[HN Gopher] Starlink review, four months in
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Starlink review, four months in
Author : geerlingguy
Score : 363 points
Date : 2021-07-22 14:05 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jeffgeerling.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jeffgeerling.com)
| skellington wrote:
| Some of the comments here are kind of ridiculous. They are
| complaining (or just pointing out) issues that are EXPECTED at
| this stage of the beta.
|
| Starlink has like 1700 of the planned 42,000 satellites in orbit
| now. Of course there are going to be temporarily blips in service
| plus the random longer dropouts during system upgrades.
|
| Even with the current issues, the service is revolutionary in the
| remote areas that it's intended to service. Why Geerling thinks
| it's appropriate to compare beta starlink to his home cable/fiber
| service is beyond me. It's totally fair to review the current
| state of starlink, but to then conclude that "I don't love it"
| because it's not as good as his cable service is just plain dumb.
|
| Why did you even begin the review with the expectation that it
| could be better than your land service in it's current beta form?
| You're not even supposed to be on the starlink service if you
| have great landline bandwidth and starlink should block you from
| their service as you're stealing bandwidth from people who don't
| have access to high speed internet.
|
| One person even said "I hope they can figure out why it drops
| occasionally" as if some of the smartest people on the earth
| don't know exactly why it drops out. It drops because the
| satellite mesh network is only 4% complete!
| paxys wrote:
| If they are charging full price for it then it is reasonable to
| complain. It doesn't matter whether they call it "beta" or
| whatever else.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > Starlink has like 1700 of the planned 42,000 satellites in
| orbit now.
|
| I'm not sure if anyone believes that 42k number. They are
| launching ~60 satellites at a time - that would mean ~700
| launches. There is no way that will be economical for the
| relative handful of people (500k? 1-2M?) who could
| realistically be interested in this.
|
| Not to mention, the lifespan of these satellites in orbit is
| tiny, just a few years. They would have to be constantly
| launching new satellites to keep up.
|
| The current state is probably more or less the best Starlink
| will ever offer - as more people will join the network, coming
| closer to Musk's 500k number, bandwidth will significantly
| diminish, even if the number of satellites is maybe doubled.
|
| And if federal funds dry up, I expect the whole venture will
| quickly go bankrupt, or remain alive with a handful of
| satellites and a huge price spike.
| nexuist wrote:
| I mean, Starlink is available as a closed beta commercial
| product. There's nothing wrong with comparing it in its current
| form to cable service in its current form, especially if you're
| going to pay $$$ for it.
|
| The point is for the reader to figure out if they should try
| Starlink _right now_ (if eligible) or if they should wait for
| some of these issues to be resolved.
|
| To put it another way: would you complain that reviewers were
| judging Google Glass unfairly, because Google had grandiose
| plans for it in the future (that ultimately never happened)? Or
| would you recognize that Google made the decision to sell
| Google Glass in its current form, and thus accepted that it
| would be judged against its competitors?
| skellington wrote:
| It's totally fair to review the current state of a beta
| service. It could be informative for people who are unsure if
| they want to try the beta-service.
|
| But to compare it as an equal, in it's beta form, against a
| service that it's not even built to compete against is just
| plain dumb. If you already have access to high speed
| internet, starlink it not intended for you.
|
| His final comment about "Liking, but not loving starlink"
| implies that he's comparing starlink to cable internet as
| equal competitors. They are not and they are not intended to
| be and that's even considering the fact that starlink is in
| beta.
|
| This guy should not even be allowed on starlink (in the long
| run) because he already has access to high speed internet.
|
| This whole comment section is full of stupidity like:
|
| "isn't 100watts a lot of power?" <-- typed from gaming
| computer with a 1000watt power supply "what about space
| garbage, isn't space garbage bad" <-- as if LEO garbage won't
| just decay back to earth "will starlink be like FSD and maybe
| never get delivered" <-- as if they are related issues, they
| are not "I don't like Elon" <- because reasons, but also
| irrelevant "starlink bad because worky less good when
| obstructed" <-- too dumb for words "i'm worried about the
| starlink monopoly" <-- you should be banned from the internet
| stordoff wrote:
| > "isn't 100watts a lot of power?" <-- typed from gaming
| computer with a 1000watt power supply
|
| This feels like a bit of an unfair dismissal. I'm using a
| laptop that rarely goes above 30W (and is off half off the
| time), so I'm not sure you can make that assumption. A
| 1000W power supply also doesn't mean it's using that
| continually - a GPU can consume >300W under load, but drop
| to around 10W when it's idle. Further, 100W 24/7 would add
| around 12-13% to my power bill (which is already above
| average) - it is a noticeable amount of power.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| > This guy should not even be allowed on starlink (in the
| long run) because he already has access to high speed
| internet.
