In recent years technological evolution has made it possible to develop portable meshed VSAT networks (PMVN). Among the distinguishing features of this satellite network family we can cite the following: portable terminals, direct connectivity is allowed between any pair of network nodes (meshed topology), the network may comprise a high number of terminals, the network is intended to offer low rate voice and data communication services. For this satellite network family, the most widely used technique of resource allocation is centralized allocation. But in any network with a high number of nodes, the dependence on a single resource is a potential bottleneck of the network, in terms of flexibility, reliability and scalability of costs. In order to avoid this drawback, two distributed access algorithms are proposed in this paper. Both algorithms are based on carrier sensing (CS). In order to evaluate their performance, a model for PMVNs is proposed. This model is used to study the behaviour of the conventional access technique (central allocation) and the proposed distributed algorithms. We conclude that the use of the proposed distributed algorithms is feasible with present technology, with a performance comparable to that of the central allocation algorithm, but with the advantages associated with distributed algorithms concerning flexibility, reliability and cost.