VSAT Technologies

Satellite Technologies

Though we offer an array of options within satellite based networks, our larger customers opt for point to point - roof to roof - connectivity (instead of VPN type shared satellite connectivity).  This ensures the least latency physically possible providing efficient email, Internet, telephony (VoIP), Video Conferencing and above all efficient response for real-time systems such as required by Customer Relationship Systems, Air Traffic Control and ERP based business applications as well as remote IT support from centres of excellence.

Satellite Network Feasibility Studies

Satellite networks are usually implemented where landline networks are not available or are not consistently reliable. We investigate the customer requirements to ensure that the network is designed and specified to meet the particular demands of the business. Detailed below are some of the business and technical considerations we take into account when designing our clients’ networks

Business Considerations

Satellite is the resource for organizations that require reliable communication in remote areas such as found in Africa.

• Types of customer: Any business that requires a reliable, consistent high performance network, mainly in areas where terrestrial communications are non-existent or consistently unreliable.
• Types of Business Applications: Real time systems ie ERP, CRM’s, TPS, Remote technical support and other network demanding systems.
  Types of Traffic (Triple Play Services):  
  • Voice: high volume inter-branch calls and international calls - these calls are free inter-branch and attractively priced for international calls.
  • Video: Multimedia and video conferencing
  • Data: Batch file transfer, email, internet & real time traffic

Technical Considerations

• Point to Point:  Our services connect organizations to their operations, suppliers and customers in Europe, Middle East and Africa. The point to point satellite technology is a direct line of communication between 2 points and has the least points of failure, excludes multiple vendors inherent in a VPN type installation, thus becoming reliable, easy to manage and to maintain.
• Full Duplex: Our equipment has a dual circuit, one to transmit (TX) and one to receive (RX) which are completely independent of each other, and operate full duplex, meaning that sending and receiving at the same time does not use the same timeslot thus improving the communication speed.
• WAN Acceleration: The most well known WAN accelarators (Expand, Riverbed etc) work effectivelly and voice is not affected by those hardware devices and software.
• WAN Monitoring: Though we manage entire networks 365, our customers can also monitor their own network, including the satellite segments, using use their own monitoring software or accessing our monitoring systems.  We provide satellite use statiscs per application if so required.
  Network Performance: We are well positioned to offer site to site or ”roof to roof” satellite connectivity, eliminting supplementary terrestrial land lines, thus enabling organizations that transmit large volumes of data or require fast response times for real-time systems to achieve the desirable performance.
• Importance of Latency: We are one of the few organisations that guarantee VSAT latency at a maximum of 750 milliseconds. Latency is the time that a beam of light takes to travel from the point of departure to the point of destination in a communications network. Communications satellites are about 36,000 above Earth making the distance to travel longer than terrestrial based networks. Thus in many instances it is critical not to add terrestrial lines to supplement satellite based networks to keep latency at its minimum and ensure adequate response times for business applications.
• Corporate Worldwide Networking: Satellite based Networks can be Hybrid, designed with a mix and match of VSAT topologies together with terrestrial WANs and LANs based on radio, surface and submarine copper and fiber cabling.
• Committed Information Rate (CIR): We are one of the few organisations that guarantee the agreed VSAT committed information rate (CIR).
• Supplementary Networks: When feasible, we complete the connectivity with supplementary terrestrial links - submarine cables (SAT3 & Seacom), Radio Frequency, Wimax, Wifi, Fibre and Copper.
• Satellite International Telephony: Customers may add telephony to their networks at no additional cost since our bandwidth is not shared by other customers. Thus customers can decide how to make use of their infrastructure for no additional cost. Over and above that we offer international calls at attractive rates through a facility in the United Kingdom. We provide a detail billing report including the telephone numbers called.
• Dish Antennas: Satellites communicate through dish antennas in terrestrial stations. The most common dishes have diameters of 0.9, 1.2, 1.8 and 2.4 meters determined by a diverse number of factors including the position of the antenna within the satellite footprint. Smaller dishes work well in the center of the footprint where the signal is strongest and larger dishes are needed as the stations move towards the perimeter of the footprint as the signals weakens.
• Bandwidth Pooling: Our bandwidth is dedicated to a customer, on a dedicated satellite frequency.  This bandwidth can be shared by the multiple sites of the customer.  We allocate and guarantee a minimum bandwidth to each service, application, site or customer. The sum of this bandwidth are then placed in a pool and available to every service, application, site or customer when not in use. It is practically impossible that every user is accessing data at the same time and instance and therefore users end up having more bandwidth than that contracted for.  However at peak times when most users are accessing data the extra bandwidth is not available and the systems will slow down as opposed at off-peak times. It is not advisable for applications that required fast and consistent response times.
• Satellite Services: Our products and services are flexible to accommodate our customers’ requirements on Satellite based networks, namely mesh, point-to-multipoint, point-to-point and broadcast for data connectivity, Internet services, Voice and fax applications, desktop and high quality video/multimedia.
• Our services support most if not all customers’ business applications with:
  • Interconnection of LANs
  • Internet access/e-mail connections
  • Desktop video conferencing
  • Multimedia communication networks
  • Interconnection of PBXs and telephone/fax service
  • Rapid file transfer
  • Client server applications
  • Coupling of X.25 network nodes
  • Emergency backup communication facilities
  • Coupling of CAD/CAM applications
  • Training systems
  • Broadcast applications
  • Group ware workflow solutions
  • Decentralized database access
  • Mobile and static satellite sites.