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Starlink |OT| High bandwidth - Low latency Internet for everyone in the world
- Thread starter Alucardx23
- Start date
- OT
If anything, I want this to be a success so it makes internet access cheaper and better for everyone and lights a fire under the asses of telecoms.
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SpaceX is launching another set of Starlink satellites for its growing constellation, as it prepares to launch broadband internet services for customers on the ground as early as later this year. The launch is set to take off at 9:19 PM EST (6:19 PM PST) on Monday January 6, and the live video stream of the mission will begin above approximately 15 minutes prior to lift-off time (at around 9:04 PM EST (6:04 PM PST).
This launch will add 60 more satellites to the SpaceX Starlink constellation, joining 60 launched at the end of last year, and a previous group of 60 launched earlier in 2019 for testing and experimentation purposes. SpaceX will operate a constellation of around 180 satellites (some of the original batch are no longer in operation), which is the most in active use by any private satellite operator currently in business.
Was amazed this would be allowed in Canada. Looking in more details it will be allowed in Northern Canada.
I knew or telecom monopoly would never allow this
I knew or telecom monopoly would never allow this
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A lot of local ISPs will have to ally with SpaceX. They haven't talked about what will be the business model to distribute the satellite receivers, but it makes sense for them to use local ISPs for distribution and installation. What I don't see happening is for IPSs to block SpaceX. Some will try but I don't think that will be sustainable in the long run.
In Canada our ISP's, protection agency and government are all in bed together. We have the illusion of competition.
ATM I have 1gbs unlimited so no complaints personally, but that only happened when the topic became political.
Originally when Netflix entered Canada, all ISP's removed their unlimited tiers (vertical integration is baad), in some cases switched to a 40gb cap
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SpaceX has said they will cooperate with governments if they don't want to allow their service, what we don't know how is that going to work. They might block the signal while orbiting above certain regions or they might just block the sales of the receiver, leaving the door open for you to buy one in another place and bright it over.
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"SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket on time this morning, deploying all 60 satellites into orbit. The rocket also performed another landing on the company's drone ship in the Atlantic after launch. While SpaceX did catch one half of the rocket's fairing, the other half just missed its boat."
When an engineer believes he's a scientist :
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Sorry - did the whole thing explode? or do you mean the payload got into orbit but the booster bits didn't land/get collected properly?
I really want this program to succeed - I really want decent internet.
The latter. It seemed to reach close to the landing drone but attempted to land just outside of it. They deployed just fine.
Actually, low orbit constellation have the potential to be very good with latency. It will be a bit higher for short hops, but intercontinental connections will be faster than via current ground fiber.
Current satellite internet uses geostationary satellites which are 30k km away. Starlink constellation will be at ~500km.
Please add to the OP the light pollution concerns from the astronomy community
This doesn't make sense, 500km is only in the direction of up. There still needs to be a traversal of the Atlantic, for example - but now with an additional 500km on the radius too (in addition to the up and down hops, (and many inter-satellite hops?)). How can it be faster than direct undersea fiber, the sea is nowhere near 500km deep.
I feel like paying Musk for internet instead is more of a lateral movement than an improvement.
Starlink coms are direct to the satellite from the ground at or near the user's home (and then back down to a ground ISP hopefully near the destination). While I've seen comparisons that talk about the slower speed of light in fiber as a difference, I suspect the main source of latency is stuff like repeaters, copper sections, and indirect connections. The original Starlink plan had inter-satellite laser connections which would have made the difference in latency; the current radio-only version probably isn't going to be as effective. And that's if it really is still radio-only, I haven't seen much about the current production version of Starlink satellites after they actually went into production. Everything's been happening so quickly lately.
My main concern with Starlink is the potential for service interruptions during storms and heavily overcast days, besides that though it's looking promising.
It's just absolutely mindfucked that the idiots that run my state took money in the back pocket to let these companies dig cable lines with the promise of a monopoly to have literally no cable competition in practically every county around me. There is no incentive for them to improve services or have competitive pricing and they no qualms with just ripping people off with predatory pricing scams.. because you pretty much have no other choice as DSL is terrible and satellite is abysmal, no other cable choice is available where I live.
I'd switch purely out of frustration at this point.
You could maybe get a bit of benefit from having fewer hops and avoiding copper cables on land which are definitely slower than light. Usually wireless setups tend to have their latency gains offset by interference, though.
Yeah but right now in Greece I'm paying for fast internet with private cable tv for just 30 a month, no data caps. So unless Elon can beat that, I can see this failing in Europe as Europe, in general, has cheap internet. I presume that America is the exception in terms of Data caps and ridiculous pricing.
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If Starlink manages to provide internet at the rumored low prices and high bandwidth, then you can expect for traditional ISPs to up their game. This will potentially kill a lot of small ISP that won't be able to compete.
Light travels much slower inside the fiber lines than in the vacuum, that's the main reason why low orbit constellations can made intercontinental lag much lower than what we have today. Going up&down 500km is not affecting the lag much when the entire communication is done at the speed of light.
IMO, Starlink will be first offered to those who can't get internet at all, or can get only compromised/slow connections. General population with good internet will not easily move to Starlink, unless it is clearly superor/cheaper..
