To VPN or not to VPN

Have you ever questioned if virtual private networks (VPNs) provide adequate privacy and security? Do you trust your VPN? There has always been something suspicious about VPN, because instead of trusting your own ISP, you choose to trust some guys somewhere in the world and an unknown ISP. VPNs are supposed to hide your data …

Manage VSAT Fleet in Covid Times

Early 2020 … we were all confronted with the initial Covid-19 outbreak. Life pretty much came to a stand-still and working from home became the norm. Assisting clients whose satellite communication was experiencing issues became something that we had to do over the phone. New installations, especially abroad, were put on hold due to the …

Why flat Donuts are no good at Sea

We recently ran a comparison between two LTE Cellular systems on the same vessel and came to the conclusion that one system performed remarkably better than the other while the router hardware was the same, just the antennas were different, although they had the same power rating (9dB). Antenna Radiation patterns While radiation patterns are …

The proof is in the distance of the LTE pudding

Leaving out details when revealing results can lead to wild speculations and disillusion when it turns out that the promise was valid but only in certain cases. You should always taste the pudding before accepting anyone’s claim. How far will your LTE go With maritime cellular communication (3G, 4G & 5G) becoming mainstream on many …

Which VSAT Contention Ratio is good for you?

A contended VSAT service is a connection which you will be sharing with several other users/vessels.  The amount of users/ships you share the link with is called the contention ratio.  Most commercial systems offer contented services because they are less costly than their dedicated counterparts. The advantage of sharing the connection is that the cost …

Wise Bandwidth Usage

If you are utilizing 100% of your satellite connection’s bandwidth then you can skip this article. If not you could save a $. Are you Dedicated ? In a dedicated service satellite bandwidth is assigned to a single user (ship) as if you would buy your own part of the satellite. The primary advantage is that the …

Fair Usage Policy

Even if your current satellite internet service provider offers unlimited broadband, chances are they will operate a fair usage policy. This could mean that your provider is policing the actual amount of data you download, but they will also use broadband traffic management so that the actions of one heavy broadband user do not affect …

Bandwidth, latency and congestion

Bandwidth is a measure of the capacity of a line in kbps (kilobits per second). Latency is a measure of the speed of a line between two hosts in ms (milliseconds). Factors that affect bandwidth include the physical properties of the medium being used and whether it is shared. Cable and all wireless connections are shared media. …