From:
http://www.govtech.net/?pg=magazine/sup_story&id=92349&magid=17&issue=12:2004
Wireless Crossing
December 2004 By Jessica Jones
The Washington State Ferries system is testing a way to provide
wireless Internet access from the dock to the ship and over the water.
Serving more than eight counties in Washington state and the province
of British Columbia, Canada, the Washington State Ferries (WSF) system
includes 10 routes and 20 terminals served by 29 vessels.
To improve the ride for the more than 75,000 Puget Sound residents
commuting to work or school via ferries during the week, the WSF worked
with Mobilisa and Chantry Networks to implement and test the Wireless
Over Water (WOW) system, said Jim Long, director of information
technology for the WSF.
"Our riders are, for lack of a better term, basically captive -- at
least while they're on the vessel," he said. "Many of our passengers
arrive 20 to 30 minutes before the vessel sails. On our San Juan
Islands route, our international route, some people arrive two hours
early, so this would be a way for them to surf the Web and do their
e-mails."
In the Central Sound, Long said some vessels transport 2,600 people,
many of whom are professionals, and wireless access would help them
with productivity during their commute. Many professionals also live in
the West Sound and commute to Seattle.
"In their cases, some are billable hours, so they can extend their
hours -- I say they can make partner faster -- things like that," Long
said. "Or people like me, running an IT department here, I can take my
laptop home with me, and on the boat I can deal with the administrative
e-mails -- the ones I never get to."
The wireless network has gone live on the M/V Klickitat, which serves
the Port Townsend to Keystone route. The network will eventually be
installed on three major ferry routes and is expected to serve 300 to
400 simultaneous users.
Nest Egg
U.S. Senator Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Mobilisa helped the WSF secure
an $800,000 research and development grant. Murray serves as the
highest-ranking Democrat (and is the former chair) of the Senate
transportation appropriations subcommittee.
Long said the grant contains two main provisos: First, the wireless
network must maintain continuous connectivity shore-to-shore. Second,
it must improve the ridership experience.
"In that little egg are things like performance, being able to
prioritize, types of traffic, limiting 'hogs,' if you will -- people
who try to download a 300 MB file while other people are trying to
answer a 20-byte e-mail," Long said.
"If all this comes together and works, which it will -- which it does
-- then we float an RFP out to the private sector to outfit all of our
vessels, all of our terminals, all of our decks."
Long said a private company will run the service, and the WSF would
collect a royalty, similar to how onboard food concessions are handled.
Sign Me Up
The WSF wants to offer a wireless experience ubiquitous to the user to
eliminate worries about which wireless ISP to subscribe to.
WOW users can log on to the network so long as their PDA or laptop is
outfitted with a wireless card or antenna, and they have an account
with a third-party provider, such as AT&T, Verizon or T-Mobile, Long
said. Subscriptions to such services are readily available and
typically can be paid for on a per-day or per-month basis.
"Cost is totally independent of the infrastructure," said Luc Roy,
Chantry Networks' senior director of product management. "Mobilisa can
create a unique service set identifier [SSID] for every service
provider -- T-Mobile, AT&T Wireless, Verizon.
"It also has unique administrative domains for each of these SSIDs," he
continued. "We can actually work with T-Mobile's Web site where, if you
were a wired user, you just enter your name and password; and if you
don't [have an account], you can sign up for one."
Actual cost also boils down to the ISPs and the payment method the
person chooses, Long said.
"If they choose a monthly thing, maybe it's $19 a month; if they choose
a daily thing, maybe it's $3 a day or $5 a day," he said. "That's
really up to the private sector to provide."
An online customer survey received 2,000 responses, Long said, and
other than those who said it should be free or who would pay quite a
lot, most responses indicated a willingness to pay between $19 and $39
for monthly service.
How It's Done
There were two primary challenges, Long said -- the distance the
signals would have to travel over water and maintaining signal
connectivity.
The system uses 802.11 radios from Proxim, and BeaconWorks routers and
BeaconPoint access points from Chantry Networks, which partnered with
Mobilisa and improved its software to perform a dynamic handoff from
one signal to another, Long said.
Imagine two overlapping circles radiating out over the water from two
shore positions. A vessel on a route to a port moves between those
circles as it chugs across the overlapping area.
"As the vessel goes across, it's talking to A," Long said. "As it goes
across [the overlapping area], it's talking to A and B, and then it's
talking to just B. It's been a challenge, but it works. The one that
had a stronger signal -- so shore position A and shore position B --
could do [the handoff] in a matter of milliseconds versus a matter of
minutes.
"That's what gives the semblance of continuous connectivity."
Through tuning and proper antenna selection, Long said Mobilisa has
essentially gone seven to eight miles out in one direction over water.
On another project for the Navy, he said, the signal has been sent out
13 to 20 miles over water.
"The Navy's got more money than we've got," he said. "But other than
our international run, which is from Anacortes [in the San Juan
Islands] to Sidney [on Vancouver Island, British Columbia], there is no
single run longer than 12 miles. So if you go seven and seven, you've
got it covered."
Long also said each antenna on shore directly connects to the Internet,
meaning the load of wireless users is split between them. "Virtually
every run is two vessels, so vessels A and B cross in the middle of the
sound, so both terminals are always live."
