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Lead
Roaming the wireless mesh
Wireless Mesh Networks make outdoor Wi-Fi viable by extending
Wi-Fi service from ‘spot’ to ‘blanket’ coverage, making
it possible for users to remain connected while traveling within an area of
50 square miles, says Abhinav Singh
 Wi-Fi
networks provide freedom and mobility for a growing number of notebook PC and
PDA users who no longer need wires to stay connected with their workplace and
the Internet. Ironically, the very Access Points (APs) that provide wireless
service to these clients need lots of wiring themselves to connect to private
networks and the Internet. This wiring is expensive to install and deployment
have to be carefully planned and timed to minimize disruption to normal business
operations. Permits or permissions may be required and then there is the laborious
work of pulling, terminating and testing the copper wiring or fiber optic cabling.
With all the work involved, it should not be surprising that wiring can be the
most expensive part of a ‘wireless’ network and due to this, many
obstacles associated with wiring are now preventing or delaying the deployment
of wireless applications that could deliver a real competitive advantage or
a high return on investment—or both.
Instead of wiring the AP, Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN) can help organizations
do the same wirelessly. The city of Taipei in Taiwan has deployed a WMN from
Nortel Networks that has blanketed the city, installing wireless mesh antennas
on street lamps, in train stations and on the side of buildings. This is the
first time a city of 272 square kilometers could be wholly covered by a wireless
LAN through WMN technology.
However, what ultimately determines the utility of a wireless mesh is its ability
to fit in seamlessly with existing network standards.
The rationale
A Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) is a communications network made up of radio nodes
in which there are at least two pathways of communication to each node. The
coverage area of the radio nodes working as a single network becomes a mesh
cloud. Access to this mesh cloud is dependent on the radio nodes working in
harmony with each other to create a radio network. A mesh network is natively
designed to be reliable and offers redundancy. It’s built of peer radio
devices that don’t have to be cabled to a wired port like traditional Wireless
LAN (AP) do. The WMN architecture sustains signal strength by breaking long
distances into a series of shorter hops. The early form of wireless mesh consisted
of segmented client access and shared backhaul that performed poorly when multiple
users connected and multiple hops were involved. As the demand for pervasive
wireless connectivity increased, chip making companies innovated and came up
with effective Wi-Fi silicon. Engineers developed intelligent algorithms to
handle Radio Frequency (RF) signals. Today, WMNs are highly available networks
with increased performance and can serve more users with varied applications
than their predecessors.
A wireless mesh network provides true Ethernet connectivity
and is fully compatible and interoperable with all Ethernet switching and routing
protocols including IPv6, MPLS and VPN tunneling. This capability allows multiple
wireless mesh networks, potentially from different vendors, to be inter networked
including both IPv4 and IPv6 protocols. Sajan Paul, Director- Solution Consulting,
Enterprise Networks Asia, Nortel said, “Since there are a limited number
of wired backhauls attached to the APs, any cost associated with them is eliminated
and, since the wires are fewer, manageability is easier. There are only a handful
of APs attached to a wired backhaul and Wi-Fi can be extended to a wide area.
This technology is really helpful when the numbers of APs is large and needs
to be connected to a large number of mobile devices.”
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 “WMN
is transforming how people can connect to the Internet and at the same
time have seamless access to their corporate data over a secure VPN.”
- Ranajoy Punja
Vice President- Business Development Advanced Technology Cisco India and
SAARC
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 “This
technology is really helpful when the numbers of APs is large and needs
to be connected to a large number of mobile devices.”
- Sajan Paul
Director- Solution Consulting, Enterprise Networks Asia,
Nortel
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Scalable, adaptive and highly available
The key benefit of a WMN is that it is adaptive, scalable, and highly available.
