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Hughes DirecWay (DW Series)

Last updated: 21st December 2005, Available in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portugese
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What is Hughes DirecWay?

Hughes Network Systems Europe is Hughes Network Systems, Inc.'s operating and sales organization for the European market with facilities in Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Czech Republic. Utilizing its satellite hub earth stations and network operations centers in Griesheim, Germany and Milton Keynes, U.K., HNSE provides DirecWay broadband satellite services throughout the continent, both directly and through a growing family of value-added service providers.

HNSE is the European leading provider of high-speed broad-band Internet access and intranet/extranet managed solutions to enterprises of any size, and a leading provider of broadband connectivity to Wi-Fi hot spots, although the DirecWay terminals are primarily used for SOHO and SME installations. HNSE designs, develops, installs and maintains a wide variety of enterprise network solutions such as Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), Business Continuity/Backup Services, Corporate Video and Audio Broadcasting, In-store Video Advertising/Point-of-Sale TV, Interactive Training and Distance Learning, Streaming Content and IP Multicast Services as well. Its customer base spans all major market sectors, including oil and gas, retail, automotive, banking, restaurants and governments, with more than 38,000 terminals ordered or shipped.

One of the most popular products offered by HNS is DirecWay. The broadband system used by HNS to deliver DirecWay services is available to operators and enterprises around the world to provision their own satellite broadband services - there are many Satellite ISP nowadays offering DirecWay-based services. With over 600,000 terminals ordered or shipped to 85 countries worldwide (including Americas), the DW System is the most advanced and widely deployed broadband satellite system in the world. The DW System uses DVB-S, DVB-S2, IPoS standards and HNS-patented DW technology.

Notes from the Centrum: Although Hughes list the support of Voice over IP (VoIP) and videoconferencing over DirecWay links, we have found no evidence it does support the same efficiently. This is mainly due to that DirecWay systems still utilize legacy TDMA algorithms of sharing the satellite space segment. These algorithms were not designed originally to allocate dedicated CIR (Committed Information Rate) quota to the remote terminal, thus the support of streaming services is better to be categorized as Best Effort mode, i.e. non-guaranteed mode. This refers to all DirecWay models from 1000 up to the latest 7000.

Our Centrum recommends using DirecWay VSAT systems for non-realtime Satellite Internet access tasks only, such as web browsing, e-mails, file downloads and possibly low-volume data transfers due to the reasons described above. For those applications which require a good deal of dedicated bandwidht, we recommend using either iDirect or SCPC based VSAT systems - basing on technologies (D-TDMA and FDMA) which make it possible for the teleport to allocate CIR bandwidth chunks.

HNS DirecWay Models

There is a number of different DirecWay router models existing. The main, most popluar units are listed below.

DW Broadband Satellite Routers:

• DirecWay DW3000 series - Indoor One-way (Receive only), discontinued
• DirecWay DW4000 series (including DW4020), discontinued
• DirecWay DW6000 series
• DirecWay DW7000 series (including DW7700)

DW Appliances:

• DirecWay DW1000
• DirecWay DW6040

You can click on one of the models to get access to technical specifications and additional information provided per every of the units.

Related Links

• DirecWay: Hughes Network Systems Website
• DirecWay Self-Service Website

HNS Contact Information

WWW Satellite-Internet-VSAT.com

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