tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81652037790645198442024-02-19T02:41:43.937-05:00Theo's Wireless WANgle! An Insider's Blog about Wireless Backhaul.Hearing conflicting information about wireless backhaul? Trust this true, insightful, sometimes irreverent blog by Father of Wireless Ethernet, David S. Theodore.
An insider's blog about wireless WAN technology. Impartial, factual and opinionated. Theo's Wireless WANgle!http://www.blogger.com/profile/16345547371847803790noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8165203779064519844.post-74363353313475420962016-05-30T12:17:00.000-04:002016-06-10T09:36:52.728-04:00Theo's Buyer's Guide to Wireless Backhaul. The 2016 Edition. <br />
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*** <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidtheodore" target="_blank">Connect with me on LinkedIn</a> ***</div>
Theo's Wireless WANgle!http://www.blogger.com/profile/16345547371847803790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8165203779064519844.post-31316490398110579522016-05-04T16:55:00.001-04:002016-05-04T16:55:43.544-04:00Wireless Past, Meet Wireless Future - Limitless<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Look at the man on the left, and then on the right. Is that a crazy resemblance or what? I'm guessing they're not related, but they do have something in common. The man on the left, Edwin H. Armstrong (1890-1954), did more to advance radio technology than anyone - even to this day. He figured out how the radio tube worked and then how to amplify and regenerate the signal, later cleaning it up to concert quality with his discovery of FM (frequency modulation). Armstrong's impact cannot be understated. He is considered the father of modern radio, and it was radio that gave life to the electronics industry.</div>
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The man on the right, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimefink" target="_blank">Jaime Fink</a>, is co-founder of Silicon Valley based <a href="http://mimosa.co/" target="_blank">Mimosa Networks</a>. He's part of a new breed of innovators in various communities that are taking wireless from art to science, and they're going to prove that wireless is limitless. Even Google and Facebook are pushing wireless development, literally hiring rocket scientists in a bid to deliver Internet service from the stratosphere. And closer to earth, advances like "beamforming", "GPS synch" and TDD (time-division duplexing) are already enabling a multitude of radios to play in concert with each other, sending and receiving on the very same frequencies. It won't be long before more wireless spectrum is available, even in dense urban areas.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Wireless is limitless, and so we should stop trafficking in statements like, "there's not enough spectrum" and "wireless can't handle the bandwidth."</span></div>
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The fact is, we're at a New Frontier in wireless, and in this phase we'll see that the sky's the limit. But this is by no means a revolutionary thought. A century ago, Nikola Tesla envisioned that wireless would deliver not only communications to everyone's home, but also electrical power. He didn't see limitations at all, and I'm with him.</div>
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The destiny of wireless is for all people and all things to talk to all other people and all other things - wherever they may be, in an endless ethereal mesh that plays like a cosmic symphony where there is no shortage of frequencies or capacity. In its infancy, wireless was a medium to transmit a signal from one person to another who had special receiving gear. Then it learned to "broadcast" so that one transmitter could talk to millions of households - first with radio, and then with television. People carried transistor radios like we carry iPhones, and of course we had radios in cars and all sorts of radio controlled devices. In today's parlance that might have been called the "Wireless of Things." As for the "Internet of Things," well there couldn't be one without wireless technology, and some day phone poles and wires will be a thing of the past. Wires are for the birds anyway. </div>
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Stay tuned for my follow up, in which I'll tell you how a new breed of innovators is taking wireless to new heights, moving it from art to an extremely precise science, and challenging all our assumptions. </div>
Theo's Wireless WANgle!http://www.blogger.com/profile/16345547371847803790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8165203779064519844.post-20135942207681595452016-04-04T10:47:00.000-04:002016-05-04T16:58:12.722-04:00Mimosa Channels Henry Ford with the First Licensed Backhaul Radio for Everyone - The B11.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> It's vintage American folklore how in the early days of the automobile there were tons of holdouts who still favored horses and saw cars as a fad. Then Henry Ford decided to make a car so affordable that any of his workers might own one, and that insanely bold leap changed everything. And what was once considered a toy for the rich became a mainstay of our culture. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Now Mimosa Networks is doing to licensed microwave (a.k.a. "licensed wireless backhaul") what Henry Ford did for the automobile. Likewise they'll be buried with orders from enterprise IT managers who, like early car skeptics, have never really warmed up to licensed microwave (okay... "wireless"). Now they can finally see what they've been missing. Incomparable performance, minuscule latency, higher bandwidths and no interference - a rock solid wireless connection second to none, and which is the true "carrier-class" standard that major carriers rely on worldwide. And what's crazy is that in a universe of licensed radios selling north of $12,000 to $15,000, Mimosa's is priced at under $4,000 (link price, both ends included). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> No offense to Mimosa, but their pricing reminds me of my most painful dental visit. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I'm in the chair getting (qty. 1) root canal and crown for $1,600 when the dentist says into my mouth, "When do you think the Internet will finally be free?" I practically spit the gauze out and asked him when he thought root canals might be free. I mean, where am I supposed to get his $1,600 if I'm giving out free bandwidth, and why should we have free Internet and not free dental care or free textbooks in college - or free (clean) water? Yet I never thought I'd see a licensed wireless link for $4,000, so I guess my dentist's vision (and my night terrors) might not be far off. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Anyway, if you haven't heard much of <a href="https://www.mimosa.co/" target="_blank">Mimosa Networks</a>, then you will. They won in seven categories at the 2015 WISPA awards, including Manufacturer of the Year. And what Mimosa has done will finally answer my frustration at how licensed wireless makers have all but ignored the enterprise market, relegating that business to VARs with limited means to spread awareness. Consequently, most IT managers have considered licensed wireless as something of a necessary evil, preferring relatively cheap and convenient 5GHz radios wherever possible, like early car skeptics whose horses eventually couldn't keep up with traffic. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Stay tuned for my follow on piece, in which I'll explore Mimosa's "B11" licensed radio - what's different about it (lots apparently), pros and cons, and whether I'd recommend it. Meanwhile, Mimosa Networks scores points for being first, but Ubiquity is hot on their heels, recently announcing their own radically priced licensed radio (also at 11GHz, which is <i>generally</i> good for about 10-12 miles a hop). It will be interesting to compare these brands, and I invite anyone who's taken delivery of either of them to chime in and let us know what you think. I also have pending calls to Mimosa execs and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/norm-dumbroff-7a3636" target="_blank">Norm Dumbroff</a>, CEO of WAV, Inc., a national distributor, for comments. </span></div>
