Metageek offers wireless signatures in update to spectrum analyzer software: Metageek's Chanalyzer 3.0 software for their $399 Wi-Spy 2.4x spectrum analyzer in a USB dongle adds signatures in a sidebar: patterns that let you match what you're seeing in the graph to common interferers like microwave ovens and cordless phones. You can upload snapshots to get input from other users, or add to their Signatures Library. The Windows-only tool also provides greater control over recording, annotating, playing back, and slicing data. This software doesn't work with their original Wi-Spy model (now dubbed "v1"), which continues to be sold and supported.
BelAir cited as revenue market leader worldwide for wireless mesh: This doesn't surprise me. BelAir is the name I'm consistently hearing associated with most of the large-scale muni projects, such as Minneapolis and Toronto, which skews revenue up because so many nodes are needed for these projects. Can anyone tell me if Tropos, SkyPilot, or Strix has any large-scale metro projects that are being deployed? Or have three companies refocused their efforts? The revenue estimates for node shipments, by the way, come from Dell'Oro Group, a firm that's been tracking the wireless industry for many years. Update: I got some good pushback on this by vendors. Tropos noted that it was the 2007 overall revenue leader in the study; BelAir for the second half of 2007; Tropos also led in nodes shipped. Both Tropos and Firetide also pointed out that with the rising interest in public safety networks and large-scale logistics networks, focusing on big-city Wi-Fi isn't really where the market has led to.
Intel modifies shrinkwrapped hardware to span 60 miles with standard Wi-Fi: It's not a great trick to set up antennas and receive Wi-Fi signals dozens of miles away. The hard part is keeping a consistent link over time and dealing with latency and environmental factors. Intel says they've got a device that they'll sell initially in India at what should be below $500 per node (although a pair is required for links). They expect most links will span about 30 miles, with one node on the edge of a city. An Intel manager says in this Technology Review article, "If you take standard Wi-Fi and focus, you can't get past a few kilometers." That is to laugh, as I imagine all you community networkers are now doing reading these words. It's relatively easy to run Wi-Fi that far; you just have to know what parameters to tune. In fact, they're not using Wi-Fi, but a protocol that's Wi-Fi like, which employs a form of half-duplex TDMA (time division multiple access).
Strix has a major network underway in some of the Boston Suburbs.
The last large deployment Tropos was involved in was Philadelphia, and most of the radios installed there were the Motorola Hotzone version of the Tropos radio. That was about 4500 installed mesh radios.
I don't know if Tropos gets to count any of that revenue, although they did OEM the radio for Motorola.