Rancho Santana, Tola-Rivas, Popoyo Nicaragua

Rancho Santana

Rancho Santana is a 2,700 acre coastal resort and residential community in Nicaragua. It's Inn and and residences (nearly 400 home sites), restaurants and cafes, beach clubs and spa, St. Anne's chapel, wood shop, solar farm, many administrative buildings, community health clinic, and local trade school are all network connected and receive internet service over an extensive private telecommunications infrastructure.

For visitors, Rancho is a tropical paradise. The property has five beautiful beaches on Nicaragua's pristine Emerald Coast. Powder fine pink sand and salty ocean breezes that form waves so perfect as to attract top international surfers. But this paradise is hostile toward electronic equipment.

Tropical heat and humid salty-air corrodes metal parts. Ocean breezes fill equipment with dust and sand. Lightning strikes and electrical surges hit backup batteries hard and burn up power supplies. Spiders, scorpions, wasps, ants, and all matter of winged insect build their nests on and in network equipment. The annual six-month rainy season causes regular flooding. The closest parts store is in the capitol city of Managua, over two hours away by car, and it's completely hit or miss whether the item you need is going to be in stock when you get there. You can see how building and maintaining a fast, reliable, and secure data network at Rancho Santana is a very ambitious undertaking.