Case Studies

CENTERPLEX

The Challenge:

Located in the heart of the Seattle-Tacoma high-tech corridor, Centerplex is a 12-year-old developer of innovative office buildings catering to the needs of small businesses. High-speed Internet access and "virtual offices" are among the many services developed by Centerplex to create a full-service, high-tech environment for its diverse clientele. Centerplex has deployed a shared network in each of its buildings, allowing even a one-person consulting firm or startup operation to benefit from the optical bandwidth resources. Its challenge was to cost-effectively provide high-bandwidth connectivity for clients in four separate buildings, some nearly a mile apart.

The Solution:

Centerplex's telecommunications provider, Time-Warner Telecom, suggested LightPointe's optical wireless solutions because they could provide optical bandwidth at a fraction of the cost of laying fiber. LightPointe's Flight™ Optical Wireless family reliably connects the buildings, providing the bandwidth as well as the flexibility to handle a planned upgrade to an IP-based voice network.

To make it all work, Centerplex wanted a transparent 100 Mbps network connecting all of the buildings. While it investigated different options, none seemed viable. Laying fiber — even across the street to connect the two buildings separated by 200 meters — was cost-prohibitive, checking in at nearly $20,000. Pricing for laying fiber nearly a kilometer was astronomical. RF-based systems could provide the bandwidth and the distance, but at costs that made them even more difficult to justify than fiber. And since a key requirement was to get everything up to 100 Mbps, Centerplex quickly recognized that any RF wireless solution that goes that fast was out of their price range.

Centerplex also worried about the possible affect of Seattle's vaunted weather, particularly the fog. But LightPointe's proprietary FlightNavigator™ software was able to create a weather model for the area, providing Centerplex with detailed information about fog patterns, and how they would impact the performance of LightPointe's optical wireless product.

In November, Centerplex installed FlightSpectrum™ 155 links on the rooftops of the two buildings a kilometer apart. The FlightSpectrum features a unique four-beam system that dramatically improves reliability over longer distances and provides service provider performance. Complete installation took only three days.

Sound Byte:

"The same speed everywhere . You can get to anything, anywhere in any of our four buildings without having any difference in speed and performance. I'm sold on the reliability and efficiency of LightPointe's optical wireless solutions."
— Jarod Wilson, Centerplex Information Technology