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Theo's Wireless WANgle!http://www.blogger.com/profile/16345547371847803790noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8165203779064519844.post-53818361772594848832015-10-12T15:25:00.000-04:002016-04-26T09:05:36.091-04:00Wireless Backup is a Bridge Over Troubled Water for your Corporate IT Network <img alt="Another "Inconvenient Truth." Your Corporate Network Needs a Wireless Backup" class="cover-image" height="366" itemprop="image" src="https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/jc/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAUBAAAAJDgwOGRlZTg1LWMwOTQtNGZiMC1hNzhjLWQyZDU5ZWUzMzQwNw.jpg" width="640" /><br />
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Weather extremes are overwhelming our systems. Storms and floods "never before seen," are happening in places never before imagined. Three years ago it was Hurricane Sandy that knocked out a huge swath of Manhattan and New Jersey. Now parts of South Carolina are reeling from what has been called a "1,000-year flood."</div>
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When extreme weather hits, it often takes with it aging infrastructure, collapsing roads, bridges and dams. This is a new dynamic in our lifetime, one that means girding up for rough seas - like we may have expected once in a generation, only now epic weather events are becoming commonplace. If our buildings and public ways are to be battered like ships on the ocean, businesses will need to become more seaworthy. That means building resiliency to minimize setbacks and bounce back to normal operation.<br />
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There are lots of considerations in this regard. Foremost among them is to maintain data connectivity to ISPs, carriers, data centers and colo facilities. I can tell you, having been in the microwave business through various epic events, that businesses in and around the epicenters suffered for <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">weeks</em> without communications. Fiber fails, and diverse routes too, so consider what wireless can do as a tertiary form of redundancy. Good chance it could save your cake (for the price of the candles).
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"Diverse fiber is not impregnable. And so for epic failures, a totally diverse medium - like wireless (a.k.a., "microwave"), can really save your ass." </span></blockquote>
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Some might ask, "Why care, if everything else is down?" Sounds like a great excuse to close shop and hit the liquor store. But while some might like a reprieve from the enslavement of computers and smart phones, patient records still need to be transmitted. People still rely on paychecks to be processed. Colleges stay open and kids want to connect with their families. Emergency devices need to communicate. Financial and insurance transactions shouldn't be held up. And what about the Internet? <em style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Remember what happened to the citizens of South Park when they lost the Internet?</em></div>
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Okay, so let me deal with the most common objections. "I don't have line of sight" and "Microwave won't give me enough bandwidth."</div>
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My answer to the line of sight problem is simply to get someone to find it for you, whether it's to lease space on a cell tower (as a relay or "repeater") or investigate a point-to-multipoint setup. Yes, a direct line of sight shot is best, but not everyone has a house with an ocean view. You work with what you have, so enterprise users without line of sight would have to pay double for the hardware and then maybe a few hundred a month for tower space. Oh my God! I can hear the exclamations. A few hundred a month??? Maybe fifteen grand more for hardware??? But relatively speaking, aren't we talking small change here? Some of us shell out that much for our kids' braces.</div>
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And what about wireless (a.k.a., "microwave") not handling all the bandwidth you need? Well, wireless bandwidth depends on distance and other factors. Some can get upwards of 5-10 gigs and others might have to manage on a few hundred megs. Regardless, whatever bandwidth you get in a major sh*t storm is precious. Take what you can, as you would in any emergency, and be glad for it because your foresight saved the day.
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<br />Theo's Wireless WANgle!http://www.blogger.com/profile/16345547371847803790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8165203779064519844.post-9393026460587610982015-09-26T12:58:00.000-04:002016-04-08T20:59:49.507-04:00I Tell You, Wireless Backhaul Gets No Respect<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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<span class="s1">One of my first purchase orders came in 1988 for a link between Mass General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. I was delivering the world's first point-to-point wireless solution for Ethernet, and though it was my design, I knew very little about microwave. After the install, I sweat bullets every time a thunderstorm rolled through, waiting for a 2 a.m. phone call to say that my link brought the hospital's network down. Instead of celebrating a sale to Boston's most preeminent institutions, I was filled with anxiety.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Want to know what happened? Nothing. The link didn't fail once in the eight-plus years it was in service - not from rain or snow, wind or solar flares, not from the recession of 1990, cows farting or the collapse of Communism. And since then, I can tell you that the technology has only gotten better.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">After that job we got some good publicity and lots of phone calls. Unfortunately most of them started like this, "Our consultant says that microwave goes down in rain... I understand that snow effects the signal... I hear that exposure to RF energy may be hazardous to our employees... I read somewhere that all the frequencies are taken up," etc., etc., etc. Okay, so I learned that the phone company - who was buying microwave by the truckload, was scaring the bejesus out of anyone else who might want it. I trusted that time would shake out all these misperceptions... </span><br />
