Fragrance of Herbs Spanning a Millennium, Connected by One Network.AINOPOL Transmits Heritage via Optical Networks, Reviving Ancient Herbal Incense Culture in the Digital Era

Across the vast grasslands of Inner Mongolia, winds sweep the steppe, carrying a timeless aroma of herbal incense.
Derived from Tibetan incense and enriched over centuries, this heritage integrates the cultural essence of Han, Mongolian, Tibetan and Manchu peoples. Rooted in Inner Mongolia, it embodies the wisdom of grassland communities communicating with flora. Every procedure — herb harvesting, refining, incense blending and aging — embodies craftsmen’s devotion and gifts from nature.

Today, by Babai Lake in Babai Village, Jinhe Town, Saihan District, Hohhot, a 2,600 m² Intangible Cultural Heritage Herbal Incense Industrial Park carries this legacy into a new age.

Nevertheless, for a comprehensive complex integrating cultural inheritance, industrial incubation and modern offices, thriving operations demand more than lingering herbal fragrance and time-honored craftsmanship. An invisible meridian is essential: a stable, high-performance network covering the entire campus.
From warm lighting inside incense workshops to cool blue data streams in the data center, a millennium-spanning dialogue powered by optical connectivity quietly unfolds within the park.

I. Five Critical Network Challenges Facing the Sprawling Cultural Park

As a newly built project benchmarked against smart campus standards, the Inner Mongolia Herbal Incense Intangible Cultural Heritage Industrial Park integrates herbal planting exhibition zones, intangible heritage workshop experience areas, cultural & creative commercial spaces and startup incubation offices. Its diversified scenarios and extensive coverage impose stringent requirements on network infrastructure. The project team identified five core hurdles:

1. Long-Distance Power Supply: Limitations of Traditional Solutions

Herb planting zones, intangible heritage workshops, visitor centers and startup office buildings are distributed across wide areas, hundreds of meters apart. Traditional Ethernet PoE has a theoretical 100-meter transmission limit, further shortened by real-world signal losses during construction. Installing separate power supply equipment for every endpoint drastically raises cabling costs, while scattered power nodes create persistent O&M burdens. Sufficient network coverage without accessible power became the first major obstacle.

2. Complex Scenarios Lead to Fragmented Wi-Fi Coverage

The outdoor herb viewing zone spans a large area; dense wooden beams inside handcraft workshops cause severe signal attenuation. Semi-open cultural corridors feature long pedestrian routes, while enclosed exhibition halls need support for high-density concurrent connections. Ordinary APs struggle to deliver balanced performance across diverse settings, leaving widespread weak coverage and dead zones.

3. Seamless Roaming: An Essential Requirement for Visitor Experience

Tourists follow winding sightseeing routes: moving from herb fields into heritage exhibition halls, then cultural and creative stores. Frequent reconnection or unexpected disconnections ruin visitor experience and render digital guides, QR-code audio commentary and livestream sharing ineffective.

4. Startup Offices: Building Internal Networks From Scratch

The planned incubation zone will host cultural & creative teams, e-commerce operators and research & training institutions. Wired office access, internal resource sharing, video conferencing and cloud collaboration demand far higher stability, security and bandwidth priority than visitor Wi-Fi. A single physical network must accommodate both convenient public access and reliable corporate office connectivity.

5. Real-Name Authentication: A Mandatory Compliance Task

As an open cultural venue, the park’s public Wi-Fi must legally implement user real-name authentication and internet access log retention — rigid requirements stipulated under MPS Decree No.151 and the Cybersecurity Law of the People’s Republic of China. Failure to comply risks official warnings and fines. Verifying every internet user’s identity is an unavoidable compliance threshold for open campuses.

6. Boundary Security: An Overarching Risk for Open Networks

The campus network is exposed to the public internet. Without robust perimeter defense, it faces external attacks, malware intrusions and data leakage. Compromised defenses would endanger visitor personal information and corporate office data. Building a trusted, controllable network boundary forms the foundation of campus digital security.

