User Manual

Version 3.03 SPEEDLAN 9000 Series Installation and Operation User Guide
1-2 Introduction
Features and Benefits
SPEEDLAN 9000 Series Features
The SPEEDLAN
®
9000 series offers the network manager unsurpassed flexibility in
meeting the challenges of designing, building and managing today's wireless
broadband networks. Because the 9000 series routers support mesh, star and building-
to-building topologies, they provide the network manager powerful tools to build
complex networks. This allows wireless broadband networks and services to be
extended on a greater scale, and to connect more buildings than ever before. The
9000 series are all remote-mounted 11 Mb/s routers. These routers are installed on
the building’s rooftop to help reduce signal loss.
In a mesh topology, the SPEEDLAN 9000 routes traffic around physical limitations,
eliminating the line-of-sight (LOS) issue present in star topology-only networks. Each
mesh router will communicate with other mesh routers in a radius of up to 2 miles
depending upon the model and signaling rate selected. This creates a multi-hop IP
routed cloud: self-healing, load balancing, and scalable network. By removing LOS
issues caused by large buildings, hills, and other obstructions, service providers can
reduce network deployment costs while maximizing their broadband wireless
investment and reach new markets that could otherwise not be served.
In a star topology, the 9000 router can act as a polling central base station or as a
remote Customer Premise Equipment (CPE), which is polled by a base station. This
process helps overcome problems inherent to 802.11-based products with hidden
transmitters, conserve wireless bandwidth and reduce equipment costs as well.
The SPEEDLAN 9000 series is an all-in-one solution allowing a multitude of network
options for the service provider to offer a variety of network options: point-to-point,
point-to-multipoint, and self-healing mesh. For information on the type of routers
included in the SPEEDLAN 9000 series, see Equipment Features, page 1-5. For more
information on point-to-point and point-to-multipoint networks, see SPEEDLAN Polling
Protocol -- How it Works, page 1-6. For more information about mesh, see SPEEDLAN
9000 Mesh Protocol -- How It Works in Mesh Clouds, page 1-8.