|
| I don't plan on owning it in the long run--I'm going to be
| giving the dish to my cousin who's on a farm with slow
| rural DSL once Starlink is available in her area.
|
| Unfortunately right now Starlink's available in suburban
| St. Louis but not in most of the rural communities around
| it :P
| _wldu wrote:
| It's my understanding that the Starlink signal is almost straight
| up, so if that is true, the trees would have to be rather close
| to the house.
|
| Does anyone know if this is true?
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Starlink currently wants a 100deg view of the sky (pretty
| broad), and you can actually download the Starlink App on your
| phone (even without service) and use the obstruction finder to
| view specifically how much of the sky it needs.
|
| But in my case, that tree is pretty close to the back of my
| house (and there are 75-100' trees pretty much everywhere on my
| property).
| yardstick wrote:
| No mention of this in the article, but I know someone with
| starlink and the router received a dhcp lease with a /10 subnet
| (100.64.0.0/10). I've got no problem with the CGNAT IP given, but
| found it odd the mask was a /10 and not a /31 normally seen in
| single device assignments like normally with PPP.
| Siecje wrote:
| Does this limit what a customer can do?
| blakesterz wrote:
| I just wanted to say thanks, that review was super interesting.
| And thanks for all your many ansible roles! I use the heck out of
| several :-)
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| I'm typing this message from Starlink. For me it's absolutely
| transformative; 10x the bandwidth I can get from any other source
| and very reliable.
|
| Except for outages related to obstructions. That's a real problem
| and the author's situation is not good. There's ways to work
| around it on your property; a taller mount, a tree install,
| cutting some trees. But ultimately Dishy needs a clear view to
| the north and there's no getting around it.
|
| I have some smaller obstructions for my install and it was a
| little annoying but fine. But in the past week or two it's gotten
| way better: my packet loss went from 2% to 0.6%. Details here:
| https://nelsonslog.wordpress.com/2021/07/20/starlink-improve...
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > But ultimately Dishy needs a clear view to the north and
| there's no getting around it.
|
| I don't know much about radio or Starlink's signals, but is
| this a situation where a strategically-placed radio reflector
| would help? Assuming those are a thing. So like, a reflector
| mounted on both sides of a large tree. Are the signal beams too
| narrow for this to matter?
| detritus wrote:
| huh. perhaps I'm exhibiting my total ignorance here, but why do
| they have to point North?
|
| I know that our Satellite TV dish when I was a kid had to point
| to a specific angle southwards, to match the geostationary
| position, but I'd not expect that with Starlink, unless you
| were in the Falklands or Antarctica, or something?
| mzkply wrote:
| North is where all the satellites cluster as they reach the
| peak latitude of their orbit period:
| https://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/02/190208-s...
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| First to clarify; Starlink points north in the northern
| hemisphere.
|
| Your satellite TV dish is talking to something 36,000km up in
| geosynchronous orbit, around the equator. That's to the south
| of you.
|
| Starlink are in 550km orbits moving very fast around the
| planet in a fairly inclined orbit. As another commenter has
| said, the apparent effect is the cluster tends to "hang out"
| in the north. It's complicated, a good visualization should
| help explain it. I don't have one at my fingertips.
| detritus wrote:
| Mm, i appreciate the basics there, but if you look at the
| spread of satellites against latitude (eg
| https://satellitemap.space/ ), it's pretty consistent so
| without any outside reason, I'd expect the Starlink dish to
| simply point up across most of the world, away from the
| poles.
|
| coder543's answer elsewhere here seems to furnish the
| remainder of my confusion.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Maybe this picture helps?
| https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/06/s...
|
| The radius at a northern latitude is smaller than at the
| equator, so the satellites are more tightly clustered.
|
| I think coder543's answer is wrong, or at least has the
| causality backwards. Those geosync orbits are very, very
| far away from the LEO orbits of Starlink.
| detritus wrote:
| I'm assuming that at 550 miles up, the beneath-the-
| horizon range will be quite broad, but as equally, I'd
| assume further-off satellites to be slower and more
| conflicted, given the density and interference presumably
| increases.
|
| I just don't see how - sans external requirement -
| pointing up isn't more efficient.
|
| - ed. Ok, sorry, I get it. Aim in any direction and you
| have access to more satellites, even if further away.
