MAIN HEAD Seawave DECK HEAD Seawave, based in Rhode Island, USA, produces a hardware device which will automatically work out the best route for voice and e-mail. It includes built in Iridium, GSM and GPS and allows external Inmarsat systems to be added. BODY There are several pieces of software on the market to manage shipboard e-mail, but Seawave has an alternative system - all the necessary software and electronics is supplied in one hardware device called the SeaWave Integrator 3.0. The Seawave Integrator 3.0 can act as the shipboard computer server, facilitating all your shipboard computers. Each computer is then assigned an IP address, making the networking much simpler than using just PCs. SeaWave hardware is designed to better cope with the rigours of maritime use than standard PCs. Enclosed in a metal case, the hard drives are shock-mounted and automatically backed up. One hard drive mirrors the other in the event the first one fails. Shipping companies can plug Inmarsat, Iridium and GSM antennas into the back of the box; the software will choose the cheapest available option for the message. The box costs $3,500 to $4,000 with various internal communications options available. These include Iridium satellite modem, GSM modem, GPS, required cables and antennas. SeaWave's Throughput Technology Software (TTS) provides sophisticated functionality to pick up communications where you left them off if they are broken, even over a different communications route. For example, if a ship is downloading e-mail over GSM then loses the connection because it goes out of GSM coverage, it can download the rest of the message over Inmarsat. TTS is full duplex which allows the device to send and receive simultaneously, using compression which at times can be as effective as 90%. To save the ship dialing up Inmarsat all day long to see if it has any messages, a free text message is sent to the Iridium device internal to the hardware, notifying the crew when there are e-mails to collect via the Inmarsat system. Mark Witsaman, SeaWave's vice president of technology and development , says that if the customer has a Fleet system with MPDS, it is likely that almost all the data will be pushed through MPDS, as the cheapest route, apart from very large files. "MPDS is almost always worth using," he says. If the shipping company is using a mixture of Inmarsat -A and Iridium, then small e-mails will be sent through Iridium and larger e-mails through Inmarsat -A. When connected to a printer, the box can display or print a seafarers' individual bill so they can see exactly where they are in terms of spending. The software in the SeaWave Integrator 3.0 comes with an extensive help system. However, the company notes that most of the problems shipping companies experience are with networking issues. Seawave users can open their own accounts on shore by phone or SeaWave's Web site, or they can easily open an account from sea. Users can also pay for their data communications directly, without bothering the shipping company. When users download their e-mails, they can see the size, date, subject, sender and even attachments of all the e-mails before they download them; if they don't want to pay the satellite charges for downloading the e-mails from the ship, they can wait until they get home or to an internet cafe in a port and download them for free using SeaWave's Web portal mySeaWave. All e-mails downloaded on the ship are actually stored inside the Seawave Integrator 3.0, so the seafarer can access them any time he likes without having to receive the satcoms again. Seawave operates the e-mail server, so it can automatically filter out SPAM and viruses. Administrators and users can also define what they perceive as SPAM using keywords for example, or by sender address. SeaWave Integrator 3.0 simplifies administration, helps control communications expenditures and works with myriad communication mediums, including Inmarsat, for optimal communications at sea.