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Satellite data CAN work - Bob Jones

Normally, the costs of satellite "broadband" are absurd for individual web surfing - but Equiinet has launched a product which uses satellite as a way of offloading bulk transfers to multiple branches of larger enterprises.

The new product is called TrafficPilot, and is a joint venture with Hull's Kingston Communications, selling a box very like the well-known Equiinet NetPilot, which smaller businesses use to link to the Internet.

"This is different; the people who buy TrafficPilot are buying an overlay network to their existing network," said CEO and founder Bob Jones, launching the product at NetEvents in Montreux this week.

He's looking at a chain of stores or banks or garages or petrol stations, where they already have some kind of link from head office to the branches.

"They generally have some kind of corporate IT infrastructure for simple stock control credit card validation, and transactions; and it's got rudimentary contact with the branches, with 64 or 128 kilobit links back to HQ for dozens, maybe hundreds of remote sites" Jones summarised.

The problem, he says, is that these links have to operate in real time, critical reliability being essential; and they can't be flooded with junk.

But junk is exactly what these people want - and need - to distribute to their branches; everything from corporate video materials to system upgrade data for branch PCs.

"Satellite broadband is a completely unrealistic solution for individual web surfers; you don't have to think more than a few minutes about the costs involved in renting a channel on a satellite to realise that it will only work as long as very few people do it; but no ISP or satellite operator can possibly survive on that basis," Jones told a seminar audience in Montreux.

"However, the sort of material these people want to transmit, involves sending exactly the same data to hundreds of sites; and then the price comes way down. It's broadcast; so if a transponder costs $100,000 a year for a channel, then you can get your communication costs down to $1,000 per store if you have a hundred stores."

This is what Equiinet calls "an overlay network." A TrafficPilot box plugs into the branch office LAN, and brings data - not just from satellite, but also from ADSL or cable modem, or ISDN or other Internet sources - to the branch in parallel with its ordinary link to head office.

Key to the design of the TrafficPilot is intelligent cacheing; it has substantial storage so that head office can "push" data down to the branches overnight, using whatever channel seems appropriate (cheapest, or least used).

Full details of the product will be available on Equiinet's home pages