New HX System 5.0 from Hughes Improves Scalability, Performance and Reliability of Carrier-Grade Satellite Broadband
Announcement at Satellite2014 Coincides with Hughes Shipping its 4 Millionth Satellite Terminal, Maintaining Approximately 50% Market Share
Germantown, Md., March 10, 2014 — Hughes Network Systems, LLC (Hughes), the global leader in broadband satellite solutions and a leading provider of managed network services, today launched its new HX 5.0 broadband satellite system, offering greater scalability, performance and reliability, among other enhancements. The announcement was made on the opening day of Satellite 2014, the satellite industry’s premier annual conference and exhibition in Washington, DC, and coincides with Hughes shipping its 4 millionth satellite terminal, representing approximately 50 percent market share (Comsys Report, 13th Edition, 2013).
“There’s a reason why we’ve maintained market leadership since inventing the VSAT over three decades ago,” said Pradman Kaul, President of Hughes. “Hughes engineers are relentless about pushing all the envelopes of capacity, efficiency and cost – which is evident again in our latest HX 5.0 platform, the industry’s most scalable broadband satellite system with an economical gateway and wide range of high-performance remote terminals.”
HX 5.0 is a carrier-grade, highly versatile IP broadband platform that builds on the widely successful HX System 4.0. It is the ideal solution for operators seeking to grow their business by delivering today’s rapidly expanding spectrum of broadband applications – from high-speed Internet/Intranet access, to IP trunking, 3G/4G cellular backhaul, Virtual Network Operator (VNO) hosting and Communications On-The-Move (COTM) for airborne/maritime/land. Upgradeable from the HX 4.0 platform, the HX 5.0 includes numerous enhancements.
Seamless Scalability – Enabling operators to scale cost-effectively from a few sites to very large networks with thousands of remote terminals. Operators can start small and readily expand as customer demand grows for any mix of services, such as Internet access, VoIP and video-on- demand.
High Capacity and Resiliency – Matching its greater scalability, the HX 5.0 includes a new set of high-capacity IP servers for the hub gateway, with throughputs of up to 40 Mbps. And this higher capacity comes in a smaller footprint, saving costs on floor space and power.
Higher Performance – With the HX 5.0, Hughes has enhanced router software to improve throughput performance. Individual remote terminals can now support throughputs of 20 Mbps for TCP-processed traffic running through the routers.
Higher Efficiency – The HX 5.0 introduces new byte-level compression (BLC) to optimize network efficiency and reduce the bandwidth requirements of network traffic by up to 50 percent. BLC compression uses data caching and powerful algorithms to exploit duplication of byte sequences in a data stream.
Enhanced QoS – The HX 5.0 includes two new QoS (quality of service) features to ensure fair allocation of bandwidth. A weighted fair queuing (WFQ) feature determines how much bandwidth to allocate users in the event of congestion or high demand. Differentiated Service Plans (DSPs) enable operators to adjust plans in times of congestion; e.g., a higher valued service plan can get proportionally more traffic bandwidth than a low value plan.
Multiple Gateway Diversity – Two forms of diversity are available with the HX 5.0 to facilitate multi-spectrum deployment, such as Ka- and Ku-band. Gateway RFT Diversity overcomes rain fade by instantly routing traffic to a secondary RFT facility with only a momentary interruption in user data flow. With Full Gateway Diversity remote terminals are automatically migrated to a secondary network in the event of a primary network outage.