Experiments in Hybrid Networking with the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite

Abstract

This paper describes experiments conducted over ACTS that were motivated by the commercial potential of low-cost receive-only satellite terminals operating in a hybrid network environment. The first experiment tested highly adaptive methods of satellite bandwidth allocation in an integrated voice-data service environment. The second involved comparison of FEC and ARQ methods of error control for satellite communication with emphasis on the advantage that a hybrid architecture provides especially in the case of multicasts. Finally, the third experiment demonstrated hybrid access to databases through the use of Mosaic and compared the performance of internetworking protocols for interconnecting LANs via satellite.