networkZONE Products for the week of June 5, 2006
Bandspeed Says…
Tri-Channel, Dual-Band, Scalable Wi-Fi AP Solution
Delivers Enterprise-Class, Performance, Security & Manageability
Bandspeed has announced AirMaestro -- a comprehensive, scalable Wi-Fi access point (AP) platform that enables the mass market to deploy and manage highly intelligent, automated, robust, and secure enterprise-class Wi-Fi networks. As an added benefit, the AirMaestro platform is scalable to accommodate the accelerating numbers of Wi-Fi voice and video devices that will demand world-class roaming, load management, quality of service, and collaboration among network APs.
AirMaestro addresses the shortcomings of today's Wi-Fi networks, which are complex to deploy, costly to manage, and frequently offer unsatisfactory performance due to interference, poor coverage and dropped calls. AirMaestro is the first and only AP platform to deliver the benefits of enterprise-class Wi-Fi networks for the mass market, including fast, reliable connectivity; robust security; and unsurpassed ease of deployment, use and management -- all at an affordable price.
"Bandspeed has developed a unique WLAN solution that clearly addresses the needs of the small-to-medium enterprise market," said Will Strauss, founder and president, Forward Concepts. "SMEs can now take advantage of Wi-Fi networks that are simple, secure and affordable, with the performance characteristics to enable mission-critical voice, data and video applications."
Bandspeed introduces the AirMaestro platform at a time when business users of Wi-Fi networks face a multi-faceted crisis. Today's Wi-Fi networks already struggle with performance and security issues. The sheer number and diversity of devices in the Wi-Fi environment is exploding, compounding performance and interference issues. Add to this the mounting demands on the networks as mission-critical applications such as voice-over-Wi-Fi penetrate the market. Bandspeed has anticipated these demands as well as future demands on Wi-Fi networks with the AirMaestro platform.
Breakthrough architecture enables lower cost, enterprise-class Wi-Fi
networks
AirMaestro employs Bandspeed's innovative AP architecture with a comprehensive
automation system and a software-based virtual controller that eliminates
the need for a separate hardware controller to manage the APs. This breakthrough
innovation provides superior and secure Wi-Fi network solutions at a significantly
lower cost, compared to existing alternatives.
Bandspeed's highly integrated AirMaestro platform consists of both software and integrated circuits (ICs). The AirMaestro software includes IC firmware, AP software and PC-based software that work in concert to provide advanced Wi-Fi management at mass market prices. The AirMaestro IC is full-featured, standards-compliant, and is specifically designed for APs.
Bandspeed provides best-in-class Wi-Fi performance, security and management
Bandspeed's AirMaestro platform addresses the challenges of Wi-Fi networks
for the mass market. Features include:
"AirMaestro is the solution the Wi-Fi market has been waiting for," said Bill Eversole, president and CEO of Bandspeed Inc. "Bandspeed is working aggressively with our partners and OEM customers to roll out solutions based on the AirMaestro platform."
Bandspeed has developed complete and verified reference designs for complete
access points as well as miniPCI cards to help its OEM and ODM customers
quickly introduce the AirMaestro technology into their product lines.
analogZONE Says . . .
It's great to finally be able to talk about Bandspeed's innovative self-adapting multi-channel WLAN access point-on-a-chip (APoC -- my acronym!) since I actually did the background research on them a year ago (May 2005). I was very excited to write about how embedding multiple radios with enough processing power to coordinate them allowed Bandspeed to create a Wi-Fi AP that can autonomously select channels, power settings and antennas to optimize overall network performance, work around other networks or sources of interference, and even provide a strong line of defense against intrusion or spying.
The story was half-written for June publication when I was stunned to hear that they'd delayed their product release indefinitely "in order to make a few changes to meet evolving market conditions." Normally this is a polite way of saying the company's in deep doo-doo and that you'll never hear from them again unless they're acquired at a fire sale price by one of the big chip houses.
Fortunately, Bandspeed's not a normal company.
So, after a year's wait, I'm pleased to finally be publishing the news about this extremely well-executed, well-positioned chip set -- and now a slick reference design as well. The company has wisely used the extra year to move the product focus away from its chip towards a complete reference design that can be used to produce several flavors of intelligent, self-adapting multi-band Wi-Fi access point products.
From all I learned about their updated product offering, it was worth the wait. Rather than dive into the snake pit of consumer gateways where Brand A, Brand B, Brand M and Brand T routinely sacrifice performance on the altar of saving pennies in their BOM costs, Bandspeed has targeted the more upscale carrier, enterprise and institutional markets. In these applications, the performance, intelligence and manageability the AirMaestro delivers would make it a real bargain even if the reference design was not going to slice 20% - 30% off the $400 - $450 average retail price point of today's enterprise-class APs, and even more off the overall solution cost of a large system.
