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Ruckus Wireless has released the ZoneFlex 7782-N access point for high density deployments, which features an integrated 30° narrow beam antenna that operates in the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. You deploy several of these APs and target them to specific areas in the stadium (as shown below) to deliver much better performance than the old omnidirectional Wi-Fi access points. Operators of wholesale Wi-Fi offloading businesses (like Towerstream) can also use these APs in crowded city areas like Times Square to allow mobile operators to reduce the congestion on their cellular networks, again by targeting the Wi-Fi signal to the spots where many people congregate and tap into their iPhones or iPads.

In the United States, which has hardly any densely populated cities compared to Asia, Latin America and Europe, most of the high density deployments will occur in sports stadiums and outdoor sporting or entertainment locales, convention centers and hotels. In other countries, Ruckus Wireless’s equipment will be used, not just for crowded sporting and entertainment events, but also for providing outdoor Wi-Fi access in city squares and train stations.

Related stories:

Tips on how improve WiFi in conferences and other crowded venues

Ruckus Delivers Smarter Wi-Fi Solutions to Help Service Providers Manage High-Density Wi-Fi Crowds

Ruckus Wireless files for $100M IPO

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The evaluation of a Wi-Fi network requires that enterprises carefully consider the changes happening in the user population. Factors in the Wi-Fi world today such as consumerization of IT and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) are driving the enterprise to deploy a more robust wireless infrastructure.

Additionally, three converging trends – cloud, mobility, and virtualization – allow business-critical work to be done just about anywhere on any device. This paper looks at:

• Key requirements to consider as you plan for a WLAN purchase
• The top 10 features for a WLAN
• An overview of architectural choices
• How to use the RFP process to select a vendor.

Work has become a thing you do, not a place you go. Architecturally, as the shift to wireless as a foundation-layer technology is made, one must consider future trends and their impact to the network.

This paper is offered free by Aerohive Networks.

Download the WLAN Buyer’s Guide now.

(Sponsored Post)

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WiFi³ technology was developed to deliver huge benefits to smart phone, laptop and tablet users by dramatically improving download and upload performance for voice, video and data intensive applications. Traditional single-channel WiFi is like driving on a single-lane road and getting stuck behind a slow moving vehicle. Even users with the fastest smart phone or tablet can only go as fast as the slowest device on that single-channel. By comparison WiFi³ delivers three channels on the same WiFi radio, so faster devices can be moved to the faster lane, while slower devices can be relegated to a slower lane.

“WiFi³ is the first WiFi technology developed specifically for modern mobile data usage,” says Andrew Skafel, President of Edgewater Wireless. “Realistically, the lifecycle for single-channel WiFi has come to an end yet access point manufacturers are still trying to make single-channel WiFi work. With WiFi³ we’re introducing new technology to the WiFi market that delivers proven, unparalleled performance, unbeatable flexibility and unsurpassed security for service providers, wireless network operators and, most importantly, their customers.”

Research testing conducted in February 2012 by testing and certification researchers from The Tolly Group showed that WiFi³ technology dramatically outperformed three leading carrier class access points. The Tolly Group research report shows a 54X performance improvement with WiFi³ technology over single-channel radio solutions.

WiFi³ technology is already being used by carriers, service providers and systems integrators to address the growing interference and performance problems being created by the explosive growth of WiFi networks and Hotspot deployments. The technology is positioned to have a major impact on WiFi networks and Hotspots as the number of devices using WiFi is expected to triple to over 3 billion globally by 2015.

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About Edgewater Wireless Systems Inc: Edgewater Wireless develops and commercializes leading edge technologies and intellectual property for the communications market. Edgewater Wireless delivers advanced product solutions designed to meet the high-performance, high quality of service (QoS) and high-reliability needs of service providers and their customers. Leveraging over twenty (20) patents, Edgewater Wireless is redefining WiFi infrastructure with its wideband, multi-channel radio and high-capacity Access Point solutions, and delivering next generation WiFi, today. For more information, please visit www.edgewaterwireless.com.

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Problem: poor quality of service in a rural community

Without a doubt, one of the major issues service providers will continue to face in provisioning WiFi networks is Quality of Service (QoS). In addition to poor performance, QoS issues result in unhappy customers, vulnerability to competitor offerings and difficulty in selling higher value services.

Poor QoS was a challenge being faced by Edgewater Wireless Customer – TPNet. The company had installed 6 Mikrotik APs and 6 Antennas on a single transmission tower providing broadband access to 250 customers within a small rural community in Brazil. As is typical in many rural communities, wireline infrastructure is non-existent and, as a result, WiFi is required to provide basic internet service in these locations. TPNet wanted to improve QoS and network performance to improve their customer service as well as provide added value services and increase per/subscriber revenue.

