Optical Wireless Broadband To 1 Gbps

One problem larger organizations have is how to link multiple facilities within a sprawling campus or a metropolitan area. This gets especially tricky when metro fiber connections are hard to obtain or it is difficult to run conduit even on your own property. Have you considered optical wireless?

Optical Wireless Broadband (OWB) is a high speed alternative to fiber optic cabling. Like fiber optic solutions, OWB uses infrared light to send packets from source to destination at bandwidths up to 1 Gbps. What’s missing is the glass fiber.

If you don’t use fiber to carry the optical signals, then just what do you use? Air. That’s right, just send the light beam through the air without a conduit to constrain it. Broad Sky Networks has a solution called iBeam that does just that. It creates reliable point to point Optical Wireless Broadband links that provide up to 1 Gbps of bandwidth over distances of up to 1.6 km per link.

You can imagine how easy it is to interconnect all the buildings on your university, medical or research campus using OWB technology. After all, these buildings are certainly within line of site of each other. That’s a requirement of iBeam technology. If the beam is blocked, the data is cut off.

An advantage of iBeam over short range free space optical transmission solutions is that it extends over a kilometer and a half between source and destination. That lets you cross busy thoroughfares, rivers, lakes, business districts, residential areas and so on. You may have already priced construction efforts that run fiber optic cabling on poles or trenched underground. Has that been a show stopper in your plans to interconnect facilities with high bandwidth services? iBeam can be the solution that gets around those limitations. Actually, your infrared beam goes right over the problem areas with no right of way issues, no frequency coordination and no RF licenses needed.

Speaking of RF, there is one situation where you may want to employ a radio frequency solution. Infrared light is blocked by heavy fog and other severe weather conditions. If you can’t see the building you are connecting with, the iBeam probably can’t either. If you are connecting near the distance limits of iBeam or are located in an area known for heavy fog, Broad Sky Networks offers a iBeam RF+ backup system to maintain your signal. In addition to the standard iBeam equipment, an 802.11n radio system is installed as a backup link. You’ll recognize that designation as the latest high speed WiFi standard. In the even of an optical outage for any reason, the OWB link will automatically switch to the RF+ radio backup. Your bandwidth will temporarily go from 1 Gbps to 100 Mbps, but you’ll still have connectivity.

For special coverage needs, Broad Sky has a patented mesh network solution. Their Optical Wireless Broadband Point to Multi-Point architecture (PtMP) is unique in the industry. This technology can help you expand your current wired or fiber network quickly and easily with a combination of conventional network connections and optical segments.

Are you frustrated with a lack of affordable conventional solutions to connect multiple buildings on a campus or metro setting? Optical Wireless Broadband may offer the solution you’ve been needing. Get pricing and availability of a wide variety of optical and fiber bandwidth connectivity solutions to meet your particular business requirements.



Note: Picture of Keck telescope laser beam at night courtesy of Paul Hirst on Wikimedia Commons.

Branching Out With MPLS and VPN

Does you business depend on communicating securely between multiple locations? As more business go to electronic forms and transactions, they are finding that they need more than a FAX machine, overnight mail, or a dial-up connection. A competitive position now requires knowing sales and inventory data in real time, transfer of medical images and CAD drawings in seconds not hours, and delivery of important business documents instantly rather than waiting for mail delivery. What you need is a broadband pipe that connects all your key locations.

The traditional broadband pipeline is the T1 point to point private line. This is a dedicated data connection between two locations that is always available for your exclusive use. When the line isn't transmitting data, it is idling with only enough data being exchanged to maintain line synchronization.

The point to point circuit has the advantages of being exclusive and secure. But these come at a price. Each line connects only two locations. There is no such thing as a mesh network. Companies that need communications among many branch offices have to set up a star network at headquarters to manage the data flow to and from each connected location.

This arrangement works best when all or most communications are between headquarters and each branch, or between a franchisor and multiple franchisees who do not need to talk among themselves.

An alternative arrangement is the MPLS or Multi Protocol Label Switching network. MPLS is an update to the earlier Frame Relay technology. Both types of networks can be set up to allow many to many communications. The network itself is owned by a private networking company that provides connections through it's network "cloud" to each desired location. Then allowed connections are mapped and a CIR or Committed Information Rate (bandwidth) is established. Each location accesses the MPLS network through a tag router and T1 line provided by the network.

For even greater flexibility, Carrier Ethernet can extend your corporate LAN across town or across the country. Ethernet has the advantages of being very familiar and easy to manage by IT departments. It also offers network compatible speeds of 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and even 1,000 Mbps GigE service. Fiber optic connections need to be in place at each location to achieve these higher bandwidths.

Where cost is a major consideration or there are dozens or hundreds of sites to connect, a VPN or Virtual Private Network may be your best solution. It's called virtual because it uses the public Internet instead of a private network. Privacy is provided through data encryption software in a process called "tunneling." A VPN can be relatively inexpensive because the major portion of the network is already in place and is deployed nearly everywhere, including overseas locations. Your connection to the Internet can be a T1 line, or DS3 for higher bandwidth.

Which communications network is best for your business? Our expert consultants can help you sort through the options and pick the optimum solution based on price and performance. Get started now with a quick online quote inquiry at T1 Rex.