Enterprise Case Studies

Transtel Supplies Voice Trunking and Remote Area Communications (Skylinx)

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 19:29:03 -0800

Transnet, the parent company of South-Africa-based Transtel, bills itself as a "transporter of people, goods and information." Holdings include railways, airlines for passengers and cargo, ports, road transport, pipelines, and highways for information as well.

Transtel is the information technology arm of the Transnet Group, running a telecommunications network with customers in 16 African countries and an annual turnover of about US$100 million. The network carries mostly voice traffic, with 50,000 subscribers, along with packet data including some Internet connectivity. The network is composed of fibre, microwave, mobile radio, and a satellite component. On the satellite side, Transtel is full service provider. Network design, installation, project management, integration, training and 24/7 network operations are available to its customers.

The satellite portion of the network, called Spacelink, is used mainly for international trunking of long distance telephone calls. About 300 sites are outfitted with ViaSat Skylinx and SkyRelay satellite terminals, with an IP overlay in some locations. A network operations and control hub is in Johannesburg, SA. Each site has a total of four to eight channel units, with seven or eight voice channels multiplexed into 64 kbps circuits.

In this part of the world, the wide-ranging locations within the network cannot be covered by a single C-band satellite footprint. As a result the ViaSat networking equipment operates on both PanAmSat 10 at C-band and Intelsat 704 at Ku-band. The Johannesburg hub includes both 11-meter C-band and 9-meter Ku-band antennas, also supplied by ViaSat.

Where VSAT is used, the key reason is the flexiblity of the system. Not only does it carry traffic even to remote locations, but it provides an infrastructure that can adapt wherever it goes.

"We can customize our network using the modular ViaSat VSATs," said Andre DuToit IT director at Transtel. "We can build the network and connections around the application. It also gives us a quick and affordable path to future upgrades as well."

That flexibility is illustrated by Transtel customers, including banks, railways, retail stores, other local telcos, and some civil and security networking. Traffic on the network is a mix of dedicated and demand assigned (DAMA) links, depending on the requirements of each customer. Telcos connect their voice traffic mostly by dedicated SCPC links that remain busy carrying phone calls, but some terminals operate in MCPC DAMA mode for bandwidth efficiency in circuits with more intermittent traffic. Banking customers use the opposite mix, with SCPC circuits for voice and DAMA for data. Retailers and the railways both use DAMA to connect remote locations to central databases.

Regulations continue to be a challenge in South Africa. Telkom SA, the terrestrial carrier is privatizing, but is still in control of local wireless landing rights. As a result Transtel must operate gateways in both London and Botswana. In those locations it brings the satellite traffic to the ground and then link it to the local network in South Africa by terrestrial means.

But with privatization and more liberal regulation coming, DuToit feels Africa is one market where VSATs have a long future. The low population density is ideally served by satellite, and for the same reason next generation spot-beam Ka-band systems will not penetrate the market for many years. To secure its place in the growing market, Transtel will be one of a group of companies forming a second network operator for South Africa. They will team with Esi-Tel, BEE, and one additional foreign equity partner.

Telespazio Highway System Video Surveillance (LinkWay)

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 19:20:36 -0800

Telespazio S.p.A., fully owned by Telecom Italia S.p.A., is a worldwide leader in provisioning of satellite services. The company is active in designing, installing, and managing rural networks integrating simplified cellular (wireless local loop) and VSAT technology.

Using LINKWAY 2000 VSATs from ViaSat Inc., Telespazio provides a reliable, bandwidth efficient Wide Area Network for monitoring highway traffic throughout Italy.

Telespazio's network consists of 65 terminals, Ku-band frequency on a EUTELSAT satellite, and medium resolution digital video cameras.

Telespazio evaluated various satellite products and technologies before selecting LINKWAY for its ability to reduce space segment consumption. LINKWAY frequency-reuse (or bandwidth-on-demand) features cut bandwidth use by as much as 40%. This efficiency proves to be important for Telespazio's network because each video monitoring station is active for only a very short period of time. During any one location's inactive periods, the spectrum is efficiently redirected to active sites. In this way, the total bandwidth requirement for the network is far less than if each site maintained a dedicated circuit whether it was transmitting or not.

