Muni Wireless In Action on Long Island

The Town of Smithtown on Long Island is saving $5000 per month by converting to a combination wireless and VPN network for their intra and internet needs.  We performed this installation partnered with NPA Computers of Holbrook, NY.  A logical diagram of the connections is shown here. The network that we created for them replaces a hub and spoke Frame Relay net that couldn't support their current need for internet access at each of the town offices, and the increased intranet bandwidth required by new applications and internal files.  In downtown Smithtown, we created a wireless intranet by using 20 Megabit/sec 5.8 GHz Motorola Canopy Backhaul links between the Town's main data center and several other buildings.  Somewhat ironically, we had to mount one of the Canopy units on an existing radio tower to get over the Verizon central office that stands in between two of the buildings.  Each location has Business Class Optimum Online from Cablevision, which provides between 5 and 10 Megabits download capability and 1 meg upload.  In the Town Campus, we also use the BCOOL links for a set of tunnels that backup the wireless, so that if a lightning strike takes out a link, the system fails over to the VPN tunnel, and reverts back to the higher capacity link when the link is fixed.  We get about 5ms latency on the Canopy links, and 35-40 ms latency on the VPN links.

The rest of the offices are connected to the intranet via IPSEC VPN tunnels.  The total project price was under $100K.  The town owns a very tall tower at the Highway department offices, and if we had used that tower, we probably could have connected the entire town, but this was a pilot project, and after a couple of years of operation, we will revisit things and possibly expand the wireless portion of the network.

It is not a public access network, but is an example of the potential of muni wireless to save governments' money and increase their capabilities.