Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) News

Content from BWIA Backhaul Ported In

In preparation for resuming writing full time about Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA), I'm "clearing the decks" in my blogging system (Typepad) of the old "didn't quite launch" blogs such as BWIA Backhaul that are now just a productivity sink to work around.

All articles ported in from BWIA Backhaul  Also accessible from the "Content from BWIA Backhaul" link in Archives.

Background:
In my writing (circa 1997 - 2010 or so) I painted with a very big brush in covering what I considered to be BWIA, from Wi-Fi Hotspots, to Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPS) to wireless telephony carriers (cellcos), and sometimes satellite. I've even written stories about fiber and copper networks when there was a tie-in with BWIA.

But, often I heard from readers who said "Why are you writing about X - that's not the stuff I want to read about - why don't you write more of the stuff I want to read about?". 

What I took from that feedback is that (at least then) BWIA wasn't enough of a niche... I needed to further "nich-ify" my writing. The WISPs didn't want to read about satellite. The cellcos didn't want to read about WISPs.

That was the theory, anyway. I decided I would self-federate a family of blogs and spend a few hours each month creating content for each of them, and schedule the posts out for one or two per week. That didn't quite work out :-)

So now I'm porting the small amounts of content from those "nichey" blogs into BWIA News, deleting those old blogs. BWIA News is my primary blog.

Thanks for reading!

Steve Stroh
Bellingham, Washington, USA

Interview With Exalt

This was a draft from a now-retired blog of mine called Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) Backhaul on 2008-04-17.

These are bullet points only from my original notes. My memory is a bit fuzzy on this after 13 years. Some of this may well be incorrect as I never published this article and thus never got a chance to have it vetted for accuracy.

Exalt Communications went through a bankruptcy and emerged as Exalt Wireless, but at some point (subsequent to 2018?) quietly went out of business. Their website now redirects to https://www.starmicrowave.com who apparently can do some repairs to Exalt units.

• Exalt's goal is to be a one stop shop for backhaul.
• They're agnostic on all aspects backhaul:
  • Bands:
    • 2 GHz and up
    • 2.4 GHz
    • 5 GHz
    • 6 GHz
    • 11 GHz
    • 23 GHz
    • 40 GHz
    • others to follow.
    • Notably missing - 60 GHz.
  • Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) vs TCP/IP.
  • Indoor / Outdoor vs all-Outdoor.
  • Licensed vs License-exempt.
  • Topology is currently Point to Point (PTP) only, but working on Point to Multipoint (PMP)
• With Exalt, you can start with license-exempt and migrate to licensed
• People bought more and more license-exempt WHEN THEY WORKED.
• TCP/IP and TDM treated natively inside the radio, controlled by software. The two interfaces built in, no external boxes needed. There's no penalty on latency using TDM, not emulating TDM over TCP/IP (as other vendors do).
• Can use TDM and TCP/IP simultaneously.
• Total of 19 distinct products.
• Model EX-5-16DS3 has 16 T-1 ports, T-3 ports, Ethernet, committed capacity on T-1, T-3, any/all excess capacity to
• EX-S (split mount) has TDM and Ethernet in an indoor box, connects to different band converters on the tower, uses a single coax for radio and power.
• 40 GHz in part 101 bands, 23 GHz, 18 GHz, and 11 GHz are the most popular bands in the US.
• 4.9 GHz available in all indoor (EX-I) or outdoor (EX-R). Includes TDM and TCP/IP. It's the highest capacity unit for 4.9 GHz.
• All radios include automatic power control, 1/2 dB steps for maximum spectrum utilization, built-in spectrum analyzer to park signal at least-congested portion of band.
• Topology - currently users are used to (comfortable) with star, individual point-to-point, or ring.
• "Fast burst" technology built in for eventually being able to offer PMP.
• The people buying their units "aren't quite there" yet (for PMP?)
• Exalt's focus is high capacity, low latency - ideal for migrating to mesh.
• Exalt has grown corporate team, more than 270 customers, lots of domestic and international carriers, enterprise, industrial, government.
• Exalt's analysis is that backhaul needed is 100x what they're used to (for T-1)
• Exalt is in a great position - fiber is needed, but not practical except in special circumstances. Exalt is agnostic about LTE vs Mobile WiMAX.
• Exalt has sync capability for multiple radios in one location. Can either sync with a cable, or via GPS.