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<span class="s1">Little did I know that I was about to enter "The Twilight Zone," and that all these years later, the phone calls would sound exactly the same. Same questions, same rumors. Same apprehensions. Even the same tired joke, "Can it cook a chicken?" If you're selling this stuff, you know what I'm saying. If you're buying it, then hear me out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="s1">"When it comes to wireless backhaul, nothing on earth performs </span>better than FCC licensed, point-to-point microwave. If you buy it from a qualified vendor, it will never let you down."</span></h2>
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<span class="s1">And in case you're wondering, pretty much anyone can get an FCC license. The process is relatively quick and inexpensive. You're just linking a couple of buildings, not buying CBS. </span><br />
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<span class="s1">Now, I love licensed microwave, but I'm not saying that license-exempt wireless (e.g., 5GHz) is bad. That's amazing technology too, but you have to tread carefully there and be sure that whoever is selling it to you knows where you're using it and blesses it off so you're not getting killed by interference. Bandwidth may also be an issue because with license-exempt, the longer the path, the less throughput you're getting.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">And two other points; one for buyers and the other for sellers. To buyers I say, don't listen to unqualified "experts" who bloviate with blanket statements about wireless backhaul. People will give you advice, but consider the source. If your cousin installs satellite TV dishes or Wi-Fi access points, then forget what he says about wireless backhaul. He may have dissected a frog in the sixth grade, but you wouldn't trust him to remove your spleen. So the next know-it-all who tells you that microwave is susceptible to rain, stump him by asking, "Yeah, what frequency?" because different frequencies react to the elements in different ways. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">And to sellers, let's stop putting IT managers to sleep - or losing them with the same pitch you'd give to Bell Labs. Enterprise IT buyers don't gain confidence in the purchase when we rattle off terms like "256QAM," "ACM," "space diversity," "XPIC," and all that. We know that microwave works, so sell on bandwidth, sell on payback, sell on convenience, security and independence from "the grid," sell on mixed media backup and the greater control your customer will have. Fiber guys don't have to spout about how electrons travel through glass. So let's stop killing the sale. If the customer doesn't believe, then show him that you do. Offer him a trial, give him a guarantee and put him in touch with all your happy customers. </span></div>
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<span style="text-align: justify;">There's no doubt that enterprise users are interested in wireless backhaul - they're buying it on Amazon, but we haven't yet convinced them that a Porsche outperforms a Pinto. If your customer wants performance, then SELL them on it, and never apologize for the price, because it will be one of the best investments they'll ever make.</span><br />
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<b>View and share this piece on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-tell-you-wireless-backhaul-gets-respect-david-theodore?trk=prof-post" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>.</b><br />
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Theo's Wireless WANgle!http://www.blogger.com/profile/16345547371847803790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8165203779064519844.post-23210847126475823932015-09-08T13:09:00.000-04:002016-04-08T21:04:21.632-04:00Bargain Shopping for Wireless Backhaul?<div style="text-align: justify;">
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I go way back in the point-to-point wireless (microwave) business, having developed the first wireless Internet technology, followed by a string of other firsts and thousands of customer applications. Now given what I've seen, I need to say something about pricing to IT buyers in the enterprise community.</div>
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There are things in life that you can economize on, and others that you wouldn't think that way about. For instance, my son is a lacrosse goalie and when it comes to his helmet and pads, I'm not interested in "a great deal" on protection. I'm looking for the best they've got, and if it's more expensive - within reason, then I'm not ashamed to say that I gain a little confidence in that. And what about finding a surgeon? I've never heard anyone brag that they've found the cheapest one. What you want is a surgeon who's performed the same operation (over and over) on professional athletes and U.S. Senators. </div>
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A corporate data backbone is a main artery of your business, its lifeblood. It's something where you want to know you've got the best of everything - best radios, best installers, best support. Nothing but the best, baby!<br />
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Of course you can get a $600 wireless link on the Internet, and in some places they'll kick ass. In other places those same radios might totally choke, whether from congestion, latency issues, path problems or bandwidth constraints. Consider also, that the radio you buy will only be as good as the people verifying your path and performing the installation. A shoddy implementation will kill whatever "high" performance you should be getting.</div>
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So IT managers, respect your backbone! <span style="background-color: yellow;">Reject calls to build a rice-paper bridge to your remote data network. Build one like a Roman road that will last.</span> When you're in the market for wireless backhaul, be very wary of vendors who make it all about price. They might be desperate and you don't want to catch what they have. Consider what it would cost if your wireless network crashed for a day or two because of some oversight. Be willing to pay more for the things that matter: reliability, security and productivity (throughput). In the end, a solid wireless implementation will save a fortune in recurring charges and never give you a bad day.<br />
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<br />
<span style="color: red;">To comment on this piece in LinkedIn, visit: </span><br />
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/bargain-shopping-wireless-backhaul-david-theodore">https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/bargain-shopping-wireless-backhaul-david-theodore</a><br />
