WHITE PAPER
Pop-Up & Day-
1 Networks
Strategies & Benefits for
Successful Implementations
+1.855.813.3385 | cradlepoint.com
Overview
The current pace of technological advancements is staggering.
In this new age of digital transformation, organizations of all
sizes have to evolve and adapt faster than ever to stay current on
industry standards and meet consumer expectations. The penalty
for not keeping up is no longer lagging sales — it’s no sales.
Retailers and restaurants are operating in a new era dominated
by the “Connected Enterprise,” which requires WANs to connect
all employees, IoT devices, and locations — including pop-up
locations — whenever and wherever they are. Unfortunately, the
traditional Wide Area Network (WAN) was not built with today’s
fast-paced, tech-heavy markets in mind and now impedes many of
these organizations’ ability to perform at optimum levels and keep
up with the pace of change.
Along with the underlying need for pervasive connectivity,
businesses today need to look toward software-defined
technologies and cloud applications to orchestrate, automate, and
reduce the complexity of network functions and management. This
increases the speed-to-deployment and provides the flexibility
needed to build the networks of the future.
This white paper discusses scenarios in which pop-up and Day-1
networks benefit businesses, and then outlines implementation
strategies and requirements.
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WHITE PAPER POP-UP RETAIL & RESTAURANTS

Pop-Up Networks
Pop-up and temporary locations are part of a trend that is here to stay, and Pop-up shoppers’
are part of many organizations’ business strategies. While the locations expectations, ranked:
themselves may be temporary, they boost long-term customer engagement,

1. Unique services/products
build brand awareness, and drive sales for big-name organizations and
ambitious upstarts alike.

In addition, consumers are demanding enhanced experiences and multiple

modes of engagement — even in temporary environments. To meet consumer
2. Localized assortments
interactivity demands, organizations require dependable, secure infrastructure
that put temporary network solutions on par with their more permanent 3. Optimal pricing
counterparts.
4. Convenience
Advancements in LTE edge networking solutions have expanded the
possibilities for a diverse array of applications for pop-up and Day-1 networks.
5. A fun experience 1

Examples of Successful Pop-Up Networks:

—— Like many young chefs, Tony Ferrari and Jonathan Sutton lacked the
startup capital to open their own brick-and-mortar restaurant in the
expensive Bay Area. Instead, they launched a pop-up restaurant, and
four years later their Hillside Supper Club is a celebrated staple.

—— MTV partnered with Adidas, Levi’s, and Sony Ericsson, taking their pop-
up stores all over Germany, stopping at cities for a week at a time, and
purveying limited edition apparel and high-tech items.

—— Jackson-Hewitt sets up temporary kiosks in retail locations during tax

season, increasing their brand footprint and attracting new clients.

—— MainGate takes its merchandise trailers, kiosks, and mobile retail

stores all over the U.S., setting up temporary retail locations at events
throughout the year. Given the immediacy of these events, constant
connectivity is essential for MainGate’s pop-up networks and POS
services.

1 Source Retail Touchpoints, Pop-Up Stores

Become More than a Trend, https://www.
retailtouchpoints.com/features/special-reports/
pop-up-stores-become-more-than-just-a-
trend)

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WHITE PAPER POP-UP RETAIL & RESTAURANTS

New Locations
Opening a new location is a competitive and deadline-driven experience.
Waiting on an ISP to provision connectivity could hold up opening a new
location or office (and revenue generation) by weeks, while the parent
company continues incurring overhead. In enterprises with razor-thin
profit margins, these delays can cripple a new location even before it
officially launches.

Kiosks
Kiosks can help increase revenue and brand exposure when placed
inside another brand’s location. They can be used in numerous industries:
in healthcare for telemedicine, in the financial services industry for
ATMs, by the food service industry for vending machines, by retailers
for gift card vending, and more. A temporary network may be the most
appropriate choice when testing new concepts or locations, or can be
used to inexpensively move kiosks to new locations.

Quick deployment is also crucial. When enterprises utilize routers for

their kiosks, pop-up stores, or new branch locations, a fully equipped
and secure mobile pop-up outlet must be able to tap into adequate
bandwidth to be used for multiple purposes relatively quickly, following
easy set-up procedures.

