Two-way Satellite Internet Service
By Santiago Ontañon, Tachyon,Inc.

If you believe what you read, two-way high performance satellite delivered Internet service is at least six month to three years away. Last January, in his "Market Insight" column about "the Role of Satellites in a World That’s Wired," in The New York Times Kenneth N. Gilpin reported on an interview with Bear Stearns analyst Vijay Jayant. According to Jayant, "the technology is not there" for two-way satellite Internet access. He predicted that systems by Hughes and Gilat with data stream comparable to cable modems, are 6 to 12 months away. Even Bills Gates is in the picture with his personal investment in Teledesic and Microsoft’s investments in Gilat Satellite Networks

The delay is a problem if you are a hotel that is losing business customers who demand high speed connectivity on their overnight stays, or a commercial building owner who has just discovered that DSL and T1 is months down the road, if ever, to your location. The advantage of satellite-direct service is that it allows the subscriber to bypass the "dirt roads" on the way to the high-speed backbone.

In 1998, a former Hughes vice-president Dr. John Koehler foresaw that business customers throughout the world would demand high-performance access to the Internet sooner than could be delivered terrestrially or by the ambitious programs of other satellite systems. With a Ph.D. in economics from Yale, Koehler first became acquainted with the potential for satellite communications when he served as deputy to the director of Central Intelligence for the United States Government. Appointed by Stansfield Turner and asked to remain by Bill Casey, Koehler was responsible for the U.S. Government’s investment in large satellite systems, data and global communications.

Koehler started Tachyon, Inc, named after the "tachyon," a hypothetical particle in Physics that travels faster than light. Koehler believed that the right team of engineers could take advantage of existing geostationary satellite capacity to bring two-way connectivity to the Internet to everyone, everywhere faster than everyone predicted. In two-years, the Tachyon team has designed and built a system that has achieved unprecedented performance and efficiency. The achievement of this engineering feat has resulted in 20 patents pending for the San Diego based company.

In January, Tachyon.net completed successful trials with a major United States based Internet Service Provider, a European multi-site manufacturing parts supply and sales enterprise, a global agricultural company and a network of universities. Today, Tachyon.net is rolling out its service as the first high performance two-way satellite delivered Internet service.

Tachyon.net connections are called TAPs™ (Tachyon Access Points). A TAP is a small satellite antenna (less than one square meter in area) with a radio for transmitting and receiving data, and an indoor server that acts as a satellite terminal and router. Tachyon has trained a team of professionals who mount and point the antenna, run standard coaxial cable from the radio to the server and bring the connection online. The TAP is then connected via Ethernet to a local area network (LAN).

Fast. Everywhere.™ is the company motto. In keeping with that message, Tachyon guarantees installation and two-way high-speed access to the Internet within 10 business days after receiving the order. A Tachyon TAP can be installed anywhere, whether it’s a high-rise building in Indianapolis, a college or hotel in Nebraska, or an old office building on the outskirts of Denver. A Tachyon dish can provide connectivity for multiple portals making it a good solution for retrofitting an older office building. Because Tachyon does not rely upon the local phone company to upgrade links or need any other terrestrial infrastructure, the 10-day guarantee applies to every installation.

System Meets the Needs of the Serious Internet User

Tachyon has designed its system and service to be able to extend to the end user’s location the same kind of service guarantees and network monitoring that top-tier ISPs offer on their own network.

• 24 X 7 active monitoring of operation ensures that the network manager will know immediately if a TAP drops off the network. Eight times a second, each TAP verifies its link by sending a message to the gateway.
• Service level agreements guarantee uptime for both the gateway and the TAP, maximum allowable packet loss rates, and prompt trouble resolution.
• Multiple access techniques allow many users to simultaneously access the satellite and maintain a high-speed connection to the Internet.
• Customer organizations can mix Tachyon.net with other Internet services. Tachyon.net is completely consistent with TCP/IP protocols at each end.

Tachyon.net's differentiated service includes three Service Level options that provide high-performance connectivity even during periods of congestion.

c1 service delivers data rates of 300 Kbps.

c2 service delivers data rates of 800 Kbps.

c3 service delivers data rates of 2 Mbps.

Tachyon Technology

Tachyon.net delivers high-speed Internet Protocol (IP) traffic from a sweet-spot on the ISP backbone — the point wired straight into the Internet's highest-capacity channels — going directly to end-users, while eliminating the routing hops and multiple acknowledgements that cause performance-slowing congestion. Larger transceivers operated by Tachyon at bandwidth-rich locations on the Internet decode and transmit traffic directly to and from ISP backbone links.

To maximize satellite performance, Tachyon links are continuously live; packets are transmitted as soon as they are received with no delay for reestablishing the connection.

The high data rates reduce the duration of each transmission, minimizing the delay between request and response. Underlying this technique is a highly efficient, patented link management methodology, and an enhanced over-the-air protocol, with standard TCP/IP on each end.

At the ISP, traffic from Tachyon is delivered directly from bandwidth-rich Internet backbone locations via 100-megabit Ethernet like any other data stream from an Internet exchange.

Subscribers get the cleanest, fastest and most direct "end-run" to the Internet.

In March, Tachyon announced an alliance with mPower3, to market Tachyon.net coupled with mPower³’s integrated agricultural data. The combination will create a powerful global agricultural Extranet capable of linking growers, farmers, suppliers, and their markets with mPower³ information resources.

About the Author

Santiago Ontañon is Vice President Corporate Development for Tachyon, Inc. The author may be reached via email at sontanon@tachyon.net