Corpus Christi Put Metro-Scale Wi-Fi to New Use
The City of Corpus Christi, Texas, will deploy a Tropos metro-scale Wi-Fi network for use by the city-owned water and gas utilities, public works departments, and public safety agencies. The city anticipates significant cost savings and increased effectiveness in the mobile workforce as a result of the wireless broadband network. The most immediate cost savings will be seen as a result of the automated gas and water meter reading that will utilize the Tropos metro-scale Wi-Fi system to relay automatically generated usage information twice per day from all meters in the coverage area. By eliminating the need for utility personnel to visit each meter and manually record customer consumption, the city can more quickly and accurately provide up-to-date billing information to their service recipients.
MIT Says Shortest Path is Not Enough
A key advantage to Tropos Predictive Wireless Routing Protocol (PWRP) is that it makes its path selection decisions based on maximizing throughput rather than minimizing the number of hops. The advantages of throughput, rather than hop count, based path selection algorithms are outline in a paper and presentation, “Performance of Multihop Wireless Networks: Shortest Path is Not Enough,” by Douglas S. J. De Couto, Daniel Aguayo, Benjamin A. Chambers, and Robert Morris of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science.
Sandia National Laboratories and the Livermore Police Department Use Tropos Gear to Test Sensor Management Architecture
A recent article in Government Technology explained how researchers from Sandia National Laboratories and their counterparts from the Livermore (CA) Police Department tested a system of sensors and other advanced technology designed to citizens safe from terrorist attacks. A Wi-Fi infrastructure from Tropos Networks was used in the testing, conducted at Livermore's Robertson Park during Fourth of July festivities.
Tropos Networks Releases New Tech Briefs
Often overshadowed by the hype surrounding WiMAX, Wi-Fi is rapidly evolving new capabilities. These include 802.11e, which will provide quality of service (QoS) capabilities for voice-over-Wi-Fi (VoWi-Fi) and other applications, 802.11r, which will provide improved roaming and handoffs, and 802.11n, which will provide transmission speeds of 100 to 200 Mbps. These capabilities are detailed in the new Tropos Networks technology brief, “802.11 Technologies: Past, Present and Future.”
When Tropos Networks announced release 3 of its Wi-Fi cell system, one highlighted feature was a significant enhancement to the Tropos 5110’s receive sensitivity. Even among long-time observers of the wireless networking industry, our announcement was met by confused reactions. What is receive sensitivity? Why does it matter to network operators who are deploying metro-scale Wi-Fi networks? “Receive Sensitivity: A Practical Explanation” describes why this arcane technical specification is one of the key determinants of the performance and economics of a metro-scale Wi-Fi network.
WiBLAST to Unwire Nantucket Using Tropos Gear
Start-up WiBLAST plans to use equipment from Tropos Networks to make Nantucket one of New England's first hot zones. The Wi-Fi network will provide residents, businesses and vacationers with a mix of both fixed and mobile broadband services in downtown Nantucket and the community of Naushop.
Tropos Networks Adds to Ecosystem
Tropos Networks has expanded its ecosystem by entering into partnerships with two vendors of operations support systems, each having customers in common with Tropos.
The first announcement detailed a partnership with Pronto Networks. Pronto’s products and services are being used in conjunction with Tropos 5110 Wi-Fi cells by chaska.net in Chaska, MN.
The second announcement outlined an agreement with Airpath Wireless. Airpath’s services are being used in conjunction with Tropos 5110 Wi-Fi cells by WiBLAST in Nantucket, MA.
MuniWireless Issues First Anniversary Report
MuniWireless recently issued its first anniversary report. This report provides a very comprehensive look at hot zone, city-wide and metro-scale wireless deployments throughout the world. These deployments include Wi-Fi and other forms of wireless networking. A number of Tropos Networks deployments are included in the report.
Telecommunications Magazine Names Tropos Networks One of The Coolest New Companies of 2004
In its July issue, Telecommunications Magazine named Tropos Networks one of its Coolest New Companies of 2004. The award was presented at Supercomm 2004. We thank the editors of Telecommunications for their recognition.
