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White Paper

Key Features of the Hughes HN System
HN System Overview
The HN System provides high-speed Internet Protocol (IP)
satellite connectivity for multiple remote sites connecting to a
corporate headquarters or the Internet. This is an innovative
broadband system designed and optimized for networks
that require high bandwidth and flexible policies for quality of
service (QoS). As shown in Figure 1, the network architecture
is based on a TDM/TDMA star topology and operates in the
Ku, Ka, and C frequency bands.
n 	 The HN System leverages the DVB-S2 ACM transmission
standard for the outbound channel to achieve the best
spectral efficiency of any TDM/TDMA network on the
market.
n 	 The HN System optimizes link performance, even in
networks with geographically diverse locations and
in high rain areas, by dynamically adjusting errorcorrecting codes and modulation based on signal
quality feedback from HN remote terminals, giving
Hughes customers higher system availability and greater
throughput for a given antenna size.

n 	 A state-of-the-art Adaptive Inroute Selection (AIS)
capability for the inbound channel enables dynamic
and real-time switching of the coding rates and uplink
power control. Coupled with the DVB-S2 ACM outbound
capability this provides unparalleled network availability.
n 	 The HN System is compliant with IPoS (IP over Satellite),
the first global satellite industry standard approved by
TIA in North America, and ETSI and ITU in Europe.
Advanced bandwidth management features and traffic
prioritization enables operators to tailor QoS to meet the needs
of a diverse network with multiple applications and traffic
characteristics in a highly efficient and optimized manner.
Assignment of inbound TDMA channels is done dynamically
based on actual need and usage—thus enabling operators
to maximize the benefit of TDMA shared bandwidth while
providing the perception of a dedicated service.
The HN terminal is a full-featured IP router which typically
eliminates the need for a separate router at the remote site.

n 	 The TDMA inbound channel uses variable burst lengths,
providing up to 85% efficiency on the return channel.

Point of Sale (POS)

Network
Operations
Center
(NOC)

Ka-band
Ku-band
C-band

Internet Access

Corporate Data Exchange
Internet
Corporate Office

May 2008

Voice Communications
Figure 1. Network Architecture

www.hughes.com

Transport Characteristics
D V B S 2 T hro ug hp ut

All the Hughes satellite IP broadband systems use the
DVB standard for the outbound transmission channel. This
provides several significant advantages for an operator:

11

C /N (d B ) A W G N

10

DVB Scales Effectively
Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) channels are designed to
scale effectively to large carriers. Hughes can support
carriers as low as 1 Msps or as large as 45 Msps on the
outbound channel. This contrasts sharply with systems
where the maximum outbound channel capacity can be
no more than 10 Msps. Thus, an operator is not forced
to uplink multiple outbound channels artificially. Using
multiple channels results in an efficiency penalty as each
additional carrier requires channel spacing. In addition, the
advantage of satellite multicast is reduced as each outbound
carrier must replicate every multicast message.

8

D V B-S1

7

T urb o
Code

6
5
4

a
Sh

3
2
1

nn

on

Ca

pa

ci

ty

m
Li

it

8-PSK

QPSK
0 .5

1 .0

1 .5
C a p ac ity

2 .0
(b its /s ym b o l)

2 .5

3 .0

Figure 2. DVB-S2 Performance

DVB-S2 Outbound Adaptive Coding and
Modulation
A very powerful feature of DVB-S2 is the Adaptive Coding
and Modulation (ACM) capability, which was especially
designed for diverse broadband IP over satellite systems.
Hughes was the first manufacturer to deliver a functioning
ACM system and has delivered over 450,000 VSATs for
operation in DVB-S2 ACM networks as of the first quarter of
2008.

DVB-S2 Spectral Efficiency
The most recent enhancement to the DVB series of
standards is DVB-S2, which introduces several important
features that together provide significant spectral
efficiencies when compared with DVB-S and proprietary
(non-DVB) channel formats. DVB-S2 provides for both
8 PSK as well as QPSK modulation and uses a powerful
FEC system based on concatenation of BCH with LDPC (Low
Density Parity Checking) inner coding. The LDPC technology
was developed by Hughes and adopted by the DVB standards
committee as the basis for the new DVB-S2 standard. The
result of the BCH/LDPC coding is only 0.7 db from the
Shannon limit. This is significantly better performance then
any proprietary turbocode—the best of these appear to
operate about 2 dB from the Shannon limit. Figure 2 shows
the performance of DVB-S2 against DVB-S, as well as a
typical proprietary turbocode signal.

