The Need for Introducing Multimedia Services into Ship Networks of the Croatian Merchant Navy

The integrated ship networks connected via satellite and terrestrial networks become an integral part of the global network. In this way, participants in marine traffic are offered the benefits of broadband integrated services regardless of distance or position of their vessels. This paper deals with the need for introducing integrated network and multimedia services into the Croatian Merchant Navy ships. The basic criteria to be used in evaluating high-speed LAN technologies for supporting multimedia applications are given and their usage in the evaluation of these technologies when used in the ship LAN backbones is shown. The appropriate LAN backbone technology for ships of the Croatian Merchant Navy is proposed.