The LINKWAY 2000 terminal is a cost-effective seamless extension for voice, data and multimedia networks. Advantages of using LINKWAY for highway monitoring include:

Ability to support multiple video sources per terminal; one multicast per terminal selected.
Individual video sources remotely controlled with Unicast IP (for pan, zoom, focus).
Multiple simultaneous multicasts per control group.
Multiple control groups and simultaneous multicasts.
Ability to switch video streams on demand using IP bandwidth-on-demand (multicast ramp down speed).
Multicast video streams over IP to aggregation sites for monitoring (Unicast IP allows database access of license plate information).
Flexible VSAT network that can operate in star, mesh or hybrid topology.
Operates with multiple carriers and data rates to fit application, and expand as needs grow.
Reed-Solomon error correction substantially reduces space segment power consumption.

Technocom Bridges Expanse of Russia with Terrestrial Overlay and VPNs (Skylinx)

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 19:18:14 -0800

Technocom - Terrestrial Overlay and Virtual Private Networks

In one moment the wide geographic expanse of Russia becomes obvious. It is 8 pm and 68°F in Moscow and 2 am and 32°F in Kharbarovsk. The country spans eleven time zones and everything from the deep freeze of the Arctic to mountains to coastal plains.

That kind of environment is the best argument for satellite communications. One service provider that recognized that opportunity was Technocom, a daughter company of UK-based St. Petersburg Telecom. Technocom wanted to supplement the network run by the national public carrier Ros Telecom. The new satellite network would be an overlay and also supply virtual private networks for businesses as well. As the authorized Intelsat signatory, Technocom would tie the new network into its three 18-meter Intelsat A stations and a 5 ESS switch in Moscow.

But Technocom still needed to select the right kind of satellite network to make its idea work on technical and business levels. After deciding that demand assigned multiple access (DAMA) was the right technology, the company began a competitive procurement process. A request for proposal went out to the leading DAMA vendors, including what at the time was the Satellite Telecommunications division of Scientific-Atlanta. Now part of ViaSat, it emerged as the best DAMA product in the Technocom bid.

The network was implemented with Skylinx satellite network terminals and satellite antennas, all from ViaSat. The network includes an 18-meter hub, 25 sites with 7-meter antennas, and another 45 sites using 4.5-meter reflectors. The Skylinx terminals are all DAMA-capable, but where it is called for, can operate in MCPC mode as well.

A combination of voice and data travels on the network from Western Russia to as far away as the city of Khabarovsk in the east, and into some other CIS countries as well. A total of 800 Skylinx channel units are included so far. Data speeds are up to 64 kbps. All traffic is carried at C-band frequencies and occupies a full transponder on Intelsat 604.

The network was a particular challenge for the installation team. Some of the earth stations must operate in extremely rugged environments and intemperate climates. The 18-meter Moscow hub was a large-scale integration project just by itself. Arriving in six sets of crates, the cargo had to be flown into Moscow in a special wide-body cargo plane. On-location in February, snow was cleared from the site of the foundation for the earth station pedestal. Once the base was complete, workers dressed in heavy weather suits were hoisted into the air by two cranes to build the framework and install the reflector panels to complete the massive structure.

"Through it all, there were never any issues or claims regarding our equipment," said Cisar Ladislav, the technical lead on the network for ViaSat. "We worked with the customer on some integration issues, but in the end made everything work together as promised."

Like most networks, Technocom would like to boost data throughput in the future. Fortunately Skylinx terminals are engineered to accept new channel cards to easily add new features. Technocom is considering an upgrade package that would include a move to Ku-band, enabling smaller, lower-cost antennas. But the key to the network upgrade would be the new Skylinx High Speed Channel Unit, that gives users data speeds up to 2 megabits-per-second. The most important advantage of the HSCU is that it can be added very quickly in a virtual "hot-swap", with almost no terminal reconfiguration and no interruption in service.

GCI Connects Inhabitants of Vast Alaskan Wilderness with Digital Communications by Satellite (LinkWay)

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 19:06:30 -0800

Just say the name "Alaska" and it conjures images of snow and wilderness. Though not all of the state is like that, most of it is, with sparse population and temperature extremes reaching to -60°F. The state features only three main centers of population, yet there are many people, living in villages in the wilderness areas, who want to be connected to modern schools, health care facilities, and long distance phone service.

Since 1982, GCI has been finding ways to provide those connections in Alaska. The company has grown to about 1,000 employees today, providing cable television and PCS wireless service in addition to satellite communications.