For newly built campuses, the network is not an optional add-on — it constitutes fundamental infrastructure that directly determines long-term digital operational capabilities and end-user experience.

II. Optical-Electrical Hybrid Breakthrough: AINOPOL All-Optical Solution Enables Dual-Scenario Campus Operation

Faced with multiple constraints, the project team rejected conventional copper-based networking. Instead, they designed a customized all-optical network centered on POF optical-electrical composite cables, supporting both public Wi-Fi coverage and secure startup office intranets on one unified infrastructure.

POF Replaces Conventional PoE: Single Cable Transmits Both Optical Signals and Power

Traditional copper architectures face an inherent conflict: network cables carry data but are limited to 100-meter reach; fiber supports long-distance high-speed transmission yet cannot conduct electricity. In large campuses, data transmission and power supply require separate cabling, doubling overall costs.

Optical-electrical composite cables resolve this contradiction. Within one cable assembly, optical fibers deliver Gigabit / 10-Gigabit data transmission, while embedded copper cores supply power over extended distances. A single cable handles both data and power, enabling stable operation of APs and terminals hundreds of meters away from the equipment room, breaking physical restrictions of power supply radius.

Deployed alongside optical outlets in equipment rooms and floor weak-current closets, the cables deliver power locally to ceiling and panel APs, resolving last-mile power challenges. Wherever fiber is routed, network connectivity and power arrive simultaneously, eliminating the hassle of searching for nearby power outlets.

Strategic AP Layout & Diversified Hardware Eliminate Wi-Fi Dead Zones

Targeting coverage challenges across outdoor herb fields, indoor workshops, exhibition halls and cultural blocks, the solution adopts differentiated AP deployment strategies:

• ZH-APX3P Wireless APs: Deployed in office zones, equipped with four downlink ports for wired terminal access to support diversified services.
• ZH-AP30006S-M Wireless APs: Installed in exhibition areas, corridors, public spaces and conference zones with high user density. Superior concurrent processing ensures smooth connectivity for multiple devices online simultaneously.

The two AP models are strategically positioned at key nodes inside exhibition halls, workshops and corridors. Wall-mounted deployment is innovatively adopted in selected areas to balance signal coverage and aesthetic design.
All APs receive remote power via POF optical-electrical composite cables without independent power wiring, enabling streamlined, efficient deployment.

Centralized AC Orchestration Delivers Seamless, Transparent Roaming

For uninterrupted mobility during visitor tours, the ZH-AC300R (Ultra) AC controller acts as the wireless network commander. It centrally manages channel planning, power adjustment, SSID distribution and firmware upgrades for hundreds of campus APs via a unified management interface.

Under centralized control, scattered APs operate as a coordinated fleet: automatic device discovery, synchronized configuration rollout and intelligent channel interference mitigation. Administrators oversee the whole network with simple operations.

As visitors stroll from herb fields to heritage workshops and creative retail spaces, connections switch transparently without lag or disconnection. Digital guides, online interaction and live cultural broadcasts run continuously without interruption.

VLAN Isolation & Dual SSIDs: One Physical Network Separates Visitors and Office Traffic

To meet requirements for secure startup office intranets, the architecture adopts shared physical infrastructure with logical isolation.

The ZH-AC500(Ultra) router manages campus broadband access. Through VLAN partitioning and policy-based routing, visitor traffic and office data are fully segregated. While visitors browse short videos across the herb garden, startup teams conduct high-definition video conferences without mutual interference.

The ZH-CS5530TGX-SI core switch serves as the campus data hub, handling LAN switching and forwarding. Gigabit to 10-Gigabit backplane bandwidth ensures high-speed, congestion-free data exchange across zones. It reliably supports 4K video streaming in exhibition halls and multi-terminal concurrent access within incubation offices.

Two independent SSIDs are broadcast: one for public visitors and a dedicated corporate SSID for office staff. On identical physical cabling, two logically isolated networks operate independently. Visitors enjoy convenient, stable public internet; internal teams access a secure, exclusive low-interference office intranet safeguarding data transmission and collaborative efficiency.

