak operating times.
What We Did
The Work.
- Greenfield network architecture across the data center, primary office, and remote office with unified topology
- 1 Gbps backbone deployment with VLANs for office, operations, IoT/SCADA, and guest networks
- Spanning Tree Protocol design for redundancy with documented failover paths
- Cisco Meraki MX firewalls at each site with site-to-site VPN and granular Layer 7 rules
- Centralized monitoring and management dashboard accessible to internal IT and our team during stabilization
- Backup architecture rebuild: QNAP appliances for on-site, Veeam for backup software, replicated to a second site weekly
- Operational runbooks for each site, documented escalation paths, and quarterly post-launch tune-ups
The Outcome
Real
Numbers.
sites cut over on schedule
service interruptions to operations
backbone deployed across every site
- Network segmentation now isolates operational technology (SCADA, IoT sensors) from corporate office traffic
- Backups tested monthly; first quarter of testing caught two restore issues that would have failed in a real incident
- Centralized Meraki dashboard reduced mean-time-to-detect for connectivity issues from hours to minutes
- Internal IT now operates the network independently with quarterly check-ins from Tech Critic
Tech Stack
What We Used.
We'd been told 'your network is fine' for years. Tech Critic was the first team to actually look at it, tell us what wasn't fine, and design something I'd be willing to bet the operational license on.
Transportation Infrastructure · Anonymized Client
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