Solution: multi-channel Wi-Fi access points

TPNet turned to our partners Linkpower and CWT, worked with TPNet to test the viability of implementing an Edgewater Wireless AP solution to eliminate the performance and interference issues the service provider was experiencing. Based on initial site surveys it was determined that a single Edgewater Wireless multi-channel WiFi AP would be installed to address the QoS and interference issues.

The new Edgewater Wireless AP was installed without disconnecting the 6 Mikrotik APs to test performance and ensure the major interference issues would be eliminated.

Edgewater Wireless’ AP was installed with two antennas – TX and RX, industry type with 120 degree opening, 20dBi gain, horizontal polarization. The Edgewater Wireless Access Point was also configured with five virtual APs – distributed in channels 1, 6 and 11 with different SSIDs and in the standard 802.11b/g 2.4GHz frequency band. Testing and survey results concluded that the coverage area of the new Edgewater Wireless AP had a radius of 4 km serving over 250 subscribers. This was of immense value to TPNet allowing the WISP to turn off all six of their Mikrotik APs with no need for additional technical action to support their customers. TPNet achieved significantly improved network performance and QoS resulting in their subscribers having better dramatically improved internet connectivity and throughput capacity.

Excellent results

Edgewater Wireless’ multi-channel AP solution allowed TPNet to solve their QoS and network performance issues while enabling the company to sell higher quality services and expand their subscriber base. The results were tremendously positive as the company had seen their sales paralyzed – not being able to sell additional services with their previous solution.

Edgewater Wireless’ partner – LinkPower, continuously provided further support and worked with TPNet to alter the transmission power of the AP – further increasing the coverage area and improving subscribers’ signal levels. All subscriber access to TPNet’s network is now substantially improved and is much more reliable serving more customers in the region.

Read this case study online and find out more about Edgewater Wireless solutions for urban and rural environments.

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About Edgewater Wireless

Edgewater Wireless develops and commercializes leading edge technologies and intellectual property for the communications market. Edgewater Wireless delivers advanced product solutions designed to meet the high-performance, high quality of service (QoS) and high-reliability needs of service providers and their customers. Leveraging over twenty (20) patents, Edgewater Wireless is redefining WiFi infrastructure with its wideband, multi-channel radio and high- capacity Access Point solutions, and delivering next generation WiFi, today.

Edgewater Wireless is a publicly traded company based in Canada. Its access points are used widely not only in North America, but also in Asia and Latin America, where demand for high-speed broadband service is driving wireless broadband deployments.

[Sponsored Post]

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According to Tolly, the performance of a Wi-Fi network suffers when laptops, older smartphones and other Wi-Fi devices using 802.11b and 802.11g chips, connect to the network. Where older 802.11b devices are allowed to connect, other devices on the network (even those using the newer 802.11n chip) experience slower speeds, even as low as 1 Mbps, when factors like distance or interference prevent higher association rates. Thus, even a single client associated at a low rate will degrade the overall performance of the access point. The Edgewater Wireless EAP3000 AP eliminates this problem. By providing three separate channels, the EAP3000 can service older, low-speed clients on one channel, and provide two additional channels for newer, high-speed 802.11n clients. Tests show that the EAP3000 provides a dramatic increase in aggregate throughput in these mixed-mode environments when compared with single-channel APs from several leading providers.

Read the full test report and methodology.

[sponsored post]

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Recommended reading:

Why hotel Wi-Fi is being crushed by iPads and what to do about it

Why Wi-Fi sucked at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

Why conference Wi-Fi sucks and what to do about it

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Tropos 1410 wireless mesh routers and wireless bridges create secure, IP-based field area communication networks serving thousands of automation endpoints such as intelligent electrical devices, industrial process controllers and SCADA devices. The highly integrated, next-generation hardware design of the Tropos 1410 allows it to achieve a cost up to 50 percent lower than that of single-purpose, proprietary, lower-speed communication offerings. The product line’s integrated firewall and VPN extend enterprise-class security to legacy devices installed in the field that have lacked state-of-the-art security technology. In addition, the Tropos 1410 can be centrally managed by the Tropos Control wireless network management, monitoring and control application.

“Adding the Tropos 1410 to our product line enables secure field communications for an extensive array of utility and industrial customers for as little as half the price of our competitors,” said Tom Ayers, President and CEO for Tropos Networks. “The new line includes the first board-level product from Tropos, enabling developers working on a wide variety of field automation applications to embed secure, low-cost, standards-based wireless communications into their products.”

