Navini Networks was a company that developed an

Internet access Internet access is a facility or service that provides connectivity for a computer, a computer network, or other network device to the Internet, and for individuals or organizations to access or use applications such as email and the World Wide ...

system based on

WiMAX Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) is a family of wireless broadband communication standards based on the IEEE 802.16 set of standards, which provide physical layer (PHY) and media access control (MAC) options. The WiMA ...

wireless communication standards. This access system was subsequently acquired by

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, m ...

in October, 2007.

Company

In January 2000, Wu-Fu Chen and Guanghan Xu formed Navini Networks and developed a wireless

system. The company was based in

Richardson, Texas Richardson is a city in Dallas and Collin counties in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 United States census, the city had a total population of 119,469. Richardson is an inner suburb of the city of Dallas. It is home to the Universit ...

and was privately funded by several investment-funds.Company Backgrounder
24 March 2003, retrieved via archive.org on 7 August 2011 In 2001 it was awarded the 'Start-Up of the Year' award by

KPMG KPMG is a multinational professional services network, based in London, United Kingdom. As one of the Big Four accounting firms, along with Ernst & Young (EY), Deloitte, and PwC. KPMG is a network of firms in 145 countries with 275,288 emplo ...

and in 2002 it won some national and regional prizes. Between the formation and early 2003 it attracted $66.5 million from private investors and employed 130 employees. When it was sold in October 2007 for $330 million to

, Navini had 70 customers.NetworkWorld
Cisco buys in WiMax..
23 October 2007. visited 7 August 2011 A Navini customer would be an

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, no ...

providing wireless Internet access, mainly in areas where there are only limited wired alternatives available (such as

Docsis Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) is an international telecommunications standard that permits the addition of high-bandwidth data transfer to an existing cable television (CATV) system. It is used by many cable televisio ...

access via a cable-TV network or

DSL Digital subscriber line (DSL; originally digital subscriber loop) is a family of technologies that are used to transmit digital data over telephone lines. In telecommunications marketing, the term DSL is widely understood to mean asymmetric di ...

via the telephone network).

Products

Navini developed a WiMAX wireless internet-access infrastructure consisting of two main parts: the central headend system with the special antennas and the RipWave modems or

customer premises equipment In telecommunications, a customer-premises equipment or customer-provided equipment (CPE) is any terminal and associated equipment located at a subscriber's premises and connected with a carrier's telecommunication circuit at the demarcation po ...

The Navini products offered a non line-of-sight wireless access system. The popular

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...

systems require an unobstructed ''view'' between the antenna of the transmitter and the receiver for a good reception of the signals: when the view is obstructed the signal strength decreases and the reach of the signal is very small. By using a technique called

spot beam A spot beam, in telecommunications parlance, is a satellite signal that is specially concentrated in power (i.e. sent by a high-gain antenna) so that it will cover only a limited geographic area on Earth. Spot beams are used so that only Earth stat ...

ing, normally used in satellite communications, it was possible to use radio-signals on frequencies that would normally require an unobstructed path between the transmitter and receiver or high-power transmitters. A Navini system consists of one management-system, one or more base-systems and the user-modems or ''customer premises equipment''.

Ripwave EMS

At the heart of a Navini-based internet access system is the EMS or Element Management System. The EMS is a

network management system Network monitoring is the use of a system that constantly monitors a computer network for slow or failing components and that notifies the network administrator (via email, SMS or other alarms) in case of outages or other trouble. Network monitori ...

and can manage one or more base-systems. The EMS is a server application to manage the base-systems and end-user equipment. The Navibi EMS is a

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

based IP-network management system and could run on a

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

SUN The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

server platform using

SNMP Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an Internet Standard protocol for collecting and organizing information about managed devices on IP networks and for modifying that information to change device behavior. Devices that typically su ...

.Former Navini websit
EMS System
archive.org, retrieved: 7 August 2011

Base System

The base system is the head-end equipment to which users within the reach connect to. A base-system can be compared to a base system or GSM-mast in a

cellular telephone network A cellular network or mobile network is a telecommunications network where the link to and from end nodes is wireless and the network is distributed over land areas called ''cells'', each served by at least one fixed-location transceiver (suc ...

