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StatusCompleted
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Status date2014-12-09
The objective of the project was to develop Forsway’s one-way Internet over satellite gateway, Mímir, into a carrier grade solution for operators of all sized. It is now usable for all types of one-way Internet over satellite services, covering deployments from small ISPs with a few hundred users to the largest multinational operators with high performance multi-transponder services covering millions of users.
Mímir is a one-way Internet over satellite gateway. It integrates a performance enhancing proxy, user management and authentication, transponder load balancing etc. It was initially created as a solution that would make it easy for small operators to start up new Internet over satellite services. The market interest has shown that also the larger operators have much to gain from an integrated solution for one-way Internet over satellite services. The main objective of this project has been to improve the Mímir server to make it a suitable alternative for operators of all sizes..
Six areas have been identified as critical to achieve the objective:
- Control center acting as a central control point for monitoring and controlling all subsystems,
- Support for multi-transponder deployments,
- Redundancy for improved robustness,
- Bandwidth optimization for lowered OPEX,
- Improved security,
- Improved end user experience.
The greatest challenge in the project has been to create a test environment to test Mímir with a large number of connected terminals during an extended time. Some tests have been done as part of the project and we are now planning for even larger tests.
Forsway’s platform for one-way Internet over satellite services, ForsONEway, consisting of Mímir on the hub side and Odin on the client side is the only fully integrated system for one-way Internet over satellite on the market.
This project will enable the possibility for really large deployments of one-way Internet over satellite services with a potential to reach new markets. One interesting market area is mobile operators who want to quickly and at a low cost increase the capacity of their mobile network. The results of this project will make ForsONEway fit perfectly for this task.
The full-loop system is illustrated in the figure. Data flow is indicated by arrows between the subsystems, with the data flow for a specific user session coloured red.
The stacked Mímir servers indicate the multi transponder functionality, where each (virtual or physical) server sends data to one satellite transponder.
The load balancer distributes connecting users to servers based on server load and geographical location of the users.
The control center is a unified control point for controlling the whole system.
The project was started in July 2012, with an expected duration of 12 months. The last part of the project will include a pilot test of the full-loop system.