User's Manual
8
point-to-multipoint fashion using sector antennas or antenna splitters with multiple directional
antennas. The unit operating at the center of the star topology plays the role of Master and is in charge
of coordinating communications to and from the other units that thus act as Slaves. As a result, the
hidden and exposed terminal problems are eliminated by the centralized FluidMAX MAC protocol
that supports up to 500 Mb/s maximum throughput
2
.
By reducing the number of slaves, the supported
rate per slave can be increased provided that the sum of the throughput requirements of the slaves is
lower than or equal to 150 Mb/s.
Fig. 4.4 - Point-To-Multipoint Network Architecture
FluidMAX is fully automatic and integrated within the mesh architecture. By continuously
monitoring the network topology, FM units are able to automatically select whether to operate the
FluidMAX MAC protocol or remain in the initial mesh operating mode. Consequently, no
additional configuration is needed to enable the FluidMAX features because the communication
protocol is automatically chosen by the FluidMAX protocol based on the detected network topology.
4.4 FLUIDITY LAYOUT
4.5 Prodigy
Firmware versions 6.5 or above feature the innovative Prodigy 2.0 MPLS-based protocol. The protocol
is a quantum leap in terms of performance with respect to its predecessor Prodigy 1.0. Prodigy 2.0
features include Fluidity (through software plug-in), traffic engineering and advanced QoS. Prodigy
2.0 is NOT compatible with Prodigy 1.0. The protocol selection can be done, for back-compatibility,
using the Web GUI in the Local Configuration page (see Section 7.6 for more details). No mixed
operation of Prodigy 1.0 and Prodigy 2.0 are allowed. In case of expansion of current network
deployments two options are available:
1. Setting the newly added units with Firmware 6.5 or above to operate in Prodigy 1.0.
2. Upgrading the previously deployed units with a Firmware 6.5 or above and set them to operate
in Prodigy 2.0.
!
We recommend option 1 if there is no specific issue in the network.
2
We assume the default channel width of 80 MHz