On the eve of Telecom '99, Comsat Corporation today introduced the Linkway 2100, the newest edition to the Linkway family of broadband satellite networking products. The new product, which will be available in the first quarter of 2000, is specially designed to meet the needs of customers using Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) antennas in their satellite networks.
"The Linkway 2100 is a great solution for corporations and Internet Service Providers that employ satellites in their network infrastructure," said Comsat President and Chief Executive Officer Betty Alewine. "The product is compact, highly versatile, and has a unique auto-commissioning feature that makes the Linkway 2100 easy to install, operate, and maintain."
The Linkway technology supports five popular networking protocols ¿ Asynchronous Transfer Mode (A), Frame Relay, Internet Protocol (IP), Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN), and Signaling System 7 (SS7) ¿ in a low cost platform that gives customers the flexibility to implement different protocols as their needs change.
Customer's sites can communicate directly with each other in a full-mesh manner, eliminating the expense and additional equipment required in a typical "hub-and-spoke" network configuration. Customers can also instantly access the amount of satellite capacity needed through Linkway's Bandwidth-on-Demand feature. In traditional satellite networks, customers must allocate a preset amount of capacity.
The Linkway 2100 product works with VSAT sized antennas, typically 1.8 meters in size, that fit on building rooftops and is capable of transmitting data at rates between 300 kbps and 4Mbps. This permits businesses in both urban and remote locations to easily install a satellite antenna, providing a cost-effective method of instantly establishing communications.
Customers can monitor their network usage remotely and in real-time using standard commercial web browsers and an Internet or dial-up connection. The Linkway 2100 technology also offers customers the option of managing the network themselves or allocating the management responsibility to Comsat, freeing them to focus on other business tasks.
"For customers with large networks, the Linkway 2100 can be seamlessly used with our Linkway 2000 product, which is scalable to large, gateway-sized antennas and is capable of transmitting traffic at speeds up to 32 Mbps," said Comsat Laboratories President Benjamin Pontano. "With the Linkway family of products, Comsat can provide a single-source solution for virtually all customers' broadband networking needs."
