Tooway satellite broadband

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

service available across

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

. The first version of the service was launched in 2007 via two Eutelsat geostationary

satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioi ...

s, Hot Bird 6 and

Eurobird Eurobird was a series of satellites owned and operated by Eutelsat. The Eurobird satellites provided broadcasting and telecommunication services primarily to the Western and Central European region from orbital positions of 9, 25.5 and 33 degrees ...

3, respectively at the 13° and 33° East orbital positions. At the end of 2010, Eutelsat launched KA-SAT, the first European

High Throughput Satellite High-throughput satellite (HTS) is a communications satellite that provides more throughput than a classic FSS satellite (at least twice, though usually by a factor of 20 or more) for the same amount of allocated orbital spectrum, thus significan ...

to operate in K_a band. KA-SAT was positioned at 9° East, and delivers Internet access and broadcast services toward Europe and the Mediterranean Basin. Commercial service started on KA-SAT at the end of May 2011. Tooway services over KA-SAT satellite provide up to 50

Mbit/s In telecommunications, data-transfer rate is the average number of bits ( bitrate), characters or symbols ( baudrate), or data blocks per unit time passing through a communication link in a data-transmission system. Common data rate units are mu ...

downstream Downstream may refer to: * Downstream (bioprocess) * Downstream (manufacturing) * Downstream (networking) * Downstream (software development) * Downstream (petroleum industry) * Upstream and downstream (DNA), determining relative positions on DNA ...

and up to 6 Mbit/s upstream.

Services

Tooway makes use of the

Internet Protocol The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network layer communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet. ...

over satellite to provide consumers across Europe and the Mediterranean Basin with Internet access. Unlike services relying on terrestrial infrastructures (such as

cable Cable may refer to: Mechanical * Nautical cable, an assembly of three or more ropes woven against the weave of the ropes, rendering it virtually waterproof * Wire rope, a type of rope that consists of several strands of metal wire laid into a hel ...

ADSL Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. ...

), satellites provide service in wide coverage areas as broad as a

continent A continent is any of several large landmasses. Generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, up to seven geographical regions In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as zones, lands or territories, are areas t ...

Terrestrial

wireless broadband Wireless broadband is telecommunications technology that provides high-speed wireless Internet access or computer networking access over a wide area. The term comprises both fixed and mobile broadband. The term broadband Originally the word ...

technologies focus on dense

urban Urban means "related to a city". In that sense, the term may refer to: * Urban area, geographical area distinct from rural areas * Urban culture, the culture of towns and cities Urban may also refer to: General * Urban (name), a list of people ...

centers and leave consumers outside these areas with

narrowband Narrowband signals are signals that occupy a narrow range of frequencies or that have a small fractional bandwidth. In the audio spectrum, narrowband sounds are sounds that occupy a narrow range of frequencies. In telephony, narrowband is usua ...

connections or no connection at all. Unserved and unsatisfied users were estimated to reach 30 million

household A household consists of two or more persons who live in the same dwelling. It may be of a single family or another type of person group. The household is the basic unit of analysis in many social, microeconomic and government models, and is i ...

s in

Western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...

and

Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russia, whic ...

by 2010. Tooway services operate over and via Eutelsat's geostationary satellites. This enabled bit rates of 3.6 Mbit/s downstream and 384 kbit/s upstream in 2009. Service differentiation is done on volume consumption per month through a Fair Access Policy. When consumption is above volume thresholds, the service remains available but at lower speeds. Tooway also provides a

Voice over IP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...

service for voice telephone calls over the Internet. In mid-2011, commercial use of KA-SAT with the ''SurfBeam 2'' system from

ViaSat Viasat may refer to: *Viasat (American company) (founded 1986) * Viasat (Nordic television service) (founded 1991) * Danish 1st Division, officially Viasat Divisionen, second-highest football league in Denmark * Viasat Cup, 2006 Danish football to ...

allowed higher bit-rates and volumes at the same price over the European coverage area. Tooway service over KA-SAT satellite provides up to 50 Mbit/s

and up to 6 Mbit/s upstream Since KA-SAT is located at 9°E, near Eutelsat's HOT BIRD TV neighborhood (13° East), Internet Protocol services can be combined with Digital Video Broadcasting television service using a single satellite dish with two low noise block-downconverters. This means subscribers can access

satellite TV Satellite television is a service that delivers television programming to viewers by relaying it from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth directly to the viewer's location. The signals are received via an outdoor parabolic antenna commo ...

channels without additional dishes. Tooway also markets

IPTV Internet Protocol television (IPTV) is the delivery of television content over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. This is in contrast to delivery through traditional terrestrial, satellite, and cable television formats. Unlike downloaded med ...

services with

Video on Demand Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of ...

and Digital video recorder features.

