Nortel Networks said today it has incorporated Wireless Valley's mesh planning software into its wireless mesh infrastructure line in an effort to streamline the deployment of municipal and campus WLAN networks.

Wireless Valley is a software developer specializing in software that helps carriers and enterprises design, monitor and control wireless networks, ranging from cellular to office LANs. Its MeshPlanner, however, is its first foray into the complex design process of Mesh topographies, which, depending on the size of the deployment, can interlink thousands of access points. For Nortel, the software tool could help it cut down on planning and configuration costs and deploy its new Mesh products faster.

A typical deployment of a mesh network requires several truck rolls as technicians with tripods and transmitters investigate a site to determine the best placement of access points--where they can be spaced to give the most coverage without encountering obstacles or creating dead zones, said Terry Bowman, director of product management for Nortel' mesh line. A mesh architecture is particularly sensitive, since all access points contain not only access but also backhaul elements. The radios have to placed not only to give the best coverage, but also in relation to one another so they can transport their data. They also have to be placed in such a way to distribute the backhauling duties to avoid overloading a single access point.

"Up until now, a lot of the work was--I wouldn't say haphazard--but there was a lot of guess work," Bowman said. Nortel had been developing its own planning software since its launch of the mesh line last October, but abandoned the project after learning about Wireless Valley's more robust software. The kit essentially uses satellite photography augmented with data about building height and other obstacles to create a 3D map of a campus or city. An engineer can then place access points throughout the map and see the different configurations of coverage and transport capacity that would result in different types of deployments.

Wireless Valley officials said that the software has no upper limit as to the size of the deployment it can handle, scaling up to metro city deployments with access points number in the thousands. The software has already been used in some of Nortel's deployments, but the vendor would not reveal which ones.

Since launching its mesh line, Nortel has landed several notable contracts, the biggest one being with the city of Taipei in Taiwan for a network numbering more than 10,000 radios. The city of Richardson, Texas, today announced it would deploy Nortel's mesh gear in its telecom corridor north of Dallas.

Wi-Fi vendor Colubris announced two wins to supply Wi-Fi networks in the Boston area, The city of Boston is launching a municipal Wi-Fi network designed to provide free access for residents and business. Colubris won portions of the network in the West Roxbury and Roslindale neighborhoods.