GCI's challenge is reaching remote regional centers, then connecting those sites with even more remote rural villages. Regional centers are typically located near coastal river deltas. These centers include school district offices, cultural centers, and the Regional Health Corporation, including doctors' offices and a hospital. One such center is the Native Village of Kotzebue. Originally called Qikiktagruk by the native I'upiats, Kotzebue is the hub of the 11-village Norwest Arctic Borough. About 7,600 people live in the area that covers about 36,000 square miles (93,000 sq km).

Located in northwest Alaska, 30 miles above the Arctic Circle on the Baldwin Peninsula, the area is bordered on one side by Kobuk Lake. The other side of the Peninsula, the side that the community where Kotzebue proper is located, borders the Chukchi Sea by way of Kotzebue Sound. Other major features of the area include the deltas of three large rivers, the Kobuk, Noatak, and Selawik, and mountain ranges on the mainland across from the peninsula collectively referred to as the Brooks Range, or the original names of Minumirauq and Qipaluq. There are no permanent roads to the rest of Alaska, or even to other villages in the borough, so transportation is by air.

"We're using more than 150 ViaSat LINKWAY 2100 VSATs for distance learning, telemedicine, and Internet return channels for these remote areas," said Andrew Rzeszut of GCI.

LINKWAY is a hubless VSAT system that enables cost-effective integration of a variety of applications into one network -- in mesh, star, or multi-star hybrid topologies. Adaptive on-demand bandwidth and advanced coding engineered into LINKWAY provide broadband connections efficiently and cost-effectively. Customers save transponder costs and connect seamlessly to networking applications using IP, ATM, Frame Relay, and ISDN protocols. All terminals are interoperable over C- or Ku-band fixed satellite services (FSS) satellites with fixed-beam, split-beam or cross-strapped configurations.

In the Kotzebue example, the distance learning application reaches 11 remote villages. Remote villages are using the communications to draw on the resources of the regional centers, which in turn are connected to the more populated cities of Juneau, Anchorage and Fairbanks. Though remote villages may have a few teachers, most likely they are not skilled in all subjects. Using the LINKWAY network, teachers located in Kotzebue who have specific expertise can reach out to more sparsely populated areas. Staff meetings and teacher training are other applications of the education portion of the network. GCI uses H.323 video conferencing equipment running at a rate of 384 kbps in both directions(combined voice and data rate) to deliver its distance learning services.

The telemedicine network includes email, database access for patient records, Web access, file transfer. VoIP, and a videoconferencing network. Doctors can consult with their patients "face-to-face," educate them on treatments and healthcare, and complete administrative tasks as well.

"In fact, some medical procedures have been conducted remotely via video teleconferencing between Kotzebue and the remote villages in the region," said Rzeszut. "One specific instance involved a child who suffered a facial injury in a 4-wheel ATV accident. Because it was after dark when the accident occurred, and the runway in the village wasn't lighted, the child couldn't be transported to Kotzebue until the following morning." Doctors in Kotzebue guided the medical clinician in this remote village through a procedure to stitch the child's cheek. The following day, the child was transported to Kotzebue for further medical treatment.

Prior to the more recent installation of LINKWAY, GCI selected ViaSat Skylinx VSATs to provide long distance phone service and private line voice throughout Alaska. Like LINKWAY, Skylinx provides full mesh connections, making it ideal for direct, single satellite hop connections between any two locations. Skylinx uses Single-Channel-per-Carrier (SCPC) and Demand Assigned Multiple Access (DAMA) technology, setting up calls as they are initiated, just like a terrestrial network circuit switch. DAMA networks can share a much smaller amount of satellite bandwidth than networks using dedicated circuits, taking advantage of the random and occasional nature of telephony traffic. The Skylinx network includes 139 remote sites.

Remote installations are typically an antenna, along with a small, climate controlled building housing the RF, transmit, and receive equipment. Gateway locations for tapping into Internet backbones or the terrestrial phone network use 13-meter antennas. Regional centers typically use 9-meter dishes, while remote villages use 3.6-meter reflectors. GCI services use C- and Ku-band transponders aboard the Galaxy 10R satellite. The networks are controlled from redundant, geographically diverse network management interfaces located in Anchorage and Issequah, WA.

For the future, GCI is going to be expanding its networks and look for ways to improve the bandwidth efficiency. Implemented already in the ViaSat ArcLight VSAT system, ViaSat-exclusive Paired Carrier Multiple Access (PCMA) combines both transmit and receive signals into the same bandwidth, to as much as double bandwidth capacity (or cut bandwidth use by half).

