Dear TCPSAT members-
I am involved in a startup that is a reseller of HNS satellite products. We
currently resell the Hughes Network Systems PES 5000 (with 512/128 segments
from Galaxy VII). We provide Internet access and WAN's for the education
market. In the first quarter of 99, we plan to switch to DirecPC Enterprise
Edition, which has been billed to deliver up to 24M/256k. I have been
watching discussions on this newsgroup from afar, as I have not yet had much
to contribute (I am less a technician and more of a sales/marketer). Up
until two weeks ago, our performance was terrible, slower than a bad dial-up
line. I had solicited HNS to provide us with solutions that would change
the behavior of TCP over satellite, with no tangible results until recently.
I first came to them with a product called Mentat SkyX
(http://www.mentat.com/skyx/skyx.html) that I had found. Mentat wants to
sell the source code, but does not yet have a software package. Upon this
they countered with a software solution called Fourelle Venturi
(http://www.fourelle.com/venturi.html), which our company put into testing
last week (HNS decided to endorse this product in Nov.). The software, in a
simple description, converts TCP/IP into UDP at the server prior to travel
over satellite. It then is converted back to TCP/IP by software at the
end-user point. There are other things the software does in regards to
error correction to counter the indifference of UDP as I understand it. The
results were absolutely amazing. We installed the software at a Tennessee
school that also currently has a T1 feed to the Internet. Side by side,our
512k satellite feed consistently beat the T1-fed machines downloading web
pages. While I suspect there are faster T1 environs out there (the school
is on the TN board of Ed network, which is probably quite conjested, and it
is filtered), the difference in performance is like night and day.
I would like to know if anyone has experimented with Venturi, Mentat, or any
other similar applications, and if so, what results they had. I think I
may have found one of the best available, but I could be wrong.
Additionally, I would be happy to give anyone that wants it contact info for
Venturi. If you contact them through their website, please mention that I
referred you (I am always looking for a way to negotiate a price break). I
have had no conversations with Venturi, but I will soon. I cannot relate
how good they are with support, other issues, or even pricing, yet. The
software was given to me as a test by HNS (it expires in a month).
Thank you, and best of luck to all.
Jeremy McDevitt
Uplinx Technologies
[email protected]
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