Las Vegas High-Speed Mesh Network

By Roland Piquepaille

Las Vegas, like many other major cities, sees more and more traffic jams. In order to better manage the traffic, it decided to try wireless technology, and more specifically, mesh networking. And it turns out that the pilot program will help not only police officers, but also people living in the city. In Viva Mesh Vegas, a long article from IEEE Spectrum, you'll discover many details about the three-tier resilient mesh network architecture used in this program. The pilot test covers 5 square kilometers for a cost of about $170,000. If Las Vegas decides to expand it to the whole city, it will cost about $6 million. Read more...

First, what are the key benefits of mesh networking?

Mesh networks promise several key advantages over traditional wireless solutions, such as Wi-Fi or cellphones. Benefits include higher speeds, less susceptibility to radio interference, and greater resistance to network congestion. These networks also offer better coverage, the ability to prioritize different types of users, geolocation capabilities, tighter security, faster deployment, and a degree of immunity to catastrophic network failures.

This particular mesh network has been built by a small company named Cheetah Wireless Technologies, Inc. (CWTI).

Below is a diagram of a typical mesh network with its three-tier architecture. This diagram comes from Las Vegas meshes its network, published in October 2004 by Communications News.

Below is another diagram showing the CWTI implementation for this program in Las Vegas. This diagram comes from this page on CWTI site about MeshNetworks, Inc., MEA (Mesh Enabled Architecture). Please note that MeshNetworks has recently bought by Motorola.

Here are some more details about this specific implementation.

Within the Las Vegas MeshNetworks system, the average transmission speed ranges from 500 kilobits per second to 1.5 Mb/s, with bursts of up to 6 Mb/s possible. The backbone of the network is made up of 33 or so shoe-box-size gray boxes attached to traffic-light poles high above the streets, known as wireless routers.

And these routers are connected to the Internet via three Intelligent Access Point (IAP).

In Las Vegas's case, this is a T-1 line for each of three IAPs that links them to Cheetah's servers at a secure facility. An IAP takes about a day to install, assuming the T-1 is already in place. Besides providing Internet connectivity, the servers also verify whether a piece of hardware, such as a laptop card or wireless router, should be assimilated into the network, keeping interlopers out.

A decision to deploy the technology throughout the whole city -- or about 150 square kilometers -- should be taken soon. But even if Las Vegas is one of the capitals of gambling, it wants to save money. So CWTI had to be creative, not only technologically, but also financially.

Cheetah's typical proposition is for the municipality to give the company the right to attach its equipment to city-owned light poles and establish Wi-Fi hotspots around the city. These hotspots act as bridges that allow users with regular Wi-Fi cards to access the mesh network, and they let Cheetah tap into the consumer market -- a typical Wi-Fi laptop card, of which millions have already been sold, costs about $80, while a mesh card is more like $800.

With the city's help in promoting the service, Cheetah would charge users between $20 and $40 per month to access fixed Wi-Fi hotspots. Commercial users who want to access the mesh network directly so as to be able to roam the entire coverage area seamlessly will be charged about $60 to $80 per month. Revenues are shared between the city and Cheetah, with a portion of the city's cut set aside to pay for the municipality's use of the mesh network.

Sources: Stephen Cass, IEEE Spectrum, January 2005; Communications News, October 2004; and various websites

Related stories can be found in the following categories.

• Internet
  
• Networking
  
• Wireless