Minnesota Nice is Our Commitment

 

AdaptPath

BridgeWave Introduces AdaptPath Capability to Extend the Reach of Gigabit Wireless while Ensuring ‘Five Nines’ Network Availability

Santa Clara, CA – October 8, 2007 – BridgeWave Communications, the leading supplier of gigabit wireless solutions, today announced AdaptPath™ technology, an innovative capability that seamlessly integrates the company’s AdaptRate™ Gigabit Ethernet wireless links with secondary connections using complementary wired or wireless technologies. The resulting dual technology solution provides unprecedented GigE wireless link availability and range.

AdaptPath link switching creates an all-weather, dual-path data connection by pairing a BridgeWave 60GHz or 80GHz GigE wireless bridge with a lower speed, highly rain-tolerant secondary path. This path can be a leased-line wired connection, a license-free 5.xGHz radio bridge or a licensed-band 6 or 11GHz link. When a momentarily severe rain downpour occurs, the AdaptPath feature automatically switches data traffic from the primary GigE link to the secondary path before the link would start to experience data errors.

According to Gregg Levin, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for BridgeWave, the AdaptPath feature offers customers the best of both worlds—gigabit data rates and superior link availability at longer distances. “AdaptPath is the next step in BridgeWave’s strategy to offer enterprises, government entities and network operators greater flexibility in meeting their network capacity, range and uptime requirements,” he says. “With our extended range, AdaptRate and now AdaptPath technologies, we enable the deployment of GigE links well beyond traditional distances with the highest levels of service availability.”

For Roadstar Internet, a leading broadband services provider based in Loudoun County, Va., located 25 miles outside Washington, D.C., BridgeWave’s AR80X gigabit links with AdaptPath and AdaptRate features are accelerating the rollout of high-capacity, reliable Internet services to area businesses. “Our state-of-the-art GigE wireless backbone enables us to be first to deliver next-generation access services in this fast-growing region,” says Marty Dougherty, CEO and founder of Roadstar. “The combination of BridgeWave’s AdaptRate and AdaptPath features takes us well beyond what’s currently available in the industry.”

Roadstar worked with BridgeWave to determine rain fade calculations for its region, factoring in summer periods when thunderstorms are common. The solution was designed to operate at full GigE speeds the vast majority of the time. When exceptional rain events occur, the BridgeWave link’s AdaptRate feature first switches from GigE to a 100Mbps data rate; then, if needed, the AdaptPath capability switches traffic to a secondary, highly rain tolerant 40Mbps 5GHz bridge. As the storm cell passes, the link immediately returns to full GigE speed.

“AdaptPath also reduces networking equipment costs and complexity since we don’t have to provision redundant wireless paths using external Ethernet switches and routers,” Dougherty adds. “Overall, BridgeWave’s gigabit wireless links will let us scale our network faster and more economically than any other technology.” To that end, Roadstar plans to connect hundreds of buildings to its new INET Loudoun™ network using BridgeWave’s AR80X gigabit wireless links over the next 18-to-24 months.

For existing AdaptRate link customers, the new AdaptPath feature is available as a no-cost software upgrade. BridgeWave is working with leading lower-frequency microwave radio vendors to certify that their RF bridges operate correctly as AdaptPath secondary links.