2019-May-10

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This Cisco Team Just Gave the Gift of Connected Commutes



People are celebrating the completion of a project to provide free Wi-Fi network on the Moscow and St. Petersburg metro — and it’s not just the Cisco team who helped build it! Thanks to Cisco technology, passengers are now able to enjoy connected commutes.

Passengers take advantage of the continuous network performance.
Passengers take advantage of the continuous network performance.

This project is truly one-of-a-kind because passengers can stay connected — free of charge across the entire metro network while trains are moving — even through tunnels, which is something other train networks are struggling to achieve.

It’s nearly impossible to estimate the impact that Cisco's contribution will have on lives of citizens in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

In Moscow alone, trains carry roughly 10 million passengers a day and about 2.3 million in St. Petersburg.

Moscow and St. Petersburg metro in numbers:

  • Moscow has one of the world’s largest metro systems. Its total length exceeds 330 km and 10 million passengers per day.
  • The St. Petersburg metro is about 120 km and serves about 2.3 million passengers a day.
The Moscow metro station during rush hour.
The Moscow metro station during rush hour.
  • More than 7,000 cars across the two cities were equipped with Cisco wireless access points, and each of them is now connected to the network at speeds of up to 100 Mbps during this project.
  • The bandwidth of the network exceeds 20 Gbit/s.
  • Up to 100 TB of traffic goes through the Wi-Fi network daily on the Moscow metro.

Many Cisco employees worked closely together for many months to bring this project to reality. The teams even stayed in touch on weekends and holidays to support each other, share experiences, and resolve any issues.

Ask any Cisco engineer: Providing sustainable wireless communication in trains moving along winding tunnels can be a technological challenge in itself.

Robust Cisco equipment designed with rugged environments in mind — with high levels of noise, pollution, and large amounts of conductive dust — were chosen to provide a safe and reliable internet connection for the people of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Passengers can now stay connected free of charge.
Passengers can now stay connected free of charge.

Every car was equipped with high-performance Cisco Aironet Access Points — each access point providing up to 50 connections simultaneously. In addition, trains were equipped with Cisco controllers and routers while the high-performance Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Switches were used to build the core network.

By coming together for this huge project, the Cisco team in Russia have recognized that they can implement even the most complex projects in the world when they support each other.

Achieving economic results is a big part of the success of these types of projects. Sometimes what matters most is the opportunity to make the lives of countless people better by building bridges and to lend a hand in improving their daily lives.


Connect everything. Innovate everywhere. Benefit everyone.

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