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Walk into virtually any Starbucks and, in addition to lattes and espressos, you'll see people working on laptop computers. A computer networking technology known as Wi-Fi enables users to access the Internet as well as send and receive e-mail globally at more than 100,000 locations called "hot spots." With Wi-Fi, people are no longer shackled to their home or office Internet connections. Internet access is available in many locations throughout their communities.
But hot spots are the Internet equivalent of pay phones-you have to travel to a location where service is available. In the past few years, an emerging technology known by a variety of names, including "metro-scale Wi-Fi," "municipal Wi-Fi," and "mesh networking," has taken the hot-spot concept to the next level, providing community-wide Wi-Fi access and doing for high-speed Internet access what cellular telephones did for voice services. A metro-scale Wi-Fi network can connect all sorts of Wi-Fi devices, including laptops, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phones.
HOW DOES METRO WI-FI WORK!
Mesh technology makes practical the distribution of Wi-Fi throughout a community by eliminating a significant logistical and economic hurdlethe need to connect each Wi-Fi access point to a wired network. Instead of using conventional access points, WiFi mesh networks provide user connections with mesh routers.
Approximately 10 percent to 20 percent of these routers connect to the Internet via a wire. The rest are completely wireless. Information is transmitted from Wi-Fi router to Wi-Fi router, hopping across the wireless network until it reaches a wired connection to the Internet.
Each Wi-Fi router in the mesh network is the size of a breadbox and is attached to a lamppost, telephone pole, or other fixture with a power source. Because there are no large towers, no zoning ordinances or variance approvals are required. No specialized skills are needed; installation averages 15 minutes per pole. The equipment is designed and built for environmental extremes.
If the network expands or is altered, there is no need to return to adjust the routers already in place. Expeditious and straightforward construction (combined with the lack of wireline connection to each router) delivers enormous cost savings and short deployment time frames. Tropos Networks has provided the wireless routers used in more than 500...