Shropshire Fire and Rescue service is benefiting from a new secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) designed to provide a faster, more reliable network for its 21 fire stations in the region.

The VPN, implemented by wide area network firm CI-Net, relies on 8Mbps ADSL links terminating on Zyxel Wireless VPN routers at all 21 fire stations.

The Shrewsbury HQ office, meanwhile, is supported by separate connections capable of up to 2Mbps and 8Mbps.

The use of two separately load balanced always-on links provides an automatic failover facility in the event on of them goes down, said CI-Net.

"Previously we had to have someone within the individual fire stations create a dial-up link to HQ," said Shropshire fire and rescue network operator, John Rix, in a statement.

"This could be slow and unreliable and we often experienced technical problems.

"For the onboard computers within our fire vehicles or appliances, we'd written a specific software script to create an automatic VPN connection via wireless access points in the fire stations.

"But if the VPN didn't work, we could lose connectivity, delaying the availability of risk data relating to emergency calls."