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Theo's Wireless WANgle!http://www.blogger.com/profile/16345547371847803790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8165203779064519844.post-815308134211169212015-04-30T10:42:00.001-04:002016-04-05T13:00:48.331-04:00Averting a Titanic IT Outage from Underground Cable Destruction<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZR0livO3opC-IK2uUVT1aXpJOiwyjLOCLvmKQ8-d8BifshKj333i-hf14F5qMc6YF6BEq9xj7dIUNCIhB880VBRnrWxWsUIcU76UTS4S-hIqSePIjvLVibYkv_ipIRT0TurS8wfX0GqQ/s1600/blog-titanic-banner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Vulnerable Underground Fiber Calls for Wireless Mixed Media Backup" border="0" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZR0livO3opC-IK2uUVT1aXpJOiwyjLOCLvmKQ8-d8BifshKj333i-hf14F5qMc6YF6BEq9xj7dIUNCIhB880VBRnrWxWsUIcU76UTS4S-hIqSePIjvLVibYkv_ipIRT0TurS8wfX0GqQ/s1600/blog-titanic-banner.jpg" title="" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>You’re the captain of your corporate IT ship.</b> You’ve thought it all out - your routes, requirements and resources, and you prepared for the worse by spreading your network out to different carriers. You even have different fiber routes so that if one fails you have the other. But are you really protected?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When your carrier tells you that they’ve got back ups to back ups and they’re (statistically) never going down, can you believe it? From what I’ve seen, I wouldn’t. Carrier outages happen more than we think, and while they’re hardly publicized, call some of your IT colleagues and ask if they ever lost a connection to their carrier or Internet provider.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I figure that Bloomberg must have the best IT safeguards anywhere, but their network crashed anyway. We don’t know what caused it, but no doubt those folks stayed up endless nights working to prevent such a disaster. But it still happened, and I wonder what stone was left unturned that might have mitigated the damage.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">In a similar vein, </span><span style="background-color: yellow;">I wonder how “mixed media backup” dropped from the telecom vernacular.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">It was a popular phrase in the 90's (pre-Google), and what it meant was that - as a policy decision, whatever terrestrial lines you had were backed up over the air (using point-to-point microwave). What makes more sense than that? Yet</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: yellow;">it’s far from common practice these days, even as IT managers lose sleep thinking of ways to plug network vulnerabilities. </span></span><br />
<a name='more'></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It's the fault of radio manufacturers, that their solutions are so generally misunderstood. Their focus has been on telecom carriers, who form the bulk of their business. Meanwhile, corporate IT buyers have had to fend for themselves or trust wireless resellers who may or may not have a clue. It’s a problem because wireless has become an integral part of the IT landscape and knowing the ins and outs of Wi-Fi, WiMAX and broadband microwave (fixed, point-to-point) is key.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #4d4f51;">Fiber optic cabling is vulnerable, whether underground or strung between telephone poles, and there are untold miles of it between you and your carrier. Even in protective armor it’s abused by rodents, floods, underground gas explosions (</span><span style="color: red;"><a href="http://wirelesswan.blogspot.com/2014/10/wireless-backup-is-essential-for-data.html" target="_blank">read my post</a></span><span style="color: #4d4f51;"> on that), hurricanes, backhoes, vandals, thieves - and another expression used a lot in the 90's, “Murphy’s Law”. You know that shit happens, and so it’s time to understand how you can use today’s broadband microwave technology to protect your network from a cable outage that may be painfully prolonged and beyond your control.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: yellow; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Carriers will tell you that your network has outgrown wireless capabilities and (more) fiber is the only solution. For one, they’re wrong, and second, even if you’ve got a 10 gigabit backbone, it’s like saying that your ship has too many passengers and so let’s not string some life boats across the top, because hey, what’s the point of saving 70% when you can’t save them all?</span></div>
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<div style="font-size: 14px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">IT managers need to fully consider whether wireless can help them or not, because for most businesses a single hour of outage dwarfs the cost of that protection. Better to steer your business safely through an information grid outage, than to announce that you couldn’t foresee it.</span></div>
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Theo's Wireless WANgle!http://www.blogger.com/profile/16345547371847803790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8165203779064519844.post-14100217250963256942014-10-16T09:12:00.000-04:002016-04-26T09:09:29.839-04:00The Ground is Falling! Urban Data Centers and a Case for Wireless Backup<div style="text-align: justify;">
In a front page expose, "Danger Under our Streets," <i>USA Today</i> reported that there are 86,000 miles of aging gas pipe lines corroding under U.S. streets. 30,000 miles are cast-iron, much of it from Roosevelt's time (Teddy!). The rest is unprotected, rusty steel<sup>1</sup>. <span style="background-color: yellow;">Gas leaks are surprisingly common throughout and it's practically a tinderbox in older cities, notably Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington D.C.</span>, where replacing aging pipe is a mammoth undertaking. </div>
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Consider these statistics culled from government reports - thousands of gas leaks each year, an explosion every other day, thousands more averted and 2% of natural gas literally slipping through the (pipe) cracks. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration reported that in 2012, Con Edison in New York averaged 83 leaks for every 100 miles of main. That year 9,906 leaks, half of them hazardous, were reported by Con Edison and National Grid just between New York City and Westchester county.<sup>2</sup> 5,900 leaks were mapped along 1,500 miles in Washington D.C.<sup>3</sup><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2N_TbhbQwSbfoQyhPIgkhZw5YQnjlvgoqC_QBR8Ur6XuJDsfNa72GXgrd-hCCP3hzGXDtjUGxowpa7xQOS_LGgHp18gXCjB6OCYUw0cOWcUYfmTsaMGaB6B_ufobaVHqDi7MbugS1zVA/s1600/below-NYC-streets.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="NYC aging underground infrastructure" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2N_TbhbQwSbfoQyhPIgkhZw5YQnjlvgoqC_QBR8Ur6XuJDsfNa72GXgrd-hCCP3hzGXDtjUGxowpa7xQOS_LGgHp18gXCjB6OCYUw0cOWcUYfmTsaMGaB6B_ufobaVHqDi7MbugS1zVA/s1600/below-NYC-streets.jpg" title="NYC Underground Infrastructure" /></a></div>
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Those afraid to drive across bridges may now want to avoid city streets as well, but <span style="background-color: yellow;">from an IT standpoint, if you're responsible for a data center in a high risk city, then there's no excuse not to have a kick-ass wireless backup on your roof, whether to another facility or remote Internet POP</span>. It's relatively cheap insurance and while it may not back up all your fiber, you'll easily maintain critical services. And we're not talking about covering you for a few tense minutes. A gas line explosion, like a hurricane, can sideline your data center for days.</div>
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<a name='more'></a>"It's like Russian roulette," said Robert B. Jackson, a professor of environment science at Stanford and Duke, who's studied gas leaks in Washington D.C. and Boston. "The chances are you are going to be lucky, but once in a while, you're going to be unlucky.<sup>4</sup>" What's <span style="background-color: yellow;">the prognosis for replacing old, leaky gas pipes? Based on current rates, it's going to take decades</span>. Jackson puts Baltimore at 140 years and Philadelphia at 80<sup>5</sup>. Certainly it has to be sooner, but all of us reading this will have long since retired.</div>
