Tuesday, June 18, 2002

Alvarion Debuts First FHSS System For 5 GHz Band Like every mailing list that focuses on a popular topic, the isp-wireless mailing list (http://www.isp-wireless.com) suffers from high volume, flame wars, off-topic postings and the usual litany of mailing list sins. But very regularly, there is a gem of a posting that makes it worth puting up with the problems and monitoring isp-wireless for yet another month. I didn't spot this thread until I had some extra time to "sort by subject, read the relevant threads", and I found this exchange: Marlon Schafer: I'm sad to see that there doesn't seem to be any 5 GHz FHSS gear coming though. The guys in the big cities are going to need it sooner than later. Patrick Leary: We do and we already have it released in the Russian market... I shouldn't have been surprised. Patrick's employer, Alvarion (http://www.alvarion.com, http://www.alvarionusa.com) is one of the most respected, top-tier equipment vendors in the Broadband Wireless Internet Access industry. That such a system would be initially released in a market such as Russia that's more appreciative (especially in a financial, regulatory, and significant demand) of a product of this type isn't surprising. Some advantages of a FHSS system operating at 5 GHz are that 5 GHz is less congested than the 2.4 GHz band, offers a greater amount of spectrum (150 or 200 MHz vs 83 MHz in the 2.4 GHz band) and that FHSS is relatively robust and highly scalable. In contrast, the US market demand for 5 GHz equipment is typically for "higher" speed (>5 Mbps) using higher-order modulation techniques (and thus, somewhat less robust). Exceptions to this (robust modulation techniques used in the 5 GHz band) include Motorola Canopy (BFSK) and RadioLAN (PPM). To date the only information on this new product I've been able to glean has come from a surprisingly good machine translation (Promt's Online Translator - http://www.translate.ru/eng/) of Alvarion's Russian web page - http://www.alvarion.ru. From the translation, the 5 GHz FHSS product debuted on June 4, 2002 and is an extension of Alvarion's BreezeAccess product line called BreezeAccess V. It's offered in two versions - 5.725-5.875 GHz and 5.15-5.35 GHz. For those that note that 5.15-5.35 is "indoor use only", remember that's a US rule and this unit is designed for, and marketed only in Russia, whose spectrum regulations are not necessarily coincident with US spectrum regulations. My thanks to Marlon Schafer for asking the question, and Patrick Leary for the enlightening response! I've formally requested a briefing from Alvarion, and assuming the request is granted, I'll be writing about BreezeAccess V and Alvarion's other recent product announcements in depth for the subscribers of my newsletter, Focus On Broadband Wireless Internet Access (http://www.strohpub.com/focus). 1:56:58 PM