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Light moves through the vacuum of space about 47% faster than it can through solid fiber-optic glass. The signal has to travel the atmosphere up and then down, so for short distances, say in the same neighborhood, traditional fiber should be faster, but after that, the greater the distance the bigger the advantage for low orbit satellites.
DieH@rd Do either of you know if they've said much about how routing works inside the constellation?
e.g. lets say I'm gaming in the Uk and connected to someone in west coast US. I'll beam up to whatever satellite is above me at the minute, and it knows it needs to get to the satellite above San Francisco...
Does it fire a beam straight from one to the other (presumably not as every satellite in the 2000 would need to talk to every other statellite, and also the earth might get in the way)...or are some of the satellites "special" and they act as local hubs, to route the flow of traffic around?
e.g. my comms would go to a european hub, then from that to an east coast hub, then on to a west coast hub and then down to ground?
Or does it do some kind of maths solution to work out 2 or 3 intermediate satellites to move around the planet blocking the direct signal?
SpaceX is quiet for now, no official details. We have only one report about plane in flight getting a ~600mbps connection.
Here are some theoretical overviews, one looking only on satelites, and one that incorporates the dishes (that can send and recieve) from users on the ground.
Starlink |OT| High bandwidth - Low latency Internet for everyone in the world OT
Closer look at orbits and transmission times in one year old proposed Starlink constelation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZiUsNQiJ1I SpaceX's plans changed few times since then, but it is a good starting point for the initial ~1500 piece low altitude constellation.
www.resetera.com
Starlink |OT| High bandwidth - Low latency Internet for everyone in the world OT
New overview of potential Starlink capabilities by Mark Handley:
www.resetera.com
Same. So much same. I'm actually beginning my fund this year to put aside for the inevitable Starlink IPO.
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SpaceX is quiet for now, no official details. We have only one report about plane in flight getting a ~600mbps connection.
Here are some theoretical overviews, one looking only on satelites, and one that incorporates the dishes (that can send and recieve) from users on the ground.
Starlink |OT| High bandwidth - Low latency Internet for everyone in the world OT
Closer look at orbits and transmission times in one year old proposed Starlink constelation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZiUsNQiJ1I SpaceX's plans changed few times since then, but it is a good starting point for the initial ~1500 piece low altitude constellation.Starlink |OT| High bandwidth - Low latency Internet for everyone in the world OT
New overview of potential Starlink capabilities by Mark Handley:
Awesome. Thank you for your contributions on this thread DieH@rd.
Nice details.
Musk is making bold claims. Hops performance and low latency below 20ms is insanity.
To be fair, satelites will not always be directly overhead all users, but still, lightspeed is fast. 20-30ms is will be realistic for low latency internet to distant large datacenters, and sub20 for very short hops [with none or one satelite hops]. Fiber will still be best for very close destinations.
Rough estimate:
Up 700km ~2.5ms
Sideways 1400km ~5ms
Down 700km ~2,5ms
Plus some processing at user's dish+satelites+ground station + the rest of the internet beyond the ground station.
And current constellation is for 550km orbit. Down the line there will be two more layers, one at 700km+ and one whole layer at 350km. That lowest one will decrese lag for short hops even more.
Rough estimate:
Up 700km ~2.5ms
Sideways 1400km ~5ms
Down 700km ~2,5ms
Plus some processing at user's dish+satelites+ground station + the rest of the internet beyond the ground station.
And current constellation is for 550km orbit. Down the line there will be two more layers, one at 700km+ and one whole layer at 350km. That lowest one will decrese lag for short hops even more.
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SpaceX is quiet for now, no official details. We have only one report about plane in flight getting a ~600mbps connection.
Here are some theoretical overviews, one looking only on satelites, and one that incorporates the dishes (that can send and recieve) from users on the ground.
Starlink |OT| High bandwidth - Low latency Internet for everyone in the world OT
Closer look at orbits and transmission times in one year old proposed Starlink constelation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZiUsNQiJ1I SpaceX's plans changed few times since then, but it is a good starting point for the initial ~1500 piece low altitude constellation.Starlink |OT| High bandwidth - Low latency Internet for everyone in the world OT
New overview of potential Starlink capabilities by Mark Handley:
Video was really interesting - thanks! I hadn't realised how wide the coverage per satellite was...and it's interesting to speculate that users hubs can be used as a ground relay station to route traffic from satellite to satellite.
I hope it pans out...ignoring the amount of shit posting and cat memes, sharing humanitys knowledge, online, for free, is probably a good thing. Spamming that from orbit where it's hard for most countries to reach and fuck it up, is also probably a Good Thing(tm).
Starlink also has the potential of becoming an alternate "backbone" of the internet. Bandwith-intensive services that don't require low latency such as YouTube, Twitch and Netflix video files can be moved to Starlink for the majority of the data travel, thus greatly reducing the stress of the ground fiber network. This may lead to reducing/removal of bandwidth caps by traditional internet providers.
But that's not the goal for the immediate future. First rural areas, then urban areas, and then backbone stuff. And most likely, US military/financial services will jump on Starlink from the very start.
But that's not the goal for the immediate future. First rural areas, then urban areas, and then backbone stuff. And most likely, US military/financial services will jump on Starlink from the very start.
