Feature Story

September 8, 2006

By Jenny Carless, News@Cisco

From small towns to the 1,500 square miles of Silicon Valley, broadband wireless mesh networks are bringing communities together, providing ubiquitous network access and a slew of new public services. With the help of advanced Wi-Fi technologies from Cisco Systems, municipalities can now provide high-speed wireless network and Internet connectivity services over a wide geographic area.

In mesh networks, many of the access points aren't physically connected to a wired network; they create a mesh with each other that then routes back to the wired network.

"Their importance lies in the ability to provide broadband-based services into a large physical geography where no wired network is available," explains Alan S. Cohen, senior director of mobility solutions at Cisco.

City-Wide Access, New Services

"In theory, you can get connectivity in most major cities today, but an awful lot of the onus is still on the end user to figure out what medium to use and how to plug into it," points out Zeus Kerravala, vice president of Enterprise Research at the Yankee Group. "Mesh creates seamless connectivity across the city, making it much easier for more people to connect to more devices in real time."

The market drivers that propelled widespread wireless adoption in the home and enterprise are now spurring a new demand to provide outdoor connectivity by wireless mesh technologies.

"We now have such a broad range of portable devices that can connect to wireless networks," says Cohen. "But networks don't serve in and of themselves; they live to serve applications and individual users. So it's really the growth in human interaction with networks that is behind this phenomenon."

Municipalities that install wireless mesh networks are able to provide widespread public access to the Internet and roll out a host of new, advanced services that build upon their established indoor networks and applications. Key benefits of mesh include low costs, central management, multi-band wireless device support, security and breadth of service.

Potential new services fall into several categories:

• Productivity: outdoor wireless networking helps cities get more work done. From city inspectors who can access permit information from the job site to police officers who can transmit reports rather than having to return to the station, employees have more flexibility and time to focus on the important aspects of their jobs.
• Safety and security: applications such as mobile access routers in police cars and video surveillance cameras that function independently of a wired network help first responders do their jobs better.
• Tracking: in combination with radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, cities can monitor the exact location of any tagged item, from expensive equipment like forklifts to emergency service vehicles.
• Consumer and tourist applications: as people carry more portable devices that can access WiFi networks, they can log on and quickly find a city map, read a movie review or description of city attractions, or access Yahoo! and other Websites to find restaurants in their immediate area.
• Bridging the digital divide: with mesh networks, the entire community has the opportunity to enjoy Internet access.

Bringing Communities Together

Small towns and cities alike are deploying mesh networks that support services and public wireless access.

In Madison, Wisconsin, Mayor Dave Cieslewicz says mesh networking was natural for a city that was not afraid of new technologies.

"The City of Madison has long prided itself on being in the forefront of available technologies, whatever they happen to be," says Cieslewicz. "And certainly a key to effective communication these days is wireless Internet across the city." The city recently implemented a wireless mesh network with the help of Cellnet Technology and Cisco.

In addition to providing Internet access to its citizens, visitors and businesses, Madison intends to use the network for public safety and public works applications, such as meter reading, police communications, and tracking city garbage and recycling vehicles.

"Our goal is to make Madison a textbook best-practices model for municipal Wi-Fi," Cieslewicz explains. "We believe this mesh network will open up new opportunities for local businesses, improve public safety and city works operations, and enhance the Internet experience for citizens, visitors and students in Madison."

The uses for municipal mesh keeps growing, says Cohen.

"What we found while working with about 40 municipalities where we've deployed networks so far is there are a range of municipal applications - from video surveillance cameras, to information where people are actually working, and on to Wi-Fi parking meters," Cohen says. "Think about that, you don't have to run around with a quarter any more."

Municipal leaders in Lebanon, Oregon, also wanted to improve public safety and public works responsiveness with a user-friendly communications implementation. They also wanted to encourage economic development by attracting more residents, visitors and businesses to the former lumber-mill town.

Information Service Manager Tom Oliver saw a community-wide wireless network as a relatively inexpensive way to accomplish both aims. Lebanon worked with a private-sector service provider (PEAK Internet, a local company with wireless expertise) and Cisco to install the mesh network.

The city plans to test the network with police cars and public works vehicles equipped with mobile terminals. This way, officers and city workers can wirelessly connect back to their existing IT infrastructure and take advantage of their applications, IP communications and streaming video.

"With mobile tools and field reporting using wireless, this will be a big step in the evolution of efficiency," says Oliver.

A Complete Package

Cisco announced its city-wide, outdoor mesh application in late 2005. Since then, these municipalities and many others have adopted it to support a wide range of services and initiatives.

On Sept. 5, Cisco, along with IBM, SeaKay and Azulstar Networks, embarked on expanding municipal mesh to the largest outdoor Wi-Fi deployment on record - 1,500 square miles of Silicon Valley. Here, more than 40 municipalities across four counties are working together to bring free Wi-Fi to more than 2 million residents. This undertaking represents a comprehensive mesh offering of services and solutions that is as diverse as Silicon Valley.

"Customers tell us they're looking for a complete package," says Cohen. "They want an answer to the broader question of metropolitan area broadband aggregation and broadband services - they're not just looking for an access point."

"Cisco brings the deepest R&D in the industry," he explains. "We also bring to bear the best security: we build mission-critical networks that run stock exchanges, defense departments and corporations - and that kind of sturdiness characterizes our mesh networks, too.

"Finally, we understand how applications behave," he adds. "So from mobility to voice - whatever the application - we focus on supporting that application on the network, not just on putting it up there."

With mesh networks that provide city-wide high-speed wireless network and Internet connectivity services, municipalities everywhere have an opportunity to bring their communities closer together - through shared experiences, new services and improved safety.

Jenny Carless is a freelance writer based in Santa Cruz, CA.