Routers with Voice/Fax connections suitable for use at VSAT sites

The information here on this page is about a range of routers available from WiredSkies.  These routers go between your satellite modem and your local LAN and additionally provide sockets for normal analogue phones or fax machines to be directly plugged in.  Phone and fax calls may be made via WiredSkies company servers, using voice coding and packet protocols that achieve higher efficiencies than most VoIP.

Read more: http://www.wiredskies.com/SkyWire-Satellite-Routers_ep_55.html

These devices are plug and play and come pre-configured when ordered.

The SkyWire routers connect directly to the ethernet ports your satellite modem, such as an iDirect, Comtech, Hughes, etc.

All your local LAN computers then connect to the Ethernet ports (up to 32 sockets depending on model) on the SkyWire. Phones or fax machines may be plugged directly into the Skywire router, using analog phone ports (standard RJ-11).

Service:  Phone voice and fax service and web traffic compression is provided by the WiredSkies company.  Packets you send and receive go via that companies' equipment.  Note there is no need to have matching equipment at your VSAT hub site.

Bandwidth optimization is achieved through a combination of methods.

The voice traffic uses the speex voice codec adjusted to provide a quality similar to G711. A proprietary protocol is used to carry the voice traffic which not only handles the jitter and latency on a satellite link, but actually becomes more efficient with each additional, simultaneous call. For example, it is possible to carry 14 simultaneous calls (14 lines) with only 128 kbps of bandwidth or approx 9.1 kbit/s per call.

Web traffic is optimized by a combination of altering TCP properties and most dramatically by providing a very aggressive, network-wide web cache with over 60Gbytes of storage capacity. The SkyWire router actually saves a copy of every web page that every user connected to it has viewed. Then, when another user goes to visit that site, it is pulled directly off the SkyWire router rather than going across the satellite link. This not only conserves satellite bandwidth, but makes the user experience much faster. From experience with units in the field an average of about 40% reduction in bandwidth consumption has been observed where the use is primarily internet web browsing.

DNS queries run faster as there is a DNS server on the SkyWire router. It caches all DNS requests so that when a computer is doing DNS resolution, it is happening locally and not waiting for the satellite link.

There is a comparision table showing the features of the different models here: http://www.wiredskies.com/SkyWire-Features-Comparison_ep_61.html

SkyWire Lite:  Model SWL 200
Cost effective option for fax and voice over satellite.

Skywire Pro: 4 LAN ports and up to 8 RJ-11 phone/fax sockets.
 Models: SWP-100, SWP-200, SWP-400, SWP-800

SkyWire Enterprise: Top of range convergence router with gigabit ethernet, optional fiber optics, and support for up to 24 phone & fax lines.
Models:  SWE-100, SWE-800, SWE-1600, SWE-2400.