Bandspeed's AirMaestroIC contains a trio of baseband
radios, their associated MACs, and a set of programmable processors to manage
the whole shebang. This makes the Bandspeed device the only multi-channel
radio remaining on the market. And even the wonderful triple-channel wideband
WLAN chip set produced by the late, great Engim (reviewed here July and again in December of 2004) had
to operate all of its radios in the same band, a limitation that Bandspeed
gets around by using off-chip RF sections (see Fig. 1).
The chip's baseband radio interfaces are frequency independent, allowing more adventurous souls to mix-and-match merchant radios and operating bands to suit their application. For the rest of us Bandspeed offers a couple of reference designs using a configuration their marketing suits feel will be of most interest to the "typical" end-user. They give you one 5 GHz 802.11a channel, one 2.4 GHz 802.11b channel; and one dual-band RF monitoring channel. The standard reference design uses Maxim radio chips coupled to Sharp PAs. A second budget-conscious reference design using Airoha (Taiwan) RF chips is also available. And even with those lower-performing transmit components, the radio should still do reasonably well thanks to Bandspeed's baseband section which uses some very clever pre-distortion techniques that can compensate for radio non-linearities. An NDA forbids much further disclosure of details, but I did see it work well enough a year ago that I do believe it will let the AP to coax something close to the maximum useful transmit power, best range, and lowest interference out of whatever RF front end it's hooked up to.
One of the other things that has changed dramatically in the year since my first visit with Bandspeed is the silicon's firmware which now enjoys many more functions that exploit the radio's unique characteristics to deliver even more features and performance. The new features build on Bandspeed's original auto-configuration capabilities that enable the device to set itself up with a stand-alone, or multi-node environment. Even in its original form the auto-config software would use the device's radios to perform channel mapping and selection across the network as well as dynamic power control (used to maximize coverage, minimize interference).
This ability to spot the appearance of other Wi-Fi activity in the area is useful for both working around legitimate overlapping networks and for spotting wireless trouble from malicious outside hackers or well-meaning employees who set up their own "rogue APs" within a building to "improve" its WLAN coverage. Besides saving the costs intervention normally involved with physically setting up "sniffers" in suspected trouble spots, Bandspeed's embedded signal analysis eliminates the need for an expensive separate security overlay network.
Bandspeed has bolstered its firmware by adding a soft spectrum analyzer that runs on the radio's third channel in real time. It can be used to continuously monitor the airwaves for changes in the propagation channel due to anything from a forklift moving down a hall or an office door closing. It can also monitor interference, whether it's from other non-associated Wi-Fi nodes or other sources (such as cordless phones or leaky a microwave). The self-adapting software can even re-assign its own channels on the fly and then notify the user of the potential problem to see if any further action is needed.
The updated firmware is complemented by the addition of a very comprehensive software suite that is certified for the Wi-Fi Alliance's WPA2 and WMM (802.11e QoS) requirements.
Besides manageability and security, the new reference design software exploits the dual-band, tri-channel radio to provide some of the best multimedia support in the industry. It can segregate multimedia traffic for onto its own channel and provide the strict QoS that it needs to actually be useful. The release above does a good job of describing this part of the feature set so I won't beat it to death here.
The result is a hardware/software combo reference design for an ultra-smart AP that can manage both air interface and traffic as well as perform security and performance optimization issues either with or without centralized control. The Air Maestro's embedded intelligence allows it to be deployed like a standard access point without any fancy network topologies. But, if you need it, it can be managed from a relatively simple GUI control panel while the APs handle most of the low-level details in the background.
This allows smaller business, schools, and any other multi-node Wi-Fi installations to enjoy the same level of manageability and security that's previously been reserved for large enterprises and organizations that can afford more expensive centralized controller based solutions. This opens up a huge potential market among the tens of thousands of small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) who need more manageability security and performance than the $89 crud boxes you find on the shelf at Best Buys but cannot afford a full-blown enterprise solution. It would take some very clever marketing to stir up interest in this relatively untapped market but it has enormous potential which I don't think any other chip set I've seen to date can address as well.
The AirMaestro chip set, reference design and software are available now with high-volume pricing of $30 - 35. The software for a complete management solution that supports inter-access point protocol and distributed management functionality is an additional $50 per AP.
Data
Sheet AirMaestro IC
Data Sheet AirMaestro Software
Data Sheet AirMaestro Reference design platform
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