- TechNote on Infrastructure and Performance
- Steven Taylor, Editor-in Chief, Webtorials
WAN: Wide Area Network or Wireless Access Network?
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5 Comments
Steve,
Another "nail in the coffin" of wired, location-based access to information and contacts with people. Yes, BYOD multimodal smartphones and tablets, are making it necessary to "virtualize" both communication and business apps, as well as data access, to provide more flexibility of choice for end user interactions with people and business processes.
I find it difficult to believe that things like BYOD paired with LTE (or whatever comes next) will accomplish what others (WIFI, MetroEthernet, MPLS, EDGE, HSDPA, ATM, Frame-Relay, ISDN or TDM) have failed to do; kill legacy telecom overnight. There are just too many use cases (legacy and contemporary) to quickly or entirely wipe the slate clean. Each new technology brings great promise and creative individuals and organizations keep leveraging the new and the old in amazing ways. For years things like basic telephony and long distance have been effectively given away, yet we still have tens of millions of people with analog phone service. I have no doubt the newer, better, faster, cheaper will eventually win out, but it will be a while. I suspect in the mean time wireless WAN will be leveraged by being combined creatively with legacy components.
I believe that the comment by Michael Benjamin is correct. Cost is also a factor since wired data is still much cheaper than cellular data. The advent of WebRTC will also redirect traffic in a major way, be it cellular or wired data, but switched voice via tdm will feel brunt of the new technology. Either way once the data has a fixed cost in both cellular and wired data platforms the usage will increase exponentially. I tend to think that this will mostly be in the favour of wired data deployments in the WAN due to the lower fixed data costs that currently prevail over the business WANs and the increase in fibre to the business deployments by service providers.
When your organization connects to a wide area service provider, the conversation will be typically along the lines of physical layer and data link layer. The service provider will define the physical layer options and of course that deals with the electrical, mechanical, and operational features of the connection. Access options to that media will also be defined and some options are listed here, frame-relay is one, ATM or HDLC encapsulation on serial links.
wide area network
Mobile users bypassing the traditional corporate wired WAN with direct 3G/4G connections is one example of the WAN going wireless. Another is using the mobile WAN as a bona fide "last mile" access link to branch and home offices, temporary locations, and vehicles (for transportation and public safety applications). I'm talking about routers with 4G LTE connections in them.
Cisco, for one, makes branch routers with fixed 4G LTE connections and modular routers in which you can plug in a 4G LTE module. Its main competitors are Cradlepoint and Sierra Wireless, which each offer inexpensive routers that let you "bridge" your existing WAN access router to a 4G network. So you get no layer 3 network services over that WAN link, but that might be OK, if you're using it for simple or backup purposes.
4G LTE runs at theoretical speeds to 100 Mbps in international networks; at theoretical speeds to 50 Mbps using U.S. carriers. Typical throughput is closer to 30 Mbps. Not bad, if you want to bring up a temporary site (construction, kiosk, sporting event) or a new branch office fast. Or if you want reasonably priced backup to your T1/E1 or other wired last-mile link you might have in place. In these instances, the wireless WAN is "fixed" - simply filling in for a wired counterpart but at lower prices and greater flexibility. In the transportation use cases, a 4G router gets mounted right in the vehicle, and the 4G LTE last-mile link is a mobile one. Same network, but mobile application.