Let’s get right to it – you need REAL engineering and infrastructure consultants, not self-proclaimed experts that think they know what they are doing – when they don’t.

If you really knew network engineering – all of it, not just wireless, you would understand that WiFi might not be the right choice to cover a large metropolitan area.

As I said in one of my articles – just because you built a Lionel railroad in your basement doesn’t mean that you can now become the Chief Infratructure Engineer for the Burlington Northern. The same applies to network infrastructure. A couple of successful WIFi implementations in some coffee shops do not translate into undetstanding network topographies for major metropolitan areas. Read and learn:

http://carliniscomments.com/archives/146-WIFI,-WIMAX-EVOLUTION.html

http://carliniscomments.com/archives/131-WIFI-is-NOT-THE-UNIVERSAL-SOLUTION.html

James Carlini

1) Let’s start with the idea that everybody needs ubiquitous coverage through their house. That was never going to happen regardless of what the radio manufacturers said. Make the expectations more realistic. We solved that problem 5 years ago and will now be releasing it into the cities we worked with.

2) Move forward to the concept that you need a $1200-$5000 access point with mesh. The reality is that most of the radios used $150 modules from Ubiquiti with mesh software. There were many variations but that was the reality. It’s now 5 years later and equipment that is far less expensive is now available using the same modules. That alone drops the capex by a factor of 3 or more.

3) We need mesh. Wrong. You could use mesh or WDS and saw no difference in performance. That fact it was mesh just added to the cost. How about just monitoring your network and dynamically making changes to support additional bandwidth or equipment failure.

4) You need multiple radios per access point. Sure, if you had high bandwidth needs. However, what about just adding additional backhaul in areas of high congestion and reducing the hops as, and here is the financial kick in the pants, “your revenue in an area increases to cover the Capex cost!”. Profitability, what a concept!

5) Mesh redistibutes paths based on load making it more efficient. B.S.! Not every mesh manufacturer implemented that feature and the reality is, who cares. Go back to my previous statement.

6) Make the access points multi-radio and multi-frequency to increase efficiency. Here’s my point to that. Another stupid idea. Drives up costs of equipment that doesn’t get evenly distributed across the applications it’s being used for financially.

Most of these are common sense that should be applied to any radio deployment. However, they were apparently missed when Earthlink, Metrofi, MobilePro, and others were blowing through tens of millions of dollars of their investors money. Next time hire real RF engineers instead of network engineer lackey’s who think they have some clue about RF trained by the very corporations trying to sell you equipment. An RF engineer could have told you that your expectations of performance were never realistic. And if anybody listens to these consultants like Jonathan Balco and Civitium who never installed an AP in their life, you get what you deserve.