Tri-band mesh infrastructure

May 1, 2008 12:00 PM, Mary Rose Roberts

Firetide of Los Gatos, Calif., announced tri-band capability for its HotPoint access points and HotClient client premises equipment, which it said would expand the functionality of its mesh nodes.

The company's access points and client premises equipment now operate over the 2.4, 4.9 and 5 GHz bands to address the wireless needs of several different users, said Manish Chandra, the company's product manager. The system was designed to meet the needs of city workers who transmit data, or for first responders who use Wi-Fi and hotspot deployments to support high-bandwidth communications, such as 20 Mb/s wireless offloads of recorded in-car video, he said.

In addition, the system's management and control application lets network managers provide several levels of service by type of traffic — video, voice over IP or data — based on the client device.

The tri-band capability lets law enforcement redirect all available bandwidth to public safety communications and enables municipalities to expand the capabilities of public safety video surveillance networks by adding access for the mobile work force, Chandra said

“In an emergency scenario … users can eliminate all the applications in the network and dedicate it to public safety use if there is a need,” he said.

The access points cost $695 (indoor)/$995 (outdoor), while the HotClient costs $295 (indoor)/$595 (outdoor).