Airties and Ruckus, two major WiFi players, have both announced wireless routers which are ideal for advanced DOCSIS 3.0 cable. With one pushing it as a way to send TV around the home and the other talking about the cable industry using DOCSIS to backhaul wireless broadband. Both plan to shift the devices in deals with cable and other pay TV operators.
Airties is perhaps one of the few Turkish technology companies that operates near the leading edge, and last year at IBC in September it launched a WiFi router which it said could comfortably carry HD class video around the home in direct competition with Ruckus’ first area of expertise, where it had by then already signed up around 90 operators around the world.
Now Airties has just signed up Etisalat in Israel with a router/set top device which can bring both IPTV and OTT public internet video and distribute it around the home with WiFi.
Airties last year added Dutch service provider Caiway as a set top customer with a device which also carried 2 GB of NAND Flash to enable DVR like pause TV for a fraction of the cost of DVRs. By then Airties had already installed 20,000 IPTV set tops in its native Turkey.
But that design was based on 2.4 GHz WiFi and the key to both of these new devices, from Airties and Ruckus, is that they use both the three non-overlap channels in 2.4 GHz and the 21 which are available in 5 GHz and make the best of whichever channels are available.
The Airties Air 4420 uses a Broadcom chip and can replace both the wireless router and the set top in a pay TV home. It installs in two simple button pressed, and is the company’s first dual band device. It will be officially launched at IBC in September.
Airties told us, ‘The great majority of devices out there use 2.4 GHz. But in our new device the network can change. It scans both frequencies and picks the best channels at any point in time. There is a buffer placed at the set top end with about 200 Milliseconds of video and this allows for resends of video packets if they are lost to interference.’
This is a technique that Ruckus has tried to patent, or at least its own way of doing it. Since the protocols which make the Internet, use the same idea, it cannot patent the idea of packet resends, only one particular way of making it happen.
So what both Airties and Ruckus have today, and what is an industry trend that will roll out over a period, is a device which is capable of generating 2 x 150 Mbps of connectivity, which is roughly on a par with the new Euro DOCSIS 300 mbps modems. This is achieved with channel bonding using up to 8 x 8MHz channels in the EuroDOCSIS, rather than 4 channels which were what the early US adopters of DOCSIS 3.0 went ahead and installed (4 x 6MHz) which resulted in around 120 to 150 Mbps.
Both Ruckus and Airties, and we’re sure they will be followed by set top companies like Pace and many others, are clearly saying that none of that cable DOCSIS bandwidth will be wasted if you use their equipment, and if you send video over it, none of the packets will be lost either, because they can be resent.
The net result, says Airties is that 3 x HD signals can be sent around a home with such a device, using 802.11n, with zero packet loss. As we know, video is very susceptible to packet loss.
Airties also says that it is DLNA certified and that because it allows for USB connectors it can bring any device in the home, for instance home storage servers, into the DLNA universe simply by connecting to it.
As we said Ruckus has also launched something very similar in the ZoneFlex 7761-CM but this is an outdoor solution aimed at taking DOCSIS signals and using them as backhaul in a public WiFi network.
‘Using the existing cable strand infrastructure to deliver reliable WiFi access makes perfect sense and is a major focus for almost every cable operator in the United States,’ said Selina Lo, president and CEO of Ruckus Wireless. ‘What’s changed over the last two years is the arrival of 802.11n, the debut of DOCSIS 3.0 and the introduction of smart antenna array technology. Combining these innovations gives cable companies the power to capitalize and more quickly exploit the mobile internet phenomenon.’
She went on to push the idea of cable operators using Wi-Fi instead of the WiMAX network many of them have committed to in the US using Clearwire.
‘While MSOs will invest in different solutions, including licensed spectrum, backhaul and emerging technologies such as femto and picocells, Wi-Fi represents one of the best compliments and most cost effective strategies to augment existing network assets. Up to now, Wi-Fi’s reliability within the unlicensed band has kept cable operators away from the technology. Our breakthroughs in automatic RF signal control have helped solve these problems and have propelled Ruckus into a leadership position within the service provider market.’
Ruckus says that the ZoneFlex 7761-CM is an outdoor device which is already currently in trials with US cable operators. It is ruggedized for harsh environmental conditions, and comes in a lightweight (under 15 lbs) form factor that, dynamically self optimizing, remotely managed ‘ seamlessly integrating with existing MSO infrastructure and network operation centre management applications.
Ruckus has already had some experience putting together carrier class wireless broadband using WiFi at the Tikona Digital Network in apartment buildings in India, using outdoor mesh Access Points.
The ZoneFlex 7761-CM uses an intelligent antenna array called BeamFlex to form and direct WiFi signals over the best performing radio paths and the company says that with an integrated DOCSIS 3.0 modem using an 8×4 chipset, the ZoneFlex 7761-CM supports eight downstream and four upstream bonded channels delivering speeds of up to 320 Mbps. With concurrent, dual-band 802.11n, the ZoneFlex 7761-CM supports maximum concurrent theoretical (PHY) wireless data rates of up to 600 Mbps. The ZoneFlex 7761-CM supports 3X3 MIMO operation within the 2.4/5GHz bands and is available immediately upon request for testing by Cablecos.