The suitability of satellite broadband to meet distributed applications performance requirements

One of the largest issues facing the take-up of satellite broadband communication is its ability to meet the communications performance requirements for distributed applications, in terms of both latency and bandwidth. Distributed applications can be classified according to those data requirements into three elemental classes: "batch" applications, which require the transmission of large quantities of data, but infrequently; "interactive" applications, which require reasonably frequent communication of average data sizes; "chatty" applications, which require frequent messaging, of low size. Performance engineering (PE) is a process by which scientific forecasting techniques can be used proactively to detect and resolve potential bottlenecks in a system during design and implementation. By applying a PE methodology to the broadband communication domain, this paper demonstrates a technique to assess the suitability of satellite datalinks for distributed applications. It is found that satellite broadband communication is suitable for "batch" and "interactive" classes of applications, where some communication consolidation has been made. For the "chatty" class of applications, where application efficiency is clearly affected when the rate of message arrivals increases, a satellite connection is less suitable.