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<i>My message?</i> I don't think the ground is going to swallow us up - <i>yet</i>, but underground gas explosions and other problems with our aging infrastructure are a real enough threat that colocation and data centers should take reasonable precautions. So find a knowledgeable wireless consultant or integrator (I know one!). Ask him to spec out a backup for you and put the dollars in your next budget. It's a justifiable expense that won't make a dent in your ops budget, and it just might make you a hero one day.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijdfSCRDfDllWbZBIf1GtAdaIP2Y4qNWG4ZSIofrqRdNvu5sqG8Au1EMvHTiI0WRUa_qnUOBtY8o7OiKWZvmeCAi3N2jIAyqb7fA1eJMMqx_CwpqFYrmGynVqu3k7xPNQzTY0ppPNTXho/s1600/under+a+NYC+manhole.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijdfSCRDfDllWbZBIf1GtAdaIP2Y4qNWG4ZSIofrqRdNvu5sqG8Au1EMvHTiI0WRUa_qnUOBtY8o7OiKWZvmeCAi3N2jIAyqb7fA1eJMMqx_CwpqFYrmGynVqu3k7xPNQzTY0ppPNTXho/s1600/under+a+NYC+manhole.jpg" /></a></div>
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<b>Sources</b> [Links]:<br />
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<sup>1</sup> <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/longform/news/nation/2014/09/23/gas-pipes-cast-iron-deaths-explosions-investigation/15783697/">http://www.usatoday.com/longform/news/nation/2014/09/23/gas-pipes-cast-iron-deaths-explosions-investigation/15783697/</a><br />
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<sup>2</sup><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/24/nyregion/beneath-cities-a-decaying-tangle-of-gas-pipes.html?_r=1"> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/24/nyregion/beneath-cities-a-decaying-tangle-of-gas-pipes.html?_r=1</a><br />
<br />
<sup>3 </sup><a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-can-cities-protect-themselves-against-gas-explosions/">http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-can-cities-protect-themselves-against-gas-explosions/</a><br />
<br />
<sup>4-5</sup><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/24/nyregion/beneath-cities-a-decaying-tangle-of-gas-pipes.html?_r=1"> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/24/nyregion/beneath-cities-a-decaying-tangle-of-gas-pipes.html?_r=1</a>
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"According to the Department of Transportation, New York City still uses about 3,000 miles of decades-old cast-iron pipe, Boston about 2,000 miles and Philadelphia about 1,500 miles."<br />
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<a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/explosion-reminder-nycs-aging-infrastructure-0">http://bigstory.ap.org/article/explosion-reminder-nycs-aging-infrastructure-0</a><br />
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#wirelessbackup #licensedmicrowave #undergroundinfrastructure
#aginginfrastructure #undergroundgasleaks #datacenterbackup #colocationbackup<br />
<br />Theo's Wireless WANgle!http://www.blogger.com/profile/16345547371847803790noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8165203779064519844.post-40079308391862386992014-06-03T08:56:00.002-04:002016-04-08T21:18:39.639-04:00Meet the Rip Snorting, Fire Breathing 2.5 Gbps E-band Radio by Huawei<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Huawei just upped the ante in
the E-band radio market with their RTN 380. We just installed the very first of
these links in the U.S., and so I’ll give you my impressions in my next couple
of entries. </span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It started with a unique application where we had antenna space for only a single 1-foot dish (sandwiched between
two existing ones), but we needed to get twice the throughput as advertised by leading E-band vendors</span><sup>1</sup>. <span style="font-family: inherit;"> The customer is a genetics testing lab, where a single robot wants a 2 gig/second pipe, but if you Google leading E-band vendors you’ll see that their radios all top out at 1-1.25 Gbps </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">A few uncomfortable weeks passed
without a solution and then I saw an email from Huawei’s Seattle office,
introducing their “2<sup>nd</sup> Generation E-band microwave”. It was the 2 Gbps solution I
was looking for! But, a Chinese radio? Holy ghosts of Fessenden, Marconi, de Forest and Tesla! <i>What
do the Chinese know about microwave?</i> Well <i>a lot, </i>actually. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Huawei radio is heavier with an ODU that's maybe 15% larger than other
E-band radios, but it's pushing twice the throughput too. It's a solid ODU package made to withstand hurricane forces (maybe an asteroid attack), and seeing it coupled with a familiar high-performance Andrew dish gave me added assurance. The mechanical design is well thought out too, so that for instance, it’s
impossible to screw up V and H polarization. (Imagine the service calls they
don’t get.) And, they have an ODU combiner that lets you to hang a second
ODU from it, and so now you’ve got a potential of 5 gigs/second across a
single set of 1’ dishes. <span style="background-color: yellow;">Call it what you will, but the RTN 380 is a game
changer. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The shipment came with an
installation manual with large, 11” x 17” pages, and so I had an impulse to
tear it apart and tape it up on a wall, page by page. The manual is comprehensive and leaves nothing to chance,
including that the installer may not know how to properly tape up and
weatherproof a connector or ground parts of the system. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Huawei’s attention to the
installation is notable. They furnish everything you need to install and weatherproof
their radios, down to various color and sizes of tie wraps, including ones that
hold several times the typical 75-pound tensile strength. Whatever supplies came with the
shipment (e.g., </span>electrical tape and butyl, tie wraps, pre-made grounding straps, clamps and tools)<span style="font-family: inherit;"> saved at least one trip to Home Depot.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Ironically, the one thing missing was power supplies. Huawei builds these radios for carriers and in that
environment they expect to see DC power (or PoE switch ports that go to 55-60
watts), and that's not what you’re going to find in typical enterprise setups. But fortunately we found power supplies
from <a href="https://www.blogger.com/"><span id="goog_1773450990"></span>Mean Well<span id="goog_1773450991"></span></a> that readily met the specs we needed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Otherwise, the antenna mount is
typical of carrier-grade microwave products, heavy-duty and with easy to access
fine adjustments for azimuth and elevation. And the ODUs attach with ease, with
a guide bolt and spring captured allan screws that aren’t going to fall out if