ACM allows the system to vary dynamically the modulation
and coding of the outbound channel for each transmission.
This feature can be applied in two ways—first to optimize
the link budget of the outbound channel and second to
make dynamic adjustments to compensate for atmospheric
attenuation of the outbound channel.
Optimizing the link budget —An operator can predefine the
outbound coding/modulation combinations for each remote
based on the satellite footprint or EiRP contour. As shown
in Figure 3 the remote terminals that are at beam edge
can be configured for the most robust coding/modulation
combination (QPSK Rate ½), while the remote terminals
at beam center can be configured for the most bandwidth
efficient coding/modulation combination (8 PSK Rate
9/10). The ability to customize the outbound channel per
remote enables an operator to realize additional bandwidth
efficiencies of up to 30% over and above the 30% gain from
the DVB-S2 coding. Thus, DVB-S2 with ACM can provide an
operator up to 60% bandwidth gain over DVB-S.

The bottom line for operators is that the DVB-S2 standard
can provide 2.25 bits per Hz or more, an increase of 3040% over conventional DVB-S carriers, resulting in better
bandwidth economics.

KEY FEATURES OF THE HUGHES HN SYSTEM

H N S (D V B-S2)

9



www.hughes.com

In addition, variable burst length transmissions are used
for the inbound allowing the return channel burst size to
be built optimally per remote and per demand. This is in
contrast with systems that use fixed burst length sizes,
where every inbound burst must be the same size regardless
of actual payload demands, thereby leading to significant
wastage of bandwidth.

Outroute availability—In the second application of the
ACM feature, the system is able to change dynamically
the coding/modulation combination based on changing
received signal conditions as occurs in the event of a rain
fade. In this mode there is a closed loop control feedback
mechanism between the NOC and the remote, whereby
the remote can instruct the NOC to change the coding/
modulation combination to overcome rain fade. The benefit
for an operator is the ability to provide higher availability to
its customers.

Extensive tests on the throughput of the HN inbound system
demonstrate inbound efficiency up to 85%. In practical
application, this means that the upstream performance
typical of Hughes terminals easily reaches 85% of the
inbound channel rate—1.3 Mbps upstream throughput in
the case of a 1.6 Mbps return channel.

Beam Center - “Most Bandwidth Efficient”
Coding/Modulation
8PSK Rate 9/10

Inroute Bandwidth Pooling
Taking advantage of the fact that all remote terminals
are fully frequency agile across all inbound channels (as
illustrated in Figure 4), the system is able to bundle the
inbound channels into a single large pool of resource. At any
point in time a remote terminal may be instructed to access
any inbound channel.

Beam Edge - “Most Robust”
Coding/Modulation
QPSK Rate 1/2

Figure 3. Using ACM to Optimize the Link

Inroute Efficiency

Inroute

Time

The HN broadband system is a true dynamic bandwidth
assignment system. If a remote site has no traffic, no system
resources are assigned to that site. Once a site receives
a traffic assignment (requested via an Aloha supervisory
channel), the remote goes into a stream mode (noncontention), and the amount of bandwidth assigned is based
on the QoS plan and current need of the individual remote.

2

3

4

5

Remote
“A”
Remote
“A”

By contrast some systems have no mechanism for sharing a
supervisory channel. In these systems, every remote in the
system must be pre-assigned with network capacity, always
and forever. This is extremely inefficient, particularly for
large networks.

KEY FEATURES OF THE HUGHES HN SYSTEM

1

Remote
“A”

Figure 4. Multifrequency Inbound Access



www.hughes.com

In order to achieve the efficiencies of pooling (that is,
realize the effects of the law of large numbers) and at the
same time provide the quality of service committed for
each remote terminal, the system utilizes a number of
techniques. An important element is the concept of Inroute
Quality of Service (IQoS) plans. Each IQoS plan is simply
the logical partition of inroute bandwidth together with
the set of remote terminals that can access the logical
bandwidth assigned to the IQoS plan. The IQoS plan
defines the maximum amount of bandwidth available to a
group of remote terminals when there is network bandwidth
contention. Multiple IQoS plans may be defined enabling
an operator to provide differentiating levels of service.
Remaining inroute bandwidth and unused IQoS bandwidth
is designated Open and is available for allocation as Best
Effort to remote terminals that are not assigned a fixed IQoS
plan. The structuring of the inroute bandwidth is illustrated
in Figure 5.

