May 22

Satellite follies

Wired reports that satellite company Teledesic is hitching its future to Motorola's Celestri project. Motorola recently completed the final launch of its 66-satellite network, Iridium. It is expected to be functional by September.

Internet-over-satellite may become a booming business in a few years. It's already available from Hughes Network Systems as the DirecPC and DirecDuo. Something happened on Tuesday, May 19th that may give pause to the idea.

At 6:18 pm EDT, the PanAmSat Galaxy IV satellite experienced redundant failures in its navigational and control systems. The satellite spun out of control and lost its fixed orbit. As you have probably read by now, the loss of the satellite put many pagers out of commission. Many credit card authorization systems that depended on satellite communications also failed, and some radio, television, and financial services were affected.

What wasn't as well reported is that Hughes' DirecPC system also suffered a partial outage. Whether a DirecPC user suffered an outage depended on - of all things - whether your satellite was connected to your computer through an ISA or PCI card. This, in turn, was a coincidence: Hughes switched to PCI cards at about the same time they started using another satellite. Hughes has instructions for installing a new PCI card and pointing the antenna at the functioning satellite.

Attempts are underway to replace Galaxy IV with another satellite already in orbit, a process that will take about six days. Most of the data services that depended on Galaxy IV have already been switched to other satellites.

What does the Galaxy IV incident bode for the future of satellite communications, particularly Internet-over-satellite? Certainly, it shows how tightly coupled our world is to global communications, and how quickly and unexpectedly those communications can fail.

More optimistically, Galaxy IV illustrates how well the satellites are managed. In the past five years, the failure rate is just one per cent. Being able to switch services from one satellite to another provides a safety net that will continue to expand as more satellites are launched. In another story of snatching victory from the jaws of stellar defeat, controllers rescued the wayward HGS-1 satellite by using a slingshot maneuver around the moon.

---

May 20

3Com issued a security advisory for users of the CoreBuilder 2500/6000/3500 and SuperStack II Switch 2200/3900/9300. The security problem involves a backdoor password that has been leaked on the Internet. Wired has additional coverage. 3Com expects to have new firmware to fix the problem today, and advises all users of the CoreBuilder 2500/6000/3500 and SuperStack II Switch 2200/3900/9300 to upgrade.

CMP reports that Simple Technology is spinning off its OEM RAM and modem division to become more competitive.

Todd Major of Cardinal Online Support writes:

I wanted to inform you about some updates at Cardinal. The v.90 updates for the 3440, 3480, 2420, and 2460 units are available at http://www.cardtech.com/news/c4e126.exe. The latest .inf file is available at http://www.cardtech.com/files/inf/connecta.exe.

Following up to the reports on Lucent's Internet Call Waiting, several readers noted similar systems from other vendors. Siemen's EWSD InterNode System offers even tighter coupling between the phone system and the Internet. Besides smart handling of incoming calls, the system can notify you of waiting email through your telephone, either through an LED display or a special ringing tone.

The Boca Research TidalWave modem has a feature called VoiceFirst that drops the Internet connection when a call comes in, then restores the connection after the call is completed. Call waiting is required to use the service.

Previous week