The Tsunami Wireless Gigabit Ethernet Bridge
[Thanks to my colleague Mike K. in Houston]
A TeraBeam Buster? You tell me. Of course, it has yet to launch and prove that it functions as advertised. But neither has the other guy.
wmux.com
=============press release begins:
Western Multiplex Announces World's First Wireless Gigabit Ethernet Bridge
Breakthrough Product Line Provides Broadband Access Alternative To Costly Fiber for Bandwidth-Hungry Markets
SUNNYVALE, Calif., --September 20, 2000--Western Multiplex Corporation (Nasdaq:WMUX), a leader in broadband fixed-wireless communication systems used by leading Internet Service Providers, telecommunications carriers and corporations worldwide today announced its carrier-grade Tsunami Wireless Gigabit Ethernet Bridge. The new bridge is the company's latest addition to its widely installed product line of 10BT and 100BT Tsunami Wireless Ethernet Bridges.
The Tsunami Wireless Gigabit Ethernet Bridge is a breakthrough product giving multi-tenant units/multi-dwelling units (MTU/MDU) outside the fiber ring access to broadband gigabit speed for voice, video and data through wireless communication. The bridge also provides a cost-effective alternative to fiber-optic cable for extending corporate Gigabit Ethernet connectivity between campus buildings, remote company sites and central server "farms." Additionally, the Tsunami Wireless Gigabit Ethernet Bridge is an excellent network backup and disaster recovery system, capable of handling communication traffic rerouted from accidentally severed fiber-optic cables.
"This is a significant step toward providing very high speed access to the many bandwidth-deprived markets that exist today," said Western Multiplex president and coo Amir Zoufonoun. "We are particularly well-positioned to capture the exploding demand for broadband infrastructure by supplying Wireless Internet Service Providers, BLECs (building-centric local exchange carriers) and others who are in a market share race for provisioning and delivering services to the MTU/MDU users," he added.
Fixed-Wireless Network is Today's Solution for Vertical and Horizontal Campuses
The Cahners In-Stat Group projects that the U.S. Market for multi-tenant broadband equipment and services will grow from $371 million in 2000 to nearly $2 billion in 2004. The Tsunami Wireless Gigabit Ethernet Bridge allows Internet Service Providers and BLECs to leverage the high-speed capabilities of existing in-building wiring while simultaneously sidestepping the co-location, line unbundling, loop qualification issues and costly time delays associated with the local wire line carrier process. BLECs also benefit from the ability to locate the wireless bridge in the basement of a building, which allows for services to be added, monitored, or altered remotely.
Tsunami Wireless Gigabit Ethernet is also an ideal connectivity solution for traditional horizontal campus environments such as government, university and school district networks that must link buildings together and to central servers. Businesses requiring high speed dedicated bandwidth for remote sites are now able to extend the corporate LAN transparently.
With the Tsunami Wireless Gigabit Ethernet Bridge, service providers can rapidly expand and deliver high-speed broadband IP communication services to new metropolitan and rural areas. Market applications include networking for national retail chains, emerging Internet based video distributors, streaming media content providers, and ISP and Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC) wireless network backbones and customer access.
Carrier-Grade and Unaffected by Weather
The Tsunami Wireless Gigabit Ethernet Bridge is a carrier grade system unaffected by weather, right-of-way issues, line cuts and other factors that plague wire, cable or optical laser products. With the product's 99.999 % link availability, users are assured of less than five minutes of outage per year. In contrast, leased line connections average 99.7% availability, which results in 524 minutes of outage per year.
The license-exempt bridge supports wireless communications over distances under one mile to over five miles. It is VPN (IEEE 802.1Q) compatible and can handle jumbo packets/frame sizes up to and beyond 1538 bytes. Easily installed and operational the same day, the bridge is a layer 2 data link layer bridge that passes Ethernet packets between any 802.3 compliant Gigabit Ethernet switch product. It interoperates with many of the market leading 1000BaseT products such as Extreme Networks, AlteonWebSystems, and Cisco Systems gigabit switches. High-bandwidth capacity for downloads and uploads such as a full-length feature film that previously took hours to download can now be transmitted in approximately 30 seconds.
In addition to high capacity data transport, the Tsunami Wireless Gigabit Ethernet Bridge offers four wayside T1 ports. Dedicated phone connections can be provided with greater reliability than the phone company and no recurring monthly charges. Both models have identical features such as 4x T1 wayside, orderwire, HTML user interface, SNMP management, integral antenna and mounting hardware.
Product Availability
Western Multiplex is announcing two models of the Tsunami Wireless Gigabit Ethernet Bridge, Tsunami 720 and Tsunami 480. The Tsunami 720 is a 720 Mbps full duplex wireless bridge with GbE optical interface. Units for field trials will be available at the end of the first quarter of 2001. The Tsunami 480 is a 480 Mbps full duplex wireless bridge with GbE optical interface. Units for field trials will be available during the fourth quarter of this year.
About Western Multiplex
Western Multiplex Corporation (NASDAQ:WMUX) is a leader in broadband fixed-wireless communication systems used by leading Internet Service Providers, telecommunications carriers and corporations worldwide. The company's fixed-wireless telco and IP based systems address the growing need of service providers and end-users to rapidly and cost-effectively deploy high-speed communication networks for mobile communication backhaul, fiber extension, multi-tenant/multi-dwelling unit Internet access, enterprise, government and education campus connectivity and enable last mile access. The company's website is: www.wmux.com. For customer information, call toll free 800-404-9840. For the Western Multiplex Investor Information Service, call toll free at 877-9WMUX-IR (877-996-8947). |