Utility, mining, oil and gas as well as other industries are increasingly using wireless communications networks to monitor and control assets in the field and large outdoor facilities. These field area networks support a diverse set of applications including automated metering infrastructure and distribution automation for utilities; telemetry and mining management systems for mining; wellhead monitoring and logging for oil and gas; traffic signal management and video monitoring for transportation; process control for refining and chemicals; and SCADA for a wide variety of vertical markets. In the past, companies have been forced to rely on proprietary low-speed wireless communications systems with little security to implement their field area networks.

The Tropos 1410 delivers the most advanced set of security features available for field area networks. Each Tropos 1410 wireless mesh router and bridge will include a built-in firewall and a built-in IPsec VPN. They implement a multi-layer, multi-application security model that provides defense-in-depth and enables traffic from different applications and user groups to be segregated on separate virtual local area networks (VLANs), each with its own address space, quality of service (QoS) policies and security policies including the capability to create one or more standard IPsec VPNs per VLAN. The Tropos 1410 employs RADIUS, 802.1x, and 802.11i authentication, AES encryption and HTTPS-based remote access to secure field area networks from unauthorized devices, users and snooping. The Tropos 1410’s operating software complies with the requirements of NIST FIPS 140-2 Level 2 for U.S. government cyber security and NERC CIP 002-009 for utility critical infrastructure protection.

Tropos offers two product variants in the new line, the Tropos 1410 and the board-level Tropos 1410-B. The Tropos 1410 comes in a ruggedized, weatherized enclosure suitable for use in extreme outdoor environments. The Tropos 1410-B is a module suitable for integration into Smart Grid devices such as smart transformers and intelligent electrical devices as well as into a wide range of industrial process controllers and SCADA devices. Both products can be configured via software load to be either a bridge that connects to any standard 802.11b/g/n wireless network, including Tropos mesh networks, or a fully functional Tropos wireless mesh router. Each supports an 802.11b/g/n wireless connection with full MIMO and a wired connection using 10/100BASE-T Ethernet, RS-232 serial or RS-485 serial. Their Ethernet and serial interfaces will support utility and industrial control protocols, including DNP3, Modbus, SEL Mirrored Bits and IEC 61850, to facilitate integration of utility and process control devices.

Pricing for the Tropos 1410 and Tropos 1410-B with bridging software will be $549 and $399, respectively. They will be available in March 2012 through Tropos’ authorized distributors and resellers as well as online at buy.tropos.com. The units with routing software are priced at $749 for the Tropos 1410 and $599 for the Tropos 1410-B, and will be available in Q3-2012. An upgrade from bridging to routing software will also be available in Q3-2012 at a price of $200 per unit.

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Headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, Solutions4ebiz has an extensive knowledge base as well as expertise to accommodate the growing volume of hosted WiDirect services, making them a natural fit for the hosted WiDirect product line.

“Hosted services will now be hosted exclusively by Solutions4ebiz for the WiDirect services,” says Philip McQuade, President and General Manager of AllCity Wireless, “which allows us a greater capacity than we previously had available.  This expansion of space in cloud services will allow us to expand these offerings even faster than previously designed, in order to meet the growing demand of our hosted customers.”

Service fees for the hosted WiDirect line will continue to be the lowest in the industry and are based on a per hosted WiClient schedule.  There are still no per user management fees and the hosted WiDirect solution works on a simple flat rate, per location.

For more information about AllCity Wireless’ hosted services, please visit:  http://www.allcitywireless.com/hosted/

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J&J Telecommunications needed to solve a major customer problem. The 855-boat slip South Shore Harbor Marina located in League City, TX needed to provide WiFi Internet Connectivity to their customer’s Mobile, Laptop and Tablet devices without having to install customer-premises equipment on the customer’s boat. Adding to the complexity of the challenge was the existence of over 100 other WiFi access points in the area broadcasting on the b/g and n WiFi bands. Many of the boaters in the marina were complaining about zero or limited (slow and constant dropping) WiFi connection to the Marina’s existing network and equipment.

Solution: Next Generation Multi-Channel Wi-Fi

J&J Telecommunications selected Edgewater Wireless’ Multi-channel Access Point Products with a 3-channel 802.11 b/g configuration to deploy within the marina. Edgewater Wireless’ next generation, multi-channel WiFi solution was critical to solving the wireless challenges at the marina and providing boaters with 100% reliable connectivity to the Internet. Relying on Edgewater Wireless Multi-channel Access Points the marina was able to satisfy their customer’s needs for WiFi Internet connectivity that was both reliable, and accessible without any additional CPE equipment on the customer’s boat.

