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« Wi-Fi Exploit Not an Apple Problem, Company Says | Main | Broken Connexion »

August 18, 2006

Guy Kewney Says of Tropos, Don't Forget LocustWorld

Interesting column by UK Wi-Fi gadfly--say that three times fast--Guy Kewney, pointing out a competitive technology to Tropos's new approach: Kewney thinks I was too broad in stating that all Tropos competitors choose to use 5 GHz for backhaul only, where Tropos's new metro-scale mesh system will use 5 GHz as an alternative mesh routing path with dual-radio nodes. He writes that LocustWorld, in operation since 2002, offers similar mesh-over-multiple-radio technologies. And that the firm is ignored because they don't really sell hardware or software; they develop software for reference platforms and sell consulting services.

Because LocustWorld doesn't have salespeople or an obvious US presence in the market--because they're not per se selling a product--I haven't seen any comparisons with their software running on commodity devices against commercial, expensive gear sold by Tropos, BelAir, and others. I don't know whether their approach has been considered by any of the major operators now in the US market. MobilePro has chosen to use Strix gear, EarthLink picked Tropos and Motorola, and MetroFi has stuck with SkyPilot.

It's worth noting that both the commodity devices and the multi-thousand-dollar, multi-radio proprietary hardware mostly use Atheros chips. That's right. The heart is the same. Tropos's VP of engineering Saar Gillai said in an interview earlier in the week that Tropos has put significant effort into building their own radio boards around Atheros chips, while, he asserted, their competitors typically purchase prefab reference design-based boards that Gillai says vary in performance from board to board.

If you look at Defacto Wireless, a partner of LocustWorld that sells Atheros-based mesh nodes in the US that will run LocustWorld's software, they offer single-radio ruggedized external nodes for $700 to $800, which is about a fifth of the list price of a Tropos single-radio node, which Inc. magazine said retails for $3,500.

RoamAD from New Zealand also offers software for fungible Wi-Fi boxes, although they charge license fees for it. Martyn Levy, RoamAD's CEO, told me recently that their mesh approach allows their value-added integrators to choose the best set of Atheros-based hardware, manufacture or purchase it in whatever quantities they want to negotiate, and then install RoamAD's routing gear.

I'll be curious if someone performs the testing necessary to see how RoamAD and LocustWorld stand up to their much-more expensive, proprietary hardware brethren. I have been told by RoamAD and LocustWorld seems to maintain that a large number of nodes using their respective software have been installed worldwide.

But no significant metro-scale operation in the US has been built on either platform, and we're living in the crucible of municipal Wi-Fi right now. RoamAD has a large installation in downtown Perth that's focused on three-dimensional (i.e., tall building) mesh networking, but it's only 20 blocks. Bigger networks are in the works, but not yet announced.

2 Comments

This article does not mention 900MHz - it's being used in addition to 5.8GHz for mesh backhaul. We are using Defacto hardware and LocustWorld Pro MeshAP software in our meshes.

We were given a price of Aus$6,000, around $4000 for the Single Radio nodes. After education sector discount Strix was about the same price for a more entry level Dual a and single g/g radio. RoamAD, which works out a lot cheaper (and local for us in New Zealand) seems to have a very good Management console, will see when they allow us to test one of their multi-radio units in the near future. Like Strix, they seem to be more scalable than Tropos solutions with the ability to easily add more Client or backhaul radios.

Now that Tropos Multi Radio nodes have been released we are very interested to see the price, and to see a good comparison between Strix, RoamAD and Tropos in relation to VoIp, Video, Handoff time, and tested Client load per radio.

Ideally, a solution that has the capability to seamlessly connect/expand an existing or future Municipal & campus networks would be perfect, maybe a bit of a dream though.