Ka or Ku Band??? Canada

Given the rain fade preventative measures employed in both Ka- and Ku-, the frequency band you pick should not matter. What you need to look at is the provider, specifically which one has
a) the right subscription plan to fit your corporate needs
b) the best support specific to those needs.
And based upon those stated needs, I don't think you should waste a single second considering consumer or home office plans.

Based upon what I read, HughesNet (Ku) beats Wildblue (Ka) - in the USA that is - relative to small business and enterprise solutions. Having said that however, I'm not familiar with what sort of business plans XploreNet may have up your way.

//greg//

I think you have to look closely to see what is involved with the Hughes "VPN Accelerator."  

What I believe is happening is that Hughes is OEM'ing the Mentat/Packeteer solution that places client software on the PCs in order to provide TCP Acceleration prior to the encryption.  I could be wrong, but as the product is described it seems to be a solution designed for IPSec clients, not for PCs that are placed behind an IPSec VPN appliance.  

In your application, as you've described it, you have a VPN appliance, not VPN client software on the PCs.  Thus I don't think the "VPN Accelerator" is going to provide you with any advantage over the negative effects of satellite latency on VPNs.  

The problem with VPNs is that they disable TCP Acceleration and without it, throughput slows significantly.  You'll generally get about 70 - 90 Kbps max (on the download) per TCP session, regardless of how much bandwidth is available.  You can tweak the TCP Windows to improve this a little, but not much.  The sessions will also be "sluggish."  

However, you pointed out that your primary use was for telnet.  The application where this VPN issue is of most concern is for interactive web-based applications.  Telnet is a character oriented application that may not be affected much.  Your bigger problem will be to make sure that you can support local echo, otherwise every character you type has to go to the data center and back before being displayed on your screen.  With satellite latency, that will be extremely painful.  However with local echo, you probably won't notice much difference.  Downloading will still be subject to the speed limitations but most telnet applications don't have a lot of large downloads.  So this may not be a big problem for you.

VPNs require a static IP address, or they will get messed up every time DHCP assigns you a new IP.  An iDirect-enabled service will probably be your best bet, but it will cost more than a HughesNet service.

What you might want to talk with your IT corporate folks about is whether there is an SSL-VPN option that will support your telnet application.  SSL-VPNs only encrypt the data and leave the TCP headers alone so that the built-in TCP Acceleration continues to operate properly.  This means running the VPN software as a client application on the PCs rather than using a VPN appliance, but it simplifies management and administration for the IT folks.  

One other option is to select a network operator who will place your VPN appliance in the teleport.  That means you transmit "in the clear" over the VSAT link, but your data is protected over the most critical part of the link - the Internet backbone.  It's quite difficult to eavesdrop on VSAT links, and they are at least as secure as Frame Relay or leased line connections.  So if you would normally run this application over Frame Relay without encryption, then the simplest solution may be to put the VPN appliance in the teleport.

Hope this helps,

Pat

Hello,


I wanted to introduce myself; my name is Stuart Guillot.  I am the Business Manager for the Oil and Gas Vertical at EMERGING MARKETS COMMUNICATIONS.  We are an End-to-End, Managed Satellite Service Provider with a focus on hard to reach areas, Africa, Middle East, Latin America and Asia.  We have over 700 installations in 140 countries and employ over 130 employees worldwide.  We own and operate two “world class” teleports in Europe and one in Hawaii, are an ISO 9001 Certified Company. 

We have plenty of bandwidth available and offer a complete all-inclusive service that includes all service and support at no additional charge.  If something breaks, we come and fix it free of charge and we only use our own employees not subcontractors. 

Please call or email for a quote: 


Best Regards,
Stuart A. Guillot
Business Manager, Oil and Gas Vertical
EMERGING MARKETS COMMUNICATIONS
sguillot@emc-corp.net

799 Brickell Plaza 8th Fl
Miami, FL 33131 USA
T.  +1 305.539.1358 x 232
F.  +1 786.425.0679
M. +1 786.303.2350

www.emc-corp.net