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Cisco To Unveil Wireless Mesh Hardware
An anonymous reader writes "CRN is reporting that Cisco will enter the wireless mesh networking fray next week. Since aquiring Airespace Cisco has been working hard to bring their own mesh technology to fruition. The new solution will target businesses who wish to move the traditional Wi-Fi network outside and possibly cover large regions."
Wont there at some point become a serious issue of collisions, noise, and the like if everyone decides to make their own "wireless mesh network"?
I attended a future of wireless conference in Madison, WI a few weeks ago, they had a keynote speaker from Cisco who talked about this very technology. The things its hardware can do is impressive. And yes, a lot of it could (and is) taken care of via software. These mesh nodes can detect other nodes and alther their signal strength to improve coverage. They can adapt to cover for another node that has gone down. They can immediatly detect unauthorized access points and alert NetAdmins of a potential security issue. These systems are self contained, you don't need to wire each one to the network, they just need juice except for the gateway which can run off of power over ethernet. No expencive wire pulling. No manual configuration. Just plug it in and go.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I'm all for wireless mesh network competition, but do any of you think this could help bring the cost down? I recently had some involvement in a public safety wireless deployment project. As much as I wanted to see mesh happen, it was just simply cost prohibitive. Prices ranged from $75,000 to $150,000 per square mile. And while other solutions are out there, it's hard to get a good signal in rough terrian. The final solution? Private RF with a blazing 33Kbps connection!
Of course, the other direction works as well: cell networks providing faster access. Unfortunately, most cell providers seem (to me) to be shooting themselves in the foot, charging far too high of prices for data access. IMO, they'd be better off trying to maximize market share in this segment by selling the service at near break-even pricing. I did a bit of math a while back, and figured that at least from one provider, each bit of "data" cost something like 5 times as much to transmit as each bit of "voice" -- strange, at least IMO.
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The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
We have multiple large warehouses with truck mounted and handheld Symbol wireless devices and each warehouse has 10 or more access points. One issue we have at times is with roaming. The current Symbol software has a bug and will not let go of an access point as readily as it should causing obvious connection issues. Does anyone know if this will address the issue as a possible work around? I will be interested in seeing if Cisco's 1200 series can also be used in conjunction with this new access point to create a mesh since we have rolled out a large number of them very recently to replace the nasty old 350s.
For I am Cletus.The.Wonder.Sloth IPv6.5
Help the CUWiN Project, it's distributed under the BSD license.
Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network
(Disclaimer: I'm a contributer to said project)
I find this announcement from Cisco quite puzzelling. It's not really a mesh - more of a star. A true mesh means that each node can talk to many other nodes. In Cisco's proposed solution they have a central node attaching (via 802.11a) to remote nodes in what seems like a star configuration.
In a true mesh topology only one node requires a wired connection, and the traffic can be routed through nodes which attach to this node to nodes further away. If I understand Cisco's idea of a "mesh" the end nodes (the ones in the street lights) etc cannot route anything to any other nodes.
Now the interesting thing is that people have been building mesh networks for a few years now. They take the very inexpensive WRTG54G, and put a linux image on it. From that point on it's a matter of using open source software (available in various shapes and forms) to make this very inexpensive box into a true mesh node.
I think another point which is being lost here is that people (including municipalities) want to roll these things out at low cost. Because nobody wants to pay huge money to access them, and the coverage of an individual node is so small, the cost per access point must be low, and I mean REALLY low (like under $100). Cisco will never provide a solution for these costs - that's just not how they work.
So in the Cisco solution we have to also have a tower, so we can blast out 802.11a signal to all the nodes - also not very desirable. What if we want to cover a few streets and don't have proper line of sight? Suddenly it means multiple towers and escalating costs. A true mesh network hands the signal between adjacent nodes so line of sight isn't always needed to cover an area.
There are people out there rolling out working mesh networks right now, yet we are reading how there is big demand for this "new" technology. Please... Or am I missing something here?
The only problem I see with the existing solutions based on the WRTG54G is that it isn't an outdoor device. What we need is for someone to design a little box with very lower power consumption that can handle outdoor environments, and still keep it as low cost...
Just my two cents' worth.
"The Cisco solution is based on its proprietary Adaptive Wireless Path Protocol, a mesh routing technology designed to allow the wireless network to self-configure, self-optimize, resist interference and network downtime, and reduce network deployment costs"
...
"The Aironet 1500 is priced at $3,999. A kit with an Aironet 1500 access point and equipment for pole-top mounting will sell for $4,645, and a 1500 with a rooftop mounting kit will sell for $4,815, according to the documents."
So much for the 'reducing deployment costs' part...
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
There are people out there rolling out working mesh networks right now, yet we are reading how there is big demand for this "new" technology. Please... Or am I missing something here?
That's why I've been plugging the CU Wireless Network. It is a self organizing mesh that is open source (BSD License). It is one of the first networks to use the HSLS (Hazy Sighted Link State) algorithm.
Actually it really is a mesh. The "controller" is just for management traffic. All Cisco AP's can now use LWAPP, which let's the AP's get all it's management, configurations and control traffic from a centralized device. This means all security configs, polity configs, etc.. are pre-defined on a controller. No pre-configuring each AP before deployment; you just plug in an AP like you would a light bulb and it works.
On the data plane side, they truly are mesh and can talk to any other device in that mesh.
--- RFC 1149 Compliant.
Oh, I realize from a technical viewpoint they're entirely different -- but I also realize that from the viewpoint of using them, the primary differences are speed and cost; minor (!) details like who assigns addresses or how the data is routed after it gets to the ground station clearly make a big difference in how you design the network, but are (hopefully) transparent in how you use them.
Realistically, it's true that somewhere between those, you get the job of deploying the network, and here it still makes a big difference -- particularly, in most cases, Joe Blow won't be able to install a network himself if he has to program in the handoff partners manually.
Nonetheless, an awful lot of people get a professional to do at least major parts of network installation, and for somebody who has a clue of what they're doing, this wouldn't make a big difference in most circumstances -- you program them in once, and only mess with things when you have to replace something. Of course, being from Cisco these boxes will undoubtedly require at least a dozen commands to do anything, (or entries at a GUI designed specifically to make a command line seem as straightforward as possible) but that's just Cisco, and really has nothing to do with mesh networking...
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The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.