Satellite Communications:
Some BGAN Tips from a Field User in Africa

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Posted: 7/9/2005

The following tips were provided by an RBGAN user in West Africa:

[Note: These notes refer to the PC Quick Start Guide, available as a PDF file from Inmarsat's Upgrade Page.]

Here are a few things I noted about Inmarsat's upgrade instructions:

1. p.8 instructs the user to connect the BGAN to the computer, but it
doesn't indicate whether the BGAN should be power on or power off -- the
BGAN should have power on.

2. p.9 I didn't notice this when I read the instructions prior to
installing the upgrade but notice that we are "Upgrading" from version
8.5.4.3 to 3.5.1 (and as the instruction indicated my numbers were somewhat
different, but the thrust of it is that we are upgrading from version 8 to
version 3). This is really counter-intuitive, and a bit disconcerting.
Perhaps most users won't even note this, but it's worth noting (that we are
upgrading "down" on the version number.

3. p. 10 There was a small dialogue box on the screen indicating that the
System Information Upgrades was being loaded, but it seemed like it took
several minutes, and there was little or no hard drive activity. I really
wondered if the machine was locked up. But the SIU did finally appear just
as pictured on p. 10.

4. p. 12 The "Upgrade Complete" message box took even longer to appear than
the SIU. Again, the small dialogue box indicating that the SIU was being
loaded was still there, but there was little or no disk activity. The box
finally did appear, but it seemed like an eternity.

5. p.12 Also on this page it states that the application would check for
current versions of three software programs. However, if your three
programs are current you get no indication of this. When you click "OK" on
the "Modem Upgrade Complete" message, it disappears, and there are no
further message boxes indicating that the three programs are being checked,
nor what the result of the check was. In our case there was just the mouse
cursor there (I'm assuming that all there versions did meet specifications
-- it's a fairly new computer). I finally did a Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up
the Task List to see if anything was running. When there wasn't I felt safe
to proceed. I guess that since there were no active icon on the Task Bar I
could have also assumed that the check was done. Regardless, it was a bit
unnerving.

6. p.14 instructs the user to "Use the following Instructions to initiate
rough point." A couple pictures of coverage are shown and then on p. 14 and
15 the Pointing html page is shown. Maybe it's obvious, but it would have
been helpful to know that after changing the antenna polarity (on page 13)
users then need to click on the Satellite IP Modem on their desktop to
start the Launch Pad (as they normally would when they want to connect with
the satellite). Then as usual the user should click on the Launch Control
Pad link to bring up the Rough Pointing html page. I think it's worth
noting that when the user does start the Launch Pad there is also a link
there to "Upgrade Satellite IP Modem". At this point the user does *not*
select this option (However, the user might have to use this option earlier
-- as described on p. 3 if the user was unable to download the upgrade file
over another Internet connection, or if the user was not able to get a CD
version of the upgrade).

If you download the upgrade software from the Inmarsat site, it will come as
the zipped file R-BGAN I4 Upgrader for PC_3_11_0.zip. It will *not* come as
a self-extracting zipped file. So, the user needs to unzip the file to get the
setup.exe file. The user then needs to start the setup program that gives the
initial windonw that is shown on p. 5. Essentially there is a "jump" between
the download link on p. 2 (Step 1 number 2) and Step 2 on p. 5. Windows XP
has the ability to unzip a file, but if the user is running Windows 2000 or
earlier they won't automatically have this ability unless they have something
like Winzip installed.

For further information and assistance, contact us at info@humaninet.org.

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