Belfort Hotel – From Outdated Network to Fast and Secure Guest Experience

Belfort Hotel is an attractive 3-star hotel with 35 spacious rooms (double, triple and family rooms) located on the outskirts of Amsterdam's city center, between Rembrandtpark and Vondelpark. The hotel serves both leisure tourists and business guests and features a characteristic bar, lounge, extensive breakfast buffet and fully equipped meeting room.

Belfort Hotel's network was no longer adequate for modern guest expectations and current security standards:

Outdated Infrastructure: The existing ADSL internet connection (100/30 Mbit) and End-of-Life UniFi USG router lacked capacity, offered limited network segmentation and missed advanced security features.

Floor-level Bottlenecks: Floor-level switches were unmanaged 100 Mbit models without Power over Ethernet (PoE). This created a messy setup with loose PoE injectors, cables and no remote management capability.

Physical Security Risks: Central network equipment hung loose in a storage room also used by hotel guests for luggage, creating physical network security risks.

Cobra Systems completely modernized and future-proofed the hotel's IT infrastructure:

Fiber Optic & FortiGate Firewall: The slow ADSL line was replaced with powerful fiber optic connectivity (up to 1 Gbit). The outdated router was replaced with a FortiGate firewall. This offers advanced network segmentation (VLANs separating guest and business traffic), deep security (intrusion prevention, application control) and transparent logging.

Managed Gigabit PoE Switches: All floor switches were replaced with managed Gigabit PoE switches. Loose PoE injectors are now history and WiFi Access Points (APs) are directly powered with maximum speed. A new 16-port switch was installed in the central room.

Physical Security: To protect network equipment against unauthorized access in the luggage room, all equipment was professionally installed in a locked network cabinet.

This transformation resulted in a professional, secure and highly reliable network:

Optimal WiFi Experience: Guests in rooms, lounge and meeting room enjoy fast, stable internet.

Maximum Security: Both digitally (via FortiGate segmentation and intrusion prevention) and physically (with the locked cabinet in the luggage room).

Proactive Remote Management: Issues can be identified faster. If a WiFi Access Point hangs, it can now be remotely restarted via the managed switch.

Future-Proof: A scalable network easily prepared for future digital developments and increasing data usage.

"Thanks to Cobra Systems' expertise, we now have a super-fast and secure network. Our guests enjoy seamless WiFi in their rooms and meeting room, while we have the confidence of a physically and digitally optimally secure environment."

— Hotel Owner / General Manager, Belfort Hotel Amsterdam