Technology

ViaSat ''SurfBeam'' technology uses the K_a band, approximately twice as high in

frequency Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit of time. It is also occasionally referred to as ''temporal frequency'' for clarity, and is distinct from ''angular frequency''. Frequency is measured in hertz (Hz) which is eq ...

as K_u band. This implies a smaller beam which contributes towards smaller end-user terminals. Tooway satellite antenna photo

Smaller beams allow more efficient use of satellite power on the

forward link In a telecommunications network, a link is a communication channel that connects two or more devices for the purpose of data transmission. The link may be a dedicated physical link or a virtual circuit that uses one or more physical links or shar ...

and improved G/T ( Gain-over-Temperature) on the

return link In communications systems, the return channel (also reverse channel or return link) is the transmission link from a user terminal to the central hub. Return links are often, but not always, slower than the corresponding forward links. Examples where ...

. Smaller beams draw smaller cells on ground (beam footprint) which also permits more cells in a given service area, increasing frequency reuse. K_a band has less interference than K_u band, since fewer satellites operate in this frequency. Tooway and ViaSat ''SurfBeam'' make use of DVB-S2

Variable Coding and Modulation Variable may refer to: * Variable (computer science), a symbolic name associated with a value and whose associated value may be changed * Variable (mathematics), a symbol that represents a quantity in a mathematical expression, as used in many ...

technologies. Adaptive Coding and Modulation gathers fading conditions from each terminal and adapts signal encoding and modulation to each individual terminal's receiving condition. This allows efficient transmission to each terminal, without degenerating the efficiency of the whole network. A

return channel In communications systems, the return channel (also reverse channel or return link) is the transmission link from a user terminal to the central hub. Return links are often, but not always, slower than the corresponding forward links. Examples whe ...

on the end-user terminal is needed to send the condition changes. Variable Coding and Modulation does not require a return channel and does not adapt to fading conditions in real-time. Instead a static efficiency is defined for each terminal according to the availability needed. This improves waveform efficiency as opposed to Constant Code and Modulation which forces to apply the worst

link budget A link budget is an accounting of all of the power gains and losses that a communication signal experiences in a telecommunication system; from a transmitter, through a communication medium such as radio waves, cable, waveguide, or optical fibe ...

to the entire spot. The IPTV service uses

H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distr ...

Scalable Video Coding Scalable Video Coding: (SVC) is the name for the Annex G extension of the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video compression standard. SVC standardizes the encoding of a high-quality video bitstream that also contains one or more subset bitstreams (a form of l ...

(SVC) for

video coding A video coding format (or sometimes video compression format) is a content representation format for storage or transmission of digital video content (such as in a data file or bitstream). It typically uses a standardized video compression algori ...

. SVC allows transmitting the same video coded with different resolutions or bit-rates. For example, a high definition program could be received by a terminal in clear sky conditions while the standard definition could be received by a terminal affected by fading conditions during rain. In more stringent fading conditions, a program with even lower bit-rate could use an H.264 SVC stream.

Customer premises equipment

Customer equipment comprises an Outdoor Unit (ODU) and Indoor Unit (IDU). The ODU is a parabolic satellite antenna manufactured by ViaSat of typically 60–70 cm in diameter. The ViaSat ''SurfBeam'' antenna employs a frequency selective sub-reflector that allows reflecting one range of frequency while being transparent to another range. This feature enables the reception of both interactive services in K_a band and broadcast services (DTH) in K_u band with the same ODU. The installation of the ODU employs automated tools for simplified antenna alignment and commissioning. The installation procedure is identical anywhere within the satellite service area and the use of

circular polarization In electrodynamics, circular polarization of an electromagnetic wave is a polarization state in which, at each point, the electromagnetic field of the wave has a constant magnitude and is rotating at a constant rate in a plane perpendicular to ...

further simplifies the setup which permits to reduce the time and cost of the home installation. Although the installation could be done by some advanced users, it is recommended to contact a ''certified Tooway installer''. Poor alignment of the dish system results in higher error rates and a lower broadband speed. The relatively unique transmission system of

Turbo Code In information theory, turbo codes (originally in French ''Turbocodes'') are a class of high-performance forward error correction (FEC) codes developed around 1990–91, but first published in 1993. They were the first practical codes to closel ...

