Linkway/sup TM/ for 21st century military communications

To achieve information superiority in the 21st century, military communications will increasingly depend on satellite systems. COMSAT Laboratories has developed a broadband VSAT networking product called LINKWAY/sup TM/ that, today, provides seamless extension of terrestrial networks using industry-standard protocols. This paper describes LINKWAY's unique features, including its hubless architecture; bandwidth on demand; multiprotocol support (enabling easy migration to future applications); support for asymmetric traffic; and support for single-hop, full-mesh, and star topologies on a single platform. LINKWAY is compatible with the new generation of Internet and multimedia services. Its unique, patented, dynamic bandwidth on demand algorithm distributes network bandwidth across many sites effectively and efficiently. LINKWAY offers today the capabilities that a broadband Ka-band system will provide in the future. A series of architectures is presented to show extensions of LINKWAY for military use.