Architecture of Satellite Internet for Asia-Wide Digital Communications

Abstract

This paper describes the network architecture of an Asiawide satellite Internet that considers the situations in developing regions. The design considerations for the architecture are costs, effective use of satellite bandwidth, scalability, and routing strategy when combined with terrestrial links. The architecture includes using one-way shared satellite links to reduce costs, IP multicast to leverage the broadcast nature of satellite links, QoS, audio-video application gateway to adapt to the limited bandwidth of satellite links. This architecture is implemented in an operational network testbed connecting 13 countries and supporting a distance learning project.

A Scalable Network Architecture for a Large-scale Uni-directional Link

“…It is natural to think that a large number of receivers exist on UDL due to the broadcast nature of the link. The typical usages of an operational B-BMA over a satellite UDL in Asia 2) are, for example, (1) realtime video and audio communication for small multicast groups, (2) one to many data transfer or streaming, and (3) broadband Internet access. The user terminals tend to be large and fixed because they include a receive-only earth station.…”