MIPS Project Detail:

Hughes Network Systems

Broadcast Internet Access

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Company

Hughes Network Systems

Gaithersburg

Montgomery

County

, Maryland

Founded:

1971

Website:

https://www.hughes.com/

Company Description:

Hughes Network Systems LLC (HUGHES) is a global leader in broadband satellite technology and services for home and office. Its flagship high-speed satellite Internet service is HughesNet®, the world’s largest satellite network, with over 1 million residential and business customers across North America and Brazil.

For large enterprises and governments, the company’s HughesON® managed network services provide complete connectivity solutions, employing an optimized mix of satellite and terrestrial technologies. The company’s JUPITER™ System is the world’s most widely deployed High-Throughput Satellite (HTS) platform, operating on more than 20 satellites by leading service providers, delivering a wide range of broadband enterprise, mobility and cellular backhaul applications.

To date, Hughes has shipped more than 5.5 million terminals to customers in over 100 countries, representing an approximately 50 percent market share, and its technology is powering broadband services to aircraft around the world.

With annual revenues of over $1 billion, Hughes’ headquarters are in Germantown, Md., although the company has offices in 11 countries and customers in over 100 countries.

MIPS Project

Broadcast Internet Access

Project #

1324.25

|

MIPS Round

15 |

Starting Date:

MIPS Project Challenge:
Hughes was developing a service to provide Internet to consumers and businesses via satellite but needed to develop a communications protocol for delivering data via satellite.

Project Scope:
Former electrical engineering graduate student Aaron Falk worked with Baras and Hughes’ Doug Dillion to turn conventional wisdom on its head and develop asymmetric Internet protocols, sending data to the satellite at one speed, and down to a modem at another, for use over satellite. Prevailing theory at the time held that long latency would make this impossible.

Over time, we’ve probably generated within the state of Maryland, a large share of our revenue—$1.5 billion a year, with a total of close to $15 billion. About $5 billion of that can be directly credited to the work done through MIPS. We employ 1,500 people here in the state. Most of them are working on businesses related to this technology. MIPS helped develop not just a new product, but a new industry.

John Kenyon, Senior Vice President for Engineering, Hughes

Results:

The protocols developed by Baras and Hughes are now called TIA-1008, a standard adopted intact by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute.

More than 30 papers were published as a result of the MIPS work with Hughes, according to Baras. Hughes has conducted seven MIPS projects with the university.

Falk went on to chair the Internet Research Task Force, which promotes research of importance to the evolution of the future Internet. He has chaired the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)’s working groups on TCP over Satellite, Performance Implications of Link Characteristics, and Datagram Congestion Control Protocol.

The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) annual report on consumer broadband services has ranked HughesNet satellite Internet service first among all major Internet service providers (ISPs) for delivering on advertised performance promises for two consecutive years (2015-2016).

HughesNet was originally launched in 1997 as DirecPC. At the time, it was the first consumer product/service to offer Internet access via satellite. The protocol used for this service (and HughestNet today) was developed through the company’s MIPS projects with the University of Maryland.

Hughes was acquired by EchoStar for $2 billion in 2011.