2007/08/17

Azalea Networks assists organizing The 2007 Beijing Wireless City Summit

On 15 th August, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications has held the press release for The 2007 Beijing Wireless City Summit (www.bita.org.cn). At the conference, director of Beijing Information and Telecommunication Association, principal of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications Prof. Lin Jintong, president of China Network Communications Group Corporation Mr. Zhang Chunjiang, and chairman of Wireless City Application Promotional Council of Taipei Mr. Mao Zhiguo have made a brief introduction on the summit. As one of the assisting units, Azalea Networks has participated in the conference, with Vice President of R&D Mr. Felix Zhao sharing his views on wireless city construction with attending directors, presidents, visitors and the media.

The 2007 Beijing Wireless City Summit commences at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on 13 th September, and finishes on the 15 th . During the summit, experts on wireless communication and information technology as well as famous enterprises in the wireless broadband industry will discuss and exchange their opinions on the development and applications of WiFi Mesh and WiMax network technologies. Also, while the managing director of Beijing Information Technology Office will give presentations on the development plan and status of wireless Beijing , the organizing units will provide related technical training.

On the occasion, the summit will coordinate theme shows. Currently, several famous wireless city solution providers, equipment vendors and application service providers have already indicated that they will display their new technologies and solutions at the summit.

Background

Situated in the northeastern region of Chaoyang District, Beijing , Wangjing Technology Park (http://www.wangjing.gov.cn) covers approximately 8 square kilometres, or 800 hectares. It is a technology park fulfilling needs of residencies, cultures, educations, scientific researches, and high-tech industries. Recently, phase 1 of deploying Azalea Wireless Mesh Network in the area has been completed, covering the Growth Enterprise Segment of the Technology Park . In near future, visitors, administrators, and occupants will be provided with wireless broadband both indoor and outdoor.

Requirements of Wangjing Technology Park Wireless Broadband project :

• Total coverage and availability
• The wireless network of the technology park should be able to provide stable and reliable broadband network access to visitors, administrators and occupants anytime anywhere in the area covered.
• High network security
• The enterprise networks and the wireless network should be isolated
• Highly expandable and extensible
• As the technology park is in a stage of high-speed development, the WLAN should be highly expansible and extensible without difficulties.

Solution Overview

As wired networking solutions cannot completely fulfil the above requirements, as well as providing outdoor value-added services and keeping the network maintenance and operation cost down. Studies have been conducted on various technologies and found that Azalea's wireless mesh network solution can completely satisfy the requirements of Wangjing Technology Park . The wireless network coverage solution for Wangjing is based on the principles of practicality, advance technology, stability, openness, scalability, security, availability and economy.

During Phase 1, not only that consideration has been made towards the current demands of services in the Growth Enterprise segment, but also that resource planning and reservation for the entire park have been made. With such consideration, planning and reservation, expansibility and inter-operability can be ensured, satisfying future demands from enterprises, including Motorola, Ericsson, Nortel and Agilent, for network availability in outdoor squares and ground floor lobbies, coffee shops, restaurants, hotels, banks and other such business venues.

Technical Advantages

• Adaptive Wireless Routing protocol is adopted, thus mesh network is more efficient over traditional technologies, and it can autonomously form, manage and repair itself.
• Multiple-radio and multiple-frequency band and multiple channel planning are adopted, thus interference due to large-scale expansion of the wireless network is minimized.
• Coverage is broader, with better stability and quality. Also, more access clients are supported. The multi-hop transmission capability further increases the network's flexibility and self-healing capability.
• The network can more effectively discriminate class of services and optimise transmission.
• With newly created and integrated wireless security mechanisms, the remainder of the network can continue to work normally even when multiple nodes or branches malfunction.
• With the use of network management system, users can visualize rapidly and conveniently the performance and status of the entire network.
• Compliant with IEEE 802.11a /b/g, no special client device or networking equipment is required.

Conclusion

With Phase 1 completed, network coverage is greatly increased, thus optimising the business environment and raising digital service levels in Wangjing. The success of this project has also proved that the stability, maturity and cost effectiveness of wireless mesh networking are broadly recognized.