Thanks for reading!

Steve Stroh
Bellingham, Washington, USA
2020-03-16

Dragonwave Horizon Duo

This was a draft from a now-retired blog of mine called Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) Backhaul on 2008-03-12.

Dragonwave is now DragonWave-X. When I was actively writing in the late 1990s / early 2000s, Dragonwave was one of my favorite companies to cover. They had interesting products and superb Public Relations team which made writing about them very easy - interviews, photos, etc. were easily arranged.

These are bullet points only from my original notes. My memory is a bit fuzzy on this after 13 years. Some of this may well be incorrect as I never published this article and thus never got a chance to have it vetted for accuracy.

• One Indoor Unit (IDU) / Outdoor Unit (ODU) can achieve 800 Mbps with bonding channels (in one unit) (basic unit).
• Combining two IDU / ODUs onto one antenna using cross polarization can achieve 1.6 Gbps (enhanced unit).
• 50 MHz channels in North America, 56 MHz channels in Europe
• The trick is that they use a single Point to Point (P-P), can use adjacent channels, what they actually deliver is two 800 Mbps links, and then use a Router / Switch that uses link aggregation protocol.
• They'll sell a lot of Horizon Duos
• Has a Gigabit Ethernet and fiber interface
• Base version is 800 Mbps channel-bonding
• Can swap out IDU only for increased capacity
• Can upgrade from earlier AirPair product (which supported the dual radio duplexing cross polarization option. Upgrading the IDU is a 4x upgrade.
• Pseudowire solution - converge data and Time Division Multiplexing (TDM), keep wireless core as Internet Protocol (IP) since the majority of traffic is data. Quote: "IT folks are hard pressed to tell whether traffic originates on TDM or IP".
• Single solution, tight integration, single vendor
• Characterizing the overall latency and other characteristics of a link, changes the timing of the packets sent to the radio.
• With this new product, DragonWave is now emphasizing "service delivery unit". They did sell this sort of solution previously, but not aggressively. They're now selling this solution to carriers that are trying to evolve networks from TDM-only to high capacity data+TDM.
• DragonWave couldn't find a third party product that they could Original Equipment Manufacture (OEM) (slap their nameplate on and sell it as their product) that met the requirements of low-headaches and tight integration.
• Horizon Duo meets appropriate timing over packet standards.
• Integrated network versus parallel network headaches.
• Lowest capacity is 12-15 Mbps (might be $12k - $15k) for hardware capable of 800 Mbps, provisioned 10-20 Mbps (pay more for higher capacity, software key)
• Radios can be configured for any microwave band from 11 GHz to 38 GHz.

Thanks for reading!

Steve Stroh
Bellingham, Washington, USA
2021-03-15

Why I Started Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) Backhaul

This is an article from a now-retired blog of mine called Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) Backhaul. It was actually published on 2021-03-15, but inserted into this blog for 2008-02-14 (the date of the original article).

Welcome to Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) / WiMAX Backhaul!

There's an old story, which I'll paraphrase here, that I think is applicable.

Amateurs in war theory talk deeply of battles; professionals in war theory talk deeply of logistics.

The analogy in Wireless Communications is that those without a deep knowledge talk only about Wireless Access (the sexy part); those with deep knowledge talk equally of Access and Backhaul; you simply don't have the former without the latter.

Backhaul is hugely important, of course, and it's always been of interest to me, and I've always written about it in the context of an integral part of the Broadband Wireless Internet Access industry. I started BWIA Backhaul on the advice of an industry colleague. I was explaining the Stroh Publications LLC portfolio of Broadband Wireless Internet Access sites, they said "Well... you should be covering Backhaul too!"  The colleague went on to say that there was little... and poor... coverage of the "unglamorous" role of Backhaul as part of... not just Broadband Wireless Internet Access... but all of Wireless Access.

