Colorado WISP Extends Network Reach and Capacity Cost-Effectively Using RAD's RIC Products

October 3, 2006: Mesa Networks, which provides wireless broadband connectivity along the Colorado Front Range (CFR), has selected interface converters from RAD Data Communications to increase the bandwidth available for provisioning business-class Ethernet services and to offer those services out-of-footprint.

The solution that Mesa found was RAD's RIC family of intelligent interface converters, which enable cost-effective transport of Ethernet traffic over TDM circuits. Covering a broad range of throughput capacities, RIC products transport traffic as light as fractionalized T1/E1 all the way up to the backbone capacity of an OC-12/STM-4. In Mesa's case, they selected RAD's RIC-155GE and RICi-T3 to transport Gigabit Ethernet and Fast Ethernet over OC-3 and T3 connections, respectively.

"Traditionally, Ethernet is transported over SONET using Layer 3 devices," explained Oded Ilan, President of RAD Data Communications, Inc. "However, the OC-3/T3 wide area interface cards on routers tend to be expensive," he added. "With low-cost service delivery a key objective, Mesa searched for alternatives and discovered RAD's efficient and economical RIC family."

Operating at Layer 2, the RIC units provide Ethernet bridging, rate-limiting, and offer four levels of Quality of Service (QoS) priority queues, which enables Mesa to offer differentiated connectivity services based on the end-user's application requirements. They also feature a suite of OAM tools including fault propagation and extensive network management and diagnostic tools to minimize provisioning and operating costs. Said Bill Fowler, Mesa's CTO, "In addition to the RAD converters being more cost-effective than expensive router interfaces they are also easier to manage."

Because the RIC products seamlessly interoperate with both wireline and wireless transport, Mesa not only was able to extend their Ethernet service footprint over third-party TDM infrastructure, but also further cost-effectively extend their service footprint to areas where there is little-to-no communications infrastructure. This is especially important for some of the rural and underdeveloped locales throughout the CFR.

These features, along with the RIC's cost-competitiveness and ease of installation, convinced Mesa Network's engineering and executive team that the RIC solution was ideal for their network and their business objectives. According to Todd Bergstrom, Mesa Network's CEO, "We recently reconfigured our network architecture to achieve greater cost efficiencies. RAD's RIC products were instrumental in achieving those efficiencies."