The managed service provider MetTel is providing software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) technology over SpaceX’s Starlink satellite service. Currently, MetTel is providing this service to two commercial companies and two federal clients.
When thinking of SD-WAN, one usually thinks of multiple wired and wireless connections to an enterprise, with the SD-WAN software determining which connection is optimal at any given moment.
But how in the world could satellite be a part of SD-WAN?
MetTel Chief Technology Officer Ed Fox said the satellite connection is usually in addition to other more traditional connections such as LTE and fiber.
MetTel had tried for several years to add a satellite connection for some remote businesses, working with Hughes Net. But he said Hughes' high geosynchronous orbit (GEO) brought in technology that “just doesn’t mesh” with SD-WAN. “There are so many technologies used in making IP compressions work, it breaks the whole principal of SD-WAN," said Fox. "It has to do with latency and what they need to do to compress data over the satellite network.”
But low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite technologies, such as Starlink’s, do work with SD-WAN.
SpaceX’s Starlink does not actually market to enterprises, yet. It’s focused on closing the digital divide for residences in rural areas. However, a couple of MetTel’s federal customers approached SpaceX and said they wanted to use Starlink. And they wanted the Starlink connection to be part of an SD-WAN overlay. So that’s how MetTel became involved with satellite SD-WAN.
For its part, Starlink's service has more than 3,000 satellites in orbit and over 500,000 customers since 2019, according to various news outlets.**
MetTel
MetTel uses VMWare’s Velo SD-WAN technology for its enterprise customers. It also has established relationships with service providers where it hosts SD-WAN gateways and orchestrators in different regions to create a complete SD-WAN network. Fox said, customers don’t have to call anyone else “like Verizon in the Northeast, Lumen in Chicgao or AT&T in Texas” because MetTel already has partnerships with about 120 carriers that it’s either interconnected with or has a wholesale relationship with.
Although MetTel can’t name the four customers that are using its satellite SD-WAN, Fox said that one of them is a large waste management company, which has lots of drop-off plants in remote places. It would cost them too much money to get a fiber or cable connection in all those locations. So, MetTel has hooked them up with Starlink as their primary connection and multiple LTE connections bonded together for redundancy.
Fox said that a Starlink dish has to follow and track whatever satellite it’s watching, and then when that satellite goes out of view, it has to lock onto another one. This causes a small intermittent loss of service. The SD-WAN software covers that by switching over to the LTE backups.
**Correction: The story originally said Starlink's subscriber numbers and satellite count came from Ookla. But the figures came from Wikipedia, based on other reporting outlets.