Innovative Networking Concepts Tested on the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite

This paper describes a program of experiments conducted by the CSHCN using ACTS. This program of three experiments commenced in 1992 and utilized the ACTS T1-VSAT terminal. The experiments were motivated by the commercial driver of low-cost receive-only satellite terminals that can operate in a hybrid network environment. The first experiment tested highly adaptive methods of satellite bandwidth allocation in an integrated voice-data service environment. The second involved comparison of FEC and ARQ methods of error control for satellite communication with emphasis on the advantage that a hybrid architecture provides, especially in the case of multicasts. Finally, the third experiment demonstrated hybrid access to databases through the use of Mosaic and compared the performance of X.25 and frame relay communication protocols for interconnecting LANs via satellite. The preparation and conduct of these experiments involved sixteen people from the University of Maryland, the University of Colorado, and COMSAT Laboratories.