Leveraging the strengths of the Edgewater Wireless Multi-channel Access Point, the marina was able to give the customers a choice of WiFi channels to choose from by broadcasting multiple channels simultaneously from the same EAP using different SSIDs. Having multi-channel choice boaters are able to choose the SSID, and as a result, the channel that worked best for them based on their location and their proximity to interference caused by the 100+ WiFi access points in the area.

Scott Kellogg, CEO of J&J Telecommunications Inc. says:

“We put a number of products through extensive and rigorous testing looking for a high performance WiFi solution and only Edgewater Wireless’ EAP3000 could meet the challenge.”

Result: Solid Connectivity without Interference or CPE = Satisfied Customers

By relying on Edgewater Wireless Multi-channel Access Point Products, J&J Telecommunications delivered a truly next generation WiFi solution addressing the technical infrastructure requirements of the marina and, more importantly met the needs of the boaters and customers. South Shore Harbor Marina now delivers reliable con- nectivity to the Internet with no interference or QoS issue. This result clearly demonstrates how Edgewater Wireless is leading the charge in next generation WiFi infrastructure.

[Sponsored Post]

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According to Ruckus, ChannelFly leverages the same Ruckus-patented adaptive antenna approach, BeamFlex™, that constantly learns and selects the best signal path for any given Wi-Fi transmission. A statistical adaptive channel selection technique, ChannelFly applies similar principles to automatically determine the best radio operating frequency (RF channel) to be used that will yield the highest client throughput. As more users and devices are connecting to Wi-Fi networks, channel capacity is becoming a scarce and valuable resource. Because the level of interference and activity in the Wi-Fi spectrum varies as function of location, frequency and time, it is critical that client devices use the Wi-Fi channel with the lowest activity level and interference level to assure the best possible performance.

A contention-based medium, Wi-Fi uses the unlicensed 2.4 and 5GHz bands, making it highly susceptible to congestion and interference. A proven key to delivering superior performance within a Wi-Fi environment is the extent to which a wireless system can learn and adapt to constant environmental changes that degrade client performance.

“Historical approaches to Wi-Fi channel selection use spectrum analysis or packet sniffing techniques to basically guess the impact of interference on Wi-Fi capacity,” said Bill Kish, co-founder and chief technology officer at Ruckus Wireless. “But with Wi-Fi, what an AP hears doesn’t necessarily determine capacity. We skip those needless and disruptive steps and just measure the wireless capacity directly.”

Kish noted that traditional approaches to automate channel selection don’t provide a complete view of what is really happening on a given channel. “ChannelFly was conceived to turn the traditional model on its head by using statistical analysis of real-time channel performance to discover the true capacity of any channel at any time,” said Kish, the inventor of ChannelFly.

A Predictive Model to Wi-Fi Channel Selection

Unlike alternative channel optimization approaches that passively listen for packet retries, transmission errors and RF interference on other channels when the Wi-Fi access point (AP) is not sending or receiving data, ChannelFly is based on a predictive model that uses actual channel activity to learn what channels will yield the most capacity to provide the highest client speeds. Armed with this knowledge, ChannelFly quickly avoids interference within congested and noisy environments while maintaining maximum network throughput. ChannelFly assesses all available channels within the 2.4 and 5GHz bands.

Now integrated within every Ruckus ZoneFlex Smart Wi-Fi AP, ChannelFly operates automatically without any human intervention. And because ChannelFly is based on actual channel throughput measurements, no background scanning is required for ongoing channel optimization. This eliminates the need for APs to be out of service when performing off-channel scanning.

ChannelFly operates with or without client activity. During the first several hours of operation, each Ruckus AP determines the channel with the highest capacity even before users begin to associate. This enables Ruckus-APs to offer a high quality user experience without the service disruptions caused by interference or background scanning. With ChannelFly, Ruckus APs can automatically self-tune before any client devices are connected thereby avoiding service disruptions that can often be associated with RF channel changes. Once clients are active, to ensure seamless operation with end devices, ChannelFly uses the IEEE 802.11h protocol to automatically advertise when a change to a better Wi-Fi channel is necessary.

“We see ChannelFly as a truly important step in the evolution of more reliable Wi-Fi networks,” said Arthur Giftakis, VP of Engineering at Towerstream. “Operating a pervasive Wi-Fi network in one of the most exciting locations on the planet, New York City, we’ve found ChannelFly to be instrumental in yielding higher levels of network capacity within this constantly changing environment. Innovations like ChannelFly are essential to making Wi-Fi carrier class.”

Available immediately at no cost within a new release of Ruckus ZoneFlex software (v. 9.3), ChannelFly is a selectable feature that operates automatically on every Ruckus ZoneFlex access point.

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