i have cable internet service 260 individual customers networked in cable, I have planed to buy a valuepointnet products for our network, I want remove entire cable media and I will put wifi network it is worth give me best guidelines

Every manufacturer has unique features that make their product better in some application. For example, SkyPilot has very long range at the tradeoff of reduced hop capacity, Firetide has very high capacity at the tradeoff of reduced omni-directional range. Every other manufacturer comes across this spectrum at some level. Nobody has a product that is the best fit for every application. If they did, there would be far fewer companies.

I think the more important argument is how do we penetrate more municipalities in which case, everygody wins. The focus should not be on who is the best ragardless of cost, and that product has application also, but who can open up the markets. Is Mesh Dynamics good, yes, so it Firetide, Cisco, Motorola, Tropos, Strix, Alvarion, Proxim, etc… I look at every application to see which products will work the best.

I personally am not a big fan of mesh due to the cost. I think manufacturers have priced out a lot of the market for that reason. $3000-$12000 for a single AP is not going to open up mass markets, no matter how technically awesome it it. Simultaneously, 2 Mbps to a home user is no longer acceptable so there is pressure on bring increased bandwidth. There is a probability right now that federal money will drive a lot of this. However, local governments and private industry no longer have the funding to pay this kind of fees.

In my opinion, and yes it won’t agree with everyone, is to create a system that can deliver 100Mbps down a chain of 10 radios with ranges up to 2 miles that can also be tapped for hotspot and PTMP applications for less than $1000 per AP. The system should have management capability that doesn’t require Linux experience and costs an arm and a leg, should be deployable without 3 days of training and CCNA certification, and should cost less than 2% of the deployment costs to support yearly. Do most of that and a few other things, and I believe that opens up new markets.

Independent tests have shown 50X-1000X performance gains with third-generation WiFi multi-radio wireless mesh when compared to single-radio mesh over the multiple hops typical of a large deployment. Many of MeshDynamics’ customers come to us for a multi-radio solution after purchasing and discarding a one-radio or two-radio solution. The problems in Mountain View, CA and elsewhere show the limitations of single-radio mesh.

Mr. Geier is incorrect on his assumption of unit costs. For example, MeshDynamics three-radio mesh nodes have a list price lower than some popular single-radio nodes. And total cost of ownership is less because fewer costly wired drops are needed for a mesh network built on well-designed multi-radio nodes.

Finally, emerging voice and video applications demand not only high bandwidth, but lower jitter and latency. Multi-radio mesh nodes substantially reduce the contention found in single-radio mesh networks. Reduced delay and jitter and makes voice and video work better, providing application “headroom” to support future needs — avoiding costly upgrades.

Even the industry leader in single-radio mesh has acknowledged its shortcomings by adding a two-radio product — so why are we still having this conversation? Customers have begun the migration to third generation multi-radio mesh and it will only accelerate from here.

As far as design, from what I have seen, BelAir seems to have put the most engineering and forethought into their hardware – but I have not looked at any hardware in a while now so things could have changed.

There is a reason Tropos started making multi-radios too! Sidestepping answering the single radio questions at the conferences got to be a pain.

There is a vast difference in performance between the three generation of products, please see http://www.meshdynamics.com/third_generation.html for more.

Regarding costs, overall costs are the issue, not the cost of the nodes. The running costs of more Ethernet backhauls needed with first and second generation solutions adds up as the deployment sizes increase. Further, if latency is an issue with moving Voice or Video, especially over multiple hops. So more Ethernet links are needed to reduce the number of hops.

These are some of the reasons why our customers are replacing competing first and second generation products with our third generation 3 and 4 radio boxes. Our customers get 18-22 Mbps TCP/IP over 10 hops. Previous generation products (that were replaced) were barely able to provide 1-2 Mbps over 3 hops.

Francis daCosta

What these expert analyst can do to help the Muni and Service Providers researching which vendor to select for their Metro Mesh Nets is come up with some simple guidelines and performance targets the Muni can incorporate in their RFP with a Performance guarantee (Bond)tied to delivery.

Jacomo

Certainly Bel-Air, Cisco, and Strix are more costly solutions, but there are some great dual radio solutions out there by other companies that easily rival the cost and obviously performance of single radio mesh solutions on the market today.