* Cisco gets 3G operators to sanction cellular router use
Cisco has helped blaze a trail for the legitimate use of cellular routing.
The company announced a 3G module for its widely installed branch office Integrated Services Router (ISR) last week at the CTIA conference in Orlando. The $850 Cisco 3G-Enabled Wireless WAN High-Speed WAN Interface Card (HWIC), available in HDSPA and EV-DO versions, is to be available this summer.
Perhaps more importantly, however, the equipment maker also got several mobile network operators to step up to the plate to say they would endorse the use of the router modules with associated managed cellular data services. Though a number of cellular routers exist today – an enterprise-class device from SonicWall and consumer-class devices from a number of providers, for example – U.S. mobile network operators AT&T/Cingular and Verizon Wireless have expressly prohibited routed traffic from traversing their 3G networks. Sprint Nextel has been more flexible, restricting usage to routers that the company has certified.
Cisco, though, has tested its ISR 3G modules with the AT&T/Cingular, Sprint Nextel, Verizon Wireless and Telefonica Moviles Espana networks, and these carriers all say they will soon launch associated managed services. The arrival of such services, in effect, sanctions the presence of cellular traffic aggregated through a router on the 3G operators’ networks.
The speeds that Cisco will promise with its modules, based on testing, are 800Kbps downstream and 125Kbps upstream with the HSDPA card and 1Mbps downstream and 300Kbps upstream with the EV-DO card. The limited bandwidth suggests the use of the cellular last-mile links for backup connections to lower-speed landlines, as primary connections when there is no landline available and for supplemental bandwidth to a primary connection.
It has been reported that VoIP may not be transmissible via the router, even though one of the ISR’s claims to fame is the integration of all key core networking technologies, including VoIP, into a single, high-performance device. Reports have made it sound that the reasons are technical; however, note that VoIP traffic (like cellular routing, formerly) is still expressly prohibited from the U.S. 3G operator’s backbones.
