Proactive Managed Services for Enterprise Process Control Networks

The Challenge

Enterprise-scale process control across multiple basins.

A premier oil and gas operator required a highly resilient, high-capacity process control network to manage localized communications between remote field devices and their central SCADA systems across the Eagle Ford and Permian basins.

Building an internal team of specialized network engineers and tower climbers to support that sheer scale was determined to be cost-prohibitive, challenging to manage, and operationally burdensome — so the operator turned to Twin Eagle Solutions to design, build, and fully manage the entire wireless data system.

The Architectural Foundation

A hybrid microwave, PTMP, and self-healing mesh — engineered ground-up.

To meet the operator's stringent demand for high availability and low latency, Twin Eagle engineered a robust hybrid network combining Cambium microwave backhaul, Cambium 450M PTMP access points with 450i subscribers, and a TropOS 6420 gateway mesh built on 1420, 2420, and M411 endpoints. Cisco switches live inside every process (SCADA) cabinet, and the network operates primarily on Layer 2 with comprehensive Layer 3 assistance routing — heavily utilizing BGP — purpose-built for enterprise-scale industrial control.

The deployment is rooted in a ground-up strategic design. In 2019, Twin Eagle engineers co-designed the entire foundational IP scheme, VLAN structure, and subnet architecture for the operator. We initially modeled the network's complex routing configurations in a specialized home-lab environment using MikroTik hardware, then seamlessly translated and deployed those configurations into the operator's Cisco routing environment.

Today, Twin Eagle continues to oversee the centralized infrastructure. Over 99% of the IP addresses on the process control networks across the Eagle Ford and Permian basins are reserved, managed, and provisioned directly by Twin Eagle — ensuring immaculate traffic flow, rigorous security, and zero IP collisions whenever new field devices are integrated.

Proactive Network Management & Support

The true measure of a managed service is who picks up when you call.

Twin Eagle dedicates a highly specialized team of network engineers to support this operator around the clock. We don't operate a dedicated NOC, but we do provide 24/7 callout and emergency response resources for this customer — when the operator's team detects an issue, an engineer who already understands the topology, link budgets, IP plan, and configurations picks up the phone, isolates the fault remotely, and dispatches our crews when a truck roll is needed. That continuity of expertise transforms the process control network into a friction-free utility for the operator's production teams.

This deep operational integration also provides a critical failsafe for the operator's internal field staff. When something goes sideways in the field — a misconfigured router, a stuck route, an SCADA cabinet that loses its uplink — the technician on site calls a Twin Eagle engineer who already knows the topology, link budgets, IP plan, and configurations cold. That immediate access to top-tier engineering talent routinely saves the operator from prolonged, costly data blackouts and keeps production teams focused on production.

Measurable Value & Network Performance

Hardened, resilient uptime — and the bandwidth headroom to keep growing.

Operationally, the network achieves extraordinary stability. By strategically leveraging the self-healing characteristics of the wireless Tropos mesh alongside Twin Eagle's 24/7 callout response, the infrastructure has averaged 99.999% uptime for this customer across two basins since 2019 — a five-nines result earned on this specific architecture, not a guarantee Twin Eagle extends as a global SLA.

For the operator, that translates to confident production operations day after day. The architecture steadily provides an average aggregate bandwidth of 15 to 20 Mbps to every single pad site, leaving substantial headroom for modern, data-intensive field operations.

Delivering mission-critical reliability for modern, data-intensive fields.

Return on Investment

On-demand access to a workforce that's almost impossible to build internally.

The return on investment for the operator is immense. While building an in-house enterprise networking department might appeal on paper, the true cost is astronomical — sourcing, equipping, fully insuring, and retaining a dedicated fleet of specialized network engineers and safety-certified tower climbers is incredibly difficult.

By partnering with Twin Eagle Solutions, the operator bypasses those massive capital and operational hurdles entirely, integrating a highly skilled, ready-to-deploy workforce at a fraction of the internal equivalent cost.

Antenna alignment at altitude

Multi-basin tower service

What Twin Eagle Delivers

One partner. The whole network.

The operator hands off the design, build, ongoing support, and continuous improvement of their entire process control network — and gets a unified team accountable for every layer of the stack.

• 24/7 emergency callout and dispatch support
• Dedicated specialized network engineering team — same people who built it
• Centralized IP, VLAN, and subnet management (99%+ of addresses)
• Rapid hardware fault isolation and dispatch on callout
• Cisco router and SCADA-cabinet switch remote diagnostics and recovery
• In-house certified tower climbers across multiple basins
• Cambium 450M / 450i subscriber expansion and TropOS helper-to-gateway upgrades
• Continuous architecture optimization — periodic refreshes since 2019 to keep the operator on the right technology for today
• Strategic pilot consulting on next-generation architectures

Ongoing Optimization & Future-Proofing

A static network in a dynamic oilfield is a degrading network.

That's why Twin Eagle is actively driving the operator through multiple rounds of continuous improvement since 2019 — periodically walking the entire architecture to make sure the operator is running on the right technology for today's demands. The team is concurrently executing large-scale initiatives to increase Cambium subscriber counts and upgrade standard field helper nodes into high-capacity gateways.

Because the operator's bandwidth needs continually evolve, Twin Eagle continues to evaluate next-generation architectures alongside them — keeping the intense demand for higher throughput perfectly balanced against the strict necessity of avoiding single points of failure in the field.

The Results

Mission-critical communications, fully outsourced.

The operator gets enterprise-grade reliability without enterprise-grade headcount — and stays focused on producing energy instead of running a network.

Why It Matters

Wireless, networking, and tower work — under one accountable roof.

Through this perpetual cycle of sophisticated architecture design, proactive management, and technical enhancement, Twin Eagle Solutions ensures the operator's mission-critical communications remain seamlessly integrated — allowing their teams to remain focused on driving their core energy business forward.