Mímir 2.0

Objectives

The project will continue the development of the Mímir server, Forsway’s solution for satellite hubs providing one-way Internet over satellite. The product will be extended to be a usable component in all types of one-way Internet over satellite deployments, covering deployments from small ISPs with a few hundred users to the largest operators with high performance multi-transponder services covering several million users.

Mímir is a performance enhancing proxy with integrated user management and authentication. It was initially created as a turnkey solution that would make it easy for small operators to start up new Internet over satellite services. The market interest from operators of all sizes has shown that also the larger operators have much to gain from an integrated turnkey solution for one-way Internet over satellite. The main objective of this project is to improve the Mímir server making it suitable for operators of all sizes.

Six areas have been identified as critical to achieve the objective:

• Control center acting as a central control point for monitoring and controlling all subsystems,
• Support for multi-transponder deployments,
• Redundancy for improved robustness,
• Bandwidth optimization for lowered OPEX,
• Improved security,
• Improved end user experience.

Features

The full-loop system is illustrated in the figure. Data flow is indicated by arrows between the subsystems, with the data flow for a specific user session coloured red.

The stacked Mímir servers indicate the multi transponder functionality, where each (virtual or physical) server sends data to one satellite transponder.

The load balancer distributes connecting users to servers based on server load and geographical location of the users.

The control center is a unified control point for controlling relevant parts of the system.

click for larger image

Project Plan

The project was started in July 2012, with an expected duration of 12 months. The last part of the project will include a pilot test of the full-loop system.

Challenges

One of the greatest challenges will be to test the system, as it is hard to create an extremely large deployment with many of users in a lab environment. For this reason the pilot test will be a key success factor in system validation.

Benefits

Forsway’s platform for one-way Internet over satellite services, ForsONEway, consisting of Mímir on the hub side and Odin/Freya on the client side is the only fully integrated system for one-way Internet over satellite on the market.

This project will enable the possibility for really large deployments of one-way Internet over satellite services with a potential to reach new markets. One interesting market area is mobile operators who want to quickly and at a low cost increase the capacity of their mobile network. The results of this project will make ForsONEway fit perfectly for this task.

Current Status (dated: 14 Aug 2012)

The project was started early July 2012. Current activities are mainly focused on requirements elaboration, test design, and architectural design.