Inroutes

1

2

Inroute
Pool

3

4

Network Availability
Recognizing that high availability is a crucial element
of service, the HN System provides the industry’s most
extensive set of features for increasing system availability.
Closed Loop Control—The HN System has a closed loop
control between the hub and the remote terminals for
continuous monitoring of the outbound and inbound
channels. The closed loop control allows the hub to
continuously monitor the received signal quality of
transmissions from each remote and provide this information
in a constant feedback to the remote. In addition, each
remote continuously monitors the received signal quality of
the transmission from the hub. As atmospheric conditions
affect the link quality, each component is able to initiate
changes to overcome fade conditions.
Uplink Power Control—If the remote detects a fade condition,
it is able to change dynamically its local uplink power
control to attempt to overcome the fade conditions.

5

Adaptive Coding—The HN System also is able to change
dynamically the FEC coding rate of the inbound channel.
This feature brings significant benefits in the form of higher
link availability. As shown in Figure 6, the return channel
demodulators at the hub station are able to demodulate,
decode, and process bursts of varying coding rates within
the same TDMA frame. The hub demodulator does not
need to know in advance the coding of each burst; this is
determined on the fly, allowing the remote to dynamically
change its coding rate based on link conditions as affected
by rain fade.

1000 kbps capacity

IQOS
IQOS “B”
Group of
Remotes

Open

Guaranteed
Bandwidth

Figure 5. Inbound Pooling
Rate
1/2

An important element in the inbound allocation scheme
is that bandwidth is never dedicated (hard assigned to a
remote terminal or group of remote terminals) but is always
guaranteed. The advantage is that when an IQoS plan does
not fully utilize its assigned bandwidth, the system is free to
reallocate this bandwidth to other IQoS plans, thus providing
significant flexibilities to an operator.

Rate
4/5

Rate
2/3

Same TDMA
frame supports
multiple FECs

Figure 6. Multiple FECs Within One TDMA Frame
Inroute Agility—Should the remote terminal need even more
robust link performance for the inbound transmissions, it
also has the ability to gear shift to a different inroute group
supporting a lower symbol rate.
These availability features, together with the DVB-S2 ACM
capability, result in unparalleled link performance that is
critical for any business application.

KEY FEATURES OF THE HUGHES HN SYSTEM



www.hughes.com

Advanced Bandwidth Management Capabilities

Traffic Prioritization—With any network it is vital to apply
prioritization to ensure that business-critical applications
do not suffer due to bandwidth contention with nonvital applications. The HN System can be configured to
prioritize inbound and outbound traffic based on IP traffic
characteristics (e.g. by IP addresses, port ranges, DSCP
values, and other header fields). This allows prioritization
based on a machine or application level. Prioritization
is managed at two levels. Within the site, prioritization
governs the use of bandwidth assigned to the site. At a
higher level, the network assesses prioritization across all
sites and ensures higher priority traffic has first access
to bandwidth when handling over-subscription of overall
network bandwidth. As an example, this capability prevents
a critical application at site X from experiencing diminished
performance because site Y is transmitting a large
background data file. A weighted fair access mechanism
is employed to ensure no traffic is starved when network
demand exceeds the total network bandwidth.

In addition to the logical partitioning of inbound bandwidth,
the HN System enables an operator to tailor bandwidth
assignment to meet application requirements for jitter and
latency or to prioritize one application over another.
Best Effort Services—The HN System allocates bandwidth
fairly and proportionally to all remote terminals requesting
bandwidth, based on demand. Under this scheme, outbound
and inbound bandwidth for a remote terminal is provided as
needed but subject to the constraints of the overall network
load and IQoS capacity.
Constant Bit Rate (CBR) Services—The HN System can be
prioritized to provision fixed amounts of inbound bandwidth
independent of advertised demand from a remote terminal.
Integrated client applications (such as VoIP) use the CBR
protocol to request pre-allocation of inbound bandwidth
on initiation of a session to provide high-quality voice and
fax communications. Remote terminals may be configured
to allow concurrent use of CBR and Best Effort bandwidth
when supporting mixed traffic.

