Afsat has many years of experience in designing, implementing and operating high end satellite corporate data networks for customer specific Wide Area Network (WAN) solutions.

Every business has specific and in many cases unique requirements with regards to Wide Area Network (WAN) communications needs. Any proposed WAN solution is based on:

• LATENCY | the round trip-delay from when a request is sent until a response is received.
  
  
• BANDWIDTH | the link capacity used by the application. Too little bandwidth (for a given volume of data) will increase the latency.
  
  
• AVAILABILITY | satellite communications networks in general offer link availability in excess of 99.5%
  
  
• SECURITY | is the network to be shared with others, or should it be dedicated to a specific customer?
  
  
• APPLICATIONS TO BE IMPLEMENTED? | For example, is voice communication a requirement?
  
  
• OPERATIONAL COSTS | Monthly recurring costs which are a function of the bandwidth requirements, maintenance and support requirements.
  
  
• CAPITAL (one-off cost) | which is a function of the network topology, technology required or preferred and physical size of the equipment required.
  
  
• The number of sites to be connected on the WAN.
  
  
• The main direction of flow of data between sites.
  
  
• The central site
  
  

Other factors to consider when putting up a WAN are;

• Total daily downloads per PC (GB)
  
  
• Total daily uploads per PC (GB)
  
  
• Number of PCs per site OR
  
  
• Transaction sizes on the uplink
  
  
• Transaction sizes on the downlink
  
  
• Total number of transactions per day OR
  
  
• The uplink bandwidth requirement of the application (Kbps)
  
  
• The downlink bandwidth requirement of the application (Kbps)
  

Solutions can be designed to operate in Shared Hub environments ( like the iWay Broadband Service ) through the creation of VPNs and Dedicated Hub environments both in C-band and Ku-band, regional and domestic.