Firetide 7100 HotPort Indoor Wireless Mesh Mode

The new Firetide HotPort 7000 mesh node, available in indoor and outdoor models, has two radios that can be set for 2.4 or 5 GHz or the licensed 4.9 GHz band reserved for public safety. Each node can deliver up to 400Mbps throughput, compared to 70Mbps for the previous models.

 

That boost is due to Firetide’s use of one of the core parts of the draft IEEE 802.11n specification: multiple input, multiple output (MIMO), a technique that dramatically increases throughput by subdividing a data stream into sub-streams and using a separate antenna for each. Each radio in the 7000 supports three transmit and three receive data streams, a configuration dubbed 3x3.

 

The node introduces a latency of less than 1 millisecond per hop. The company says even after 20 or more hops, the Firetide mesh still delivers more than 90% of the original bandwidth. In practical terms, each new HotPort 7000 can support up to 1,000 VoIP calls, according to the vendor.