The Nitty-Gritty
Thanks to the WOW network, people with a regular Wi-Fi card can walk
around on the ferry and be connected to the Internet, said Mobilisa CEO
Nelson Ludlow.
"There are two parts to the technology," he said. "One is the shore to
boat -- the ship is moving, so our shore system connects to a moving
boat. Once we capture that signal on the boat, we redistribute it on
the boat using Wi-Fi."
Getting Wi-Fi to work on runs as long as almost 20 miles was a
challenge, especially when compared with a Wi-Fi setup at home that
works for just a few hundred feet, Ludlow said.
"In this case, we had to get it to go out dozens of miles. To do that,
we used some of our technology called Wireless Over Water. WOW includes
keeping a constant connection to a bunch of focused antennas all the
way out to a moving ferry," Ludlow continued. "The other big deal about
wireless -- and this is important to a layman, but I don't think a
layman understands it -- is that roaming is not part of the typical
Wi-Fi environment."
Wi-Fi is fine for sitting in a coffeehouse or at home, but when trying
to roam between different access points -- as one would do driving in a
car with a cell phone and using different cellular systems -- users
expect to switch seamlessly between the different systems and stay
connected.
To achieve that level of connectivity with Wi-Fi, the WOW network uses
two technologies. One is advanced switching algorithms from Mobilisa so
the ship stays connected during the trip's duration. The other is from
Chantry, and it allows users to seamlessly roam from one terminal to
the other.
"A person could literally park in the parking lot, get connected, drive
onto the ferry, use the system the whole time the ship is moving, and
even drive off onto the dock on the other side and still stay
connected," Ludlow said. "That's a big deal in Wi-Fi."
Chantry's Roy describes the technology as consisting of different
layers -- the infrastructure layer that allows communication from a
boat back to the main shore, and the communications layer that offers
the service to the client.
"We basically allow you to manage different administrative demands, for
example, one could be for T-Mobile where Mobilisa would wholesale
T-Mobile's services," he said. "We would create a different logical
network for AT&T Wireless, who then can offer their own wholesale
service on top of Mobilisa's infrastructure."
Chantry Networks handles all remote management and segregation of
users, all policies for users and all administrative domains. Mobilisa
works with a wireless ISP to offer the ISP a place from which to send
their signals.
Proof of Concept
Any problems, issues, opportunities or challenges to the WOW network
would arise in the Port Townsend to Keystone route, Long said, which is
why the area was perfect for a proof of concept test.
"It gave us the chance to test the two distinct frequency ranges --
802.11b and 802.11g -- and we went with 802.11g for the backhaul," he
said. "The real problem is the backhaul, getting it from the vessel to
shore, because that's the part that's open. But on the vessel, your
laptop can be 802.11a, b or g."
Because of shipping in the region, the ferryboat's path has an "s"
curve. The route also crosses the shipping channel, which is regularly
traveled by nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers and ocean-going
vessels. Ferries must yield right of way to larger ships.
"You don't want to run into an aircraft carrier, so [the ferry's] path
changes even more," Long said. "It's not like a railroad track going
point A to point B all the time -- it's all over. And then with tides
and currents, that can also make the route change."
To resolve the "s" curve situation, multiple shore stations were
installed, so this route has four shore stations versus two like the
other runs. Big vessels are also blockage points if they get in the way
of the antenna to the shore, so it's important to reacquire the signal
as rapidly as possible.
Fog on the Port Townsend and Keystone route is another problem.
"High-bandwidth wireless is wonderful ... except when you have a lot of
moisture in the air," Long said. "We had a wonderful success up in Port
Townsend, and now we're outfitting a couple larger vessels to get a
better feel for the customer experience where we have a lot of users
trying to access it."
Despite the WOW network's success, Long said the No. 1 priority is to
keep the boats moving.
"Anything that precludes the boat from moving takes priority over
throwing in a wireless system," he said.
What's Next?
A sister wireless system that will handle WSF network traffic is in the
works, Long said, explaining that the WSF system will run ship
maintenance off the vessels and many other technology applications that
are shore/server-based.
That flow of information must be treated differently.
"We do not want to commingle customer Internet use, which is basically
uncontrolled," he said, adding that the system will be 802.11i. "Given
some of the things going on with homeland security, we'll have cameras
on board we'll be monitoring, so we need a dedicated pipe."
Long also said incorporating wireless into WSF vessels will most likely
generate more revenue for concessionaires. Food can be purchased aboard
most vessels, and the WSF is working to get food services on all of its
boats.
"If vendors could take a credit card and get it authorized, they know
their sales would rise," he said. "The one vendor we currently have,
they're going to have wine tastings with premium Washington wines.
We'll get 'boutiquey' kind of stuff on board -- kiosks."
There may also be cell phone possibilities on a pay-per-use basis
aboard the vessels.
"Believe it or not, a lot of people don't have cell phones," Long said.
"We are always looking for new ways to generate revenue where we end up
being the landlord, if you will, and not the provider."
Under these sorts of partnerships, the WSF provides floor space,
electricity, lights and whatever else is necessary; the vendors run
their for-profit businesses, and the WSF gets a royalty.
"We really think this is a good, viable project," Long said. "We had
the Small Business Administration here -- they're touting the project
as a major success for small business dealing with a state agency,
which isn't the easiest thing in the world."
Jessica Jones
Managing Editor
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