Depending on the particular installation conditions, Motorola's PTP 600s can easily supplant a Fast Ethernet link between buildings. Enterprises that need high levels of unlicensed wireless performance or are operating in difficult installation environments and can afford the per-pair price of $19,995 won't go wrong with this system.
Proxim Tsunami.GX 90 AND GX 200
Longtime Network Computing readers may remem- ber Proxim from the early days of our enterprise WLAN infrastructure coverage. Over the years, Proxim's focus has shifted from the enterprise WLAN market toward wireless P2P and point-to-multipoint gear for both carriers and enterprises. Today, Proxim sports an extensive portfolio of backhaul radios to meet the needs of a variety of consumers.
The Tsunami.GX series represent Proxim's carrier-class product portfolio. Unique among the competitors in our review, Proxim's GX radios use FDD (frequency division duplex) rather than TDD (time division duplex) to create a transmit-and-receive channel. Each Tsunami.GX includes an outdoor radio unit paired with an indoor device that provides data interfaces and power. Both the GX 90 and GX 200 models offer T1, fiber optic and copper Ethernet interfaces for data connectivity.
The Tsunami.GX radios were the simplest ones of the group to set up; in fact, we just plugged them in and were able to start testing. Proxim says the Tsunami.GX radios are meant to act as transparent bridges, which explains why configuration is minimal. However, this philosophy also means Proxim does not include QoS in the Tsunami.GX series; the company says that QoS should be handled by the router or switch behind the radio. We can understand operating the Tsunami.GX radios in a FIFO (first in, first out) manner; however, we were puzzled that Proxim didn't include the ability to prioritize TDM traffic over IP, as Motorola does.
