Today's satellite communications, while fulfilling unique business requirements, come with significant networking challenges. As user demand increases, limited satellite service availability becomes severely strained. Companies have realized this, and have begun employing satellite optimization technology to overcome the traditional low bandwidth, high latency obstacles that impede the speed and performance of applications and services over satellite links.

So has the United States government.

 

I had the opportunity to sit down with Howard Teicher, one of Expand networks' founders. He is the company's vice president of public sector and satellite markets, where he is responsible for Expand's military, intelligence, civilian agency and satellite businesses.

 

I asked him about Expand's satellite optimization technologies - and how the United States government is harnessing that power in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

 

Noticing that Expand offers several accelerator C4 programs that are in use by the U.S. military, I asked Howard why these satellite links so important when it comes to combat?

 

Howard responded by saying that, first and foremost the US military, like any other organization, wants to save money. And high latency, low bandwith links tend to be expensive and perform poorly because of the affects of latency on the transport of data.

He specified that, "Expand's implementation of the SCPS' protocol fills the pipe so that the military user is actually getting the bandwith that they are paying for."

 

And that, like so many organizations that are trying to use enterprise applications designed for high speed LANs over low speed WANs, the military absolutely requires optimization to squeeze every possible bit of performance out of a network, whether for intelligence, or command and control or just tactical communications - or morale, welfare and recreation.

 

With all core requirements for the military where satellite links are used, optimization gives them two to ten times more of the bandwith that they are paying for. Which significantly contributes to their ability to achieve their mission goals.

Satellite optimization has proven a valuable tool in a military scenario - I can see why many companies are choosing to harness that power for more residential applications.

 

To listen to the rest of this interview, visit the podcast at http://www.tmcnet.com/tmc/library/librarydownload.aspx?type=podcasts&id=2809&title=United+States+Military+Harnesses+Power+of+Satellite+Optimization.