ISP system using non-geosynchronous orbit satellites

A satellite communication system comprising:

• a plurality of satellites and a plurality of gateways,
• said satellite communication system being bidirectionally coupled to a terrestrial communication system through at least said plurality of gateways,
• said satellite communication system and said terrestrial communications system comprising together a data communication network having a plurality of nodes including source nodes, destination nodes and intermediate nodes,
• wherein multiple copies of a packet are selectively generated within the data communications network based on a criteria that includes at least one of (a) whether the packet was previously duplicated by a previous node, and (b) a direction of transmission, from source to destination or from destination to source, and
• wherein the multiple copies of the packet are routed, using at least in part satellite-resident routers and gateway-resident routers, over a plurality of different paths between a particular source node and a particular destination node, and
• wherein at least one of the multiple copies of a packet is not used during the execution of a packet reordering procedure in the destination node, or at an intermediate node.

A method for packet data transmission through a data communications system comprising satellite routers and terrestrial routers, comprising steps of:

• originating a stream of packets at a source node;
• selectively duplicating individual ones of the stream of packets within the data communications network based on a criteria that includes at least one of (a) whether the packet was previously duplicated by a previous node, and (b) a direction of transmission, from source to destination or from destination to source;
• operating said satellite routers to route duplicate packets over different paths, including wireless paths through a medium subject to transmission impairments;
• and
• reconstructing the stream of packets from received packets while ignoring an arrival of an already received and valid packet.