SatSig topic:

ABS Satellite

(Read 4697 times)

Jul 24^th, 2009 at 8:15pm

Hi
What are the ASB line cards and how they will work .
What is the procedure when they in network and how they will communicate with all remote sites .

Jul 24^th, 2009 at 8:28pm

Not sure what you are asking. ABS is automatic beam selection (or switchover). Which doesnt apply to the Line cards.

Aug 27^th, 2009 at 1:10am

We're even using ABS for our failover in case our PCMA Cancellers stop working. Wink

Aug 27^th, 2009 at 1:21am

How are those PCMA cancellers working out for you? Any complaints?

Aug 27^th, 2009 at 6:39am

Ninh and Jason Choe hooked us up for sure. The only downside was the 70 to L conversion we had to do (I used the LBC-4000 Comtech converters) that got a little pricey. I rolled 2 networks on my C Band platform and our single network for our S2. All together, we saved about 21mhz. Seeing as we cannot get any more bandwidth out of intelsat on G18 (we have 11 transponders or so) it really saved us. Everything has been humming along pretty nicely. I even brought up your name and the forum to Ninh - he says hi Wink

If you guys have the cash to do it, the payoff for us was a no brainer.

Aug 27^th, 2009 at 12:04pm

Jason, is one of my reps (he calls me periodically to see if I am having any issues that need to be run up the flagpole, and such). He also combs over any tickets I have open (with my iDirect gripes and complaints). Glad to here the PCMA cancellers are working out for you. They are spendy (arent they about 90k per?)... but the savings on MHz will quickly line thru that initial investment. Where are you guys hub'ed out of? Is your NOC co-located?

Thanks for the feedback....

M

Aug 28^th, 2009 at 1:55am

We have 2 teleports here in Anchorage, Alaska. One is our C Band with a 13M Antenna going to G18 @ 123W .. Our other is a 9M for Ku band which is going to H1 @ 127W. We own both of our teleports, and they are for our customers only (though we do host a few other SCPC services for people). We are the largest communications provider in Alaska, so we have our hands full without taking on outside VNO's etc.

You'd have to call your rep on price (clinger is my rep) but I can say that even though it SEEMS expensive (we paid around 100k ballpark and also paid for the 10k install) it's really not. You get 2 x PCMA + Miteq 1:1 protection switch. It's actually a really sweet system, and the savings justified it 1000x over. Especially when you have recurring bandwidth costs in the order of magnitude we do (15-17 transponders per month) it was really a no brainer.

We have 2 NOC's .. Our NOCC (Network Operations Control Center) and our CNCC (Customer Network Control Center) both of which are in the same building and have different priorities. NOCC handles our core infrastructure (fiber to seattle, satellite systems, cable tv systems, cable modem systems) and CNCC handles all of our contracts and customer related (CPE) outages and notifications. They are both 24x7x365 and our guys are really good about staying on top of alarms. We don't co-locate anything aside from our connections for fiber at different IXC's around the US.

All in all, we (especially I) have been really happy with iDirect performance over the last year. They really got it together, and it's showing. Things are supported much better, bug releases are much more straight forward, DOCUMENTATION is much better! All of the guys they have there are top notch, and we're now beginning to really make headway with out networks.

By the way, ABS is no longer a free feature in idx 2.0. There will be a replacement, but ABS is going to become a licensed feature post idx 2.0. No joke, if you are using it now and upgrade you have to buy it. There is an ABS-lite version - but I haven't seen it yet.