And with that suggestion, and the ability to "self-franchise", I shall do so. What's fascinating to me is that Backhaul is undergoing enormous change. Not only is Wireless Backhaul proving (rapidly, aggressively) to be superior to wired Backhaul, but the technology is morphing rapidly. Point-to-multipoint backhaul is becoming common, as is Mesh Networking. New spectrum is being used for backhaul such as 3.65 GHz.

In short, it's an exciting time. I look forward to your comments on individual articles.

One disclaimer - in making the title of this site Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) / WiMAX Backhaul (the original title), I'm not describing that Wireless Backhaul always is, or should be, WiMAX. It usually isn't, and often shouldn't be or doesn't matter (as a point-to-point link, as long as the radios are matched, it can be nearly anything, including totally proprietary.)

Thanks,
Steve

By Steve Stroh

This article is Copyright © 2008 by Steve Stroh. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged).

Thanks for reading!

Steve Stroh
Bellingham, Washington, USA
2021-03-15

Business Only Broadband / Dragonwave

This was a draft from a now-retired blog of mine called Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) Backhaul. It was actually published on 2021-03-15, but inserted into this blog for 2007-11-01 (the date of the original notes).

Dragonwave is now DragonWave-X. Business Only Broadband (BOB) was acquired by Windstream.

When I was actively writing in the late 1990s / early 2000s, Dragonwave was one of my favorite companies to cover. They had a superb Public Relations team which made writing about them very easy - interviews, photos, etc. were easily arranged.

These are bullet points only from my original notes. My memory is a bit fuzzy on this after 14 years. Some of this may well be incorrect as I never published this article and thus never got a chance to have it vetted for accuracy.

• From a DragonWave, BOB press release
• First market is Chicago, very large, encompasses 5 counties
• DragonWave licensed radios will be used
• Will be going into NYC
• Target customers are large enterprise users, data centers, Class A buildings. Example is Aon Tower - insurance and financial services company
• 100% uptime, can't afford to have network downtime
• Designed to be independent of telcos, etc., multiple upstream Internet
• Secondary access for smaller clients is Motorola Canopy operating in license-exempt spectrum
• When they design a network, they include key financial centers, data centers, sources of bandwidth / fiber bandwidth
• DragonWave radios can scale to higher speeds so can increase speeds on degree.
• Core backbone is diverse paths using multiple radios, but customer access is generally single radios unless customer requests (and pays for) multiple radios using diverse paths.
• Even in a market as densely populated as New York City, spectrum, paths, and sites are available to build the kind of network that BOB wants to build.
• What spectrum used for each backbone and access link is determined by distance, rain model, and speed (how much spectrum is available).
• Each BOB market will have its own sales staff.
• Customer says that they're different and better than Towerstream
• Speed available is T-1 (1.544 Mbps) to 300 Mbps; BOB average customer is 50-100 Mbps
• 30% of BOB access uses license-exempt spectrum
• BOB was launched 2005. They bought an existing Wireless ISP which had good tower sites and an existing revenue stream.
• The New York City network will be operational in January (2008?).
• BOB is making a multimillion dollar purchase of DragonWave systems to upgrade the Chicago network and launch the New York City network.
• BOB will be buying their own fiber to connect New York City and Chicago to provide Metro Ethernet services to customers that want to bridge their networks in New York City and Chicago
• BOB has plans to deploy to other cities in the near future. Deployments will be accelerated by customer demand.
• BOB's primary funding source is two private equity rounds.
• Kingston (?) has experience in deploying fiber with XO Communications, but was frustrated with the inability to finish the last mile.
• BOB isn't worried about NextLink because NextLink is a carrier's carrier - not last-mile. NextLink uses 28 GHz, only good for about 1 mile.
• Quote "I don't think the competition is doing it the same way we are."

Thanks for reading!

Steve Stroh
Bellingham, Washington, USA
2021-03-15