| Pointing up isn't 180o access. Reception is probably less
| than 90o, I guess? My bad, I'm dumb.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| It's OK, orbits are confusing. We all know in our hearts
| the earth is flat.
| coder543 wrote:
| It's a purposeful choice to avoid interfering with radio
| bandwidth allocations to existing geostationary satellites.
| As I understand it, Starlink dishes aren't allowed to send
| signals to a portion of the sky around the equator where the
| geostationary satellites are located.
|
| Starlink would probably work even better if they didn't have
| to deal with this restriction, but Starlink might not have
| been allowed to exist if they didn't design it to work this
| way.
| detritus wrote:
| Huh. I had no idea, but makes a lot of sense, thinking
| about it.
|
| Thanks!
| jgrodziski wrote:
| I'm one of the few client here in France for a few days. I moved
| from Paris to a quite isolated area (Vercors mountains) with only
| ADSL (no mobile coverage), and it's night and day, I now get
| between 100 Mbps and 200 mbps with 30/40 ms latency... I don't
| have a lot of time with the service to give an exhaustive
| feedback, but for the moment I'm able to do video conferencing
| and call perfectly. And the setup experience is great!
| 0x0000000 wrote:
| > Starlink uses CGNAT
|
| This is why I'm cancelling my subscription (though I have the
| privilege of multiple terrestrial providers in my area). For what
| Starlink charges, they shouldn't be using CGNAT. It's not an
| Internet connection if I can't get anything inbound.
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| I dislike Elon Musk as much as anyone but I think it's becoming
| clear that starlink could turn out to be a very good idea.
|
| What I haven't seen anyone do and something I'd be very
| interested to see is a comparison of the relative environmental
| costs of so many starlink launches in contrast to the building
| and upkeep of last mile connections to the backbone.
| runarberg wrote:
| idk. It could turn out to be a very bad idea
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome). And it still
| hasn't proven it self to be better then traditional
| infrastructure. The last mile connection problem can much
| easier be solved with a 5G tower then a constellation of
| satellites.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Additionally, I'm not sure how great it will be for air
| quality if we have thousands and thousands of satellites
| burning up in the atmosphere over the next few decades. I
| certainly don't want to be breathing in vaporized satellite
| ash. Your point about 5G is well made.
| anchpop wrote:
| It's probably not zero, but I imagine the effect on air
| quality is completely miniscule compared to things like
| millions of ICE cars driving around or the wildfires on the
| west coast. Additionally I think they burn up in the upper
| atmosphere, which makes it less likely for the particles to
| end up in your breathing air (compared to cars which emit
| their waste at ankle level right outside your doorstep)
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| Also the rocket used to launch each satellite has ejected
| more than 20x the mass of its payload as burnt rocket
| fuel by the time it reaches orbit.
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| Is that ash in any way different than the many thousands of
| tons of meteoroids and dust that enters from space each
| year?
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| These satellites are low enough that they will deorbit
| themselves within 5 years without periodic boosting
| NDizzle wrote:
| My Starlink experience has gotten a lot better recently. In the
| past few months.
|
| I'm in rural Arkansas, near the southern edge of the rollout
| still I believe. I have maintained 3 ISPs this whole time. I have
| an EM160R LTE modem that will do 5x carrier aggregation and pulls
| around 240-250 mbit from my local AT&T tower. I also have
| T-Mobile's 4g home internet (5g works here on my phone, but they
| won't give me the home internet for whatever reason) which pulls
| 100-115 mbit. Starlink itself is somewhere between 180 and 240
| down, but only 15 up. On the ATT line I can get 40-60 mbit
| upload, and that's one of the main reasons I keep things set up
| this way.
|
| I'm about to try disabling the wan port for T-Mobile to see what
| it's like without that ISP. I don't do any connection bonding -
| straight up round robin load balancing with no stickyness, and
| with the amount of servers and services that use multiple TCP
| streams I can see 300+mbit downloads often. Pings range from 30
| (when using Starlink) to 90. (when using one of the LTE
| connections)
|
| I no longer game enough to comment on it. My kids play Roblox and
| PS4 online games and don't whine about it, so I think it's
| sufficient.
|
| I don't really do Zoom meetings. MS Teams is what we use. I don't
| use the camera very often, but the calls will pause and drop and
| the people I work with have coined this as, "being Starlinked".
| Usually a few seconds and rarely does it take an actual redial to
| reconnect anymore. Just a dead period.
| driverdan wrote:
| If you get 250Mb from AT&T why bother with the others?