Harris Offers Very Secure Wireless LAN For those that think Wireless LANs cannot be made secure, Harris Corp. begs to differ. Harris has begun offering their Secure Wireless Local Area Network - SecNet 11. The product is based on 802.11b technology, but considerably enhanced with US Government-only encryption suffiencient to allow its use for classified data. More information at http://www.govcomm.harris.com/secure-comm/. Recall that wireless LAN chipset powerhouse Intersil, developers of the ubiquitous Prism family of WLAN chipsets, is formerly the semiconductor division of Harris Corp. Thanks for the tip to Dave Farber's IP mailing list. In Other Broadband Wireless Internet Access News: Barely On-topic: Toshiba Home Audio Server Uses 802.11b Wireless - Costs too much for too little, but gotta start somewhere, and it has a wireless component. Toshiba announced the Magnia SG20, a server for the home intended to be a "digital hub for the entire home". To its credit, Toshiba at least recognizes that the market for a "digital catch-all for the home" exists. Many homes now have multiple computers and digital media files - electronic photos, digitized video, and digitized audio are all clogging individual computer's hard disks. It absolutely makes sense for such a household to have a home server with big, cheap EIDE/Ultra ATA disks in a redundant array to guard against individual disk failure. The Magnia SG20 is badly flawed in its bang-for-the-buck. First, the price - $1399. Urk! That high price is a deal-killer for an appliance that most don't yet recognize that they need. Second the incredibly paltry amount of hard disk storage that it ships with - 15 GB, when 80 GB drives are hovering at $100 (retail) and 160 GB drives are at $299. The high price would seem a lot more justified if it included a 160 GB drive to start with... but a mere 15 GB is a bit of a joke. Most of the PCs in households that can be expected to use such a server appliance (remember, only "technically advanced" households are going to realize that they have some need for this) will have bigger hard drives than the server. If that's the case... what's the point of a server? To its credit, Toshiba implements the wireless portion of the system as a PC card, theoretically allowing upgrades to newer wireless standards as they emerge, such as 802.11a, Ultrawideband, etc. In reality, because the Magnia SG20 is a proprietary system, the ability to use additional wireless cards is wholly dependent on Toshiba developing the requisite drivers for particular cards. Also to its credit, Toshiba includes "disk slots" to add hard disk capacity, but I don't think that saves the product. For $1399, "technically advanced" households are likely to dedicate an older PC as the household server and add some disk drives to it, especially as USB 2.0 and IEEE-1394 (FireWire) make it more and more feasible to easily expand disk drive capacity using serial connections. Bold Prediction Department: Lots of bad press, user angst, and probably lawsuits will result from failures of home server appliances and lost data unless the vendors make backups painless and nearly witless (using tape, online [a huge opportunity for someone, perhaps the vendor of the home server appliance to get online backup right... as in obscenely profitable], DVD-R, or whatever. More info at http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,101965,00.asp. (Thanks to Good Morning, Silicon Valley (http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/columnists/gmsv/3493922.htm) for the pointer to this story.) More Catch-up: (June 13, 2002) InterWave Sells Broadband Wireless Product Line to YDI - Several years ago, one of the best-known names in the Broadband Wireless Internet Access industry was Wireless, Inc. At the height of the telecom downturn, Wireless, Inc. was bought by InterWave (http://www.iwv.com). There was some logic to this pairing - InterWave manufactures infrastucture equipment for the cellular industry and probably thought of Wireless, Inc.'s equipment as a backhaul solution. But, overall, InterWave's acquisition of Wireless, Inc. seemed to me to be a poor fit. As far as I could tell, InterWave made no effort to market the Wireless, Inc. product line into the Wireless ISP industry. This sale would seem to be a better fit as YDI (http://www.ydi.com) operates entirely in the Wireless ISP industry. It remains to be seen if YDI will continue all these product lines as YDI has largely confined its product line to derivative products of the popular 802.11b wireless LAN standard, amplifiers, transverters, and integrated radio/amplifier/antenna systems. Notably, some of the Wireless, Inc. product lines being sold to YDI operate in the 900 MHz band; to date YDI's products operate primarily in the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. Press release: http://www.ydi.com/pressrelease.asp#anchor9. (Thanks to Broadband Wireless Exchange (http://www.bbwexchange) for the pointer to this story.) Even More Catch-up (June 5, 2002): ioWave Acquires Assets of Hybrid Networks - To the great relief of operators of Hybrid Networks (http://www.hybrid.com) systems, an agreement was reached for ioWave (http://www.iowave.com) to "gracefully" acquire the assets of Hybrid Networks and continue the support (and likely manufacturing) of the existing Hybrid Networks product lines. I rarely comment on personnel matters in the Broadband Wireless Internet Access industry, but I'll make an exception in the case of Hybrid Networks. I feel that now (now) ex-CEO Michael Greenbaum came into a very, very difficult situation at Hybrid Networks and did as much as anyone could have possibly expected to save and grow the company under the incredibly difficult market conditions, situation with legacy technology, and customer base that Hybrid Networks encountered. Greenbaum very skillfully negotiated a "soft landing" (as opposed to a "pick up whatever pieces you can salvage and best of luck to you" acquisition)  that largely preserved Hybrid's assets for the benefit of the existing customer base. (Thanks to Broadband Wireless Exchange (http://www.bbwexchange) for the pointer to this story.) Old News: Whatever Became Of Triton Network Systems? - I had been checking regularly for news of what became of the impressive technology developed by Triton Network Systems, Inc. (TNSI) for their Invisible Fiber line of 38 GHz (and other bands) high-bandwidth radios. No information was forthcoming from any of my usual sources and what little was left of the company wasn't willing to divulge any information. It turns out that the intellectual and certain other property (radios) were acquired by CarrierComm (www.carriercomm.com), (http://www.carriercomm.com/news.htm.) CarrierComm is a Moseley company (which also bought the assets of Adaptive Broadband and relaunched.) The Triton assets were sold to CarrierComm/Moseley for a mere $100,000 (the low price of which was accounted for, in some part, for CarrierComm/Moseley assuming certain liabilities.) Off Topic: The Origami Boulder Company - http://origamiboulder.com/index.htm. (Thanks to Sheldon Koehler for the pointer). 5:51:55 AM

© Copyright 2002 Steve Stroh.