Retail
Retail networks where the till never waits for the network
In retail the network has one job above all others: the till must not stop. Everything else — guest Wi-Fi, digital signage, footfall analytics, CCTV — is worth having only if it cannot interfere with that.
The second job is rollout. A chain opening its fortieth store cannot afford an engineer on site for each one, so the design has to be identical everywhere and provision itself on power-up.
- 2
- WAN circuits per store, automatic failover
- 3
- Isolated VLANs — POS, CCTV, guest
- 64
- VLANs available on the store gateway
- 0
- Site visits needed to bring a new store online
What goes wrong
The failure modes this design exists to prevent
Not a list of pain points — the specific ways this kind of deployment gets found out, usually after handover.
A broadband outage stops trading
Cloud point of sale, card authorisation and stock lookup all need the internet. One circuit means one failure between a queue of customers and a working till, and the store cannot fall back to paper the way it used to.
Guest Wi-Fi competes with the business
Shoppers on free Wi-Fi will use every bit of bandwidth available. Without prioritisation, card authorisation queues behind someone's video download and transactions time out at the counter.
Card data on a shared network
A flat network puts payment terminals, cameras and guest devices in one broadcast domain. That is a compliance problem before it is a security problem, and it is the finding auditors reach for first.
Every fix needs an engineer on a train
With no remote visibility, diagnosing a store fault means sending someone. Across forty branches that cost dominates the IT budget and slows every resolution to days.
No two stores are configured the same
Networks built store by store drift. Different firmware, different SSIDs, different VLAN numbering — and no one can say with confidence how any given branch is set up.
The design
How we build it
In build order, with the models that carry each part and why they were chosen.
Two WAN links in every store, POS first
The LR300G-P terminates a primary broadband and a backup circuit with SD-WAN policy and automatic failover, so card authorisation moves to the second link without anyone at the counter noticing. Application control and traffic audit put point of sale ahead of everything else in the queue.
Three VLANs, no exceptions
Payment on one, CCTV on a second, guest and signage on a third, with no route between them. It is the same numbering in every branch, which is what makes an audit answerable and a fault diagnosable from a console.
PoE for cameras and access points off one switch
A single 8-port cloud-managed switch with a 120 W budget powers the store's cameras and access points and reports to the same console as the gateway. Larger formats step up to the 16- or 24-port models without changing the design.
Zero-touch rollout
Hardware ships pre-claimed to the chain's cloud account and pulls its configuration on power-up. A new store is opened by whoever plugs in the power, and it comes up identical to the other thirty-nine.
Reference bill of materials
What typically goes in the quote
A starting point, not a fixed kit. Quantities and models move with the site — that is what the design conversation is for.
| Role | Model | Why this one |
|---|---|---|
| Store gateway | LR300G-P | Dual WAN with failover, 64 VLANs, 8× PoE+ out, 300 users, 1.5 Gbps |
| Small-format gateway | LR100G | 5× GbE, 100 users, full VPN suite, 5 W — for kiosks and small stores |
| Store switch | LCS-8GS-P | 8× PoE+, 120 W, cloud managed, SFP uplink |
| Large-format switch | LCS-24GS-P | 24× PoE+, 370 W, rack mount for a flagship or department store |
| Managed store switch | LS2-8GT2SFP-P | 4094 VLANs, DHCP snooping, IP-MAC-port binding where audit demands it |
| Shop-floor AP | L6 | Wi-Fi 6 AX3000, 512 clients on 5 GHz, standard PoE |
| Small-store AP | L6Lite | AX1800, 110+ clients, 175 mm — the discreet option |
| Warehouse or yard link | CPE5 | 5 GHz, 16 dBi, up to 5 km to a stockroom or a second unit |
Field notes
What catches people out on Indian sites
The things a datasheet will not tell you and a survey usually misses, gathered from deployments rather than from a brochure.
- Two circuits from the same provider often share the same last-mile fibre. For genuine redundancy pair a wired circuit with a different medium.
- Mall units frequently mandate the landlord's connectivity. Confirm what you are allowed to install before designing around your own circuit.
- Label the VLAN scheme once and enforce it chain-wide. The value is not in the numbering, it is in every store being identical when something breaks.
- Ask your payment provider what network segregation they require in writing. It is easier to design for it than to retrofit after an assessment.
- Keep a spare gateway and switch at head office. A store down is revenue down, and a courier beats a repair.
FAQ
Retail chains — common questions
What happens to the till when the internet drops?
With dual WAN and SD-WAN failover on the store gateway, traffic moves to the backup circuit automatically and card authorisation continues. The important detail is that point of sale is prioritised ahead of guest and signage traffic, so even on a slower backup link the till keeps working while the less important traffic gets squeezed.
How do we keep guest Wi-Fi away from payment systems?
Payment, CCTV and guest each go on their own VLAN with no route between them, using the same numbering in every branch. The store gateway supports 64 VLANs and the managed switch line supports up to 4094, with DHCP snooping and IP-MAC-port binding where an assessment demands them. Ask your payment provider for their segregation requirement in writing and we will design to it.
Do we need an engineer at every new store opening?
No. Hardware ships pre-claimed to your cloud account and pulls its configuration on power-up, so whoever connects the power brings the store online and it comes up identical to every other branch. That is also what makes remote diagnosis possible later — you are troubleshooting one known design, not forty variations of it.
Other deployment patterns
Send the site. Get the design and the BOQ.
A floor plan, a camera count or an existing BOQ is enough to start — and the coverage heatmap comes back with it, free.