. The central system consisted of an indoor unit and an outdoor eight element antenna system.Former Navini websit
Ripwave BTS system
internet archive, retrieved 7 August 2011 A single BTS could allow up to 1000 end users connected to it. An end-user could connect to different base-systems, depending on which station gave the best connection at that time, but it wasn't possible to 'hop' from one BTS to another without losing the connection: the system wasn't designed for mobile communication. The Ripwave system is based on the

TD-SCDMA The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a 3G mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. UMTS uses wideband code-division multiple access (W-CDMA) radio access technology to offer greater spectral efficiency ...

technology and one of the founders of the company, Dr. Xu, wrote the initial drafts for this standard.Ripwav
technology
on former Navini website, retrieved 7 August 2011 The RipWave system was one of the first land-based systems for private use that uses spot-beaming to realise the non-line of sight connection between the CPE and the BTS. Spot-beaming is used in satellite communications to ''aim'' a signal from a satellite to a specific area and so increase the signal-strength in that area. Originally the base-station was sold as the RipWave MX8 system but after the acquisition of the company by Cisco the base-systems were sold as Cisco BWX 8300 series until it was marked as End of Life in 2008. The MX8 was a Navini

proprietary protocol In telecommunications, a proprietary protocol is a communications protocol owned by a single organization or individual. Intellectual property rights and enforcement Ownership by a single organization gives the owner the ability to place restricti ...

. It was followed up by BWX2300 WiMAX certified systems.

Customer premises equipment

To get access to a Navini WiMAX base-system the customer uses a special radio-transceiver: the ''customer premises equipment'' or CPE.
The Navini CPEs or modems introduced since September 2007 are based on the

IEEE 802.16 IEEE 802.16 is a series of wireless broadband standards written by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The IEEE Standards Board established a working group in 1999 to develop standards for broadband for wireless metropo ...

standard. The old modems, sold as BWX100 systems, are EOL from 18 September 2009. A CPE consists of a ''modem'', which is in reality a radio transceiver, and has a built-on antenna. To improve signal-quality it is possible to connect an external antenna to the modem. The Ripwave CPE uses an

active antenna An active antenna is an antenna that contains active electronic components such as transistors, as opposed to most antennas which only consist of passive components such as metal rods, capacitors and inductors. Active antenna designs allow antenn ...

. Although the Ripwave technology doesn't support the active

handover In cellular telecommunications, handover, or handoff, is the process of transferring an ongoing call or data session from one channel connected to the core network to another channel. In satellite communications it is the process of transf ...

of a ''call'' from one base-station to another (such as in cellular networks) it does support ''nomadic'' use: a CPE isn't fixed to a specific base-station: if the provider allows it, a CPE connect to any base-station in their network or even allow connections from modems of another ISP's.Description of th
Ripwave CPE
archive.org, retrieved 7 August 2011

High costs

Worldwide there were 70 deployments. One relative early example in Europe was the Dutch ISP Introweb who were planning to offer wireless broadband internet access in rural areas in The Netherlands. The Dutch incumbent telco

KPN Koninklijke KPN N.V. (Royal KPN N.V. in English), trading as KPN is a Dutch List of telephone operating companies, telecommunications company. KPN originated from a government-run postal, telegraph and telephone service and is based in Rotterda ...

had announced that they wouldn't roll-out

in these rural areas and the cable-companies like UPC and

Ziggo Ziggo Holding B.V. ( ) is the largest cable operator in the Netherlands, providing digital cable television, Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers. History The company is the result of the merger between ...

had stopped upgrading their cable-TV networks to offer

after the dot.com collapse of 2001. To offer 'always on' broadband internet this ISP was going to deploy the Navini product range on large scale. While the network was being built, KPN changed their plans and upgraded their entire network so they could offer DSL in the whole country (including the rural areas Introweb was targeting with the Navini systems) and the cable TV operators also continued expanding their Docsis coverage. The costs of a Navini-based connection was much higher than a DSL or Docsis connection and Introweb could not compete with DSL or Docsis on both price and speed. Introweb subsequently went bankrupt.Tweakers.ne
Introweb requests bankruptcy
(Dutch), 28 September 2005. Visited 29 March 2012

References

External links

* {{web archive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050216044010/http://www.navini.com/, title=Official website 2000 establishments in Texas 2007 disestablishments in Texas American companies established in 2000 American companies disestablished in 2007 Broadband Cisco products Cisco acquisitions Computer companies established in 2000 Computer companies disestablished in 2007 Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies Metropolitan area networks Network access Wireless networking