It seems the designers of both products assumed that all electronics would be located indoors; neither product is weather-resistant.
This affected neither our partially indoor short-haul test nor our entirely outdoor long-haul test. Adtran also assumes you
have upward of 30 feet of antenna cable leading to the outside, which means you’ll have decent flexibility in terms of positioning.
The two products use similar management methods. Initially we were put off because the units indicated signal strength with
an external multimeter instead of a Web-based management utility. But this approach reduces the cost of the units, and the
multimeter console adequately indicated signal strength for both sides once they were linked. Of all the units we looked at,
Adtran’s products were easiest to get linked.
Ongoing management is both simple and practical. The system uses VT-100s to display link status, activity, and a table of
power settings. These systems also default to two channels to avoid conflict and allow multiple radios to be operational at
the same time. Indeed, the Tracers are designed to allow network managers to easily daisy-chain several boxes for truly long
hauls, while still managing each of them from a central location.
For dedicated network managers, Adtran doesn’t stop there. Customers also get access to a special section of Adtran’s Web
site, which contains a number of interesting tools. Customers get access to Adtran’s virtual lab, where they can take Telnet-based
control of running hardware in Adtran’s labs. This allows customers to take Adtran equipment for a test drive over the Web
— no canned demo, but actual working equipment. The company also provides downloadable link-analyzer software, which allows
owners of Adtran equipment to perform tasks such as intelligent traffic analysis for diagnostic or capacity-planning purposes.
Although we’d love to see a gigabit-capable version of the Tracer, we were plenty impressed with the series’ combination of
a low price and a five-minute setup easy enough for any IT manager. Both Adtran Tracers impressed us as solid options for
site-to-site connectivity, with the 5045 being an excellent fixed-throughput option and the 6420 providing flexibility for
organizations with independent needs.
Canon Canobeam DT-110
Canon almost didn’t manage to play in our shoot-out. Not only were they the last company to accept the invitation, but they
were also the only company not to send hardware engineers to ensure a successful test. In Canon’s favor, however, this posed
no problem for the DT-110, a member of Canon’s Canobeam DT-100 family; it managed all of our tests with aplomb.
On the LAN side, this system acts like a fiber-optic pipe. Different models within the DT-100 family accept a wide variety
of signals, including 25Mbps for old-style ATM connections, 155Mbps for ATM OC-3, 100Mbps for Ethernet, and 1.25Gbps for Gigabit
Ethernet. Even sweeter, though the DT-110 is a laser-based unit, it did not require us to convert speeds or protocols as the
LightPointe product did. We simply plugged it in and were off and running.
The Canobeam was also the only laser in our roundup able to shoot through our double-paned, energy-efficient glass. In fact,
we had to downshift the laser from full-power mode to low-power mode to avoid overwhelming the optics, which says a lot about
this unit’s potential flexibility.
As far as the lasers went, Canobeam also had the best alignment system we saw. Canon touts this feature as one of Canobeam’s
major draws. Each tripod is equipped with small vernier controls, which made slight adjustments really easy. So initial alignment
of the two lasers was a quick process. Once we had a few bars indicating a proximity signal, we just hit the Auto Tracking
button and the signal strength jumped.
The fragile nature of optic-signal alignment makes the Auto Tracking feature particularly compelling. Bad weather, wind, or
even an animal deciding to perch on the equipment can misalign an optic connection badly enough to require recalibration.
The DT-110’s Auto Tracking feature, however, is in constant mode, meaning the connection is always confirming its own integrity.
The only limitation is that the Canobeam has a restricted range for all this ease of use, forcing us to stay within 2 kilometers
for Auto Tracking to work.
E-mail
Printer Friendly
Reprints
(InfoWorld) - In the litigious world we live in, deploying a unified communications platform in your enterprise could...