| soheil wrote:
| > Most well-known apps like Netflix, FaceTime, and Zoom, handled
| things well without any incident. It was really the apps and
| services that are obviously outsourced.
|
| Not sure why he threw in outsourced there, but ok. I know this
| could be as simple as using the right library for your video chat
| app, but at a low level how is something like this achieved? If I
| establish a tcp connection with a handshake and everything and my
| internet connection drops or IP is changed the tcp connection
| gets terminated. Other than using udp is there a way to keep the
| tcp connection going when the IP address changes without having
| to establish a new connection, which takes non-trivial amount of
| time?
| geerlingguy wrote:
| The reason I threw that in is because I've personally worked on
| a few of these apps, and also some of the backing APIs the apps
| consumed.
|
| I know first-hand that many of the ones that suffer from weird
| and annoying quirks would be a thousand times better if they
| had any reliable QA process (most don't), and were run by teams
| that were invested in the company's success.
|
| Outsourced doesn't only mean 'to other countries', but in many
| cases to consultancies, since for some strange reason many
| media companies don't see their apps as being a core
| competency, so they farm it out, and the results are always
| 2nd-tier at best.
| orzig wrote:
| This is an exceptionally good review, and (well small in the
| grand scheme of the worlds problems) a beautiful example of how a
| passionate happiest can sure goodness with the world. Thank you
| this is an exceptionally good review, and (while small in the
| grand scheme of the worlds problems) a beautiful example of how a
| passionate hobbiest can sure goodness with the world. Thank you!
| dougmwne wrote:
| It's sort of mentioned, but not emphasized in this review that
| connection dropouts happen every few minutes for a few seconds.
| That makes starlink fine for any kind of asynchronous content
| like web browsing, torrenting or video streaming, but unusable
| for video calls, stream hosting, voip, or online gaming. It's
| implied that this is due to the trees obstructing a full view of
| the sky, but I have actually heard these connection dropouts are
| just about universal due to the constellation not having enough
| infill. Just a warning that for most of us we are still several
| hundred satellites short and some connection handoff updates away
| from this being a useful internet connection.
|
| I have a property where Starlink would be perfect and I would pay
| triple the price to be able to do zoom calls over the connection.
| dataflow wrote:
| > That makes starlink fine for any kind of asynchronous content
| like web browsing
|
| This sounds terrible for web browsing. Last thing I want is to
| know is to submit a form and then have my connection drop out
| in the middle. Imagine being in the middle of filling out an
| application or opening an account or verifying your identity or
| something like that.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| If the connection drops for less than 5-10 seconds (this
| happens even on my Cable Internet sometimes), it's no
| problem. Most timeouts and TCP connections are okay with
| complete dropouts for 30 or 60 seconds (sometimes longer), as
| long as your local LAN doesn't drop your network connection.
| dataflow wrote:
| Doesn't that depend on the nature of the "drop"? When it's
| just lack of signal then sure, but when I see connections
| break even momentarily (on cable...), there's often some
| sort of feedback (I think sometimes it's a connection
| reset?) that causes the browser to just error immediately,
| and then I have to reload the page... despite still being
| on the same network with the same IPs and such.
| lazide wrote:
| That is because of the way your connection is being
| dropped/what your router is doing. It's sending reset
| messages back to your client telling it your connection
| is dead, instead of trying to resend your packets - which
| then succeed when the connection is back up.
| dataflow wrote:
| That's a possibility in theory; I haven't root-caused
| this to know what's happening in every case (again: not
| every drop is the same). Regardless, I'm just talking
| about what the average end-user might see; I don't really
| care where the blame goes.
| boringg wrote:
| As a user of Starlink for more than 4 months - the quality has
| improved. While you say it is unusable for video calls, i think
| that is way overstated and it completely depends on where you
| are trying to connect.
|
| Compared to the other options which were atrocious (10 MB down
| max, 3 MB Up max, weather changes everything) - the hiccup you
| get maybe every 10 minutes for 10 seconds - is annoying but not
| a deal breaker for VOIP calls. If you are doing client side
| calls maybe a deal breaker - team calls manageable but
| annoying. Also I do calls with our Australian team (and were
| North America based) and they are on cable internet and they
| get hiccuped in the same amount. So actually I would say that
| Starlink is on par if not better than their connection.
|
| If you are comparing the internet to city quality cable then
| yeah not comparable - but thats not what they are targeting.
