Shared hub VSAT service in Canada

The authors discuss the use of wide area diversity (WAD) in conjunction with very small aperture terminals (VSATs) connected to metropolitan area networks (MANs). Metropolitan area networks can provide very high speed data paths and may soon cover cities and other built up areas. Such networks can be linked by satellites, which are inherently capable of high data rates, and can link areas not connected by suitable terrestrial means. High availability satellite links are required and WAD could be used to switch traffic from a VSAT suffering a weather related outage to one operating at or close to clear sky performance. Each VSAT would be connected to the users through the MAN and the routing of traffic would be handled by WAD controllers operating directly and via routers. The WAD controllers would continually assess the status of the inter MAN links and make best use of the resources available by selecting the most appropriate VSAT for each user´s traffic.<>