Grand Mayfull Hotel

Established in 2016, Grand Mayfull Hotel Taipei is a Taiwanese hotel brand located alongside the Dazhi riverbank. As the top 3 Michelin-rated hotels in the 2019 Michelin Guide Hotel Taipei, its classic European exterior and exquisite cuisine and beverage options together deliver a luxury hospitality experience to each and every guest.

Lack of performance and management features in the legacy dorm Wi-Fi leads to ineffective network management

To ensure employees perform at their best, Grand Mayfull Hotel Taipei provides a cozy dorm for them. However, back in 2015 the interior decorator deployed the dormitory network infrastructure without considering the actual usage and management requirements. The crappy Wi-Fi back then affected over 70 tenants who often ended up calling the IT department for dorm network troubleshooting. More than half of the reported issues were failures to get an IP address because the total number of devices exceeds the 255 address limit imposed by the DHCP or poor network access due to uncontrolled Internet traffic resulting from high bandwidth occupation.

Chen Yong-Qi, Manager of the IT Department at Grand Mayfull Hotel Taipei, pointed out that the inconvenient Wi-Fi management caused increased workloads for the IT department. The Internet-related issues had also been plaguing the tenants in the dorm for a long time. A cost-efficient solution was therefore needed to solve these problems. When Grand Mayfull Hotel Taipei moved its employee dorm to a new 5-story building (1,423.33 ft² / 132.232 m² on each floor) in 2019, the IT department took the chance to build a whole new mesh Wi-Fi system using a Synology RT2600ac and 14 Synology MR2200ac Mesh routers. The unstable wireless connection has now been fixed thanks to the stable mesh Wi-Fi network and its easy-to-manage routing.

Boosting work efficiency with remote management via the intuitive operating system, SRM

Chen said that Grand Mayfull Hotel Taipei had compared a lot of domestic and foreign router manufacturers before deploying a new Wi-Fi system. Synology stood out from the competition mainly because of the intuitive operating system, Synology Router Manager (SRM).

He pointed out that there are only two members in the IT department, and there needs to be at least one member on site during office hours, which makes it difficult for them to make time to go to the dorm for troubleshooting. The remote management feature of SRM allows the IT personnel to centrally manage all the wireless devices in the dorm miles away from the office – made possible solely with the Internet access in the hotel. The IT personnel no longer have to offer instructions over the phone or go to the dorm to deal with any network issues, and the Wi-Fi management tools have considerably improved the work efficiency of the IT team.

Mesh Wi-Fi fixes all problems with reliable performance & granular traffic/IP management

Chen further pointed out that the granular traffic and IP management in SRM fixed all the past Wi-Fi issues. "The whole new network infrastructure has solved P2P bandwidth hogging because the easy-to-use monitoring system makes sure that users can work over the P2P network without affecting other online users," said Chen. Another problem facing the IT team was the insufficient distribution of IP addresses due to the DHCP range limit, but that's no longer an issue now. "Leveraging RT2600ac to set up two sets of Class C networks allows more devices to have Internet access. This not only benefits the tenants who have many devices but also provides great flexibility in adding dorm equipment such as an access control system, surveillance system, or other digital devices in the future.

Besides, the self-configuring and self-optimizing Synology Mesh network can automatically select the best topology. An AP can offload traffic to another in case of heavy traffic. The online experience in the employee dormitory has never been smoother.

Reducing IT team's workloads and focusing on IT transformation with the full-fledged management system

"You can see the operation status and bandwidth usage and check the number of connected devices of each mesh AP at a glance on the management interface of RT2600ac. This is particularly helpful when the IT department receives reports regarding abnormal connections. We can see the status of a mesh AP at once and know if the bad Wi-Fi access comes from the fact that there are too many connected devices under a single AP. We can evaluate the number and location of the APs and make adjustments accordingly for future deployment plans," Chen said. He further points out that an easy-to-manage Wi-Fi network system can significantly ease the burden on the IT team and help them focus more on IT transformation.

Faced with a growing demand for Wi-Fi and data storage, Grand Mayfull Hotel Taipei takes an active approach to these requirements by not only expanding its storage and Wi-Fi infrastructure but paying extra attention to the management and maintenance of wireless network transmissions. Therefore, the IT department is currently assessing Synology's networking add-on packages in hopes of ensuring optimal investment and the best possible online experience for users while providing a safer Internet environment – building the most cost-efficient and reliable Wi-Fi environment.