Belair Networks announced two innovative mesh networks going live this week; a commercial network in London and a public service network for first responders in Oregon.

London’s financial centre, called The City of London has fired up its mesh network, using Belair gear to bring WiFi anywhere in the Square Mile, reports the BBC and .

The City of London Corporation believes it will be invaluable to traders, bankers and brokers who want access to their data when they are on the move - or out at lunch. Some 127 nodes on lamp posts give access to 350,000 people.

Nokia is subsidizing one month of free access, collaborating with The Cloud to promote the use of new Wi-Fi enabled devices. The Cloud operates wi-fi zones across Europe.

The City of London, is a geographically-small city within Greater London, England. The City of London is a major business and commercial centre. It is often referred to as just the City or as the Square Mile, as it is approximately one square mile (2.6 km²) in area.

The City of London’s network will provide a major test of whether the public really wants to surf on the move - and whether there is any money to be made from it, says the BBC.

BelAir’s WiFi public safety network in Oregon blankets the city of Beaverton, Oregon, located seven miles west of Portland. The network, developed exclusively for first responders, encompasses over 18 square miles with more than 83,000 residents.

Invictus Networks worked closely with the city to develop and install the network, using BelAir’s mesh gear as a key component.

Using the network, officers can access their desktop in their patrol cars and will be able to wirelessly review mug shots and digitalized fingerprints, as well as issue electronic traffic citations on PDAs from the field.

High-performance BelAir200 and Belair100 wireless multi-service nodes were installed throughout Beaverton to provide wireless coverage to city hall and commercial districts.

Also known as the ‘Silicon Forest’, Beaverton is home to technology companies such as Intel and IBM. The City of Beaverton, in Washington County, had their Information Systems Department install and deploy the wireless mesh network in police cars. Under the leadership of Lieutenant Andrea Moore, the city fitted its fleet of forty police cars with wireless-enabled computers enabling real-time access to critical information. Washington County is one of three Oregon counties making up the Greater Portland Metropolitan area.

Invictus, a five-year-old company, has also installed a wireless public safety network for Washington County, and is supplying public safety and municipal wireless networks for other Oregon cities, including Lake Oswego, Forest Grove, Lebanon and Sandy. The company is also involved with Corvallis’ municipal wireless project.

In related news, The City of Houston has ordered 750 solar powered electronic parking meters for a 1.9 mile area of downtown capable of accepting credit cards, coins and paper currency as well as providing maps of the surrounding areas. WFI will design and deploy the dedicated 802.11g WiFi network, the first of its kind, to support the parking meters.

This project represents the first municipal parking meter system in the U.S. that does not rely on a cellular network, but instead communicates exclusively using a dedicated 802.11g WiFi Network.

Corpus Christi’s WiFi Cloud uses an Automated Meter Reading application that automatically read utility meters throughout the 147 square miles of the city.

Seattle-based NetMotion Wireless enables seamless roaming for police officers and firefighters over the Tropos Networks in Milpitas, California. It can handoff to the Cingular cellular system when out of range from the WiFi network. Applications like the CalPhoto Database, DMV records and photos, hazardous materials databases, and video surveillance are utilzed. On-Net Surveillance Systems, Data911, Panasonic and Sony concentrate on wireless surveillence. Other municipal workers such as building inspectors, traffic engineers and code enforcement officers also have seamless roaming access to city and utility applications.

Accela Wireless has partnered with a number of companies to provide municipalities with wireless/WiMax solutions that allow building inspectors to take their workplace on the road. It uses a store-and-forward technology in which the home server periodically polls the client for new information.

Accela software was used by the City of New Orleans for gathering and tracking information about damaged buildings and structures. Armed with mobile devices running Accela Wireless, City inspectors are dispatched to the field to perform inspections in New Orleans and the surrounding parishes. Accela GIS, built on the ArcIMS platform by ESRI, provides automated maps from a central database and gives staff direct access to view geographic representations of all land use, zoning, and infrastructure information associated with a parcel, permit, inspection, or plan.

Wireless Newsfactor describes the different architectures of BelAir Networks, Cisco Systems, Firetide, MeshDynamics, Motorola, Nortel Networks, PacketHop, Rajant, RoamAD, SkyPilot and Strix Systems:

• Tropos’ MetroMesh OS with PWRP can scale to thousands of routers in a mesh network without exceeding 5 percent of available bandwidth. It achieves this by measuring throughput 5 times a second on all available paths back to the wired network. Then, each router selects the path with the highest throughput.
• Firetide’s EtherDirect enables the mesh to operate as several small local clusters of nodes. Each cluster can support about 30 nodes and connects to other clusters.
• MeshDynamics’ intelligent Structured Mesh nodes are configured with one 802.11b/g radio for client access and two 802.11a radios for backhaul.
• The BelAir 200 features a plethora of backbone radio options, providing antenna selection, to switch the signal path in the appropriate direction to eliminate the need for the installer to manually point the antennas.
• Strix configures its network with up to six radios per node.
• SkyPilot has a high-gain, 8-antenna array and offers 4.9 GHz public safety option.
• Cisco has a dual radio system coupled with their popular controllers and promotes mesh standards using the Lightweight Access Point Protocol.

Ratification of IEEE 802.11s, a mesh networking standard, is expected in 2008, but pre-802.11s gear may begin to show up in the next few months. A draft standard was submitted for a Letter Ballot in November 2006, but failed to reach the necessary 75% approval. The current draft (as of April 2007) is D1.02.

The 802.11s mesh standard should enable interoperability among Wi-Fi mesh vendors, enhancing competition and lowering costs.

The 802.11r standard, for fast WiFi roaming, is likely to make its way to market by late 2007 or early 2008, says Dark Reading. It effectively “mobilizes” 802.11i’s security services and 802.11e’s QoS functions.

Related DailyWireless articles include; Toronto’s BelAir Cloud Tops Test, Dolphin Stadium Unwired, County Public Safety Nets, Belair: Firefighter, Testing Municipal Networks, Belair For Minneapolis, Public Safety Mesh, Belair + Fujitsu + Cable, Motorola’s WiFi Mesh, UK Unwires 12 Cities, Mapping Goes Live, 3-D Traffic/Weather Maps, Cellular Navigation/Tracking and Belair Expands London Cloud.

Posted by Sam Churchill on Monday, April 23rd, 2007 at 8:33 am.