Optical Wireless Bridge Links Two Manufacturing Facilities
San Diego - LightPointe, a designer and manufacturer of high-speed outdoor wireless products, announced that Advance Metal Products, a leading supplier of comprehensive sheetmetal and office storage solutions based in Sydney, Australia, has installed a highly secure and reliable LightPointe FlightStrata Gigabit Ethernet optical wireless bridge to link two state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities. The high-speed, building-to-building connectivity ensures seamless access to critical manufacturing systems, as well as bandwidth-intensive Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Voice over IP (VoIP) applications.
Aggressive business expansion led Advance Metal Products to open a second manufacturing facility. The strategic move also required an economical yet robust method for extending its corporate network to the new satellite site. Available network connectivity choices from the local service provider were limited to low-speed 64 Kbps ISDN, unreliable 512 Kbps ADSL or cost-prohibitive frame-relay services. To bypass the local service provider, Advance Metal Products explored a variety of outdoor wireless alternatives, including 802.11b and 802.11g WiFi bridges, licensed microwave and license-free optical wireless.
According to Eric Paul, Advance Metal Product's IT administrator, only optical wireless provided sufficient capacity and reliability to support the company's bandwidth-intensive data and voice communications between the two facilities. Extensive research also revealed that LightPointe's FlightStrata Gigabit Ethernet link had the best overall feature set of any optical wireless manufacturers, with multiple-beam and multiple-receiver architecture, auto tracking and auto gain control. LightPointe also had a strong presence in the Australian market. "After struggling with inadequate, unreliable and costly alternatives, selecting the LightPointe optical wireless link was an easy decision," says Paul. "The system provided ample bandwidth and had a strong track record of success in the field."
In determining the best outdoor wireless connectivity solution, Advance Metal Products sought the assistance of Integrity Data Systems and Optical Solutions Australia, two LightPointe distribution partners and leading suppliers of connectivity and networking products with a wide range of optical wireless experience. "LightPointe had the right mix of worldwide experience and proven technology to meet Advance Metal's high-speed connectivity requirements," says Glenn Cooper, technical director at Optical Solutions Australia. "As an optical wireless pioneer, LightPointe shares Advance Metal's dedication to developing the highest quality products while reinforcing them with superb customer support."
With LightPointe's FlightStrata Gigabit Ethernet system in place, Advance Metal Products' remote staff now accesses all the company's core applications, including ERP, bar-code scanning, turret punch-press and other vital manufacturing operations, as if they were in a single building. Furthermore, the company now takes advantage of a VoIP phone system that enables transferring calls transparently to the satellite location without any latency or packet-loss issues. "Optical wireless is in a class of its own -- there's no other comparable technology that gives us this much capacity to meet our existing and future business needs," adds Advance Metal Products' Paul.
According to Bob Preston, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for LightPointe, customers that demand Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet full-duplex bandwidth wireless connections are moving to proven optical wireless technology as an alternative to fiber-optic cable or licensed microwave bridges. "Increasingly, companies like Advance Metal Products are installing optical wireless links to overcome bandwidth bottlenecks, spectrum issues and avoid monthly leased-line costs, while also ensuring they have sufficient capacity to support future business requirements."
SOURCE: LightPointe