Jumpgates provide all ships, regardless of size, with a way to get into and out of hyperspace. Each jumpgate is owned and operated by the race that builds  it. Most races allow passage through their own gates into hyperspace by other races through various trade agreements, treaties and tariffs. Passage out of hyperspace via jumpgates is never restricted, given the dangers of getting lost. Since the power generators in jumpgates are only used for hyperspace functions, it usually takes less than a minute to recharge a gate's jump engines.

A jumpgate is a jump engine assembly situated in a known location in normal space. Both jump engines on ships and jumpgates are expensive, massive devices. They are expensive because of the materials needed to construct them and massive because of the power needed to operated them.

The construction of jump engines is expensive because it requires solid, heavy materials, months of careful precision construction, and one rare ore. This ore, known as Quantium-40, is found mostly in uninhabited, hostile solar systems, particularly in the dead systems of older generation stars, and is not usually found in large quantities. A system "rich" in Q-40 might have enough in it to construct about 10-15 jump engines, while many systems, particularly those with habitable planets, contain barely enough for one or two engines. Needless to say, the exploration and mining of systems for Q-40 is an attractive business, luring scouts, miners and dreamers from all races. Those who can find or extract the valuable ore from a system are well rewarded for their efforts.

Jump engines are massive due to the intense power requirements involved in their operation. Opening a hole in the fabric of space-time is not something that is done easily, and even with the technology necessary, it requires a large discharge of power to open a jump point and hold it open long enough for a ship to traverse it. Most ships require at least a few minutes to recharge their jump engines once they have opened the point.

Since ships cannot navigate by any conventional means in hyperspace, jumpgates perform a navigational function as well as providing transport. Each jumpgate provides two communications signals in hyperspace. The first is a "local beacon," which broadcasts a signal that any ship passing nearby can follow to the gate. The second is one end of a "beacon pair," which leads to another jumpgate. 

Local beacons can only be received a short distance from the gate, and provide a safety net to ships entering hyperspace to ensure that the ship does not get lost before it finds the beacon signal from the destination end of the beacon pair. Once a ship has drifted more than a few thousand kilometers from a gate, the signal is lost. 

To provide signals over long distances in hyperspace, it is necessary to construct beacon pairs. A beacon pair is a matched set of transmitter-receivers that communicate via a tightly focused tachyon beam in hyperspace. A ship entering hyperspace simply finds the signal from the beacon that it wishes to travel to and follows it like a lifeline until it reaches the other end. In order to ensure that they remain in contact and do not lose each other, each end of the pair transmits to its mate full time, so it is necessary to have one endpoint for each destination that a ship can find from each gate. Each gate can have multiple endpoints installed, but interference from multiple transmitters, and the power requirements involved, generally restrict a gate to no more than 4-5 at most. In heavily traveled systems, this can lead to multiple jumpgates a few hours apart  to provide more destinations. 

When a ship files a flight plan through hyperspace, it specifies which beacons it will be following to reach its destination. As it reaches each endpoint, it leaves hyperspace and sends a tachyon signal to its flight plan administrator to indicate safe arrival and then resumes its journey, traveling to a new gate if necessary.