When the satellite link is not the problem
The most expensive, least understood component gets blamed for everything. Prove it before escalating.
Platform
Satellite / VSAT
VSAT and other satellite links: the hub, the remote terminal and the path between them.
Reading a satellite modem’s statistics
The modem knows. Learning to read it separates link faults from network faults quickly.
Designing a hub and spoke that tolerates outages
Every remote site will lose its link. Design for what happens during, not just after.
Acceleration, and what it breaks
Performance enhancing proxies work well and complicate everything they touch.
Why voice over satellite needs different thinking
The usual voice quality rules assume terrestrial latency. Over satellite, half of them do not apply.
Rain fade and link budgets
The link degrades gracefully until it does not. Reading the margin tells you which side of that you are on.
TCP over long fat pipes
High bandwidth and high latency together defeat default TCP settings.
Latency you cannot engineer away
Geostationary orbit imposes a floor. Design for it rather than trying to tune past it.
Designing for the link you cannot drive to
Satellite enforces habits that terrestrial networks let you skip: observability before convenience, validation before shipping, and a backup path that has actually carried traffic.