Telecommunication networks are traditionally, wire-based. They depend wholly on their physical platforms, as well as providers for reliability. Providers of wire-based networks, historically, have been the national carriers -- in Nigeria, N1TEL. Many data networks have been built by the reallocation of old voice telephone lines. These antiquated voice networks, by design, are incapable of effective and efficient data communications. Statistically, they were built on 3-minutes per call usage estimates. However, the culture of Internet is radically different - session or "surfing-time" as it is known, on the average, runs into hours.

The scenario painted above, clearly, is not intended to ridicule wire-based networks or NITEL, rather, it is shade of light on a future catastrophe.

In a preemptive move aimed at avoiding this inevitable dilemma AfreeNET has designed and will implement an alternative network -- The Lagos Metropolitan Area Network (L-MAN).

LMAN is a wireless network designed to bridge and link organizations in the Lagos metropolis, at the fastest speed (1.5MB/s - E-l) ever, in the country.

Physical Network Architecture:
L-MAN is built primarily on a wireless topology utilizing spread spectrum radio in a point-to-multipoint configuration. The physical layer is combination of adapter cards and access points and radio antennas. Data exchange is made possible by transmission and reception between the cards and the access points in a down and uplink streaming.

Though wireless, L-MAN's open architecture, will support wire-line access - via Dial-Up Remote Access System (RAS).