On the commercial side of the industry, XipLink will remember this past year as the point when the WAN Optimization market moved fully into the satellite space with a vengeance. As the Company migrated the technology platform from a traditional TCP acceleration device to a more advanced WAN Optimization system targeted specifically at satellite link optimization, the overall market for protocol optimization over satellite is in full swing with the top five players showing growth.

The satellite WAN Optimization market also quickly segmented into three key areas: Traditional satellite TCP acceleration products (Mentat, etc.). Transparent Link Optimization products that include TCP acceleration at the core plus advanced optimizations, such as stream compression, combined with “horizontal” application support such as web optimizations and UDP/VoIP improvements (XipLink, etc.).

Layer 7 Application Optimization systems that include some transport acceleration capability plus sophisticated application spoofing technology for specific protocols unfriendly to higher latency networks like Citrix, CIFS and others (Riverbed, etc.).

Over time, many of the traditional TCP acceleration functions, such as Fast Start and Acknowledgement Frequency Reduction (AFR), have moved into the VSAT terminals as embedded systems with higher capacity requirements residing in external appliances.

During 2010, the market also started to move some of the more advanced Link Optimizations into terminals as added value. Companies such as Lufthansa, ARINC, Datum and others have moved standards-based SCPS acceleration plus streaming compression and some web optimizations into the CPE (terminal) using XipLink’s XE embedded software products.

Looking forward, XipLink expects more link optimizations to be combined into existing hardware systems, thus reducing box count and improving management simplicity for the end customer. During 2010, XipLink had many key events contributing to Company succes, including:

• Announcement and delivery of XipLink Hub Optimizations (XHO) that perform one-way, single device outbound web optimizations with no remote device deployments, relying on a standard browser for de-compression
• Deployment of embedded XipLink (XE) to Lufthansa for inclusion with their Mobile Access Router for certain types of business aircraft supporting VSAT, MSS and Cellular broadband connections
Certification of XHO, XipLink X1/X2 streaming compression and SCPS acceleration technologies by Inmarsat for BGAN, FleetBroadband and SwiftBroadband networks
• First deliveries of XipLink Real Time (XRT) UDP optimizations to drastically improve packet per second throughput performance on VSAT terminals and significant bandwidth reduction for small packet applications, such as VoIP, Skype and Citrix
• Key strategic wins, validating the XipLink technology, at premier accounts such as Singtel, SpeedCast, SDN (Glaser Foundation), TAI Trading, Boeing, India Air Force and many others, increasing our account base by 40 percent

On the military and government side of the industry, XipLink, as one of the first commercial developers of SCPS acceleration protocol since 2001, has always participated in the defense acceleration market while also promoting the Space Communications Protocol Specification. During the past year, military applications continued to be one of the top two verticals for our company as well as other WAN Optimization vendors in the marketplace.

Three key trends improved the market for SCPS acceleration in the defense sector during the past year. First, NATO military planners continued to push information and decision making closer to the warfighter. In addition to allowing for more rapid and informed decisions, the impact of this move was to place encryption devices very close to the outside edge of the network. Since the optimization process needs to run on the user side of the encrypted link, technology providers like XipLink are required to place the acceleration logic either on the user PC or provide a lightweight, portable optimizer to augment the PC.

In XipLink’s case, we delivered two solutions for this in 2010. The XipStick™ USB powered portable optimizer was successfully deployed in both MSS and VSAT applications when high performance throughput is required without CPU or application performance impact on the PC.
Other important deployments USED XipLink’s Embedded (XE) optimization system for portable “suitcase” terminals, thus eliminating external acceleration devices while reducing weight and providing the required SCPS acceleration on the move or pause.

The second trend was a dramatic increase in the use of UAV systems for surveillance and reporting. Most of these systems utilize satellite on the backhaul portion of the link once a ground control device has received feeds from the UAV. The use of unmanned aircraft continues to proliferate so the use of SCPS optimization appliances also increased due to this trend.

Lastly, due to heavy UAV demands on space capacity as well as insatiable demand for broadband data networks in theatre, space capacity continues to be a scarce commodity in the Middle East and Africa. The result was an increase in spending on optimization products to efficiently USE capacity.

New applications for XipLink wireless link optimization continued to evolve in 2010 for defense networks with key project wins at the Border Patrol (Canada Defence), ARINC (Airborne Defense), Boeing (Mobile Military), India Air Force (Operating Base Communications), Telespazio, 3Di, Agile Networks and several others

The Company expects defense to continue as a top vertical moving forward. XipLink thanks our employees, customers, partners and other friends for a wonderful year in 2010 and wish all SatMagazine readers great success in 2011!