| They are bringing remote areas online.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Yeah, different call quality requirements I think. I am
| mostly on client calls and I have a ready alternative to be
| on fiber. If I head out to my place in the country and have
| crappy call quality as a result, that does not go over so
| well.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| To be honest, one-on-one Facetime calls and Zoom are almost
| perfect now, with few bits where it would pause and come
| back. Group calls were even less of a problem, because we're
| all used to one or two people having connection issues, and
| it's easy to work around that.
| epmaybe wrote:
| Obviously latency is important in synchronous use cases like
| video calls, however I wonder if a delay for slower one on one
| discussions would be all that jarring for users
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| As Geerling points out, he has substantial obstructions. I have
| no obstructions, and see a few seconds of downtime per day. My
| wife and I regularly have multi-hour zoom calls with no
| problems.
|
| Obstructions are a problem, but users with no alternative are
| much more motivated to locate the dish appropriately.
|
| Starlink is not for people who have gigabit wired connections.
| For those of us who were lucky to get a hotspot to work long
| enough to use our 15Gb cap, it is a godsend.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| The outages have been getting better recently. They are
| supposed to go away entirely once the first constellation is
| fully complete. If you don't have obstructions, that is.
| tylerscott wrote:
| I use it for zoom daily. Yesterday was the first day in awhile
| where I had difficulty completing a call. The handoffs now last
| only about a second or two. Previously they'd be 15 or so
| seconds but that hasn't happened for over a month. It is my
| daily driver though I do have back up DSL just in case.
| chollida1 wrote:
| > It's sort of mentioned, but not emphasized in this review
| that connection dropouts happen every few minutes for a few
| seconds. That makes starlink fine for any kind of asynchronous
| content like web browsing, torrenting or video streaming, but
| unusable for video calls, stream hosting, voip, or online
| gaming
|
| Yep, been our experience as well. We've got a few of us who
| wanted to trade from our cottages and its just unusable if you
| need a continuous signal for more than 10 minutes at a time.
|
| That doesn't mean its useless, just that its not usable if you
| want to do voip, trading, video calls etc.
|
| Hopefully they'll figure out what causes drop ever few minutes
| at some point. But currently given how expensive it and the
| hardware are its a very disappointing product.
|
| I guess we're just spoiled now a days with the 1Gbps wired
| internet that most city homes have access to.
| foobiekr wrote:
| When these dropouts occur, is the IP address stable?
| pomian wrote:
| Yes. We have the drops also. But they are happening less,
| and for only a blink. In the worst case, we experience a
| freeze frame. Most of the time can barely see the freeze.
| pomian wrote:
| That was the feeling a few months ago. But in the last 2
| months, we have used zoom and other applications with very
| little drop outs. I have various TV stations running for hours
| at a time at high resolutions, and at the most there is a
| freeze frame for a split second once or twice every few hours.
| Frankly, I have had more issues with all the other internet
| connections we still maintain, than with Starlink. (Zoom was
| always dropping out with the others.) For example we have:
| (Slow) high speed DSL, (slow) high speed lte. In all those the
| internet download speeds are very variable, start fast (5-12)
| dropping to 0.5-1 and going up and down over time. Starlink
| maintains over 20 down, going up sometimes to over 30. We are
| in the countryside in Canada, so true high speed doesn't exist.
| For now, Starlink is the most dependable high speed option.
| (What will happen when more subscribers will join all on the
| one satellite?)
| jdc wrote:
| It may be that anyone who is willing and able to do so has
| already thought of it, but on Linux you could multiplex the
| connection with LTE/3G/dialup and probably get pretty good
| results.
| [deleted]
| shagie wrote:
| > It's implied that this is due to the trees obstructing a full
| view of the sky, but I have actually heard these connection
| dropouts are just about universal due to the constellation not
| having enough infill.
|
| If you go to https://satellitemap.space/# and enter in your GPS
| location in the settings (45, -90 for a rural northern
| Wisconsin as an example), and you can see the satellites that
| that location has visibility of.
|
| And there are times when there's nothing in that area of the
| sky.
| agildehaus wrote:
| https://starlink.sx/ can generate a coverage prediction chart
| for you
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > It's implied that this is due to the trees obstructing a full
| view of the sky
|
| Why is the antenna on the ground and not up on a tall mast?
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Mine is mounted near the top of my roof's ridge. The problem
| is there are 8 trees (five of them more than 75') around my
| one-story house.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| It certainly can be on a mast; I put mine on a (short) steel
| tube mast, and it's been a great improvement on service that
| was already a vast improvement over Hughesnet-provided
| satellite.
| brummm wrote:
| Had a team mate on Starlink and they would drop from our zoom
| call essentially every single time.
| ToFab123 wrote:
| How long is that ago?
