airFiber

Sat Mar 31 13:14:46 UTC 2012

On 3/31/2012 6:12 AM, Andrew McConachie wrote:
> Is this any different than what GigaBeam tried before they went bankrupt.
> http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/news.html?d=177145
>
> Their website only shows a control panel login now so I think they've
> gone completely out of business.  The only reason I know about them is
> because one of my customers used two of their radios for a p2p 1G link
> and it was a disaster.  The Gigabeam radios tried to transparently act
> as L1 devices.    They were just converting optical energy to radio
> energy.  They didn't act as bridges.  So if you plugged a switch into
> either end each switch would think it had an L1 connection to the
> other switch.
>
> It would work with certain optics and certain firmware versions of
> certain switches.  But if you changed anything you might get link and
> you might not.
>
> I hope these Ubiquity devices actually maintain link even if the radio
> connection goes down.
>

Often such a feature is an option within the radio configuration. Where 
wired side
link follows wireless link.  To me that never seemed like a good idea 
because I need
to get into the radio during a wireless link-down situation.  Maybe if 
there was
an OOB ethernet port it could work but I haven't seen them on any radio 
I've touched.