Oceanside

Oceanside, the third largest city in San Diego County, is the home to over 175,000 residents and the next door neighbor of for the Marine Corps Base at Camp Pendleton. Three years ago, Michael Sherwood, the Chief Information Officer, recognized that there had to be a better way to connect the numerous City facilities into a Metropolitan Area Network other than expensive DS3 lines from the phone company.

Michael Sherwood contracted with Sun Wireless to undertake three initial site survey/engineering studies. Because of the challenging terrain, several repeater sites were needed to connect the first few locations. Today the MMAN (microwave metropolitan area network) consists of a 100 Mbps backbone which is currently being upgraded to 300 Mbps. Initially the network brought together the city’s two police stations, seven fire stations, seven water facilities, the command and operations center, city hall and the harbor master. Having the core infrastructure in place at strategically located positions throughout the city made bringing in other facilities more cost effective. Connectivity has now been expanded to include one senior center, two high schools, one life guard facility plus the local television station and code enforcement. All of the sites are being delivered at least 45Mbps of bandwidth.

Developing this entire network has not been without its challenges. Presently, there are nine repeater sites — one of which is solar powered. There are both licensed and unlicensed radios in the network. To overcome line-of-sight (LOS) issues and reflective paths, non-LOS radios have been employed. In terms of microwave hops, the City now has over thirty links forming its MAN. It is used for data, voice over IP and video over IP applications. Also, routed redundant paths and emergency generators aid in disaster recovery efforts.