SOLUTIONS

Transportation: WiFi

WiFi access is now commonplace across urban areas, and public spaces such as airports and shopping centres, with coverage continuing to increase through build-outs by service providers, municipalities, and transportation agencies. Yet, insufficient attention is still given to the backhaul network in many cases, which is quite often a bottleneck, preventing users from obtaining the Quality of Service (QOS) that the WiFi network itself is capable of delivering.

With WiFi access points now so ubiquitous, fiber is only occasionally available for backhaul, while other options are either failing on QOS, as with some wireless technologies, or lacking sufficient bandwidth, as with legacy T1/E1 circuits. However, the same copper infrastructure originally used for T1/E1 can be redeployed for carrier Ethernet, boosting bandwidth per pair by five fold, with the potential for even greater gains by bonding up to eight or 16 pairs together. Up to 100 Mbps of backhaul bandwidth can then be configured, which is sufficient for most active WiFi hotspots, and capable of delivering real time applications such as video to multiple users. The Actelis ML series of Ethernet Access Devices (EADs) is already being deployed to backhaul WiFi hot spots. Each hotspot is connected to the copper network via an ML point to point system, typically feeding back to a point-to-multipoint ML system at the central office.