MALVERN, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Rajant Corporation, the pioneer of Kinetic Mesh Networks and provider of pervasive, multi-frequency wireless solutions, today introduced a major new release of InstaMesh, the company’s proprietary routing technology, as well as its BC|Commander network management software. With a broad range of new and enhanced features that improve functionality, performance, security and utility, the release effectively transforms the way wireless mobile broadband networks are used and managed.
Users of Rajant networks in the oil & gas , mining , military ,first responder , railroad, municipalities , service provider and telco markets, will benefit from significantly enhanced ability to quickly and securely configure networks, support new devices (including recently introduced BreadCrumb® models ME4 and JR2, and ensure optimal performance and availability.
InstaMesh is the advanced routing protocol developed by Rajant that powers Kinetic Mesh Networks. It allows for continuous and instantaneous routing of wireless and wired connections, and enables complete network mobility, robust fault tolerance, high throughput and low latency – all with minimal maintenance and administration. BC|Commander is used to monitor the status of Kinetic Mesh Networks formed using Rajant BreadCrumb wireless network nodes and InstaMesh routing technology.
Among the new features and improvements to InstaMesh are the following:
- Tactical Multicast – A dynamic method of multicast suitable for highly mobile, highly volatile, mesh networks, Tactical Multicast minimizes the number of packets rebroadcast across the network – eliminating over-air congestion and associated failure, while maintaining reliability. New BreadCrumb API (BCAPI) – The foundation for Kinetic Mesh Network applications development, The BCAPI allows customers to develop their own applications to enhance network utility. By supporting multiple languages, BCAPI empowers users to customize their network experience with a variety of mobile apps – including those for Android devices.
- Enhanced APT Functionality – Unique to Rajant networks, APT enables integration with other networks to enhance extensibility and reliability by allowing Rajant networks to utilize other best-of-breed wired and wireless network technologies to extend mesh technology and provide multiple ingress points into a customer’s wired network. APT links now have the same quality measurements that wireless links had in previous releases. This allows the use of more complex wired networks. APT now supports a failover without fallback capability, and failover is now faster. As soon as APT peer BreadCrumbs lose contact with the APT master, they will immediately reconnect to the new APT master.
- Tactical Radio Over Internet Protocol (TRoIP) – Support for Rajant’s TRoIP device, a wearable USB BreadCrumb-headset combination that brings robust push-to-talk voice connectivity to BreadCrumb network nodes without the need for a server. Using TRoIP, users on a Rajant network can leverage real-time voice conferencing without the need for additional equipment, land lines, or cellular coverage.
- 802.11n Support – Improves upon the previous 802.11 standards in a number of ways, including higher throughput.
Highlights of new features and improvements to v11.2 of BC|Commander include the following:
- Bulk configuration of Rajant BreadCrumb network nodes – Network admins can now select any number of BreadCrumbs and configure shared settings simultaneously. This capability can substantially reduce the time required to configure a network. Additionally, customers can import and export complete or partial BreadCrumb configurations, allowing a 'configuration by template' approach.
- Improved performance and customizability due to the BCAPI – Gives customers ability to create their own tool-chain to augment Rajant out-of-box functionality. This new functionality makes it possible for applications developed by other customers could potentially be available through a development community.
- Visualization – Abstract visualization of Kinetic Mesh Networks is improved in both breadth and scope in v11.2, with many more ways to visualize a network. The expanded topology view enhances administrators’ abilities to visualize the relationships between network nodes.
- Troubleshooting – Rajant’s internal mesh analysis tools are now available to customers and fully integrated with BC|Commander, enabling detailed network analysis and report generation. Reports can be saved in PDF format, and include a network snapshot to be circulated for analysis. Snapshots can then be viewed and analyzed offline in BC|Commander for advanced troubleshooting capability.
In addition to these features, the new release includes many additional ease-of-use, security, display and configuration improvements over previous versions.
- Mapping – Live, GPS-positioned mapping enhances the user’s ability to leverage topology and mapping to solve network problems – making visualizations more interactive and enabling configuration through the mapping interface. This unique Rajant capability supports both online mapping solutions like MapQuest or Google Maps as well as the importing of customer’s own maps. The live tile set provides both satellite view and street view. Users can take non-GPS nodes and plot them anywhere on the map, and get accurate GPS coordinates – reducing the potential for error in manually entering GPS coordinates.
- Enhanced Security – Multiple cryptographic options are available for BreadCrumb-to-BreadCrumb communication, allowing users to balance security with performance needs. Also new in v11.2 is MAC address encryption, in which the original source and destination addresses of the original Ethernet messages are encrypted to provide greater security. Additional cryptographic options include support for multiple algorithms for both mesh authentication and encryption.
“This release is the culmination of 18 months of development work, and reflects the valuable input of our customers, support staff, and technical specialists – the people who work with Kinetic Mesh Networks on a daily basis,” said Rajant CTO Paul Hellhake. “This release provides new levels of functionality, utility and ease of use that fundamentally change how Kinetic Mesh Networks are deployed, configured, maintained and supported.”
InstaMesh and BC|Commander – Delivering the Power of Kinetic Mesh Networking
BreadCrumb network nodes with InstaMesh enable voice, video and data communications over a common wireless infrastructure – even while all nodes are moving. In addition to providing true mobility, InstaMesh enables dynamic frequency utilization – allowing network nodes to seamlessly switch between available radio frequencies based on best-path analysis at the node level. Multi-frequency radios avoid frequency lock-in and provide operators greater flexibility to leverage additional frequencies.
Operating on Microsoft Windows or Linux workstations, BC|Commander establishes secure, encrypted links to each BreadCrumb node, providing point-and-click configuration, RF status for mesh and client links, wireless client display, and a real-time view of network topology. Client link security can also be configured up to WPA2-Enterprise through BC|Commander administrative tool to provide a graphical view of the entire BreadCrumb network.
Rajant’s solutions are based on the proven Rajant BreadCrumb® wireless, portable mesh networking nodes and InstaMesh software, which enable continuous and instantaneous routing of wireless and wired connections. This dynamic frequency utilization capability allows for total network mobility – Kinetic Meshing – as well as robust fault tolerance, high throughput and low latency.
The range of applications supported by Kinetic Mesh Networking is virtually unlimited – from remote monitoring and equipment conditions to voice and data communications and video security.
About Rajant
Rajant Corporation enables secure communications-on-the-move through a portable meshed wireless network that can rapidly reconfigure and adapt in real-time. Rajant's BreadCrumb® Wireless solutions provide networks for Military, Mining, Oil & Gas, Homeland Security, First Responders, Railroads, Telecommunications Service Providers and Public Safety and provide voice and data communications across a meshed, self-healing network. Rajant’s BreadCrumb network nodes communicate with IP based client devices such as laptops, PDAs, video cameras, satellite terminals, networked radios, RFID’s and sensor devices. Please visit www.rajant.com or call (484) 595-0233.
