Wireless mesh net creates shuttle watch

BellSouth and Nortel are providing high-speed wireless data service for the media attending tomorrow’s launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla.

BellSouth upgraded its circuits to support high-speed backbone links, up to DS-3 speeds, for a Nortel Wireless Mesh Network that will cover the entire six-acre campus and support the 2500 journalists expected to attend the launch, the first since the Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed on re-entry to earth two years ago.

“What makes this network unique is that the mesh network does not require each wireless access point to be hard-wired by cable,” a BellSouth spokesman explained. “The system requires only one access point to be hard-wired and the rest are able to talk to each other.”

The shuttle launch is expected to generate additional video transmissions, in addition to print and Web coverage, from journalists housed in new hurricane-rate press structures built by NASA since the last shuttle launch in January 2003.