FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

Press Contact: Mary Soules
Engage Communication, Inc. 
1.877.ENGAGE4; mary.soules@engageinc.com

Engage IP Tube Backhauls Baja California Cellular Base Station with Parallel Multi-hop WiFi

 

Aptos, CA. – March 11, 2008: Engage Communication’s IP Tube-DLE1, which encapsulates full and fractional E1 circuits into IP packets, is being used in Baja Mexico to economically extend Cellular Phone Service to a remote educational conference center.  The rugged terrain and distance between the facility and the TelCel switching center in Ensenada requires a three hop radio connection. 

 

Initially an existing 802.11A radio link, which is being used by their computer network for Internet access, was used to extend the Cellular Base Station’s E1 Circuit over the Ethernet Packet radio link.  However, it quickly became apparent that there are technical issues in attempting to use the 802.11A technology over multiple hops to transport the full duplex real time latency sensitive Cellular traffic.

 

Basically 802.11A is a half-duplex Ethernet radio. 802.11A radios are Half Duplex because the radios at each end of the link use the same transmission frequency.  One radio transmits while the other radio receives.  The half-duplex characteristic during bidirectional loading adds latency to the Ethernet packets being delivered because the radio buffers packets until it is its turn to transmit.  For file transfer and Web surfing this is not an issue, but for full duplex real time latency sensitive E1 circuit extension utilizing small high frequency Ethernet frames multi-hop radio links get overrun. 

 

Fortunately Engage’s IP Tube DLE1, which has two independent Ethernet interfaces, is able to be configured to send E1 circuit extension packets out one Ethernet while receiving the remote IP Tube's E1 circuit extension packets on the other Ethernet interface.  This capability of the IPTube makes it possible to extend the Base Station E1 circuit over two parallel 802.11A multi-hop links since the packet traffic to the radios links is simplex.

WIFI Base Station Backhaul

 

Although this doubled the radio cost to extend the circuit.  It is still a fraction of what it would cost to use 3 microwave hops.  Engage has transporting E1/T1 Circuits over 802.11 radios since 2000.    The economics are very compelling especially for short distance single hop radio links which generally work well with a single radio link. 

 

“The ability to reliably extend Base Stations across significant distances with Commercial Off the Shelf radios enables Mobile operators to economically serve remote communities and locations.” said Mark Doyle Engage Communication president.  “I am keeping my ears open for other Mexican Radio stations.”

 

Engage Communication, founded in 1989, has ROHS compliant solutions that enable organizations to routebridge, encryptand auto protect Voice/Video/Data Networks and to take advantage of the lower costs and flexibility associated with Packet transport while preserving their investment in Circuit based premises equipment such as: PBXsPhone SwitchesVoice and Data MultiplexersVideo and Audio Codecs, and Encryptors...

 


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