Network Security
The HN System includes a Conditional Access mechanism
which is used to prevent remote terminals from
eavesdropping on the outbound traffic being sent to other
remotes. In addition, the HN System provides a standardsbased IPSec/IKE implementation for AES encryption of
user data traffic and managing encryption keys in a Hughes
network. The IKE (Internet Key Exchange) protocol is used
to automatically generate and maintain 128-bit session
keys and to set up a secure IPSEC tunnel between the HN
terminal and the NOC or extended to the customer’s data
center. Encryption is implemented for both inbound and
outbound traffic. The HN security kernel has received NIST
certification for FIPS 140-2 level 1 operation.

On-Demand Streaming (ODS)—ODS enhances the availability
of CBR services to allow real-time applications such as
third-party Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) devices and
videoconferencing devices to work seamlessly over the
HN System. These applications require constant bit rate
bandwidth on the inroute on a demand assigned basis. The
remote terminal identifies latency-sensitive data streams,
automatically requests CBR bandwidth for active streams,
and releases bandwidth as the streams stop. The remote
terminal identifies target applications based on IP Selection
Rules (e.g. by IP addresses, port ranges, DSCP values, and
other header fields) or through a SIP sniffer. Additional
support for SIP includes call set-up snooping and codecspecific bandwidth reservation.

KEY FEATURES OF THE HUGHES HN SYSTEM

Because the encryption function is integrated within the HN
System, the acceleration and traffic prioritization functions
typically available in an HN network are maintained.



www.hughes.com

Full-featured IP Router
The Hughes family of VSAT satellite routers provides a fullfeatured IP router functionality, generally eliminating the
need for an external router at remote sites.

IP Services—The HN routers provide IP services that are of
benefit for both enterprise and consumer applications, such
as:

IP Protocols—The HN routers support all common unicast
and multicast IP protocols, including TCP and UDP, and the
protocols carried on top of them (HTTP, SSL, RTP, SIP, etc.).
The routers also support other IP protocols such as ICMP,
IGMPv3, etc.

n 	 Flexible addressing with support for network address
and port translation (NAPT), NAT with port forwarding,
DHCP server, and DHCP relay
n 	 Integrated Access Control List, which controls access
from both the local LAN and the external network

Routing Protocols—The HN routers support a wide range
of routing protocols enabling network interoperability,
including:

n 	 Integrated virus protection
High Performance—All HN routers implement the Hughes
Performance Enhancement Proxy (PEP) which includes
TCP spoofing, ACK reduction, and message multiplexing.
To ensure optimal use of bandwidth, the HN System
provides header and data compression on both the inbound
and outbound channels. In addition, the HN routers have
an integrated optimization targeted for handling and
acceleration of Internet traffic. This includes

n 	 RIPv2, ICMP, ARP
n 	 BGP—The HN network edge components operate as
BGP edge routers and exchange routes with their BGP
peers enabling interoperability with other networks,
such as MPLS
n 	 VRRP—Support of the IETF standard Virtual Router
Redundancy Protocol (RFC 3768) provides redundant
Internet gateways. Increased availability with no
single point of failure is achieved by creating a virtual
router consisting of a group of cooperating physical
routers which share a MAC and IP address, but provide
transport diversity

n 	 DNS caching
n 	 HTTP/HTTPS acceleration through sophisticated
prefetch algorithms and caching
n 	 Fenced Internet access to reserve use of satellite
bandwidth for approved Internet sites

n 	 PBR—The HN network also supports Policy Based
Routing which can be used, especially in conjunction
with VRRP, to support carrying traffic over all available
network paths instead of just the active path
n 	 VLAN Tagging

KEY FEATURES OF THE HUGHES HN SYSTEM



www.hughes.com

Integrated Application Services

Network Operations

The Hughes broadband solution includes the capability for
integrated application services.

Hughes is the largest provider of managed network services
in the U.S. operating a network in excess of 400,000
consumer sites and more than 90,000 enterprise sites. This
provides a constant feedback cycle between the service
operations and engineering, leading to innovative designs
to lower the total cost of ownership and increase system
performance.

Serial Protocols—The HN7700S router supports both
high-speed IP and native serial protocols (such as X.25,
SDLC, BSC, and async) in a single, low-cost package. The
HN1030, with up to four synchronous / asynchronous
connections, can be deployed in conjunction with an HN
satellite router if more than one serial connection is required
at a site.

