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VSAT 101:  All VSAT systems are not created equal

Yacht owners and their crew all have wished for the internet while onboard for many years now. Not too long ago we were all pleased with the few available systems that delivered up to 64K of data. But that had its costs and of course speed and performance limitations. Then the magic acronym VSAT caught us all. We all want it and couldn’t wait to get it. Before you sign up there are a few things to know that all VSAT systems are not created equal!

There are two predominate systems in marine VSAT sold today. One is iDirect D-TDMA system and the other is DVB or DVB-S. Station 53 utilizes iDirect’s platform which was built from the ground up around TCP/IP and provides the most efficient use of satellite bandwidth. Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) is a standard that was primarily designed to use in broadcast video applications. DVB frame format uses MPEG for broadcasting video. IP over DVB has to be encapsulated within an MPEG frame to be transported over DVB satellites. IP packets must be segmented into MPEG 188 byte cells which further decreasing efficiency.   >>