Proxim taps 802.11a for wireless broadband

Equipment announced Monday by Proxim adds to a growing array of wireless alternatives to wired broadband and leased lines.

The gear, which Proxim calls the Tsunami MP.11a line, is designed to let service providers and enterprises build long-range outdoor networks that take advantage of inexpensive commodity hardware designed for Wi-Fi wireless LANs. It is based on IEEE 802.11a technology, with a maximum carrying capacity of 54M bit/sec and represents a step up from Proxim's currently shipping Tsunami MP.11 line, which uses 802.11b gear that offers 11M bit/sec.

The 802.11a technology has more channels so service providers can offer bandwidth to more customers, and its higher data rate opens the door to services for small and medium-sized businesses, according to Ken Haase, director of product marketing and business development at the Sunnyvale, Calif., company. It can also provide backhaul connections from one network to another, such as a wireless "fat pipe" from a public wireless LAN hot spot.

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

Equipment announced Monday by Proxim adds to a growing array of wireless alternatives to wired broadband and leased lines.

The gear, which Proxim calls the Tsunami MP.11a line, is designed to let service providers and enterprises build long-range outdoor networks that take advantage of inexpensive commodity hardware designed for Wi-Fi wireless LANs. It is based on IEEE 802.11a technology, with a maximum carrying capacity of 54M bit/sec and represents a step up from Proxim's currently shipping Tsunami MP.11 line, which uses 802.11b gear that offers 11M bit/sec.

The 802.11a technology has more channels so service providers can offer bandwidth to more customers, and its higher data rate opens the door to services for small and medium-sized businesses, according to Ken Haase, director of product marketing and business development at the Sunnyvale, Calif., company. It can also provide backhaul connections from one network to another, such as a wireless "fat pipe" from a public wireless LAN hot spot.

The market for broadband fixed wireless systems is already crowded with technologies, most of them proprietary, but the introduction of standards-based products may help drive down prices and help wireless compete against DSL and cable modem services, analysts said. Though systems such as Proxim's are not designed for use with off-the-shelf client devices from third parties, high production volumes should reduce the cost of the standard components on which they are based.

Cisco introduced its own fixed wireless system based on 802.11a in June, and the IEEE 802.16a standard approved early this year has drawn interest from major vendors interested in wireless metropolitan-area networks, including Intel and Proxim itself.

Though standards-based, Proxim's MP.11a products are specialized. Typical wireless LAN gear couldn't be used for the kind of controlled, multiple-customer services for which Proxim designs its outdoor gear, Haase said. Proxim uses its Wireless Outdoor Router Protocol (WORP) to allocate a guaranteed amount of bandwidth to each customer, so a few users can't take up the whole capacity of a base station as they could with a conventional wireless LAN access point.

WORP allocates network capacity by assigning brief time slots to all the users who want to send and receive data and giving each a turn to use the bandwidth, Haase said. At the service management level, service-provider technicians can throttle the amount of bandwidth available to each user through a simple Web interface or a RADIUS server.

Each base station has an effective capacity of 30M bit/sec and can serve as many as 100 subscriber units, Haase said. Service providers also can support more customers by putting several base stations on a tower, assigning a different channel from 802.11a's assigned spectrum to each of them and pointing them in different directions. Proxim offers antennas with ranges as narrow as 30 degrees. The system's range is four miles to 32 miles under Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations and one mile to 7.5 miles under European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) rules, according to Proxim. Unlike some fixed wireless systems, it doesn't require a direct line of sight between the base station and the device at the customer's premise.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.