Ordinance 2215-97 - Laserfiche WebLink

EXHIBIT A RICOCHET NETWORK DESCRIPTION RicochetTM is an innovative network that enables high speed, low cost, wide area access to on-line services, the Internet, LAN applications, and peer devices. Ricochet networks employ frequency- hopping, spread spectrum, packet radios, installed geographically in a mesh topology. Through a unique combination of Ricochet's wireless cloud and its wired backbone, digital information travels through the network at high speeds within a community, across a city, and from city-to-city. Ricochet wirelessly enables high speed, low cost access to peer-to-peer communications, on-line services, LAN's, and telephone modems. Ricochet packet radio repeaters [poletops] are shoe-box size and require low power levels; they can be simply deployed on street lights, utility pole-tops or roof-tops. These poletop radios support 100 kilobits per second (kbps) raw speed, typically provide between 10 to 45 (kbps) of continuous user throughput (depending upon software, hardware, and applications run), and are capable of burst user speeds to 70 kbps. Poletop radios are typically deployed in a cluster from one-half mile to two miles apart in a mesh topology. This mesh topology makes Ricochet extremely flexible and expandable. Each poletop radio constantly knows the identity of, location of(longitude and latitude), and its ability to communicate with other poletop radios within its range. In addition, each serves as an entrance or an exit to the network, so information packets can enter and exit the network at any poletop radio location. Once in the network, packets can "hop" around busy or non-functioning radios. Expanding coverage, increasing capacity, or achieving communications in dead spots is simply a matter of installing one or more additional poletop radios. Clusters of poletop radios are interconnected with a high-speed digital network running on a frame relay or a similar wired service. Information packets move from poletop radios to this high speed wired network through a Wired Access Point [WAP] that is located in the center of each cluster of poletop radios. A WAP consists primarily of radios to handle traffic to and from the cluster; a packet switch conversion computer to convert and route packets to and from wireline services; and a leased- line with high speed access to wireline packet switch services. The network is designed so that an information packet should require no more than two to three hops before reaching a WAP. Packets can move from a WAP in one city to a WAP in another City through Network Interconnection Facilities [NIFs], which control the movement of packets across Ricochet's wide-area-network. Information from an application will hop from a subscriber device to the nearest poletop radio, and then will hop from poletop radio-to-poletop radio, to WAP, to NIF until reaching its destination. Destinations may include another subscriber device, a public packet switched network (e.g., Internet on-ramp), on-line service, or LAN. Ricochet's subscriber device provides the final piece of a seamless wireless communications solution. Ricochet's subscriber device uses the HayesTM AT command set and is compatible with most popular applications. The current generation of subscriber devices is a portable radio modem that connects with a cable to the serial port of a computer or PDA. Because the modem is functionally equivalent to a poletop radio, portable modems can talk directly to each other without access to our mesh network. 17