New IP Network Coordinates Meetings with Royalty and Knights in Armor in Bavaria

The Royal Castles of Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein in Bavaria offer a glimpse into the daily lives of German royalty and ancient German knights. These sites are very popular tourist attractions, with more than half a million people visiting each year. There are 10,000 visitors a day during the peak summer months, requiring a wait of four to five hours for the castle tour.

 

To alleviate the inconvenience of long lines and the stress that resulted for tourists as well as for the castle staff, RAD's German distributor SCALTEL installed a network based on RAD equipment for organizing the visits. With the new system, tickets that display specific admission times are sold at a ticket office, where visitors can wait for their reserved tour. Entry to the castles is controlled by computerized turnstiles that read the tickets.

The ticketing information from the LAN in each castle is conveyed to the central ticket office via microwave link, which is the most practical and cost-effective way to connect the castles to the office situated in the valley below. RAD's FCD-IP converts the IP LAN data to run over an E1 line with drop-and-insert functionality to connect both castles over a single link for transmission via microwave. The network also delivers VoIP between telephones connected to the LAN of each site.

For many, the long wait was changing the fantasy of visiting a castle into a bad dream. “Our new system makes the visit to our castles much more enjoyable. It is no longer tarnished by disorganized logistics,” says Mr. Andreas Brandner of the Staatlichen Hochbauamt Kempten, the city office in charge of the project.