Recently, Tianjin Railroad has successfully established a high quality digitalization platform through wireless network deployment. Each patrol is equipped with customized handheld terminals, which wirelessly sends digital and voice data via communication base-stations to Hazardous Materials Identification System (HMIS) and rail-station maintenance system for electronic storage and printing. This ensures the precision, timeliness and security of the data.

“The terminals are important equipments for ensuring safe operation of railroad. Its applications demand for increases in network communication support. Also, as the environment of railroad system is complex, large communication equipments are inappropriate due to high engineering cost, maintenance difficulties and inflexibility. Consequently, simple wireless network is one of the effective solutions. However, topographical issues such as mountains and tunnels will place hash requirements on signal coverage.” Tianjin railroad patrol system representative stated.

The t echnical team has repeatedly researched, compared and tested several solutions, and has decided to adopt Azalea Networks' Wireless Mesh Network Technology to construct the wireless platform for the logistic railroad.

Azalea Networks' Wireless Mesh Network solution combines a fixed line access point with wireless return multi-hop technology to realize large scale mesh network that requires little maintenance, is highly stable and can be expanded or re-configured anywhere anytime. The handheld terminals can accomplish cargo entries, early warning certificates and voice recording, as well as data code download, wireless digital half-duplex conversation, verbal and visual alerts, and wireless data transmission and reception. Point to point and broadcast communications are also supported.

“The deployment of wireless mesh networks in Tianjin logistic railroad shows its capability of good coverage and operations in complex environment.” President of 51CTO.com, largest IT technical website in China , stated.

2007/06/12

Azalea Networks names John Elms as Chief Executive Officer

Former SpectraLink Corp. CEO to lead worldwide expansion

MILPITAS , Calif. , June 11, 2007 – Azalea Networks, an innovator in wireless mesh broadband technology and products, today announced that it has named John Elms as its new chief executive officer. Fang Wu a co-founder of Azalea will lead the company's product realization functions.

Elms joins Azalea from SpectraLink Corp., now a part of Polycom (Nasdaq: PLCM), where he was the president and CEO of the Nasdaq-listed company until its sale in March of this year. At SpectraLink, Elms successfully guided the company to its position as the leading global OEM provider of enterprise wireless telephone systems selling to industry leaders such as Alcatel, Avaya, NEC, Nortel and Siemens. Sales at SpectraLink more than doubled under Elms' leadership from $71 million in 2003 to $145 million, ending 2006.

“ I am delighted to join Azalea Networks at such an exciting time for the company and the wireless broadband marketplace,” stated John Elms, Azalea Networks CEO. “The founders have created an impressive suite of mesh networking products based on patent-pending technology that are gaining great market traction in Asia in just a short time. I look forward to working closely with them to expand the company to a global scale.”

“ We are pleased to have John join the Azalea team,” stated Fang Wu. “His leadership and experience will augment what we believe is an already superior technical solution. The Asian market has readily adopted our innovative technology, and I look forward to working with Elms as we expand our presence into additional global markets.”

“ The board and company are fortunate to attract a CEO of John's caliber,” continued Frank Marshall, Azalea Networks board member. “His public company background, international credentials and deep wireless experience provide us with the necessary skills to successfully move the company forward.”

Prior to assuming the president and CEO roles at SpectraLink, Elms was the company's vice president of operations. He also served in several sales and service leadership positions at PictureTel Corp. in both the U.S. and Hong Kong . Elms holds a bachelor of liberal arts from Harvard University and is conversant in Mandarin Chinese. He is based in Azalea's U.S. headquarters in Milpitas .

Azalea blooms in Xinjiang as off-road rally proceeds in Taklamakan Desert

Every year, 1 st May is celebrated as Labour Day. But in 2007, it also marks another important event: the first day free WiFi Internet services are provided for the Taklamakan Rally in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

The race started in provincial capital Urumqi , headed into the desert, moved through seven stages encompassing the Silk Road, Lop Nur, the Tianshan Mountains , the Turpan Basin and ended in Aksu. A total distance of 4,500 kilometres, within which 2,000 kilometres were timed, covering complex geographical areas of deserts, Gobi-deserts, grassland, mountains and dried riverbed. Taklamakan, also known as the ‘ Sea of Death ', the remoteness and topography of the track, volatile climate, demands for real-time news transfer, key region monitoring, and communication placed strict requirements and difficulties on deploying networks.



