Installing a VSAT in Iraq
This is a pretty nerdy post about how someone in Iraq might get access to the internet. Feel free to skip it.

This is how I spent my day today. It took around 6 hours round trip to drive to Sulimaniya, Iraq. Kurdistan is the region of Iraq where we did the install. I learned some stuff, it's mostly simple labor but it raised some interesting questions in my mind about interception.

As far as I can tell, it's entirely possible to intercept any data being sent to earth in an entirely passive way. I'm going to look into this more before I make any outlandish claims, if you know, feel free to let me know.




This is an example of a installing a 1.2 meter dish for uplink with a given satellite using an ODU (OutDoor Unit) and an IDU (InDoor Unit) connected by two approximately 15 meter coax cables (one for TX and one for RX).



This image shows their previous internet link. It appears to possibly be a radio T-1 which at some point would have to get an uplink. The decided to just get their own dish and cut out the middleman because the previous connection was terrible.



This is the lead engineer checking to find the 251 degree azimuth. The tool he's holding is totally awesome and old school. I think you could sail around the world with it if you were determined.



This is the man doing the heavy lifting, he's drilling small holes into the roof as markers for deeper drilling in a moment.



Here he's drilling the holes much deeper so he can put mounts into the holes and then bolt the stand to the roof.



This is the back of the 1.2 meter dish. Currently our head engineer is putting the adjustable mount on the back of the dish.



Here he's tightening it down.



Here's our team tightening and drilling while I document and learn.



These are some of the tools we're using. These are just simple networking tools and a few extra wrenches thrown in to tighten bolts that you would find on a dish mount.



This is a spool of coaxial cable that will be used in two cable drops (again one TX and one RX) by the end of this task.



This is a specialized piece of hardware that is used in conjunction with the RX cable to test the signal strength of the dish. You use this to calibrate and find the bird in the sky.



This is the ODU. It's broken into four main parts. A transmitter, a receiver, a filter and the cone.



This very clearly shows the ODU. The white box on the top of the device is the Low-Noise Block down-converter (LNB), it's the receive portion of the ODU, you connect the RX cable to this coax port. Following it down, it's connected to that is the Transmit Reject Filter (TRF) filter. This prevents cross talk between the transmit and receive portions of the ODU. The next part is the Ortho-Mode Transducer (OMT), it keeps the RX and the TX signals 90 degrees out of phase.The left side of the device with the huge white heat sink is the Block Up-Converter (BUC). It's the transmitter, it apparently can get really really hot, hence the heat sink. The right side of the device is the Feed Horn, it looks like a cone. This is the part that's pointed at the dish.



This is the front of the feed horn. It's actually deeper and more concave than this picture shows. It has a plastic cover that prevents unwanted dirt and dust from getting inside of the device.



This is the ODU from a different angle. This is the bottom of the transmitter (BUC).



This shows the orientation in degrees of the transmitter relative to the dish and ground.



This is a close up of the Transmit Reject Filter.



This man has the Azimuth-Elevation Positioner Head in his hand, he has just mounted it on the stand.



This is the Azimuth-Elevation Positioner Head being adjusted.



This is the current angle of the dish in degrees of elevation, we haven't adjusted it correctly at this point.



This is part of the Support Arm bracing.



Another shot of the feed horn support bracing. This shows all two metal poles connecting in the middle with the Feed Support. In the middle of the dish is where we will mount the ODU.



Another shot of the full dish including one of the super talented engineers as he tightens the arms to the dish.



This is the Feed Support mount. We will mount the ODU here.



This is the first sign of the USA I have really seen since I have gotten here. It's out of place but I could see it from the roof.



This is the Feed Horn being mounted onto the Feed Support. Note that the Feed Horn is pointing into the dish.



The Feed Horn is being locked in place at a 45 degree angle to the right when facing the dish.



Here the angle is more apparent.



Now we connect the satellite finder up the our RX port with a nice little coax patch cable. As you can see, it's searching for a bird.



After about 30 minutes, we have acquired proper signal strength (the SS bar) and picture quality (the PQ). The PQ is what matters most.



Here we have our engineer laying out the full length of cable for the drop.



Here are our cable making devices.



Here's the cable under construction.



Cutting the outer shielding off of the cable.



Fastening the head onto the nicely cut cable.



Making sure that the head is secured on the cable.



Taping the head to the cable just for extra stability.



He's the second cable end being cut.



Here's the ODU mounted on the dish as seen from above.



The cables are now being quick tied down to the support arms.



Here we have our cables attached to the RX and TX ports.



Here we have our finished product on the roof.



Another shot of the dish after it's finished.



Here's a shot of the dish that includes a view of the angle of the ODU and the dish. It gives you some idea of what it looks like it's pointed at but it's misleading, the angle of the ODU actually reflects off the dish to be pointing at the horizon.



Here we have a happy engineer giving us the thumbs up sign. He's pleased with the work.



Another close up of the dish and it's angle.



This is a poster for the office the install was done in. As it just so happens, we're helping a voting office get onto the internet.



This is a satellite photo of the area we're currently in. It was hanging on the wall. The people at the office were very proud of this. The main center of the photo is now a park. It was a prison and a mass grave during the early 1990s.



This is the equipment on the network side of the clients office. The top box is the Tachyon embedded system. We plug in our RX and TX cables to it. It gives us ethernet out. It's basically a bridge running some sort of embedded VXWorks system. The actual coax ports are on a PCI card. In theory you might be able to have some fun with one of these cards.



This is a front view of the Tachyon box and the other Cisco hardware the office is going to be using now.



Before we plug in the cables willy nilly, we have to decide which is the RX and the TX cable. As it just so happens, the satellite finder will turn off if you plug in the TX cable and it will read you the signal strength if you're using the RX cable. So you know which end is which on the ground and you can mark it.



This is all the equipment hooked up with a laptop for configuration of the Tachyon box.



We had to get the GPS data for the location, this was taken from the directly behind the dish. We entered this into the configuration data when we used the laptop for configuration.



This dish is a typical shared Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) setup. This means that you're not in a dedicated channel, you share the frequency with other dishes.

At this point, you stick a router on the ethernet side of the Tachyon box and you're ready to go.

I'm sure I've made a mistake somewhere, feel free to point it out.

Anyway, that's how I'm online right now in Iraq. It's fast but it's doesn't have great latentency.