Dec 1, 2003 12:00 PM,

SPOTNIK MESHES WITH BELAIR

by Dan O'Shea

BelAir Networks, a developer of Wi-Fi mesh network technology, has garnered its first carrier customer in Spotnik Mobile, a Canadian national public hot spot operator affiliated with Telus Mobility. BelAir's solution will be initially deployed only at a single Radisson Hotel in Ottawa, Ontario, but the deployment could indicate how public Wi-Fi providers might evolve hot spots to deliver broader, more reliable coverage.

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“This goes beyond basic Wi-Fi and single access point architectures,” said Joe Aragona, vice president of marketing for BelAir.

The hotel deployment, announced this week at the Wi-Fi Planet conference in San Jose, uses four BelAir 200 switch/router/gateway boxes to provide Wi-Fi coverage throughout the 11-story brick hotel, including every guest room. The units are mounted externally near different sides of the building to create a point-to-point mesh network. One of the units serves as the main gateway connection to the hotel and uses wireless back-haul to two other units to manage coverage and bandwidth.

“You can't be religious
about architectures.”
—Stephen Rayment
BelAir Networks

The fourth BelAir 200 is connected to the hotel's DSL line for wireline backhaul to the traditional telephone network. Wi-Fi meshes and other new Wi-Fi deployments likely will use wireless backhaul more frequently, or at least a mix of both wireless and wireline, said Stephen Rayment, vice president of engineering and chief technology officer at BelAir Networks.

“You will see some hybrid configurations as the more immediate model,” he said. “This deployment is really a case study in the pragmatics of urban Wi-Fi deployment because it was too difficult to get wireless backhaul [instead of the DSL line].”

The deployment is Toronto-based Spotnik's first installation of mesh network equipment.

Wi-Fi mesh networks are ideal for creating so-called “hot zones,” and Spotnik easily could expand its existing mesh by adding more BelAir 200 boxes, Rayment said. However, BelAir's architecture also can integrate existing access points, a reflection of the fact that traditional access points won't disappear as Wi-Fi operators move toward more advanced configurations.

“You can't be religious about architectures,” Rayment said. “Existing indoor access point solutions have their place, and every application has its particular needs.”