Figure 2 Road map of the Taklamakan Rally

Nevertheless, the WiFi Internet services have been successfully provided with high stability, reliability and performance, and enabled wireless video monitoring and recording in key areas at crucial moments. This is made possible by infrastructure consisting of satellite antennae, indoor wireless Access Points, outdoor wireless Access Points and Azalea's mesh routers. The following paragraph is translated from a blog of an engineer who have participated in the deployment

Figure 4 Capturing the motion	Figure 5 One of the crucial moments: finishing at the stop
Figure 6 Another crucial moment	Figure 7 Locations of Free WiFi in Taklamakan Desert

“At the Qiemo camp, several engineers from China Mobile have, very professionally, brought over ten big boxes of equipments. I, without any other colleagues, brought only one box of equipment, but I feel very proud.” (Source: http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/53d29d93010008c1)

This comment fully demonstrates the low cost of deployment and retraction, as well as the ease of set-up, configuration, maintenance and re-use, of the infrastructure based on the combination of satellite communication and Azalea Wireless Mesh technologies.

Figure 8 Free outdoor WiFi for competitors	Figure 9 Prize winners and event finishes

In order to experience and learn about wireless mesh technologies, EMBA students from Baylor University visited Azalea Networks on 24 th April 2007.

During the visit, Azalea lead scientist Professor Luo Haiyun introduced wireless mesh network technologies and the prospects of Azalea Networks to approximately 50 visitors from Texas Instruments, Verizon (largest wireless communication service provider in US) among other famous enterprises or organizations, and showed them Azalea's test laboratories, radio frequency shield rooms, low temperature experiment shelves, and other research facilities. Technical staff of the company also introduced them to the patented technologies.

After the visit to the company premise, the marketing team of Azalea Networks shared their knowledge about the application values and market positioning with the visitors at Holiday Inn.

Baylor University was established near Brazos River in Waco around 1845, and was the earliest tertiary education institute in Texas as well as the biggest Baptist University in the world. Currently, 14000 students are enrolled.

Figure 1 Professor Luo introduces Azalea's technologies to the EMBA visitors	Figure 2 EMBA visitors involved in interactions and reading materials provided by the company

Azalea in the top 60 Wireless Enterprises in the States

Azalea Networks, with recommendation by SoftBank, will be presenting together with Intel, Cisco, Motorola, Nokia, QualComm, Oracle, Sony and other enterprises at Wireless Innovations 2007 (http://wirelessinnovations.dowjones.com/) in San Francisco on 25 th and 26 th April 2007. As the world's leading wireless mesh network company, Azalea will represent China with the next generation wireless network technologies

Azalea Networks is an international wireless technology enterprise founded by Chinese. Her wireless mesh network products are widely in use worldwide. Azalea was named in the list of the top 60 wireless enterprises in United States for her leading position in wireless mesh technologies and associated products as well as her potential in the market of American wireless cities. Within these 60 enterprises, Azalea Network is the only company possessing technologies to construct wireless municipals. Wireless Innovations has been organized for several years, and is mutually supported by Intel, QualComm, famous risk investment institutes such as Columbia Capital and market research institutes such as JP Morgan.

Wireless Innovations provides a platform for technology enterprises to cooperate and collaborate on projects and researches. It also provides a medium for financial and risk investment institutes such as Accel Partners, BlueRun Ventures, Canaan Partners, Columbia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Qualcomm Ventures, Sevin Rosen Funds and Storm Ventures to find opportunities to invest in wireless technologies. Due to the long-lasting culture of this event, Wireless Innovations have become an assessment for leading wireless technologies.

The organizing association of the event has defined wireless mesh networking as one of the eight most advanced wireless technologies of the era. During the event, Mr. Fang Wu, President of Azalea Networks and the representative of the new member of the 60 companies, will present and comment on the prospect of wireless technologies.

Wireless Mesh Network pushes forward the trend for wireless cities. Azalea leads the wireless era.

As global digital construction proceeds, wireless mesh network is labelled as the next generation wireless network technology for its unique economical and technical merits, and is more and more adopted world wide. In the construction of wireless municipal, wireless mesh network have gradually become the mainstream technology, especially in the metropolitan cities, such as Philadelphia , San Francisco and Taipei .

