five questions you need to ask your teleport operator

VSAT Systems addresses the need of Internet, technology and networking companies looking to provide satellite Internet or expand their service offerings but are not ready to make the multimillion dollar infrastructure commitment to become a Tier I Satellite ISP and Teleport Operator.

Choosing the right provider is probably the most important factor critical to your business. After all, most of the promises you make to your customers are greatly dependent upon the backbone provider. Here are five important questions you should be asking your provider before partnering with them:

1. Does the operator have non preemptible space segment on the satellite(s) they operate?

Satellite broadband providers lease space-segment from satellite operators such as Intelsat and Telesat and use it to provide service to their customers. They could also provide a part of this bandwidth to their VARs and VNOs. However, space-segment is not only a limited commodity, it is expensive, too. It can cost upwards of tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars a month to lease this space segment. This high cost prevents many satellite Internet providers from purchasing non preemptible transponder capacity.

Preemptible bandwidth means that the satellite operator has the option of denying access to this bandwidth in case of an equipment failure, special requests from the government during emergencies or if some other provider is willing to pay the non-preemptible premium. Although this is a rare occurrence, it essentially puts your business at risk if a disaster strikes and the bandwidth is available only to the government and the providers who paid the premium. It is a bigger risk if you are a reseller or a VNO or if you have customers using the service for disaster response and business continuity applications.

2. Are you a Tier-1 operator?

If you are a company looking to enter the satellite Internet market as a VAR/VNO, partnering with a Tier 1 operator is almost a pre-requisite. A Tier 1 operator is basically a technology backbone provider, essentially a teleport operator and a bandwidth wholesaler. The following are the hallmarks of a Tier 1operator:

• Non preemptible satellite space segment
• Teleport infrastructure
• NOC infrastructure
• Dedicated tech support and engineering team

Because of the high start-up costs associated with being a Tier-1, operator many companies prefer to avoid these costs and use teleport facilities and transponder capacities of other companies or invest in poorly designed teleport and NOC infrastructure with no redundant equipment. This leads to network management and reliability issues such as oversubscription and outages.

Partnering with a Tier 1 operator gives you the confidence of meeting the promises you make to your customers. And assured connectivity when your customers need it the most.

3. How does your network overcome latency and jitter?

Latency is defined as the amount of delay measured in milliseconds that occurs in any round-trip data transmission. Latency is inherent in any Internet connection. It cannot be avoided, only minimized using a better managed network. Due to the physics involved in using a satellite link for data transmission, there is a latency of 500 ms for a round-trip transmission. This latency is much higher than terrestrial networks delays. This undesirable feature can negatively affect the performance of many business applications.

What sets apart one satellite ISP from another is the network induced latency (i.e. latency induced due to coding and processing delays). The most efficient satellite networks offer total latency of less than 600 ms (including both the physics component as well as the network induced latency). Figures as high as 1200-1700 ms across satellite networks is not uncommon and are due to the use of commercial-grade equipment coupled with poorly managed networks. While these levels of latency are acceptable for web browsing and basic Internet applications, it definitely does not work well for applicaitons such as VoIP, streaming video and high-bandwidth applications.

Jitter is defined as the fluctuation in latency and can often worsen the performance of networks, in some cases much more than latency itself. This is another consequence of oversubscribed networks.

Latency and jitter are key parameters used to assess the performance of a network and should be one of the first questions you should ask your operator.

4. What is oversubscription and how does it affect 'up-to' speeds?

Understanding the difference between the actual and the up-to speeds (which is often a lot) is extremely important. Satellite capacity is expensive and limited. If a situation demands allocating X capacity to Y subscribers, there are only so many ways to slice the bandwidth. If more subscribers are put into a given amount of capacity, each subscriber will receive less service. Cram enough subscribers into a given amount of capacity, and other problems begin building on themselves – almost like a feedback loop. Packets collide, contention at the hub increases, latency increases, jitter increases. None of these things are good from the end user perspective, but those are the consequences of networks that say "broadband anywhere" with no performance guarantees..

The up-to speeds are also affected by IP overheads which typically reduces the ‘up-to’ by 20 %. This, combined with oversubscription, drastically increases the gap between advertised up-to speeds and actual up-to speeds.

Oversubscription is also known as contention. A contention ratio of 20:1 means that up to 20 customers are sharing the same connection. When the traffic is low during off-peak hours, contention does not pose a problem. However, during peak times, the quality of the connection can significantly deteriorate realized speeds. For example, if all 20 users are using an up to 512kbps download speed broadband service at the same time, your access speed is reduced to about 26 kbps. In reality, this event is a rarity and would not significantly affect low bandwidth applications giving leeway for providers to oversubscribe networks. Most of the time, a user would be able to connect to 60% - 80% of the top speed.

5. Do you offer CIRs?

One thing to look out for while choosing a provider or a partner is whether they provide CIRs (Committed Information Rates) for their plans and services. As oversubscription is common across the industry, most satellite ISP providers provide only ‘up to’ speeds on their service plans and generally do not provide Committed Information Rates (CIRs).

CIRs provide a floor for the upload and download speeds ensuring guaranteed speeds even during peak times. In the satellite Internet world, CIRs act as guarantees against oversubscription and slow speeds at peak times.