Can anyone out there give me an idea of the bandwidth that different oil companies have for their offshore installations?

I am especially interested in bandwidth used by floaters.
We are currently struggling with 64k for voice and data.

Saint

 

64-128K is the average, sat bandwidth = v. expensive

 

Do BP have 2X128 K on Foinavon and Scheihallion?

Our weedly link is swamped by the crew surfing the internet/home banking etc. Dunno how other companies handle this.

Saint

 

Somewhere at work I've got a document with details of many offshore comms links.

128k Satellite link for both voice and data is common, though there are still some out there with 64k links shared for voice and data. Sounds a lot, but when there are say 10+ phone lines, plus dozens of PCs, it soon gets swallowed up. One of the biggest problems is the latency of the comms link, probably 500 - 600ms on average for a satellite connection, but sometimes higher.

A lot of companies use Citrix/Metaframe now for running applications, including Internet access from offshore. This generally speeds up access, as only compressed screen refreshes get sent across the link. It's not any faster if you need to download files onto the local PC though...

BP and Shell now have fibre to many platforms, which has effectively ended all these problems, as they effectively have broadband from the PCs offshore.

John

 

John,

Thanks for the info - would be grateful if you could mail it to me at my work e-m address.

ta

SJ

 

We upgraded our floaters to 64K about 1 1/2 year ago, and that has been plenty for our own comms (drilling contractor voice x 3 lines, fax, network data link). The operators tend to tack on to our terminal about 128K I think.

We found 32K not enough.

Clubby

 

Our Vessels run 64k soon to be 128k, but when you think a phone line is 8k then it doesn't leave much room for surfing

 

Unplug all the phones and you can all all the bandwidth to yourself

 

Our vessels run on 64K.

 

I have been on over 15 different floaters ( i used to be one of the offshore surveyors who parked them up and threw out the anchors ).

In my experience they weren't too bad ( guessing 64k)- that is, until this time of year when the weather was poor and the comms would drop out on occasion

In any case they are all slow as a week in Barlinnie compared to onshore i.e frustrating ! oh and you only ever got 5 minutes on the PC before some hairy erse started busting your chops to let him on !