March 17th, 2010
#8: Wireless Cannot Really Achieve 5-9’s
This is a real hot button for me because the power grid isn’t even 5-9’s. There are a number of issues with this metric as follows:
- For it to be statistically relevant it must be evaluated over years not just weeks or months.
- Common sense should dictate that anything that is singular is susceptible to and in time likely to have some form of failure.
- Many wireless providers make 5-9’s claims but do not properly explain what it means clearly (i.e. at what distance, under what weather conditions, etc.) and as a result an expectation is created that cannot be met.
Think of this for a moment. If you were to encapsulate a strand of fiber cable under glass, light it up and watch it for 10 years, do you think the circuit would stay intact for all but 50 minutes in that time period? The answer is absolutely no. The Power system itself isn’t 5-9s so this can’t be true, unless there are back up systems, redundancies and a network to ensure that when something does go wrong the customer of the service is not impacted. And, in fact, if you recall the years that fiber optic cable was first deployed the arguments against it were that it was not reliable. If you evaluate Sprint as the pioneer in the Fiber Optics space, it was nothing short of a miracle when their first cross country all Fiber Optic call was made. Today Sprint and others have determined that they needed to build redundancy into the system to make it more reliable. And that is exactly the same thing that we do with our wireless networks. We build in redundancy. The application in this example is different but the principals remain the same.
The bottom line is that nothing in life is inherently 5-9’s and the key mechanism to achieving ultra high availability is proper planning, understanding the technology at hand and designing a system/network that has the best chance of performing with ultra high availability.
Tags: 5 9s, broadband wireless, fiber optic, five nines, gigabeam, metro ethernet networks, power grid, redundancy, reliability, Sprint, wireless
Posted in Gi-CORE, GigaBeam Advice, GigaBeam Products, Myths About Wireless, Uncategorized, Wireless Urban Legends, gigabeam | No Comments »
February 24th, 2010
Myth #9: Wireless cannot handle ultra broadband capacities
Wireless solutions today can achieve Gigabit Ethernet (1.25Gb/s) full duplex capacities and at GigaBeam we are developing solutions that will achieve 10 times this capacity in the near term. There are many benefits to new wireless technologies that are the sum of innovations in chipset, software and regulatory policy improvements.
There is truth that Fiber cable can handle more capacity via DWDM technologies. This brings to light one of the real truths of the benefit of fiber and wireless cooperating. Each technology in its own right has a place within various applications in the telecommunications environment. The most simple example being that Fiber Optic is typically a better long haul solution and wireless is often more desirable in last/middle/first mile applications. There are scores of examples of cooperation between technologies, but the bottom line is that wireless can handle ultra broadband right now and the capacity reach of both wireless and fiber will increase materially in time.
Tags: broadband wireless, broadband wireless networks, fiber, fiber vs wireless, gigabit ethernet, last mile, long haul, middle mile, ultra broadband, wireless capacity
Posted in GigaBeam Advice, GigaBeam CEO, GigaBeam Products, Myths About Wireless, Uncategorized, Wireless Urban Legends, gigabeam | No Comments »
October 7th, 2009
Greetings,
I am back again to give you another peak at the people who make up GigaBeam. This time, I thought I’d bring the focus out of the lab and into the field with a profile of our VP of Field and Sustaining Engineering, Tony Breland.
Tony Breland has been with GigaBeam since 2006 when Don Peck brought him on to act as liaison between the Engineering department and the Support Department. Tony brought 20+ years experience to the job, having served previously in key executive leadership roles with Alcatel Lucent, Larcom/NetEdge, NorthPoint Communications and GTE specializing in sales, design and operations of ISP, ASP and Enterprise network solutions. It didn’t take him very long to distinguish himself as a rock star within GigaBeam. In short order he moved from the position of liaison to VP of Field and Sustaining Engineering.
Okay, so Tony Breland is amazingly good at his job. Tony took a fledgling support department that was getting lukewarm reception in the field and created a world class department offering 24/7 global support, a suite of extended warranty programs, and a network design integration and implementation program to boot. Then he helped launch four new product lines to our portfolio in a matter of 18 months. The guy works hard.
But most importantly, Tony has a knack for listening to and being an advocate for the customer. When Tony arrives, our customers know they are going to get personal attention. Truthfully, his job requires a good dose of diplomacy–someone who can separate the real issue from the perceived issue, be responsive and fix whatever the underlying problem is. More often than not a problem is quietly chocked up to user error and a little education or improved communication is all that is needed. Still, our customers are always grateful for Tony’s advice and more than one has come back to me to tell me how much they learned from him. We, in the meantime, are grateful that Tony is one of the champions of our customers, faithfully bringing their voices back to us at headquarters. After all, it is our customers we want to hear and please.
So, some of you may know these things about Tony already, but did you know that every year he volunteers to teach network computing to local teenagers? Since 2008, Tony has led a 2 day “IT Communications” workshop for 13 and 14 years olds from the Raleigh Chapter of Boy Scouts of America. The workshop teaches the kids the fundamentals of network computing and IT communications, and at the end of this rigorous course the kids are awarded a certificate of accomplishment. At GigaBeam, we are pleased to support his natural inclination.
Okay, so it wouldn’t be fair to rave about Tony without pointing out that he drives us all crazy from time to time with his opinions on odd details . . . I guess the best ones always do . . . . . so, let’s just say, we don’t let him make all the decisions, but we always listen because he is someone we inherently respect.
And thus, on behalf of the whole GigaBeam Team, we are pleased to introduce you all to Tony Breland. (The photo, below, was taken atop a rooftop during installation in Doha, Qatar.)
Signed, a grateful colleague,
Marijke
Tags: broadband wireless, customer advocate, field engineering, gigabeam, IT Communications, networking, Qatar, support, tony Breland, wireless, wireless implementation, wireless integration, wireless network
Posted in GigaBeam Employees, GigaBeam VP Field Engineering, Uncategorized, gigabeam | No Comments »
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