Cyber Ships

Maritime Communication Platform provides managed communication services for ships and remote locations using mainly satellite communications. It is designed to use efficiently relatively slow speed and costly satellite communication in remote locations with limited or no on-site technical support. The Platform is a modular end extensible platform that can provide centrally managed services such as Internet access, VPN, e-mail, real-time communications, entertainment services. At this stage will be implemented – e-mail, Internet access, PBX (VoIP) and etc. Composed of 3 main components: 1. Management sub-system 2. Service sub-system 3. Remote Communication Servers Management sub-system is located in the “cloud”. It controls the services and remote devices, monitors the services and the platform's components and provides a user interface and integration APIs to manage and control users and services. Management sub-system contains: • Management console – provides a web interface to the operators, resellers, and customers to provision and manage the service. Management console also provides integration API to allow integration with operator's, resellers' and customers' BSS systems such as CRM and billing system. • Monitoring system – monitors services and devices of the platform, communication links and remote communication servers. • Authorisation, accounting and access control (AAA) – AAA server controls users access to the services and their usage, collects usage information. AAA provides information for online or offline billing system for rating and billing. • Provisioning server is responsible for management of remote devices – configuration management, over the air configuration, update and upgrade. It also implements key management and key exchange with the devices and device authentication. Service sub-system is located in the “cloud”. It contains one or more servers providing specific services such as e-mail, chat server, traffic compression, value-added services (VAS), etc. Remote Communication Servers operate together with the Service subsystem to provide services to end-users. Service sub-system has a modular architecture and allows integration of additional services. Remote Communication Servers (RCS) are dedicated appliances in the vessels. They are connected to the satellite terminal and computer networks on board. RCS provides Internet connectivity for all onboard networks controlling the access permissions, manages and accounts the traffic. RCS may run multiple services according to the customer subscriptions - internet firewall and accounting, e-mail server, 3G offloading, web cache, pre-paid internet access for end users, voice/video/chat, music and video streaming, etc. RCS are managed and updated remotely by the provisioning server (part of management sub-system) and don't require any local configuration or setup.