The Hughes Network Management System (NMS) provides
centralized configuration and management of all network
components, including software upgrades. A network
operator is able to upgrade the configuration or software for
all remote sites within the network. All network components
have an integrated SNMP agent allowing for ease of network
management and use of standard off-the-shelf network
management tools.

Voice over IP—The HN7740S supports high-speed IP and
two RJ-11 connectors for integrated voice or fax over IP. On
establishment of the VoIP session, the HN7740S requests
Constant Bit Rate (CBR) bandwidth over the satellite for
the duration of the call. In addition, the codec sampling
size is optimized for satellite usage to provide high-quality
voice over the satellite. The HN1040, with up to four RJ-11
connectors, can be deployed in conjunction with an HN
satellite router if more than two connections are required at
the site.

To ensure maximum network availability, the network
architecture supports redundancy for all network
components. In addition, the architecture supports
automated geographic NOC redundancy. With NOC
diversity, a remote site will automatically detect a failure in
communicating with a NOC and switch to operations on the
back-up NOC—providing diversity in spacelink and/or NOC
services.

Multicast services—The HN System operates as an IP
multicast network to efficiently deliver rich-media or
bandwidth intensive files for applications such as digital
signage and streaming digital audio and video broadcasts.
Due to the fact that bandwidth does not need to be preassigned to remote terminals, any of the remote terminals
can be configured for receive only operation for applications
such as IPTV distribution and other digital content
distribution applications. The enterprise package delivery
capability leverages the efficiencies of satellite multicast to
transfer any collection of files to a selected group of sites
simultaneously. Delivery options include best effort or return
receipt for guaranteed reliable delivery.

Unique to the HN System solution is the integrated
capability to support autocommissioning for every remote in
the network. With this feature no human interaction at the
hub station is required at the time of a remote installation
and commissioning. Remote configurations are preloaded
into the NMS database prior to the remote being installed.
Once the remote is physically installed and the antenna
aligned, the remote will interact directly with the various
hub elements to set power and timing values, download
software and parameters, and enter operation. All of this is
accomplished without the involvement of an operator at the
NOC station.
Not only does this feature allow an operator to scale easily
to a large number of installations per day—without the
burden of adding staff at the hub station—this feature also
significantly reduces the possibility of error so that installs
are done right the first time.

KEY FEATURES OF THE HUGHES HN SYSTEM



www.hughes.com

Worldwide Presence
Hughes is the recognized market leader for broadband
satellite solutions. Beyond our technical advantages, Hughes
has a very significant presence worldwide with offices and
networks throughout the world with operating companies
in the US, Europe, Brazil and India, as well as sales and
service offices, and service providers operating networks
based on Hughes technology. We have been committed to
the business of satellite networking for well over 30 years.
Selecting a Hughes solution brings not just the technology
advantages but also the support and experience of Hughes.
Visit our Web site, www.hughes.com, for a list of our
worldwide office locations and contacts.

Acronym List
Acronym

Definition

ACM

Adaptive Coding and Modulation

AIS

Adaptive Inroute Selection

CBR

Constant Bit Rate

DVB

Digital Video Broadcast

IKE

International Key Exchange

IPoS

Internet Protocol over Satellite

IQoS

Inroute Quality of Service

NOC

Network Operations Center

ODS

On-Demand Streaming

PBR

Peak Bit Rate

PEP

Performance Enhancement Proxy

POS

Point of Sale

QOS

Quality of Service

TDMA

Time Division Multiple Access

VoIP

Voice over Internet Protocol

VSAT

Very Small Aperature Terminal

Proprietary Statement
All rights reserved. This publication and its contents are proprietary
to Hughes Network Systems, LLC. No part of this publication may
be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written
permission of Hughes Network Systems, LLC, 11717 Exploration
Lane, Germantown, Maryland 20876.

HUGHES and HughesNet are trademarks of Hughes Network Systems, LLC.
©2008 Hughes Network Systems. LLC. All information is subject to change. All rights reserved.
KEY FEATURES OF THE HUGHES HN SYSTEM
HUGHES PROPRIETARY

www.hughes.com
H35493 ID MAY 08

11717 Exploration Lane Germantown, MD 20876 USA



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