"One option that GCI is very interested in is looking at PCMA technology as a way to save satellite bandwidth for the fixed-assigned SCPC carriers in our network," said Rzeszut. "The PCMA 'hub canceller' may have possibilities if it could be offered as a stand-alone product."

National Distributing Business Continuity Assured (Managed Broadband Services)

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 18:55:30 -0800

Linking 16 locations nationwide is not an easy task. Just getting your everyday network in place is difficult enough, much less thinking about building a backup network as well. But every terrestrial network eventually falls to harsh weather, a stray backhoe or some other unexpected interruption. Network backup provisions need to be made and they need to be robust enough to keep a business humming, not just squeeze by with a minimal level of service.

That's the problem National Distributing Company had. As a billion dollar plus company and the third largest distributor of wine and spirits in the U.S., the company has 2,500 employees working out of 16 offices in nine states. All of them need connections to the home office in Atlanta, Georgia.

NDC uses Frame Relay for its primary communications network, and a series of leased ISDN lines behind that. The ultimate backup system was a bank of dialup modems. The modems were a bad match for the regular network.

"You had a network that was usually running at data rates between 128 and 512 kbps, trying to operate at 9600 bps," said John Dickson, network administrator for NDC. "And only six locations could communicate at once. So Dickson began investigating alternatives for business continuity. At first he looked at another copper path for backup, but that proved too expensive. The next step was to go to a non-terrestrial backup system, such as satellite. However, he quickly discovered that most, even those from leading vendors, were not going to supply enterprise-caliber levels of availability and reliability.

Eventually Dickson found his answer with ViaSat Managed Broadband Services (MBS), a turnkey, bandwidth-on-demand satellite service.

At NDC headquarters in Atlanta, five ViaSat MBS terminals are daisy-chained to form the hub. Each terminal contains one high-speed modem (at 128 kbps) and two low-speed modems (at 64 kbps). The outdoor equipment is a 2.4-meter antenna and 4-watt RF unit. Each remote site uses a single terminal as the interface to the backup network. The system has enough capacity to connect all sites with 64 to 128 kbps circuits.

"So now if any or all of the terrestrial connections go away, our Cisco routers automatically initiate a satellite call for a circuit," says Dickson. "The switchover is virtually seamless to the user and we are back up in seconds over the satellite, connected to Atlanta. Atlanta has our main servers and connection to the Internet backbone, so it's critical that they be connected to our headquarters there."

Customers like NDC pay for ViaSat MBS much like they would for a cell phone. The company pays a monthly fee per location that includes a monthly allocation of minutes, then pays extra per-minute for any overages. Dickson said he rarely surpasses the base minutes on his plan, even with monthly testing of the circuits. NDC chose to purchase its Immeon network hardware, but the option to lease is also offered.

Behind the scenes at ViaSat are a couple of things that bring the service its competitive edge. One is a 24/7 network operations center, located at ViaSat headquarters in Carlsbad, CA. The center monitors and controls all locations, commissions new sites, provides customer support, and ensures availability of the network. The other is use of ViaSat-exclusive Paired Carrier Multiple Access (PCMA). While most satellite transmissions require separate frequencies to transmit and receive, PCMA combines them into the same bandwidth. A terminal equipped with PCMA recognizes the signal that it sent and simply cancels out that information, leaving it with the information received from the transmitting location.

The bottom line is that PCMA can cut satellite bandwidth needs by as much as half. Along with the ability of ViaSat MBS VSATs to set up satellite circuits on-demand, that lowers the cost of service to levels that make it far more affordable than other satellite communications alternatives.

In fact, because of the affordability of ViaSat MBS, Dickson is exploring the possibility of using it for primary connections to carry lower priority traffic such as email. The service can provide comparable data throughput to Frame Relay and is a little cheaper for those applications, says Dickson.

Has the backup system paid off for National Distributing?

"There have been multiple instances since we installed the network, that the terrestrial connection has been interrupted either by a backhoe or weather," said Dickson. "Recently we had some very bad storms interrupt communications all over Jacksonville. But our ViaSat connections took over and we were processing requests just like normal."

MEERP - Disaster Recovery Network on VSATs (Skylinx)

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 18:35:26 -0800

Maharashtra is one of the largest states in India with 30 districts, and the state capital at Mumbai. The state has had two major earthquakes in recent history which caused great loss of life and property in small towns and villages. Being on the sea coast, disasters due to tidal movements and typhoons are also frequent.