you’re up a tower. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoB4pM6uhK4-Mw4SgkYqpqotK0yyzdg4SFA7eeCYmfwEEtGZb8BvVHzxLuKTGiOnJOPe5S-BlbJLtZD4wQjKkIXb5chJshziQx30zH349JUJJ_YRmrInhEbGTjFD4MnN0xQMSvf8HrF1k/s1600/huawei_install.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Huawei's RTN 380 E-band PTP Wireless Link" border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoB4pM6uhK4-Mw4SgkYqpqotK0yyzdg4SFA7eeCYmfwEEtGZb8BvVHzxLuKTGiOnJOPe5S-BlbJLtZD4wQjKkIXb5chJshziQx30zH349JUJJ_YRmrInhEbGTjFD4MnN0xQMSvf8HrF1k/s1600/huawei_install.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="color: blue;">Huawei's RTN 380: 2.5 gigs across a single 1' Dish</span></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">For our 2 gig payload, we ran one cat-5 and one fiber. I would have liked both gigabit handoffs to be cat-5, but the fiber was already cut, connectorized, and in a protective jacket that made it easy to run. Outdoor (ODU) connections are each contained in “waterproof sockets” and let me tell you, </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">nothing’s</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> getting into those connector ports. The waterproof sockets are the same used on commercial aircraft, a point that Huawei likes to emphasize. Still, I don’t like custom cabling and would rather buy it off the shelf, cut and terminate it myself and find a different way to do the waterproof sockets. I like the way <a href="http://www.siklu.com/" target="_blank">Siklu</a> does their "weatherproof glands".</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The two gigabit cables (a cat-5 PoE, and fiber) go from the ODU to a power injector (PI) for ground and lightning protection, and from the PI we ran a 2-conductor DC wire to the AC/DC power supply and added a second cat-5 for out-of-band management</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Once everything was connected we
powered the radios and were pleased that they didn’t interfere with two other
80GHz links that were previously installed. (The RTN 380 has a built in
spectrum analyzer to tell you that, but I wasn’t taking any chances.) And so we
started up in low power (-10dB), and though it's a mere .7 degree beam coming
from the dish, eye-balling them gave us an instant -55dBm reading. We aligned more at both ends, raised the power from -10dBm to +2, and then we were running at -30 dBm, which can be a bit hot for some radios. Huawei claims their radios can actually run at -25 or better without overloading, but still, I felt better leaving the radios at around
-32dBm. The customer's path is only 800 feet so they’re never going to feel a rain fade, and they haven't yet with the
two Siklu Etherhaul radios we installed months before. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: yellow;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Here’s my assessment of the RTN 380 on a
scale of 1-10</b></span></span></div>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Product sheet: </b> <b><span style="color: red;">10</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Someone’s hiring our top English majors.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Install manual:</b> <b><span style="color: red;">9 </span><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I'll be jerk and give it a 10 only if it was on tear
resistant, waterproof paper. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Furnishing install supplies</b>: <b><span style="color: red;">10</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Protection afforded by the waterproof
sockets: <span style="color: red;">10</span> <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Convenience/Install flexibility
of the waterproof sockets: <b><span style="color: red;">0</span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Having no AC power supply:</b> <span style="color: red;"><b>3</b> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Huawei gets 3 points for having a radio that wasn't hard to find a power supply for. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Mechanical Design: <span style="color: red;">8</span></b> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Don't look for it at MOMA, but their ODU
can survive a fall from space.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Pipe Mount: <span style="color: red;">10</span></b> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s small enough that it doesn’t
overwhelm a 1-foot dish, yet it could hold a 6-footer.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Power Injector: <span style="color: red;">7 </span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Functionally perfect and
obviously high end, but the opening for the custom power and Ethernet cable is
too narrow and so you just barely can get a couple of
threads on the allen screws to catch enough to close the box. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Built-in spectrum analyzer:</b>
<span style="color: red;"><b>9</b> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I’d give it a 10 for a more eye
catching display, but a 9 for having one in the first place. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Single Link 2.5 Gbps Throughput:</b> <b><span style="color: red;">10 </span><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>5 Gbps potential throughput</b> with
a 2<sup>nd</sup> ODU: <b><span style="color: red;">10 </span></b></span></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So my first impression of the RTN 380 is a very pleasant one. It solved our bandwidth problem and it seems to be a solid,
well made product that we feel confident about, and that our customer approved on sight. Installation went
over without a hitch, after the shock of finding that we had no power
supplies. But hey, what first time product deployment is <i>ever</i> complete without a surprise? The system is rock solid, <i>definitely</i>
safe from the elements, the power injector is a nice unit (better when they get it to close all the way), and a lot of thought was put into the product. Huawei was
good to work with too, attentive and very dedicated, and for added measure they gave us
one of their engineers for on the job training. Thank you, Zhijun! </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Stay tuned for my follow-on, reviewing the RTN 380’s management interface, which I purposely haven't touched on yet. Spoiler alert. It’s Java based, but there are some very cool
features too, like the spectrum analyzer that proved handy for us. Our customer has also offered to
unleash terabytes of data at the link and so I’ll let you know how that goes. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">NOTE:</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><sup>1</sup> <a href="http://www.lightpointe.com/" target="_blank">LightPointe</a> is the only U.S. exception;
the only E-band vendor I (later) found that matches Huawai’s 2.5 Gbps, single
radio throughput. They also offer
an ODU combiner for double the throughput across a single set of dishes.
LightPointe’s retail price is higher, and otherwise we didn't get to consider them, because Huawei never stopped
trying to earn our business.<span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">#Huawei microwave </span><span style="text-align: left;">#PTP wireless </span></span></span><span style="text-align: left;">#RTN 380 </span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">#E-band radio </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">#pointtopointmicrowave </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-align: left;">#microwavecommunications #wirelessindustrynews #wirelesswan</span><br />
<!--EndFragment--><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />
<!--EndFragment-->Theo's Wireless WANgle!http://www.blogger.com/profile/16345547371847803790noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8165203779064519844.post-85142842716661865492014-03-19T16:40:00.000-04:002016-04-08T21:19:57.682-04:00REMEC acquires BridgeWave Assets...The Big News in the Wireless Biz – that you Never Heard. <br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I recently learned that the assets of BridgeWave Communications were acquired last December by REMEC Broadband Wireless. This is Big news – capital “B”, for the wireless telecom business; for carriers, integrators and especially microwave vendors. Yet as of this writing, you won’t find an announcement in REMEC’s <a href="http://www.remecbroadband.com/news/" target="_blank">news page</a>, and you also won’t find one in BridgeWave’s <a href="http://www.bridgewave.com/company/press.cfm" target="_blank">press release list</a>. In fact, you won’t find news of it anywhere on the Internet before this posting. <i><b>Interesting… </b></i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">BridgeWave is a leading worldwide provider of point-to-point microwave for cellular and backhaul applications, founded in 1999. They pioneered radios in the millimeter space (60 & 80GHz) and were first to support a full gig throughput. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">REMEC has been manufacturing Bridgewave radios since a deal was struck in August, 2008. REMEC also makes radios for lots of other microwave vendors, perhaps as many as twenty, supplying, in their words, “<a href="http://www.remecbroadband.com/products/odus.htm" target="_blank">the only commercially successful "off-the-shelf" ODU product on the market today</a>.” And I believe it, because I see their ODUs everywhere, packaged by one microwave vendor after another, each saving a fortune in R&D and manufacturing, enjoying a solid, state of the art product for a good price (maybe too good for REMEC). REMEC’s web site says one of their ODUs is being installed every two minutes, somewhere in the world. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">BridgeWave radios have been sold direct and through distribution, but as far as I know, all of REMEC’s ODUs are moved by OEMs who private label them, which is why even some industry veterans don’t know about REMEC. No microwave company is a household name, but I’ll bet that REMEC has been one of the more obscure names, but perhaps not for long. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So... <span style="background-color: yellow;">What do you think REMEC’s purchase of BridgeWave assets means to the market?</span> Will REMEC be gaining BridgeWave's sales and marketing channels? This can’t be good news for all those vendors who rely on REMEC engines (ODUs) for their product lines, can it? </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As it is, other vendors have been cutting like Emo’s wanting attention, hacking at prices and bleeding discounts and more incentives. Frankly, I think the problem with microwave has never been high cost. I routinely see paybacks of under a year versus leased lines or fiber. So I wonder if REMEC will better establish microwave’s value proposition or will they commoditize microwave more by driving prices further down? Will there be fewer microwave vendors a year from now or more?</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">PS: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEHB00zIByP_9DSFDXF_A1XevjNWx_SiVOeQ7tjD8afLKGWLxTciD7P5cfQleCARoruKLY-WDgMsT_6aVLfl4-S-zBlqJU9qCTvEeelB7eM9SDd8yBkwjf2VEac0RB76Pf4eb4Go_AC9U/s1600/REMEC_ODU.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEHB00zIByP_9DSFDXF_A1XevjNWx_SiVOeQ7tjD8afLKGWLxTciD7P5cfQleCARoruKLY-WDgMsT_6aVLfl4-S-zBlqJU9qCTvEeelB7eM9SDd8yBkwjf2VEac0RB76Pf4eb4Go_AC9U/s1600/REMEC_ODU.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Here's the inside of a REMEC ODU, the kind you see behind parabolic dishes on a lot of vendor literature. The ODU is everything - transmitter and receiver, in many cases, delivering fiber or cat5 straight to the network switch. REMEC's form factor defines how the ODU connects with the antenna and has become an industry standard mechanical interface. </span><br />
<span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="text-align: left;">#remecbuysbridgewave </span><span style="text-align: left;">#brigewaveacquiredbyremec </span><span style="text-align: left;">#remecbridgewavedeal </span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="text-align: left;">#microwaveradio </span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; text-align: left;">#microwavecommunications #wirelessindustrynews</span></div>
Theo's Wireless WANgle!http://www.blogger.com/profile/16345547371847803790noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8165203779064519844.post-42029971137668524282014-01-11T13:15:00.000-05:002016-04-08T21:17:06.652-04:00Suddenly Microwave Latency is all the Rage, but Should it Be?<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Let me start by saying
point-blank. <span style="background-color: yellow;">Don’t stress about microwave latency</span><span style="background-color: yellow;">. </span><span style="background-color: yellow;">It’s not an issue</span>, period. It’s good to ask about it, but don’t get talked into buying one radio over another because of some (supposed) latency advantage. Hear
me out and tell me if I’m wrong… </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">My first brush with microwave latency was 1986, so I'm pretty familiar with the topic. My engineers were writing the industry’s
first wireless Ethernet specs (typed up on my 128k MAC) and calculated
round-trip propagation delay through the air, along with whatever delays were
associated with the equipment. Those specs were confirmed by Cisco when we co-developed the first full-duplex Ethernet interface, and later by Motorola in a technology transfer deal. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Here’s what I know. </b><span style="background-color: yellow;">Latency of a
microwave transmission is (considerably) less than optical fiber</span>, but only as the signal travels through air as opposed to glass.
There’s also the fact of equipment latency, and that's where fiber wins. Yet microwave hardware (of the FCC licensed variety) introduces mere microseconds of delay, a </span>minuscule figure when you consider that it takes 150 <u>milli</u>seconds before VoIP suffers. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>So why all the fuss about latency?</b> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">Well, not long ago microwave vendors woke
up to a crazy niche application for high frequency trading (HFT) and there’s
been plenty of press about how every microsecond means insane amounts of money
when those trades are moving between stock exchanges. I repeat, “when those trades are moving between stock
exchanges.” That's calculating distances over hundreds of miles, not to a data center across town or
to your remote office. The other day I noticed vendor literature that claimed to meet the needs of the "Low-Latency Market". But where is that market? What else but high frequency trading needs to obsess about shaving a microsecond here or there? </span><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">If microwave traffic
between stock exchanges constitutes a “market”, then there’s got to be a
similar sized one that wants zebra striped antennas. Consider that there are only so many
microwave paths you can carve out between any two destinations before you run out of
frequencies or tower space and start veering off course (adding latency). Enough
about this.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I get that everyone has to
reinvent how they sell things after old pitches get stale. But let’s get real
and not try to tell enterprise users that they should buy one radio over
another because of a latency difference that offers no real advantage. Microwave is already an
inherently low/ultra low latency medium.
