Satellite Broadband Internet Network Types

Point-to-Point network

A Mesh network is used when all sites in a network need to be connected to all other sites within that same network with a single satellite link. This could be done by installing multiple PtP networks between each network site, but as the number of network nodes increases, there is a dramatic increase in the number of carriers that would be added and also an increase in the number of modems required at each site. At some point, this becomes unmanageable and the alternative is to use a Mesh network topology instead of multiple PtP networks. At each site in a Mesh network there is a single carrier that contains all the information destined for all the nodes within the network. In an IP based network there is considerable statistical satellite bandwidth savings by using the shared outbound carrier from each site because of the typical traffic patterns consistent with IP networks.