Spokane launches
dual-use municipal Wi-Fi network
While other cities have created city-wide wireless
broadband networks solely for use by public safety
employees and are paranoid about sharing them
with the public, Spokane is taking a bold step and
has become the first city I know of that has deployed
a dual-use city-wide Wi-Fi network.
Spokane's city-wide wireless broadband network starts
with a 100-block downtown area. The city claims it is
largest municipal Wi-Fi network in the US. The network
has two domains:
(1) the city's private domain which it will use for public
safety, mobile workforce, and automated parking
enforcement and (2) the public domain, SpokaneHotzone
(http://www.spokanehotzone.com/), which is devoted to
public access offered through OneEighty Networks, a
local ISP. Users get the first two hours of access per day
for free. By the fourth quarter of 2004, OneEighty hopes
to make additional hours available through the purchase
of a day pass or a monthly subscription service.
The 100-block downtown wireless coverage spans Division West to Cedar, and
from Spokane Falls Blvd., south to the railroad viaduct. Secondary coverage
is available in areas north and south of downtown, including Riverfront
Park.
The city began the project last year at the Hoopfest basketball tournament,
and the official launch of the network coincides with this year's
tournament. The SpokaneHotZone will have a tent at the tournament where
spectators and players can surf the HotZone, check out scores and player
stats using laptops provided by Itronix. Also, members of a SpokaneHotZone
street team will be roving through downtown with Itronix GoBook Tablets
showing people how to log onto the HotZone.
"The City of Spokane is achieving recognition in this country and around
the world for our innovative projects," said Mayor James West. "We just
celebrated recent awards for All America City and Top U.S. Intelligent
Community that highlighted our community's investment in broadband
infrastructure and state-of-the-art applications. The SpokaneHotZone gives
us a distinct advantage over other communities that aren't using these new
technologies as an economic development tool."
Details of the project
The wireless network is a natural extension of the fiber-wired downtown
network of buildings, known as the Spokane Terabyte Triangle
(http://www.terabytetriangle.com), and provides additional connectivity for
the city's mobile workforce, businesses, residents and visitors. Terabyte
Triangle's purpose is to maintain a specialized zone in downtown Spokane
where businesses have access to cost-effective, high-speed connectivity.
The wireless network uses a combination of Wi-Fi base stations and
bridge/routers. The high placement of the base stations, together with
their azimuthal spatial filtering, makes them suited for additional
purposes:
- coverage to clients well outside the central area;
- coverage to very distant Bridge/Routers to fill coverage holes; and
- spatial diversity to enhance link performance.
As is usual for many cities, Spokane has high buildings in a central
district and low buildings outside this area. The use of base stations at
these high central locations provides client connectivity out to several
miles. A bridge/router placed at a distant location allows a hole-filler to
be placed in an important coverage location, without the need for wired
backhaul. Throughput measurements have shown good connectivity to a laptop
client, to several miles, along one of the major streets extending from the
central district. To further enhance coverage and link reliability, the
placement of two high Wi-Fi sase stations provides spatial diversity. The
separation of the two base stations facilitates alternate paths to clients
and bridge/routers.
In ongoing phases of the Spokane project, additional Wi-Fi coverage will be
provided. The placement of a central set of Wi-Fi Base Stations provides a
framework for the provision of this extended coverage at low added cost.
Five Vivato (http://www.vivato.com/) Wi-Fi base stations and twelve Vivato
outdoor bridge/routers are installed throughout the downtown area to
provide wireless connectivity to cover 100 blocks This core is about one
mile long by 0.32 mile wide. Again the five Wi-Fi Base Stations
additionally provide direct access to clients over many square miles around
the 100 block city core. New deployment phases are planned which include
additional outdoor bridge/routers, utilizing the existing base stations for
low latency wireless backhaul.
All the Vivato wireless base stations are connected using a wired backhaul
to the city's network and all bridge/routers are connected using wireless
backhaul. Wireless backhaul is provided using a wireless protocol called
Wireless Distribution System (WDS).
As mentioned earlier, the wireless network will include two domains.
(1) City government: they will use the Itronix iCARE client and server
utility; security will be implemented using iCare VPN client. City of
Spokane domain users include the police and fire departments,
computer-aided dispatch services, downtown parking violations department,
sewer department, etc. This domain will also be used to promote the concept
of the mobile worker for the city's work force by allowing wireless access
to the city's computing resources and database information. Access to
building floor plans, fire inspection reports, mug shot database, and
equipment repair manuals are all examples.
(2) Public: for the public domain part of the network, residents,
businesses and visitors to the city willl have access to the Internet and
VPN access to their own private networks through VPN.
To see the area covered by the network and the network design and
implementation plan, visit http://www.vivato.com/metro/index.html
Vivato Metro Cities Wi-Fi site: http://www.vivato.com/metro/index.html
Source: http://www.muniwireless.com/archives/000372.html
