General
- How long has 7-ip been in existence?
- Why was 7-ip established?
- Can I invest in 7-ip?
- Do you charge for the LG Service?
- Do you sell to equipment end users?
- Do I need a server to use 7-RR or 7-RG?
- What kind of tcp acceleration do you use?
- Is there a web cache in 7-RR?
- Is there a DNS cache in 7-RR?
- What kind of compression do you use?
- How much does your compression save?
- I want to compress secure traffic, can you do that?
- Can I use your solution on satellite network XYZ?
- How do you control an Inmarsat BGAN modem?
- Do I need Inmarsat BGAN LaunchPad software?
- Why do I need your PEP on BGAN, doesn't Inmarsat have one by default?
- I am located in country XYZ, can I use your service?
- What is SevenSpot?
- Does SevenSpot support prepaid?
- Can SevenSpot monitor traffic from my users?
- Can I remotely administer SevenSpot?
- Does SevenSpot support voice?
- How does SevenSpot rate my calls?
- What reports are available in SevenSpot?
General
Q. How long has 7-ip been in existence?
The company 7-ip was formed in May 2006. However, work on 7-ip technology was already started in NICTA early 2005.
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Q. Why was 7-ip established?
7-ip founders believe that people using wireless access technologies like satellite and WiMax should have the same ease of use and performance as people on more conventional infrastructures.
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Q. Can I invest in 7-ip?
7-ip is currently looking for investing parties to take our development out of the beta stage and into a fully operational and commercial phase. Investors interested in 7-ip can drop us a line here.
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Q. Do you charge for the LG Service?
Yes, we will charge for LG Service. We are incurring cost for hosting, capacity and voice termination to enable LG Service and need to recuperate those. Price will be determined in the course of our commercial roll out, and will be set by our partners who will distribute the service.
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Q. Do you sell to equipment end users?
7-ip is a small start-up company so we mostly rely on partners to get our product to end users.
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Technical
Q. Do I need a server to use 7-RR or 7-RG?
The short answer is yes, you need one. The good news is you don't have to buy one. 7-ip will operate infrastructure to enable the compression and acceleration features of 7-RR and 7-RG. If you want you can operate your own service, that is perfectly possible and in that case you do need to acquire a LG server.
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Q. What kind of tcp acceleration do you use?
We use a modified version of SCPS, a TCP protocol extension standardised for deep space communication. SCPS mitigates the slow ramping up of tcp transfer speeds due to the large round trip especially in satellite environments.
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Q. Is there a web cache in 7-RR?
Yes, and not only in 7-RR, but also in the 7-LG Service. So there is a web cache hierarchy optimising traffic between a remote site and the Internet or the Intranet of a specific customer.
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Q. Is there a DNS cache in 7-RR?
Yes, 7-RR and 7-RB are optimised for browsing speed. One important factor in browsing via links with large round trip times is the address resolution that a Web browser has to do before he can fetch a page. For example on a satellite link, the actual resolution of an address can take 1.5 seconds. 7-RR and 7-RB remember previously resolved addresses, so getting the address is instantaneous.
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Q. What kind of compression do you use?
We use several tricks to reduce the amount of traffic over the link. Compression is one of them. We use lossless compression. This means that we compress data, transport it accross the wireless link and decompress it, without losing information. We only compress TCP traffic, so UDP based traffic passes untouched. The main reason for this is the fact that most compressable traffic is TCP based. An excellent example of compressable TCP traffic is email. A good example of non-compressable UDP based traffic is streaming video, which is already highly compressed at the source.
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Q. How much does your compression save?
This is a diffcult question because it depends on your communication pattern. On average, we have measured on a mixed bag of traffic with email, web, secure web and file transfer around 30% reduction of data. However, email easily gets up to 70% reduction, while secure web traffic only gets reduced by 5%. Secure traffic is very hard to compress if it is already encrypted.
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Q. I want to compress secure traffic, can you do that?
Yes, that is possible if you are willing to acquire a 7-LG server. In that case, all your users will conect to your 7-LG, and not to the 7-ip LG Service. Both your 7-LG and the 7-RR and 7-RG clients are processing traffic before it enters the secure tunnel between the devices and your secured network. We currently support both IPSEC and SSL as mechanism to create a secure accelerated solution.
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Q. Can I use your solution on satellite network XYZ?