After the tragic earthquake at Latur, Maharashtra became the first state in India to plan, design, and implement a dedicated communication network for disaster management. As part of the Maharashtra Emergency Earthquake Rehabilitation Programme (MEERP), the Maharashtra Disaster Recovery VSAT network was installed using satellite based communications technology due to the inherent advantage of satellites which are not affected by ground-related disasters.

Today, the MEERP network consists of a central Hub station in Mumbai, with a backup geographic redundant hub at Pune, and 37 remote stations distributed across the state. Each of the state's 30 districts has a VSAT terminal at its district headquarters. Six remotes are located at divisional Commissioner Offices in Nasik, Mumbai, Pune, Aurangabad, Nagpur and Amravati. Transponder space on Intelsat has been leased by VSNL to the state.

The MEERP Network financed by World Bank with the design details worked out by the customer and its consultant (MELTRON) was awarded to Global Wireless Technology Limited, with ViaSat Inc., USA as the lead supply partner.

The key requirement, met by the ViaSat Skylinx® product, was the geographic redundancy of the network, whereby the entire network would seamlessly work even in case of any emergency shutdown of the main hub at Mantralaya in Mumbai. In such a case, the Pune hub would automatically take over the control of the overall network. Besides this basic feature, the network was going to be used for the following:

Data applications, like maintaining these on-line records at the Mumbai Secretariat of each district-level transaction.
- Revenue and tax collections
- Computerized land records
- Agricultural inputs
- Commodity price movements
- Help in drought-prone areas
- Rural development programs
- Other general administration

These data applications would generally be using file transfers, email and certain basic record update software.

Mesh Voice and fax capabilities between the various district collectorate offices and with the Central Secretariat.

The network based on Skylinx DAMA equipment works on the Intelsat 804 satellite and is also amongst the first networks in India to operate on Ku-band. The network has capability to operate in full mesh architecture and in a Demand Assigned mode, which enables the frequency and power resources of the satellite to be used only when a caller initiates a voice or data call.

The Primary Hub at Mumbai houses the Skylinx SCPC DAMA equipment for voice and data traffic to the central site, as well as the NMS for monitoring and controlling the network. This NMS Server is fully aware of all the traffic in the network at any give point in time.

The Geo Redundant Hub at Pune is exactly same in configuration to the Mumbai hub. The servers at Pune get replicated with all the changes that occur at the master server at the NMS in Mumbai.

This fully standby hub at Pune provides full geographic redundancy for the main hub in Mumbai. If at all the Mumbai hub loses control of the network, all the functionality of the NMS would be switched over automatically to the hub at Pune. This switchover is seamless, without any break in the existing communication going on between the various locations. All new call requests automatically get handled by the Pune NMS. This ensures that there is absolutely no breakdown in communication in the network even in case of a disastrous situation at Mumbai.

The network is configured to accommodate 8 kbps voice carriers, data carriers at 64 kbps, and some video carriers at 384 kbps. All the applications work in the Demand Assigned mode, with the help of some unique features of the Skylinx system which allows for even the data and video calls being dialed on-demand.

The MEERP network with the help of National Informatics Centre (NIC) has been recently upgraded by ViaSat to the latest standards and features, thereby allowing for the latest functionality:

Remote maintenance by NIC from their Skylinx NMS in Delhi, providing further fall back for geo-redundancy
High speed internet data connectivity up to 2 Mbps via the Mantralaya gateway in Mumbai, using the Skylinx high speed modem enhancement
Option of multi-party videoconferencing

The MEERP network today enables voice, data, fax, file transfers and e-mail connection for any location to anywhere in the state. Videoconferencing between district collectors, divisional commissioners and secretariat headquarters is also available for general state administration.

The Maharashtra Disaster Recovery communications network is being used as part of an integrated, comprehensive disaster management program to forewarn the government of earthquakes, typhoons, floods and other such natural calamities. It also contributes to the coordination among hospitals, voluntary organizations, police, fire brigades and the government during post disaster relief and rehabilitation measures all over the state.

The MEERP Project is a very well conceived, planned and executed project; the first of its kind in India. The Disaster Management Plan for the state of Maharashtra thus emerges as one of the most comprehensive programs on the area of disaster management, managing disaster after-effects which impinge so greatly on human life and society.