In 2006, the number of projects associated with building wireless municipal using wireless mesh technologies have increased by more than 80% compared with 2005. In-Stat reports that number of such projects will increase from the current figure of 400 to above 1200 in year 2010. Singapore even adopts wireless mesh technologies for her iNation 2015 project, targeting to convert the entire area into a “wireless country”.

International giants such as Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, and Microsoft are proactively pioneering into the business of wireless mesh network equipments. This definitely declares that a revolution in the next generation wireless broadband will be lead by wireless mesh network technologies. Microsoft has stated that wireless mesh network is the best interfacing media between telecommunication and internetworking.

As wireless mesh network technologies are widely adopted globally, this has provided an advanced starting point in the market in China . In the mainland, the technologies are starting to be adopted in constructing wireless cities. While Beijing and Jiading district of Shanghai are proceeding with the constructions as planned, Tianjin and Shenzhen are setting up experimenting points.

According to the report produced by IDC, the size of wireless mesh network equipment market in China has reached USD 5.96 million in the first three quarters of 2006. Based on this figure, it is estimated that the market size for the entire 2006 should be around USD 8 million, translating to RMB 62 million. Within this, wireless cities and hotspots applications have been the main components. According to professionals in related areas, the actual size of the equipment market is likely to be much greater than that estimated by IDC. The mid-2007 market will again exceed that expected by research organizations.

Azalea Networks, as the only company with wireless mesh network technologies Research and Development centres and technical support team established in China , ha s started works on research and testing long time ago. It has a certain advance standing in the technical aspects worldwide, and has become the first mesh equipment manufacturer having realized layer-3 cross subnet roaming. Up till now, the company has obtained many patents on its core technologies, ranging from adaptive wireless routing protocol, network infrastructure, roaming, terminal to terminal QoS, security and product performance management.

“Wireless mesh network can provide a higher bandwidth at a lower cost, and thus can produce more values for video and voice applications. Our wireless mesh network technologies can support high speed roaming video monitoring and other applications. For an example, more precise, complete and convenient public safety monitoring systems can be achieved. Users may even be travelling in a vehicle at high speed, and can remotely check or utilize one or several monitoring equipments. The images can also be shared to other users, while simultaneously conducting conferences. This is very useful to public and enterprise-level safety control. Not only that, the user can also expand the monitoring network anywhere at anytime, or even move deployed networks to other venues. This is essential for investment protection, avoiding duplicated investments.” Mr. Wu Fang, President of Azalea, stated.

In the aspect of voice application, mobile VoIP is the hottest application. Azalea's carrier-grade roaming, terminal to terminal and QoS patented technologies and unique system designs have guaranteed real-time, continuous and clearly audible conversations and n-ways conference during high-speed roaming, thus helped users realizing application and services improvement.”

Mr. Sheng remarked that wireless mesh network is becoming more and more popular in regional wireless networks, public safety, and emergency. Several communication service providers have already begun adopting wireless mesh technologies to improve existing networks, increase network capacity and lower operational and maintenance cost.

“Azalea would really like to become partners with service providers to develop in this area, and welcomes interested partners to experience the performance of our MSR series products.”

2007/03/13

New Wireless Experience in the Back Lakes

Background

Houhai (the Back Lakes, 後海 ) is the region situated in Northeastern part of Xicheng (West District) in Beijing .  Its name originated from the Back Sea , which together with Qianhai (the Front Sea ) and Xihai (the West Sea ) forms the Shichahai lake area, or Heyan (Riverbank) in former times.

Figure 1 Night view of Houhai

Recently, as tourist projects develop, services of various characteristics, especially restaurants, bars and other entertainment spots, have filled the region.  Yet because resources are limited, broadband coverage has been minimal, if not null.

To satisfy the needs of wireless multimedia, given the unique topographical restrictions of Houhai, Houhai, Qianhai and Yandaixie Street are the emphasis of wireless network services coverage.

