Panoramic view of the Grand Traverse Resort & Spa.
Yet another advantage of wireless is that the project is modular. It was easy to turn on just the main building in phase one, add connectivity to the condos in phase two, and then connect the golf course and other outdoor areas in phase three.
Since the deployment is in Northern Michigan, we asked about the weather. Coffman reports that there is some rain fade, but only during torrential rains or white-out conditions. Although the Traverse deployment has not yet been through a winter, Coffman says that Firetide has another deployment in Iceland that has survived a winter and quotes the local network manager as saying, “the Firetide system is a good investment as it even worked when covered with snow during the long winter.”
One major issue with every wireless deployment is backhaul. At Grand Traverse Resort & Spa, the ISP is Charter Communications and the backhaul is fiber. The availability of fiber for backhaul makes this deployment easier than others. WISPs looking at this case study will need to think long and hard about backhaul before committing to a project of a similar scale, but if they can solve this issue, they should consider Firetide for their mesh network.
Alex Goldman is Managing Editor of ISP-Planet.com. This article originally appeared at ISP-Planet.com and is re-printed with permission.
