LR Tests Wireless Mesh

NEW YORK -- Light Reading (www.lightreading.com), the world's leading online publication for the telecom industry, today announced that it has published one of the most exhaustive tests of wireless mesh equipment to date, performed by testing lab Iometrix Inc. (www.iometrix.com). The results of the test indicate that two leading wireless mesh platforms have excellent performance.

Light Reading and its sister site, Unstrung (www.unstrung.com), invited dozens of companies to participate, but only two – Firetide Inc. and Strix Systems Inc. – agreed to be tested. Both vendors have developed a wireless mesh networking product with a dedicated 802.11a radio (multiple radios, in Strix's case) for backhaul connectivity – an approach that is much more efficient than using a single radio for both backhaul and client connectivity.

Iometrix developed a test plan based on continuing standards work by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. (IEEE) 802.11 Task Group for Tests.

The test showed that both vendors' equipment achieved excellent results for mobility handoff delays. Strix's mesh nodes can backhaul up to 36 excellent-quality voice calls, regardless of the number of hops. This number drops to 23 when 50 percent data is added to the mix. In addition, the tests of Strix's equipment disprove the commonly held belief that throughput will taper off when hop counts increase.

"Multiple radios make a huge difference when a few hops are involved," said Bob Mandeville, President and Founder of Iometrix. "It's not double the radios and double the bandwidth; it's double the radios and quintuple the bandwidth. That was the big takeaway of the test."

Iometrix paid for the test and partnered with Light Reading to publish and publicize the results.

"This was a pioneering test that will no doubt send ripples throughout the wireless mesh market with its demonstration of the power of using multiple radio technology," said R. Scott Raynovich, Editor In Chief of Light Reading.

The entire report can be seen here: http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=96200.

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Contact:
Scott Raynovich
Editor In Chief, Light Reading
[email protected]
(212) 925-0020 x103

About Light Reading
Reaching a core audience of more than 917,000 enterprise IT managers and executives, Light Reading Inc. publishes www.lightreading.com, the leading global content site for the telecom industry; www.byteandswitch.com, a storage networking site; www.unstrung.com, dedicated to wireless networking; www.darkreading.com, an IT security site; and www.cabledigitalnews.com, covering the cable industry's evolving communications infrastructure. Light Reading is also affiliated with www.heavyreading.com, a market research site offering quantitative analysis of telecom technology to carriers, service providers, and vendors. Light Reading was acquired by United Business Media in August 2005, and operates as a unit of CMP Technology.

About CMP Technology
CMP Technology (www.cmp.com) is a marketing solutions company serving the technology industry. Through its market-leading portfolio of trusted information brands, CMP has earned the confidence of more technology professionals than any other media company. As a result, CMP is the premier provider of access, insight and actionable programs designed to connect sellers and buyers in ways that yield superior return on investment. CMP Technology is a subsidiary of United Business Media (www.unitedbusinessmedia.com), a global provider of news distribution and specialist information services with a market capitalization of more than $3 billion.

About Iometrix
Founded in 2003, Iometrix Inc. (www.iometrix.com) is dedicated to developing the rigorous, standards-based methodologies essential to any meaningful evaluation of advanced enterprise and WAN technologies. It is already attracting international attention: Its massively scaled Sonet stress test – which measured and monitored 512 ports in parallel and generated 160 Gbit/s of traffic – set the industry standard for verified performance. The lab is already planning pioneering evaluations of wireless LANs, metro Ethernet services, storage networks, and other emerging technologies.