Evolving to the Next Level

When I build a prototype I normally don’t “wow” myself until I build the Array-AP. Not only did I meet my expectations I exceeded them to possibly creating the next generation of Internet using a wireless mesh. When you look at the new Array-AP it doesn’t appear to be different other than any other MeshAP other than the 1u rack mount option. In fact the pundits would say it is just an embedded system with a 802.11b radio card and 4 Ethernet ports and at the price of $600 - $800 US it better do something else then simply route using wireless mesh. They would also say that because this is an industrial solution that this in itself would exceed any commercial-off-the-shelf wireless AP. But when you design hardware to meet Municipal standards you shouldn’t be building components using PC type equipment. The fact that most Muni AP routers will be continuously on needs specialized industrial embedded hardware. But Array-AP’s unique combination of Wireless Mesh, Virtualization, Supercomputer, and by also providing Software as a Service (SaaS) it starts to turn heads. The combination is called MVSS.

The physical hardware on Array-AP will meet or exceed many expectations regarding a wireless mesh. The single 802.11b (Prism chipset) radio card will not turn a single head when 802.11N is the new standard. Having a single radio card in the unit will not make this compete with the likes of units that can handle up to 8 different radio cards. The idea for a single radio card is to use that radio card to access the service solution. Traditional AODV routing will be done with a combination of aggregation or clustering using MeshAP, wireless Bridge, Free Space Optics, Fibre Optics, or other types of Metropolitan backbone technology either in licensed or unlicensed operation. That means your wired or wireless mesh can exceed 1 Gbps.

The Array-AP limitations are 100BT Ethernet ports and a single 802.11B radio card. What on earth was I thinking when I built this unit? Well the solution was to build a wired router using Locustworld v1311. So I did I built a 2 Ethernet port MeshAP with an 802.11B radio card. I basically replaced my current off the shelf wireless router with this unit and I found tremendous benefit when integrating wireless mesh right down to the injection level. Quality of Service (QoS) improves the Telephony operation as well as the IPTV operations. QoS is now at the edge of the service application support for wireless mesh. This becomes the ultimate for triple or quadruple play network environments.

The Array-AP starts to stand out not only from a physical construction but also from configuration. Most wireless MeshAP’s is built with less than 500 MHz and 64 Megs of RAM and disk space. Because of their small footprint they can easily be embedded into different hardware such as PC Engine or Via Mini-ITX boards. The Array-AP runs at 1 GHz and has over 4 Gig of disk space and 1 Gig of ram. This is truly unique solid-state construction.

The idea came to me based on the CERN supercomputer and utilizing VMware to provide other application services within a Wireless Mesh router. The problem is that many people require faster “Last Mile” networking, meaning that people want faster Internet connections. What CERN did was to combine High Performance Clustering (HPC) with a dedicated network. The access to this super computer did not require more than a dial connection because the supercomputer was being accessed with X windows. Ok, so if you have 100 to 1000 of the Array-APs you can start utilizing the access computing to build the same network mesh network giving your client the ability to utilize the entire mesh array as one big computer hence the name Array-AP. I figure if you are building out ISP you might as well build out the next generation of Internet.

I believe that this should be a plug and play type scenario. Once you have decided on your operation that deploying it should be as easy as plugging it in and watching your MVSS grow.

The neat idea about integrating a supercomputer into a wireless mesh access point is that as the technology comes and goes it can be utilized from the basic dialup internet connection to the latest technology offering. To see more of the Array-AP please see Going to the Next Level.