May 18, 2005
Technology in Focus features analysis of recent technology news articles, by the consultants in Technology Group, IDA. This is the top pick of the month from a list of 10 - 20 news analysis compiled monthly.
Intel releases a new wireless mesh system called 802.11s, by Rupert Goodwins, ZDNet UK, 03 March 2005
by Wong Weng Wah, Consultant, Network Technologies
Up until now there is no "true" interoperability between mesh networks; thus making it unsuitable for home and enterprise users. Currently it uses proprietary protocol and is designed to cover over very large areas, such as a city, campus or the industrial park. The one and only massive mesh network deployment today is setup by Nortel in Taipei, with 10,000 wireless access points forming a massive mesh covering 440 square kilometres.
But all this is going to change when Intel introduce 802.11s. The newly proposed standard will enable node in a mesh network to communicate with other popular wireless standards like 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g and even the future 802.11n. Intel hopes to get its 802.11s proposal together by the end of 2006, with the standard hopefully being in place by 2008.
The advantage of mesh networking systems is that they will automatically configure themselves and are intelligent. A mesh network uses standard based 802.11s protocol to determine the best route for information to travel across the network based on the quality required, meaning a video stream could take a different route to a webcam that requires higher bandwidth. 802.11s will also allow wireless nodes to dynamically find one another and create a link.
Another significant advantage of Mesh network is that it can provide greater redundancy and can be used for traffic balancing. In dense networks, such as crowded offices or campus, each device can have many neighbours that create multiple routes between two communicating devices. In the presence of localized interference a multi-hop network can route data along an alternate path to avoid interference. Or if one node requires a large amount of bandwidth, then the network can dynamically route traffic to other network nodes, avoiding the congested node. Current single-hop networks do not have the ability to dynamically adapt to interferences or overburdened network access points.
Mesh networks provide significant advantages because they can adapt to changes in network topology, such as nodes being added and removed or changes in location of devices. As people become more mobile and wireless capabilities are included in new classes of devices, future business and home networks will need to adapt or self-configure to these changes.
Some words about the writer
Wong Weng Wah is a Consultant with the Technology Group, tasked with the responsibility of identifying and driving the adoption of emerging telecommunication technologies in Singapore. He specializes in a wide range of wireline technologies, including Passive Optical network and Voice over IP.
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