Choosing Pop-Up Network Solutions

Given the fleeting nature of most pop-up scenarios, it isn’t realistic or
practical to invest anywhere near the same amount of IT resources
or energy in setting up a pop-up network as one would a primary
network. Speed and simplicity are essential when it comes to deploying
Today, networks
the necessary technology infrastructure for pop-up and temporary must stretch
networks. Nevertheless, cutting corners or trading reliability and
advanced capabilities for affordability and rapid deployment is fraught beyond brick-
with risks.
and-mortar
The following pages of this white paper offer a comprehensive and locations to
detailed list of factors that organizations may need to consider when
identifying pop-up or temporary network solutions. Recommendations
connect pop-up
tailored to specific applications can be found in those respective locations, kiosks,
selections.
vehicles
& people.

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WHITE PAPER POP-UP RETAIL & RESTAURANTS

Cost-Effectiveness Consider Using One or a Combination of the Following

Network Security Strategies:
Pop-up and temporary networks typically must be cost-
effective to be justified. IT staff need to be able to deploy,
manage, and troubleshoot these networks remotely with as
little impact on staff and finances as possible.
Data usage also is a concern for organizations that choose
cellular service as a connectivity source. Each location’s data
needs may change from month to month, so a cost-effective
solution must allow for real-time monitoring of data usage.
For organizations with multiple pop-up deployments, their
LTE plan should allow for data pooling across the network to
better utilize allotted data and prevent outages.
Hardware
In traditional networking environments, management
and security functions are executed using expensive and
feature-heavy IT hardware. By contrast, the expenses and
logistical challenges associated with such hardware aren’t
compatible with the streamlined execution of a pop-up or
temporary deployment. Consider deploying a solution that
encompasses an all-in-one routing platform with built-in
redundancy, best-in-class cloud management, an embedded
LTE modem, and software-defined technologies.
—— Parallel Networks: When launching a store-within-
a-store, kiosk, or other temporary network located
inside a third-party location, businesses may be
tempted to utilize the third party’s existing network
connectivity, but this is a dangerous practice.
Hackers are increasingly using misconfigurations
or launching pivot attacks in monolithic networks,
thus gaining access to sensitive consumer data. To
prevent such attacks, industry leaders and other
forward-thinking enterprises are transitioning to
Parallel Networks, also known as air-gapping. Parallel
Networks keeps sensitive data separate from other
applications and third-party networks. They utilize
LTE to create independent, physically air-gapped
networks that are simpler, safer, and more cost-
effective for primary and failover solutions.
—— Software-Defined Perimeter: Using Software-Defined
Perimeter technology, IT teams can micro-segment
the network at department, user, and device levels
to create a zero-trust WAN — via the public Internet
— that automatically isolates threats and quarantines
them when and where they happen. Don’t rely on
complex and easily mismanaged access control lists.

Segmentation & Access Control

Allowing all network users, devices, data, and

endpoints to reside together in the same network
environment creates the potential for colossal security
incidents. In the past, providing secure access among
people, places, and things was achieved through
complex network segmentation, access control lists,
and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). These methods
worked well for a period, but today’s latency-sensitive
applications — such as VoIP and video chat — do not
function as well when all traffic must be routed over
the VPN, to headquarters, and then to its destination.
There also is an inherent security vulnerability in the
complexity of managing VPNs.

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WHITE PAPER POP-UP RETAIL & RESTAURANTS

Checklist for Pop-Up & Day-1 Networks

1. LTE-Enabled Router Success Story:
ChargeItSpot
Because LTE connectivity isn’t subject to the same outage causes as wired
lines, it is a highly reliable connectivity option. However, it is still important to
ChargeItSpot provides multifaceted
consider a solution that offers multi-carrier compatibility along with remote
value for retail stores and venues
management and troubleshooting. A solution also should offer automated
with its free phone charging
alerts in the event that connectivity does fail.
stations. It’s a popular amenity
that is only feasible with always-
Given the supplementary nature of temporary and pop-up networks, the
on connectivity — and is more
chosen router should be capable of overlaying existing network infrastructure.
palatable to retailers and other
venues if ChargeItSpot can stay
For maximum flexibility, especially if all potential use cases have yet to be
off their corporate networks. With
identified, enterprises may want to choose a solution that offers multi-WAN
retailers not wanting ChargeItSpot
capabilities — essentially, the ability to utilize wired WAN sources, 4G LTE, and
to tie into their store networks, the
WiFi.
company knew it needed LTE for
Further, routers used for Day-1 deployments can be repurposed as failover
connectivity, noting the mobility,
solutions.
flexibility, and speed it provides.