That depends on the physical interconnection that the satellite equipment provide. Currently we only support a 10/100bT Ethernet interface into transmission equipment like satellite modems. If your modem supports such an interface, then our solution will run accross that network. We have tested our remote site equipment with IPSTAR and Inmarsat BGAN equipment, and verified we work well with both networks.
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Q. How do you control an Inmarsat BGAN modem?
We have built a web based interface on 7-RR and 7-RG to connect to different types of transmission equipment. Currently we support call-setup and teardown on Inmarsat BGAN equipment. We have tested with Hughes Networks HNS9201 and Thrane & Thrane Explorer 500 on both the Inmarsat infrastructure and the Stratos Username / Password based services.
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Q. Do I need Inmarsat BGAN LaunchPad software?
That depends on your applications, but in general this should not be necessary when deploying 7-RR or 7-RG with Inmarsat BGAN. Since both products have an integrated web gui to set up and tear down best effort and streaming IP connections. However if you require advanced application tuning with BGAN transmission templates, you will need to deploy BGAN LaunchPad software.
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Q. Why do I need your PEP on BGAN, doesn't Inmarsat have one by default?
Yes, Inmarsat has implemented a download TCP PEP in their network. No software installation is needed to benefit of this PEP. For an upload PEP, the user needs to install the special Inmarsat PEP software on every computer that is used on the BGAN network. The Inmarsat solution is therefore perfect for single users, who are not bothered by corporate IT policies. 7-ip's solution requires no changes to any PC, and also compresses traffic, thereby saving money on BGAN and keeping corporate IT in control of laptop environments.
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Q. I am located in country XYZ, can I use your service?
That depends on two factors, the location where your wireless network connects to the Internet and our partner coverage of that region. We currently have a service Point of Presence in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Sydney, Australia. So if you are located in the EU or South East Asia, our service will most likely give you the expected benefits. If you are located in the America's, it will work but the speedup will probably be sub optimal. We are currently looking at deploying another PoP in the US to mitigate this issue.
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SevenSpot
Q. What is SevenSpot?
SevenSpot is an extension to 7-ip's remote products and functions very much like a WiFi hotspot. It captures the users who want to browse to the Internet, and only allows them on the Internet after they have logged in.
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Q. Does SevenSpot support prepaid?
The short answer is: yes. A prepaid model is supported on a per user basis. The operator of a SevenSpot portal can hand out to its users a certain amount of MegaBytes or on-line minutes. After these credits have been used up, the user is disconnected from the Internet. There is only support for bytes or minutes as credits, not money. A price per Megabyte can be entered in SevenSpot for reporting purposes.
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Q. Can SevenSpot monitor traffic from my users?
Yes, one of the key elements of SevenSpot is its capacity of keeping track of the amount of data used on a per user basis. Several reports exists for a SevenSpot operator to keep good track of network usage and individual users. SevenSpot does not monitor the actual destination of the traffic, so it does not keep track of which websites are visited e.g.
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Q. Can I remotely administer SevenSpot?
Currently we do not support remote management of SevenSpot, however the architecture of SevenSpot is such that the portal can be network based, in stead of in the remote product. This will allow for managing several remote SevenSpot units, and allows users to migrate between those SevenSpot hotspots.
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Q. Does SevenSpot support voice?
SevenSpot supports voice calls in prepaid and postpaid mode. Several reports are available for an operator of a 7-ip remote unit to keep track of voice usuage per user. Basic operation requires each user to have its own 'local extension' which is tied to his prepaid credit.
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Q. How does SevenSpot rate my calls?
SevenSpot is aware of the destination of the call. To allow correct rating, SevenSopt supports the concept of zones (six zones are supported). Each zone has a differently rate for outgoing voice calls and there is one zone for incoming calls as well. The mapping of country code to zone is made by virtue of a zone file, which can be uploaded to SevenSpot. The zone file is a comma delimited file, mapping dial destinations to zones. Zone cost can be entered in the SevenSpot GUI.
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Q. What reports are available in SevenSpot?
The following reports are available:
- Admin: Node status information
- Admin: Registration Log (New user's first connection)
- Billing: All active users data only cost export (csv)
- Billing: All active users data only cost report
- Billing: All active users voice and data cost export (csv)
- Billing: All active users voice and data cost report
- Billing: Detailed individual cost export (csv)
- Billing: Detailed individual cost report
- Network status information
- Usage: 10 highest bandwidth consumers
- Usage: 10 most frequent users
- Usage: Connection Log
- Usage: Full data usage export (csv)
- Usage: Individual user data usage report
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