8PSK used is not recognized with standard DVB-S or DVB-S2 installation meters. Horizon Global Electronics manufactures a Test and Measurement meter specifically designed to align the Tooway dish
HD-TC8
Applied Instruments also manufactures a Test and Measurement meter, the model Super Buddy 29, designed to align the Tooway dish
Super Buddy 29
None of these two meters are able to do the new Viasat SurfBeam DVB-S2 signals. Also for these higher capacity signals and in addition on the higher K_a band, the accuracy of the installation becomes much more critical. Maxpeak AB (publ) manufactures a meter specifically for these new signals, SAM-plus (DVB-S2 ACM and VC

The current KA-SAT Surfbeam TRIA (dish receiving block) incorporates an audible tuner allowing accurate pointing of the dish without any additional external meter. The IDU is a

satellite modem A satellite modem or satmodem is a modem used to establish data transfers using a communications satellite as a relay. A satellite modem's main function is to transform an input bitstream to a radio signal and vice versa. There are some devices t ...

providing a

plug-and-play In computing, a plug and play (PnP) device or computer bus is one with a specification that facilitates the recognition of a hardware component in a system without the need for physical device configuration or user intervention in resolving reso ...

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1 ...

interface with

DHCP The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a network management protocol used on Internet Protocol (IP) networks for automatically assigning IP addresses and other communication parameters to devices connected to the network using a cli ...

. The current version is manufactured by ViaSat. A

WiFi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wa ...

router may be connected to the satellite modem in order to deploy wireless Internet access in the home. No

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

is required on the computer. Recent changes (mid-2012) to the software disabled DHCP in the modem/system which means the subscriber must provide their own router with DHCP server if they use more than one device connecting to the internet. LED indicators on the modem front inform on satellite reception and transmission statuses (RX and TX) as well as on network activities. The IDU is connected to the ODU using two coaxial cables.

Performance

Packages, called Tooway 2, 10, 25,40, Extra and Infinite, became available through service providers all over Europe in May 2014 which offer downstream rates of up to 22 Mbit/s and upstream up to 6 Mbit/s (excepting entry level service). The Small entry-level package provides bit-rates of 2 Mbit/s downstream and 1 Mbit/s upstream with a volume ( FAP) of about 2GB. The

round-trip time In telecommunications, round-trip delay (RTD) or round-trip time (RTT) is the amount of time it takes for a signal to be sent ''plus'' the amount of time it takes for acknowledgement of that signal having been received. This time delay includes pr ...

inherent to

satellite communications A communications satellite is an artificial satellite that relays and amplifies radio telecommunication signals via a transponder; it creates a communication channel between a source transmitter and a receiver at different locations on Earth. ...

comes from the ''double hop'' between

earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

and

space Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually cons ...

. All communications travel at the

speed of light The speed of light in vacuum, commonly denoted , is a universal physical constant that is important in many areas of physics. The speed of light is exactly equal to ). According to the special theory of relativity, is the upper limit ...

(approx. 300 million metres per second or 671 million miles per hour) from a terminal on ground to a satellite in geostationary orbit (approx. 36,000 km or 22,000 miles in altitude), then to another terminal on earth and back. The result is roughly a half a second round-trip time which may be unsuitable for

real-time Real-time or real time describes various operations in computing or other processes that must guarantee response times within a specified time (deadline), usually a relatively short time. A real-time process is generally one that happens in defined ...

critical applications, including many games, though it is sufficient to support other applications, including (with minimal delays), VoIP. Tooway domestic consumers are subject to a 1/50 contention rate which under peak loading, typically from 17:00 GMT onwards can result in heavily degraded performance for applications such as streaming media services which manifests as pausing, buffering and heavily pixellated pictures.

References

External links