2. Cloud Management Cradlepoint’s NetCloud Service

for IoT — delivered through LTE-
Because companies are unlikely to staff IT administrators at pop-up locations,
enabled gateways — provides
a solution should enable remote management, monitoring, and configuration
secure, reliable VPN functionality,
in order to limit truck rolls and personnel needed to maintain the network. In
keeping data safe as it travels to
particular, the service should offer automated alerts, client and application
and from these widely dispersed
analytics, and granular reporting.
kiosks. The stores and venues that

3. Software-Defined WAN host the kiosks can keep their

networks physically separate from
ChargeItSpot’s network.
Traditional WANs are complex and inflexible, which prevents business agility.
Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN) technologies help organizations make
“We’ve had very steady
the most of limited bandwidth and improve network performance through
connectivity, and our kiosks
intelligent traffic steering by creating automated policies that prioritize
have performed extremely well
particular bandwidth users and sending certain traffic over whichever link
is best suited to the context. Similarly, network security measures can be
in that environment.”
automated and applied uniformly; important updates to firmware and security
Robert Kay,
can be applied remotely and en masse, instead of one by one and on-site.
Senior Vice President of
SD-WAN allows IT teams to manage, orchestrate, and automate the network
Operations, ChargeItSpot
with point-and-click functionality, without depending on complex, error-prone
command-line interface configuration.

4. Network Security
Choose a centralized, cloud-managed network solution that features Unified
Threat Management, web content filtering, and device visibility and control
to make it easier to secure the network with limited or centralized resources.
Additionally, depending on the use case, network administrators may need
a solution that supports third-party, cloud-based security services such as
Intrustion Protection and Detection Systems (IPS/IDS).

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WHITE PAPER POP-UP RETAIL & RESTAURANTS

For IoT security, a solution featuring SD-Perimeter technology allows

organizations to create a perimeter-secured overlay network in just a few
minutes. Instead of connecting networks or locations, SD-Perimeter employs Success Story:
a host-based approach, connecting people and things directly to the
applications they need — with complete privacy and isolation over the public MainGate
Internet. Administrators should be able to grant devices and users tailored,
granular permissions without the complexity of managing an access control When your business is all about
list. providing retail services at major
sports events throughout the
For physical security concerns, choose a routing solution that offers U.S., constant connectivity isn’t a
geofencing to allow network administrators to track the location of all routing luxury, it’s a necessity. MainGate,
devices from one central location. Geofencing, which relies on real-time GPS a merchandising and marketing
data, offers the ability to automatically or manually lock down the network company that takes its retail
should a device leave its assigned location. merchandise units on the road
all year long, needed constant
connectivity for its pop-up
About Cradlepoint networks and POS services, as
well as WiFi coverage and VPN
Cradlepoint is the global leader in cloud-delivered wireless edge solutions capabilities.
for branch, mobile, and IoT networks. The Cradlepoint Elastic Edge™ vision
— powered by NetCloud services — provides a blueprint for agile, pervasive, The company selected
and software-driven wireless WANs that leverage 4G and 5G services to Cradlepoint’s NetCloud Service
connect people, places, and things everywhere with resiliency, security, and — delivered through LTE-enabled
control. routers — to ensure reliable
connectivity and easy deployment.
More than 27,000 enterprise and government organizations around the world, They no longer have to provision
including 75 percent of the world’s top retailers, 50 percent of the Fortune wired lines in remote locations,
100, and first responders in 10 of the largest U.S. cities, rely on Cradlepoint and can meet their many network
to keep critical branches, points of commerce, field forces, vehicles, and connectivity needs with a single,
IoT devices always connected and protected. Major service providers use all-in-one router.
Cradlepoint wireless solutions as the foundation for innovative managed
network services. Founded in 2006, Cradlepoint is a privately held company “All our team has to do is plug it
headquartered in Boise, Idaho, with a development center in Silicon Valley in and turn the power on.”
and international offices in the UK and Australia.
Dan O’Reilly,
©Cradlepoint. All Rights Reserved. IT Support Supervisor, MainGate

To learn more, go to cradlepoint.com.

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