Believe me, when you’re buying microwave there are more important
product distinctions. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Here’s another Fact. </b><span style="background-color: yellow;">Few sales or marketing guys – even the most technical, actually <i>know</i> the latency numbers of their
radios</span>. If you really wanted to know that, you’d have to break out every radio
feature you’re getting (or enabling), and ascribe to it the amount of latency
that it introduces. Adaptive modulation? That might
cost you 50 microseconds. QOS? Maybe
20 mics. Except for high frequency
trading, I’m not about to revert to primitive radio designs to shave microseconds here or there. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Truth told, <span style="background-color: yellow;">if you count hardware
at both ends, a fiber connection is still going to have lower latency than a
typical (not for HFT) microwave link</span> because fiber interfaces can get down into
the nanoseconds and that makes up for microwave’s 2.5 microsecond/mile
advantage. </span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">On a final note, there’s one
distinction to be aware of. Wireless under the category of "FCC licensed microwave" has far lower latency than 802.11, license-exempt wireless that runs for instance, in the 2.4 and 5GHz bands. The reason
is simple. Licensed microwave is built on solid state hardware, whereas license-exempt radios may be driven
entirely by software, and that’s where you get latency in the 30-50+ millisecond range. 150 milliseconds (one-way) and VoIP starts to crap out. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>There's nothing on the planet that's lower in latency </b>than old-school, analog (licensed) microwave. Hmmm... If I already didn't have enough bad ideas, I'd dust off my old radio designs. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">#microwavelatency #wirelesslatency #wirelesswanlatency #voiplatency #pointtopointmicrowave </span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Theo's Wireless WANgle!http://www.blogger.com/profile/16345547371847803790noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8165203779064519844.post-65346306311249846782013-12-09T17:16:00.000-05:002016-04-26T09:10:48.694-04:00A Cautionary Rant about "Aggregate Throughput"<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I cringe when I hear, "aggregate bandwidth" or "aggregate throughput" as it's commonly used by radio marketeers. To me it's madly misleading, and so I take offense when a salesperson uses it on me, though I know they're just following convention.</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">By "aggregate" throughput, the vendor is taking the transmission rates (potential) from both directions and adding them together. It's as though someone asks you how much you can bench press and you say 300 pounds because you can lift 150 pounds up and then back down. Or that you can jump six feet because in your three foot leap, you come down three as well.</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I've been selling bandwidth since leaving college in the 80's, and since the first Ethernet radios (FCC licensed) made it on the market, speeds have always been quoted as full-duplex, the assumption being that you're getting the same performance from the other end as well. Isn't that the way you order phone lines or fiber?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But 802.11 radios at 2.4 GHz (and later 5.x GHz) were quite slower than FCC licensed ones, largely owing to all the software overhead, and after they made the scene some marketing genius decided that 24 Mbps didn't sound "robust" enough and so he called it a 48 Mbps "aggregate" rate. I wish that all other vendors had declined to follow suit, but they caved because no one wants to appear to have a slower product.</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">All the while, FCC licensed radios (true "carrier-class" radios), have continued to quote the actual full-duplex data rate (since the 1980's) and I hope that never changes. The main buyers of those radios are sophisticated telecom operations - along with larger enterprise users, and they wouldn't put up with crazy-ass throughput representations. Nor, now should you.</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">As a PS: "Aggregate bandwidth" is of course not the same as when you take feeds from multiple radios (or fiber, etc.) and combine them in your switch. That way of talking about "aggregate" throughput makes all the sense in the world. </span></i>
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#aggregatebandwidth #microwavebandwidth #rfbandwidth #wirelessthroughput #wirelesswan </div>
Theo's Wireless WANgle!http://www.blogger.com/profile/16345547371847803790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8165203779064519844.post-82900513158776155152013-11-27T11:22:00.001-05:002016-04-26T09:12:16.544-04:00Dumb Things Some “Consultants” Say about Microwave<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I’ve heard them all. That microwave goes out in rain, or is bothered by snow, or that it’s bad in fog or even that you’ve got to worry about bird migrations. Then there’s the solar flares! </span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Never believe a blanket statement about microwave because “radios” come in a wide frequency range from 2 GHz to 80 GHz, and the radios behind those signals use a variety of different type antennas. Your microwave link might have a one degree beam or a thirty degree beam. Different frequencies and
different antennas have a huge bearing on how the signal acts, whether in rain or shooting over ten miles of ocean.</span><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9Kai0NzOkSPbi800rSWB3A3LxTU9Btp82DsZQa6b7DVkOwgA1lr6rlljuxqqoHjHtMPZdSmOOqitNGd7hdb3kMNIjJJtoHzKnNueAel6TLqxJsK0rNlujOaz-5RuW0CKkdNmQB6B3QO8/s1600/blog-pics-installs620.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img alt="Point-to-Point, 6GHz, Microwave WAN Connection" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9Kai0NzOkSPbi800rSWB3A3LxTU9Btp82DsZQa6b7DVkOwgA1lr6rlljuxqqoHjHtMPZdSmOOqitNGd7hdb3kMNIjJJtoHzKnNueAel6TLqxJsK0rNlujOaz-5RuW0CKkdNmQB6B3QO8/s1600/blog-pics-installs620.jpg" title="St. Martin to Nevis, 400 Mbps, Point-to-Point Microwave Radio Link" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: red; font-family: inherit;"> A 69-Mile, 6 GHz "radio" w/8' dishes running 400 Mbps, full-duplex (redundant) </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Generally, lower frequency radios go further distances and so we have a 6 GHz link that goes 69-miles. At the other end of the spectrum, a 60 GHz link is hardly useable beyond ¾ of a mile, depending on your rain
region. Yes, rain effects 60 GHz radios, but if you go to 6 GHz, you’ll never have a rain problem.</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: yellow;">Whether a microwave link holds up to the elements is entirely a matter of proper frequency selection and transmit power, the right antenna type and size, and a good installation.</span> These are all things your microwave integrator is supposed to handle because in the end, it’s their responsibility. They’re on the hook for performance, not the microwave manufacturer, who won’t come out to the field to fix these problems or reimburse you for an ill-fated purchase. </span><br />
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Theo's Wireless WANgle!http://www.blogger.com/profile/16345547371847803790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8165203779064519844.post-63810231720530735952013-11-24T17:18:00.002-05:002016-04-26T09:13:00.023-04:00You're the Future for Microwave Makers as Telco Biz Dries Up<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
If you're an IT manager - in health care, education, business, etc., then you've probably never heard of the major microwave manufacturers. That's because they haven't paid much attention to you, because it's telco and government orders that got them listed on Wall Street, not end user business, which has been a relatively insignificant part. But times are changing. Telco business will dry up for microwave, the way the cable broadcase industry did in the late 80's.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
Nothing convinced me of this more, as when I tried to sell Comcast on a 6-8 gig microwave backup - which was <i>everything</i> we could deliver based on frequency availability, and they said that it would hardly cover them. Just last year they thought that same connection would be great at 4-gigs. It was a revelation to me, that a sea change is coming for manufacturers who've depended on carriers as a mainstay. Fiber bandwidth is easy to grow if you just keep lighting more strands of it, but microwave is limited according to available frequencies and channel bandwidths, and telco appetites are outpacing the technology. </span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: yellow;">Microwave will always be a great option for enterprise applications, but manufacturers will have to do more to get the word out. Despite its inherent value and tremendous reliability, microwave is still a niche solution and it's all for lack of market awareness.</span> But expect to hear more about microwave as makers look for enterprise business to fill the void left by telco. </span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: yellow;">Meanwhile, buyer beware, because you're more dependent on your microwave reseller/integrator than you think.</span> If they botch your path engineering or installation, or aren't good on support, then there's little the manufacturer can or will do for you.</span><br />
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Theo's Wireless WANgle!http://www.blogger.com/profile/16345547371847803790noreply@blogger.com0