Ranajoy Punja, Vice President- Business Development Advanced Technology, Cisco,
India and SAARC said, “WMN is loop-free, self-healing, and scales to a
large numbers of nodes. WMN is transforming how people can connect to the Internet
and at the same time have seamless access to their corporate data over a secure
VPN.” The major differentiator over enterprise Wi-Fi is that users no longer
have to be glued to their work areas. They can roam freely and have access to
business applications as well.”
| Public Safety |
Police, ambulance, and fire fighting
departments can have real time access to data and inter-departmental voice
calls. Police and fire fighting vehicles equipped with notebooks or police
officers with Wi-Fi-enabled handhelds can intercept videos, visualize maps,
gather vehicle or criminal records from the police databases and effectively
respond to crime. With Wi-Fi enabled video surveillance cameras they can
provide efficient citizen safety, traffic monitoring, and respond to emergencies
in a short span of time. |
| Government Services |
Water metering, electricity billing,
road transport systems, land acquisition/ town planning, tourism information
kiosks powered with Wi-Fi systems can share usage and billing information
to a public utility teams through wireless handheld devices. This will shorten
billing cycles, make the process more transparent, eliminate any malpractices,
provide statistics for improving public services, and help government get
all the revenues for the public services provided. |
| Education |
Internet-based learning and online universities
are growing at a very fast rate across India. WMN Service Providers can
extend Wireless Broadband Access for online learning and achieve increased
subscriptions. |
| Tourism |
WMN attracts tourism by providing them
local information at their fingertips. There is a direct relationship between
the rising tourism in a country and the revenues that local businesses make.
With WMN, tourists can reach out to local businesses may it be food, travel,
or just directions. |
| Entertainment |
With India being one of the epicenters
of entertainment across the globe, service providers can offer music on
demand, optimized video download, booking of movie tickets, and online gaming.
In addition service providers can generate significant revenues and increase
their profit margins through online 'Location Specific' advertising. |
| Transportation |
With several modes of transportation
available and metro rail and air-conditioned buses coming up, the ticketing
for these alternative modes of transportation can be centralized, standardized,
made easily accessible to the public and enforce a regulated ticketing system.
The ticketing system would be Web enabled and users with notebooks or PDAs
or at Wi-Fi enabled kiosks can get digital tickets. This eliminates the
wastage of paper and helps us protect the environment. |
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Source: Cisco Systems
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Wider coverage
In general, WMN is superior as a technology where the area to be covered is
extensive, either within a large building, or spanning a sprawling campus or
even a city; coverage is required both indoors and outdoors. There can be instances
where the building or area is unwired or under-wired, and lacks the infrastructure
(raceways, conduits, and there are relatively few ‘lines of sight’
and obstructions exist) can be circumvented with one or two hops. A WMN can
be a cost-effective element of any disaster recovery strategy. The mesh is easy
to deploy, expand and reconfigure as needed to mitigate anything from a localized
service outage to a more widespread and serious emergency situation. The fast
and friendly self-managing nature of a wireless mesh also makes it suitable
for most temporary networking requirements, such a trade show or other transitory
need.
The road ahead
The next generation of WMNs would address the indoor enterprise Wi-Fi or Home
Wi-Fi. There would be enhancements on the hardware and newer semiconductor chipsets
to efficiently handle video traffic and improve voice quality to achieve Wireless
Video Conferencing and Quad Play services, which is going to be the next generation
service provider offering. Although the technology is 20-30% more expensive
to install than traditional Wi-Fi technology, the benefits that it brings to
the table are unique and hard to resist. A beginning has been made in India
as vendors such as Nortel and Cisco Systems are talking to educational institutions
and the government sector to sell their WMN technology and it will not be long
before this technology makes its mark in India too. Cisco recently announced
the acquisition of Navini Networks, a company in the mobile WiMAX broadband
wireless industry which will help it extend and enhance Cisco’s IP Next
Generation Network (IP NGN) solution for service providers to integrate with
the current Cisco Wireless Mesh solution. Today Cisco has MetroE links and other
backhaul WAN links provided by Service Providers to inter-connect the Wireless
Mesh nodes.
abhinav.singh@expressindia.com
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