VON: SkyPilot enhances VoIP over wireless mesh

SAN JOSE--Adding support for Wi-Fi voice-over-IP handsets and beefing up the quality-of-service algorithms in its new software release this week, SkyPilot Networks enhanced the VoIP capabilities for its SyncMesh supported wireless mesh networks.

Skypilot’s Brian Jenkins, vice president of product management, said SyncMesh software is the only synchronous mesh protocol on the market today. The company provides infrastructure and software for carrier-class broadband wireless mesh networks. Support for dual-mode cellular/Wi-Fi VoIP phones opens a lot of opportunity for large-scale Wi-Fi mesh networking.

Jenkins said the company’s ability to provide VoIP service guarantees over a multi-hop, unlicensed mesh networks helps the company make its case for business-class VoIP services using city-wide wireless mesh networks. Its technology uses a GPS timing source to schedule and coordinate simultaneous transmissions. As a synchronous protocol, VoIP traffic can be guaranteed with low latency and low jitter to ensure high-quality voice calls.

“We’re doing a lot of business enabling city-wide networks to provide VoIP over Wi-Fi,” Jenkins said.

The new version of SyncMesh includes support for 902.11e/Wi-Fi Multimedia support; increased prioritization granularity; enhanced queue management that uses per-device queue management and is improved to lower per-hop latency for high-priority traffic; enhanced end-to-end mesh prioritization; and enhanced scheduling fairness.

“We are taking the indoor market and extending it outside to these city-wide wireless networks,” Jenkins said.

Skypilot serves more than 300 customers in more than 50 countries today. It addresses the fixed broadband wireless market and the municipal networks segment, which is the faster growing part of its business.