Most companies develop their private wide area networks to interconnect the network of the remote offices with the main computer center. While data communications is the primary use of VSAT, there are companies that require internal telephone network for inter-office communications.
Corporate communications can be divided into the following categories:
Interactive applications
The interactive applications can be based on centralized or distributed concept. In a centralized system, all terminals in the offices operate "on-line" and communicate intermittently with the host or servers at the data center. These include client-server applications and Web-based intranet applications. In a distributed system, each remote office has terminals linked to its local host or servers. The servers then communicate with each other in a Wide Area Network (WAN). Besides real-time data applications, our VSAT network supports two-way voice capability for telephone or facsimile. Remote offices can make phone calls to each other or to the central headquarters, bypassing the local public phone network.
File Transfer
These applications send a large amount of data in one transaction. These include the use of the TCP/IP File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to transfer files and the printing of large reports.
File Broadcast
A recent file transfer application requires support of file broadcast or IP multicast. These applications send the data to multiple sites in one transaction. Typical applications include audio and video broadcast, distance learning, data distribution, and software updates. A VSAT network is inherently broadcast in nature. Thus a VSAT network naturally and efficiently support these new broadcast applications. Using a VSAT network, a large file can be distributed to hundreds of sites simultaneously. Our VSAT network supports IP multicast, which improves broadcast performance even more.