Real-Name Authentication & Log Retention to Comply with MPS Decree No.151

As an open cultural tourism campus, public Wi-Fi strictly implements mandatory user real-name authentication and internet behavior log retention requirements.

A deeply integrated Portal authentication system supports dual modes: SMS verification and one-click WeChat authorization for fast identity verification, achieving traceable, verified internet access for every user.
Full-network user activity data is retained throughout operations. Logs are stored locally with encryption for a minimum of 180 days, protected against tampering and deletion. Administrators support instant traceable inquiry and one-click compliance report export, fully aligning with the Cybersecurity Law and MPS regulatory standards.

The architecture mitigates operational risks including regulatory rectifications and fines. In the event of online public opinion incidents, cyber violations or cybersecurity breaches, complete log records serve as valid evidence for investigation, balancing convenient visitor internet access and compliant campus network operation.

Perimeter Firewall Builds an Integrated Communication & Security Convergence Solution

To address cybersecurity risks stemming from open public networks, massive connected terminals and frequent data exchange, a security multi-service gateway with native firewall capabilities is deployed at the campus network egress to establish a comprehensive multi-layer defense system.

Integrated IPS intrusion prevention and AV anti-virus engines deliver bidirectional packet filtering and intelligent URL filtering to identify and block external cyberattacks, unauthorized access and risky online behavior at the network perimeter.

Leveraging the inherent anti-eavesdropping security of fiber transmission at the physical layer, supplemented by 802.1X and MAC dual admission control at the access layer, alongside integrated border firewall and full-network behavior auditing capabilities, the solution eliminates the need for stacked additional security hardware to achieve enterprise-wide compliant governance.

The complete architecture balances network throughput and data protection. While sustaining high-speed stable campus connectivity, it builds a robust all-domain security barrier featuring integrated communication and security, coordinated attack defense, achieving fast transmission, rigorous data protection, controllable user activity and preemptive risk interception.

III. Unlocking New Digital Potential for Intangible Heritage Parks

Once infrastructure is deployed, the campus operates in a revolutionary new way.

Visitors walk from the herbal garden into incense-making workshops, with AR herbal guides continuously available on mobile devices. Audio commentary follows their route; they scan QR codes to learn the story of each medicinal herb without disconnection at every corner.

Heritage craftsmen livestream ancient techniques including horn shaping and pottery jar fermentation. High-definition footage streams smoothly without stuttering or dropouts. Thanks to fiber optics, the millennia-old herbal fragrance reaches audiences thousands of miles away across screens.

Cultural & creative teams, e-commerce streamers and research institutions moving into the park do not need to build private networks. They connect to campus Wi-Fi immediately for video conferences, cloud collaboration and large-file transfers. New tenants obtain full network access within half a day.

Network status and device online rates across all zones are visualized on management center dashboards. Administrators conduct centralized oversight, remote early warning and troubleshooting to cut routine maintenance workload. 24/7 surveillance video streams deliver crisp, uninterrupted footage.

A network connects far more than hardware.

Network construction for the Inner Mongolia Herbal Incense Intangible Cultural Heritage Industrial Park goes well beyond simply providing Wi-Fi. This high-bandwidth, low-latency optical network covering the whole campus acts as the digital nervous system of the smart park:
It enables real-time interaction for smart guides, reserves sufficient bandwidth for AR intangible heritage restoration experience, removes uplink bottlenecks for online operations and livestream sales by startup teams, and lays a solid foundation for future innovations including digital twins, intelligent security and IoT perception.

When visitors raise mobile phones amid herb fields to broadcast craftsmen’s skills to remote audiences; when entrepreneurs in offices share grassland culture globally over stable office connectivity — this invisible optical network fulfills its core mission.

Let traditions be seen, let culture be connected. With optical-electrical composite cables, AINOPOL paves a digital highway for millennia-old intangible heritage to thrive in the digital age.