More of the Great Outdoors

Agere Systems isn’t letting a little thing like having Proxim soon take over its products business stop it from putting out more products. This week, the company announced a new ORiNOCO branded outdoor access point, but also a software update for all the company’s outdoor products.

The new ORiNOCO OR-500 is a $795 outdoor unit based on the AP-500 access point, that uses a single radio for wireless ISP or business that don’t need the extra capacity found in the current dual-radio OR-1000. The embedded radio has a range of up to 10 miles due to its high-gain antenna, with speeds of 11Mbps, plus supports 128-bit data encryption, routing, and Power over Ethernet to help with placement.

The OR-500 is powered by the new 4.0 version of ORiNOCO Outdoor Router Software, known as OR 4, with support for advanced services including spanning tree.

“All [our] outdoor products can use the 4.0 software,” says product manager Jan Buiz. “The software is a free download from www.orinocowireless.com. The customer has to enter a license key or MAC address to get it.” Jan says it’s available for download now.

The software doubles the number of supported remote devices to 128, plus offers support for RADIUS-based authentication for checking clients and bandwidth throttling to control how much speed each end-user really gets via their connection. Thus WISPs can offer different tiers of service to customers at different price points.

OR 4’s spanning tree support “was something customers wanted,” says Buis, because “not only were they using [equipment] in routing but also bridging. There’s a chance you can make a loop with too many bridges, which spanning tree prevents.”

Assuming the acquisition by Proxim of all Agere’s product’s goes through when expected, these newly announced products will become part of Proxim’s line.