TNSI DD
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Triton Network Systems
Just Like SONET
Just when you thought the LMDS and broadband wireless market would be built upon a point-to-multipoint configuration, along comes Triton Network Systems. The Orlando, Fla.-based start-up has a whole new architecture in mind for its Invisible Fiber (IF) system, a wireless OC-3 technology with the reliability and survivability of SONET. Investor confidence is high: Triton catapulted Florida to the top spot in venture capital financing for the Southeast, and, in its second round of financing, Triton’s $26-million deal was the fifth largest nationwide. Early returns on that confidence are promising: After spending more than $200 million in combined investments, Triton is in trials with Walt Disney World Co. and Lockheed Martin, running a variety of applications.
Wireless customers will have some architectural choices. IF is about 1 square foot in size and can run more than two miles, acting as a high-speed Internet access cube. This makes it extremely easy to deploy, and, in fact, changes the economics of broadband wireless. According to a number of analysts, IF will enable an architecture called consecutive point (though it can also be used in more traditional configurations), where two units are deployed in a line-of-sight link and placed back-to-back with additional links. This means more units can be deployed as market demand dictates; networks can be extended to specific customer addresses. Equally importantly, IF units can be easily added or relocated to strategic spots that require more capacity. If wireless technologies are supposed to enable end-user mobility, this solution allows the network itself to be mobile.
The wireless broadband market is hot today, and the space is crowded with start-ups that claim a technically better air link for their products,” said Joe Savage, director of research at RHK. “Triton has introduced a system that deploys just like a SONET ring network, helping to reduce service providers’ initial deployment complications and alleviating staff training issues.”
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That said, there’s a new game in town--Invisible Fiber Unit (IFU). No, it won’t replace PMP or PTP (in fact, it will work alongside it), but it should cut into the pure PMP market and provide telcos with a whole new business model. PMP advocates are quick to shoot it down, but market awareness of Triton Network Systems’ IFU products is beginning to ramp up quickly. Why all the fuss? Because IFUs can extend a traditional fiber network, backhaul to a PMP link, or create a new architecture called a consecutive point configuration. This is a standard telephony and data ring architecture built on a point-to-point-to-point design. Two IFUs are deployed in a line-of-sight link and placed back-to-back with additional links, thus forming a consecutive point (see Figure 1). The IFUs transmit and receive, creating a link between sites. To expand the network, links are connected back-to-back until the ring has fully extended back to the original site. The units are small, easily installed, interoperate with existing SONET equipment, and, most importantly, can operate at OC-3 or Fast Ethernet rates. This is significantly faster than almost anything around today with comparable range and low bit error rate.
If IF was merely another way to move traffic, it would be an interesting entrant--no more, no less. But in a consecutive point architecture, IF can do something the RBOCs, with their tight grip on the local loop, can’t. IF can be deployed based on market demand quickly and cheaply to specific end sites, adding or relocating units as needed with no bay stations required. Service providers can acquire customers along the backhaul route easily with few time-to-market headaches. Furthermore, consecutive point can create a self-healing SONET wireless network if the equipment used meets SONET standards, as IF does. If one point fails, traffic is reversed around the ring until the original node is back up. PMP has no such inherent reliability. And reliability concerns are a major impediment to CLECs taking big-name customers from RBOCs.
After reliability, concerns about scalability are a close second. The number of buildings on a consecutive point ring can vary widely, from three to upwards of 20. At OC-3, each ring provides up to 84 nonblocking T1s of service. When this capacity becomes maxed out, the existing ring can be divided into two by deploying another link, thus doubling total capacity in that specific area.
Frezza, an industry prognosticator and investor in Triton, sees a number of IFU advantages over PMP, even pronouncing multipoint “dead.” He points to the fact that millimeter waves are directional in nature, but PMP makes these waves less directional with broad sector antennas. “Ring architectures can reuse frequencies over and over via space division multiplexing, where multipoint cannot. The total number of erlangs or Mbps of traffic that a fully deployed ring architecture can extract from a square kilometer is an order of magnitude higher than for multipoint architectures. As for ease of deployment, to add another building to the network you only need to have line of sight with any other building on that network. IFU capacity is triple that of PMP vendors’ current multiple-T1 rates.
Other analysts don’t see the death of multipoint anytime soon, but are certainly impressed with the implications of IFUs in a consecutive point architecture. Citing its redundancy, capacity and frequency reuse capability, Ira Brodsky, president of Datacomm Research Co., does see some advantages for carriers in using consecutive point “if their goal is to become a significant source of bandwidth in urban centers. With PMP, all of the buildings must have line-of-sight access to the hub. That may not always be easy. With consecutive point, you just need to find any building on the network that is within range and has line-of-sight access. The more buildings that join the network, the easier it becomes to meet those conditions.”
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