Blog Home

PROBLEM: Revealing the MAC addresses of networkable devices (including BGAN terminals) can be required before travelling in certain countries, China is one example. For the BGAN satellite terminal models that offer an Ethernet connection it is possible to retrieve the Mac address of the BGAN satellite terminal.  Knowing the MAC address can also come in handy for a number of troubleshooting situations.

SOLUTION #1: Windows XP comes with the Getmac command-line tool, which you can use to quickly ascertain the physical or media access control (MAC) address assigned to a network interface adapter in a local or remote computer.

SOLUTION #2: Another Windows XP command-line tool that can provide you with remote MAC addresses is Address Resolution Protocol (ARP). When used with the -a parameter, it displays the ARP cache, which stores the IP addresses and MAC addresses of the computers that most recently accessed the system.

To use it,  enter the following at the command line:  Arp - a

Populate the ARP cache with remote MAC addresses by pinging the remote system.   Then, type Arp -a,  and you'll see the MAC address of the system that was pinged.

PROBLEM:   A user in a large medical group was using an HNS-9201 Inmarsat BGAN terminal for emergency backup communications.   He could not get an IP connection on his Windows PC.

SOLUTION:  Outfitter Satellite technical support checked  carefully and found that the problem originated with a setting on the RADIUS server that handled the SIM's account.   The customer's issue was resolved immediately.

PROBLEM:  In early 2007, Globalstar announced unexpected problems with their satellites. Evidently, the S-band satellite antenna power amplifier on the satellites had degraded and two-way voice and data services were impacted. Simplex services such as those used for some Globalstar-based locator systems, such as SPOT, were not severely affected.

SOLUTION:  Globalstar adjusted the configuration of its remaining functional satellites to cover the continental US.  This was done at the expense of parts of the coverage map, especially in the high north latitude, such as Alaska. Even in the areas that continued to have service, there was a significant increase in  dropped calls. The remaining satellites were farther apart so that path redundancy was often lost, too. This is the feature by which if line of sight between your Globalstar device and the Globalstar satellite is lost, the sat-phone simply switches to any other Globalstar satellite it can see so that your call is not interrupted.

SOLUTION #2:  Some Globalstar dealers such as Outfitter Satellite also offered trade-in promotions to help Globalstar customers switch to Iridium products.

SOLUTION #3:  Globalstar launched eight first generation, replacement satellites in 2007 to compensate for the degraded satellites.  Unfortunately, this was only a partial solution and had limited impact. Globalstar's second generation satellites are now expected to begin launching in the fall of 2009.  They expect to launch 4 satellites every 3 months until 24 additional second generation satellites are deployed. In principle, the 24 second generation and 8 first generation satellites (newly launched in 2007) would mean that there would be as many as 32 operational satellites.   If the launch schedule holds, noticeable improvement in quality of service would be expected by mid-2010.