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 TEST CENTER Tachyon's reliable broadband access is truly heaven-sent By Tom Yager, InfoWorld Test Center January 5, 2001 Resilient 2MB Internet service comes via satellite, making it an attractive and convenient option for remote users
No data service can survive every possible disaster, but Tachyon.net comes close. Even in a total blackout (no power, no phones, no data lines), Tachyon's satellite links keep humming to branch offices, partners, and the Internet. Now that's disaster recovery. Tachyon uses a .9-meter-wide industrial satellite dish and an all-in-one receiver, transmitter, router, and Web cache unit called a Tachyon Access Point (TAP), a desktop PC-sized box that sits indoors, to bounce data off a satellite orbiting thousands of miles above. It takes about half a second for data to make the round trip between the ground and the satellite. Granted, compared to landline circuit latency of 20 milliseconds or less, 500 milliseconds may seem like an eternity. But Tachyon's reliability, security, and convenience are a winning combination, and that's why we gave the service a score of Excellent. Getting off the ground The Tachyon.net service shuttles data among customers, a satellite transponder, and the Tachyon network operations center. One call to Tachyon or one of its ISP partners sends a truck carrying the dish, the TAP, and everything else needed to get you on the air. Tachyon contracts professional installers throughout the United States. We were greatly impressed by the professionalism of our installer, who went so far as to bring two sets of identical hardware in case something didn't survive the trip. He seated the elliptical dish on a nonpenetrating (i.e., nonleaking) roof mount and weighed it down with hundreds of pounds of concrete blocks. Using a sensitive oscilloscope, our installer then scanned a tiny patch of sky looking for Tachyon's unique wave signature; he found the satellite in a couple of minutes. Finally, after making adjustments to lock in the strongest signal, the installer fixed the dish's position with more weldings and bolts than are strictly required. As a result, the equipment stood firm against high winds and freezing temperatures. Once it's installed, the elliptical dish gathers and precisely focuses the satellite's narrow radio beam. The beam travels through a narrow feed horn and into the radio unit. The same radio unit emits a powerful radio signal that punches through clouds, smog, and migrating birds to hit an orbiting antenna nearly five miles away. A pair of RG6 coaxial cables connects the Tachyon radio unit to the TAP, which ships power and data to the radio unit while also gathering statistics that measure the system's health. This data then goes to Tachyon's network operations center, as well as to the user, on a password-protected Web page that can be viewed from any system on your network. Getting the TAP running took practically no effort at all. The unit is completely self-contained and has only three connections: radio transmit, radio receive, and Ethernet. Once you make those connections, you power up the TAP and are ready to go within about three minutes. The unit works like any TCP/IP router: It routes all protocols and TCP ports, unlike some wireless and satellite systems that rely on proxy servers and spoofing algorithms to mask the delay. If something goes wrong, you'll probably hear from Tachyon's operations center before you even realize you have a problem. During our tests, one of our lab's UPS (uninterruptible power supply) units failed after we had installed the system. It was offline for about two hours, unbeknownst to us, when Tachyon called to tell us our TAP wasn't responding. Even better, the technician stayed with us until we powered up the TAP to make sure everything was working. That's the kind of service we'd like to see from all data service carriers. The small TAP unit includes software that routes a contracted group of IP addresses through the satellite. Most companies send their satellite data via the Internet, but Tachyon can also build custom subnets that create secure, private data channels shared by your remote offices, partners, and even telecommuters. For our tests, Tachyon set us up with a block of five IP addresses, all routed directly to the Internet. What about speed? Users browsing the Internet via the TAP may be unnerved at first by the latency. But satellite is the only way for users in outlying areas (most of the U.S. land mass, in fact) to get high-speed access. Besides, exchanges between computers, including EDI (electronic data interchange) traffic, are not affected by latency. And Tachyon's SLA (service-level agreement) guarantees excellent minimum availability and performance. To get a comparable level of service from a local wire carrier, you'd have to subscribe to T1 or DS1 service -- those services cost more than Tachyon and a T1's receive performance is 25 percent slower. That makes Tachyon the service of choice for businesses and remote users who can afford it. (Not surprisingly, the lion's share of the company's sales are made to organizations connecting far-flung locations, such as affiliated hospitals, car dealerships, and newspaper bureaus.) The service proved to be robust, too. We experienced no outages or slowdowns during our tests. Receive speeds on our 2MBps service never dipped below about 1,800KBps, and we were pleasantly surprised by transmit rates that hovered around 20 percent higher than the SLA level of 256KBps. Companies looking for a backup data circuit, a secure private link to remote locations, or reliable high-speed data service where landline options don't exist would do well to look into Tachyon.net. The company's prices are sometimes erroneously compared to DSL rates, which makes Tachyon.net seem overpriced. (Tachyon costs roughly $4,950 for equipment fees, plus anywhere between $800 and $1,299 per month for the service itself.) But the only similarity between Tachyon.net and DSL is that both are asymmetrical. DSL lacks Tachyon's committed data rates and guaranteed availability, which are key factors separating commercial data services from residential alternatives. Moreover, no copper or fiber line can keep humming when a backhoe slices through your building's telecommunications trunk. Nothing short of an alien invasion can knock your Tachyon satellite connection off the air. For a business that depends on its circuits, that's a comfort worth more than its cost. Tom Yager is the East Coast technical director of the InfoWorld Test Center. Tom can be reached at tom_yager@infoworld.com.
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