Office of Information Technologies P.O. Box 539, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556...

Office of Information TechnologiesP.O. Box 539, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556

Phone: 574-631-5600 Web: oit.nd.edu

EXTENDING YOUR CAMPUS

IP BACKBONE USING

BROADBAND WIRELESS

Dewitt Latimer, Ph.D.Chief Technology Officer

The University of Notre [email protected]

Copyright Dewitt Latimer, 2003

Office of Information TechnologiesUniversity of Notre Dame

Notre Dame Ain’t in the South and it Ain’t in Ireland…


Business Problem

• To extend Notre Dame’s IP network infrastructure at “broadband” speeds into faculty, staff, and student residences in the surrounding communities.


Other Goals

• To generate a new source of revenue to offset declines in other revenue sources.

• To replace expensive leased circuits into off-campus buildings.

• To present ND IP space because of licensing and/or security issues.


Other Goals

• To better leverage existing university resources during the “off” hours.– Commodity bandwidth– Level 1 helpdesk


The ND Sprawl(faculty)


The ND Sprawl(exempt staff)


The ND Sprawl(off campus students)


Potential Solutions

• Use established broadband providers– SBC for DSL– Comcast for cable

• Use bonded ISDN (Yuk!)

• High-speed wireless– WiFi offerings on steroids– Proprietary technologies in

unlicensed/licensed spectrum


Drawbacks with Commercial Providers (in our area at least!)

• Poor build-out in greater Michiana area– Poor DSL performance on long loops

• Large number of hops/latency

• Non ND IP address– Use of VPN and/or Proxy services to

“extend” IP network problematic.– Establish cross-connect between provider

infrastructure and campus backbone DOA.


The Final Choice

High-speed Wireless

(with a smatteringof the other two)


Pros and Cons

• No costly infrastructure build-out

• Attractive price/performance

• Several good solutions that operate in the unlicensed spectrum

• Works well in geographically flat areas.


Pros and Cons

• Those technologies that operate in the licensed spectrum.

• Tower management issues.

• Line-of-sight limitations at higher frequencies.


Market Leaders in the Wireless Point-2-Multipoint Arena

• Motorola Canopy

• Proxim Tsunami

• Alvarion's BreezeAccess

• Aperto's PacketWave

• Vivatio WiFi switch

• Others, growing by the day


And the Winner


The Tale of theGranger Gazette

• With Canopy and Tsunami being so close in price/performance, how did we end up where we did?

• Set up first test (me!!!) in 1 day


Under the Hood of Canopy

• The basic building blocks are:

– Subscriber Module (SM), the Internet access receiver, installed in or on your customer's site.

– Access Point (AP) to distribute service to the surrounding community. A site with Canopy AP Units can serve up to 1,200 subscriber modules in all directions.

– Backhaul Unit (BH) provides Internet "feed" from a remote location.


Internal Setup Page


Internal Diagnostics


What About Security…

• Motorola uses proprietary air interface to transmit data between it’s technology (e.g. does not cover the rest of the IP flow from end-2-end).

• Strong authentication between subscriber AP and cluster equipment. Keyed to unique serial number of the subscriber AP with rolling keys.


Security

• 128-bit strong encryption of data stream (optional on a user by user basis).

• See

http://motorola.canopywireless.com/pub_files/SecurityFinal_F.pdf


Traffic Segmentation

• Canopy is essentially an Ethernet bridge

• Using L3 gear and port-based VLANS to tie distribution APs and backhaul modules, we can separate ND traffic from commercial and non ND residential traffic

• Because it’s a bridge, supports such things as multicast, etc.


The Partnership

• A partnership between ND, Shearer Communications (a local Motorola distributor and tower provider), Fourway Communications (a local ISP), and Motorola Corp.


The Early Test

• Identified 20 users to be served from the Granger tower with a single 6 Mb backhaul to campus.– Ran for 6 months– Only two outages. One cause by ND

equipment failure. One by high wind.– No degradation of signal because of

weather


What ND provides

• ND acts as ISP providing bandwidth to I1/I2 sites.

• ND provides IP address range• ND provides tier 1 helpdesk during

normal business hours.• ND provides 24x7 NOC• ND provides payroll deduction or

student bursaring for payment


What Business Partners Provide

• Distribution and back-haul infrastructure.

• CPE installation

• Partners provide level 2 support and equipment R/R

• Negotiations with tower providers


What Motorola Provides

• Direct access to engineering R&D

• Cross marketing and extended visibility

• Price support


What We All Get in Return

• ND gets a viable solution to its business problem

• Local business partners get an anchor tenant, guaranteed revenue, and enhanced marketing

• Motorola gets excellent case study, direct access to technical insight, and very valuable national brand association


Trial Coverage Area


Original Granger Tower Site


The Backhaul to Campus


Some Typical Customer Installs


Typical Customer Demarc


Pricing and Service Model

• 768K down/128K up for $39.95/mo

• 1.5 Mb down/256K up for $49.95/mo

• Higher speeds priced as needed

• $4.95/mo equipment rental for the AP

• $100 installation fee for mounting AP, demarc and grounding rod, and running exterior CAT5 to demarc.


The Revenue Share…

• ND receives $12/mo for every user.– $17/mo for those

users served from Hessburg Library.

• Essentially compensation for ISP, helpdesk, billing services, and prime tower location


The Dreaded Contract

• Originally wanted to go live with this on March 1st.

• Roll-out delayed because of contract negotiations between ND and providers.


Coverage Areas


Early Feedback

• Users like the speed and stability.

• Like ND IP space and “extended office” model

• Like extension of ND helpdesk support

• When all options are available to customer, most will lean towards ND solution


Early Feedback

• Dislike the hot or miss line of site issues.– One person gets it, next door neighbor has

trees.

• Dislike the lack of coverage area– users don’t understand why we just can’t

climb the cell tower around the corner and mount the equipment.



Some Interesting One’offs


Hotel Conference Room

• ND needed week-long off-campus site to negotiate ERP contract earlier this year.

• Hotels with high-speed wireless internet access wanted to add $250/day to conference room fee

• Worked with local hotel (Varsity Clubs of America) to install temp Canopy link in under 4 hours.


By-pass Local Loop

• Was able to by-pass SBC/Ameritech local loop charges to bring I1 bandwidth to campus.


Long Haul



What’s Next?


Build-out coverage areas


What’s Next

• Explore near line-of-sight technology (900 MHz, others)

• Better internal marketing and promotion

• Redundant backhaul modules and upgrade to 20 Mb primary link

• 802.11x broad-space coverage



Thank You

Questions from the Audience?


Contact Information

• Dewitt LatimerChief Technology OfficerUniversity of Notre [email protected]/canopy

• Kevin SmithShearer [email protected]

• Roland HouinFourway Computer [email protected]

Office of Information Technologies P.O. Box 539, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556...

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