VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal)

A satellite Earth station, or terrestrial terminal, characterized

as having a dish antenna with an aperture, or opening, of very small diameter, at least in relative terms. A typical VSAT dish is 0.9, 1.2, 1.8 or 2.4 meters (approximately 3 to 8 feet) in diameter, with the specific size sensitive to the position of the antenna within the satellite footprint.The smallest dishes work well in the center of the footprint, where the signal is strongest. As antenna placements move farther from the center and closer to the fringes of the footprint contour, larger dishes are required to collect more signal and, thereby to improve the quality of reception.VSATs are associated with digital satellite systems operating in the C-band and Ku-band, and are designed primarily to support data communications applications such as retail inventory management, credit authorization, and general transaction processing.

Bandwidth commonly is in channel increments of 56/64 kbps, generally up to an aggregate bandwidth of 512 kbps, which is the equivalent of 8 channels. Some newer systems support much higher levels of bandwidth that can be asymmetric in nature. See also antenna, C-band, footprint, Ku-band, and satellite.

• RTSP (Real-Time Streaming Protocol)
• RTS (Request To Send)
• rt-VBR (real-time Variable Bit Rate)
• rule of thumb
• rule of thumb
• rules of engagement
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• run-length encoding
• runt
• Rural and High Cost Program
• Rural Health Care Corporation (RHC)
• Rural Health Care Program
• Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Center (RIPE NCC)
• S
• SAN (Storage Area Network)
• SAPI (Service Access Point Identifier)
• SAR (Segmentation And Reassembly)
• satellite
• S band
• S-Band (Short [Wavelength] Band)
• SBE (Small Business Enterprise)
• SCAI (Switch-to-Computer Applications Interface)
• SCAI (Switch-to-Computer Applications Interface)
• scaling
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