Requirements

• Network coverage should be expandable upon demand anywhere at any time
• Network deployment, upgrades and expansion should be achieved easily at a reasonable performance to price ratio
• Adaptive and dynamic routing within the network should be supported, eliminating the risk of major network outage due to node failure, thus ensuring high reliability
• Roaming should be supported
• High data throughput should be ensured for any wireless channel
• High data processing power in any wireless AP should be ensured
• 802.11a / b / g compliant terminals should be supported by the wireless network
• Equipment interfaces should be standardized
• Multi-layer QoS guarantee measures, such as 802.1p and IP COS should be supported
• The equipment should support configurations, maintenance and Network Monitoring Specification Integrated management such that the network efficiency can be maximized.
• The wireless network should be inter-operable with other open systems.
• The wireless network should ensure high security by supporting Broadcast Storm and Network Paralysis prevention, 802.1X and 802.11i

Network topology


Figure 3 Topology of Houhai wireless distribution system

The topology of Houhai Wireless Mesh Network

• Azalea MSR2000 Wireless Router
• 5.8GHz for backhaul, with unidirectional antenna to prevent interference
• 2.4GHz for user access, with all wireless access points equipped with unidirectional sectored array antenna.
• IPSTAR 2M Satellite Link
• 2M ADSL Link

Wireless Distribution System Test results

• The WDS link has high and stable bandwidth reaching pre-defined quality standard
• Good indoor and outdoor wireless coverage and fast network access
• Good voice quality during Skype test, supporting mobile/roaming voice calls;
• Smooth multimedia and video streaming

Comments

2007/02/01

Azalea soars high in South America

As reported by Infonetics Research, in Q3 of 2006, the global sales of radio access network (RAN), mesh network, WiMAX and WLAN equipments have been enormous, and the prospect looks great. It is predicted that by 2009, the sales figure for mesh network will reach USD 1.17 billion. Recently, Azalea Network, a globally leading wireless mesh network equipment manufacturer, has successfully landed its products onto the South American market. This is another market Azalea enters since the dramatic sales increase in North America and Asia .

“The mobile and fixed line telephone networks are scarce in South America . As the opportunity costs for wireless mesh network deployment is very low, it can easily satisfy the requirements of wireless broadband access. The demand on wireless mesh network in South America is strong and rapid-growing, making it one of the most important market s in the world.” Mr. Sheng Dengfeng, Vice President of Azalea Networks, remarked.

“Our board is confident in our choice of operating in this market, and also in our ability to deepen our global operations. Our successful entrance into the South American market illustrates the high versatility and advanced technology in our MSR series products. They are absolutely capable of fulfilling more requirements from the market and the customers.”

According to Mr. Sheng, sales in the South American market are currently targeted at the top-tier channel. Based on this solid foundation l arge-scale market expansion activities will soon begin.

“I like Lorenz's Butterfly Effect – a butterfly fluttering its wing can cause a cyclone two weeks later. Similarly, Azalea will, with her globally leading wireless mesh network technologies, bring easily accessible data, multimedia and wireless broadband services to more and more countries in South America .” Mr. Sheng humoured.

2007/01/11

Climax builds up in wireless city construction as Azalea blossoms in North America

As US company Visiongain reports, up till Q1 2006, there are already 400 cities in the world planning to deploy, if not already deployed, municipal broadband for public access, public safety and public services. It is also predicted that another 400 cities will begin similar plans in 2006.

Climax is building up in wireless city construction as Azalea Networks have good news to share. Recently, Azalea Networks has signed contract with a well-known network equipment and application solution provider in North America . This agreement implies that Azalea MSR series wireless mesh products and solutions will be adopted in establishing tens of wireless municipals.

“In the aspect of wireless mesh network applications, North America is one of the most advanced region in the world, especially in establishing wireless municipals.” Mr. Sheng Dengfeng, Vice President of Azalea Network Inc. stated.

Constructing wireless cities can effectively reduce the digital divide. It is an investment to the people and economic development . More and more users and business units can benefit from these projects.

“Of course, constructing wireless cities places extra-ordinary requirements on the products and solutions. After up to a year of testing and comparison with many other products, comprising repeated and exhaustive test s on routing efficiency , frequency planning, roaming, QoS and various previously unspecified checks, Azalea comes out as the winner with definitive merits.” Mr. Sheng said.

“The successful signing of this agreement not only implies that Azalea products are technologically more advanced than those from other manufacturers, but also evinces Azalea's capability of operating in the international market. This is a very encouraging result. Our partner is very satisfied with the performance and supportability of our products, and they feel confident in our future cooperation with greater depth.”

Mr. Sheng believes that Azalea products, utilizing advanced wireless mesh technology, will create the most wonderful network with its reliability, maintainability and expandability.