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| I would expect that won't stay a problem for long, they're
| still pouring those things up there.
| fossuser wrote:
| It works with video calls, I've done it often.
|
| Occasional blips occur, but the call isn't dropped (and this is
| with some tree obstruction).
|
| So it's worth just getting it if that's what you want it for.
| It's probably 10x better than your existing connection.
| bin_bash wrote:
| I hope that the problem really is due to lack of infill because
| that means it'll be temporary.
| gibolt wrote:
| For the remote areas this is intended for, it is already a 10x
| or more improvement. Great internet service is better than
| perfectly reliable slow internet.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Honestly when I first got the dish, and had it in an open
| field, that was the case--but now the momentary dropouts
| between satellites are less than 1-2 seconds.
|
| They had 1000 or so satellites when I first started testing,
| and there are now something like 1600 or so. Most of the time,
| I don't even notice when it switches satellites.
|
| If you were doing some more real-time work or extremely
| latency-sensitive operations, then yes, you need to stick to a
| different type of connection. But it's really seamless now,
| compared to even a few months ago.
|
| Most of the software I used either showed no sign of the
| dropout, or at worst would freeze a frame or show a loading
| indicator for a brief moment before getting back to normal.
|
| Online multiplayer gaming and/or streaming are the main areas
| where I'd have to not recommend Starlink for now.
| taf2 wrote:
| I'm thinking of using this for a backup connection if FIOS
| fails... we'd switch our office over to starlink... currently
| we switch to comcast and it's basicaly unsable... so wonder
| if starlink would be good for ssh connections etc...
| wil421 wrote:
| I'd fix the Comcast problem before switching over to
| something that is pretty much guaranteed to have drop offs
| at this point in time.
|
| There are also devices that will give you a cellular LTE
| backup like the U-LTE from UniFi. I've heard the plans are
| a bit pricey.
|
| https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-
| accessories/products/...
| solarengineer wrote:
| When I connect to remote servers over SSH, I usually start
| a screen (another alternative is tmux) session and then
| perform my administrative and diagnostics actions in that
| session. This way, even if I get disconnected, I can
| reconnect and join that running session. There are other
| benefits to a screen multiplexer - such as multiple remote
| users being able to attach to the same session, a joy when
| a distributed team needs to diagnose an issue or watch some
| actions together.
| jefftk wrote:
| Combine with mosh and you can even keep editing while the
| connection blips!
| iotku wrote:
| You may also want to look into mosh [1] as it will handle
| dropouts and continue where ssh would just fail on its
| own. Also has local echo for points of high latency.
|
| Was a real life saver on some of the terrible sat
| connections of yesteryear.
|
| 1. https://mosh.org/
| aruggirello wrote:
| How does it compare to autossh?
| wffurr wrote:
| autossh just re-reestablishes your ssh connection. It
| doesn't tolerate packet loss very well or have local echo
| like mosh.
|
| mosh does require UDP ports, though, which might be
| problematic with some firewalls or proxies.
| starfallg wrote:
| Mosh is great, but if you don't need the predictive
| terminal emulation, then you can try Eternal Terminal,
| which is easier to get running due to not needed an UDP
| port open.
| taf2 wrote:
| yeah i use screen for everything too... still there are
| times when a connection dropping is a bit scary...
| olyjohn wrote:
| I work from home on Starlink. My SSH sessions work just
| fine. When I first got the service, it was dropping quite a
| lot, but even then SSH worked pretty well. But these days,
| if there are any drops, I can't tell. The improvements in
| the last few months have been massive. I am even about to
| drop my land line, because WiFi calling on my cell phone
| has been nearly perfect. It works better than my cell phone
| does when I am in a good service area.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| If you live somewhere with FiOS, Starlink is going to be a
| non-starter. FiOS requires high density. High density kills
| Starlink connections.
|
| I suppose Starlink can support a small, negligible,
| percentage of customers in an urban (or even suburban)
| area. (Same total number as a rural area.) So, if you think
| they are going to cutoff registrations as oppose to
| oversubscribe when they hit that point you may want to sign
| up right away.
| freeopinion wrote:
| I'm not sure if you are using FiOS as a synonym for FTTH.
| If so, you might be interested to know I live somewhere
| with FTTH that is reasonably low-density (~25-30 people
| per sq km). I think Starlink will be a very serious
| consideration here.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| When I say FiOS, I'm thinking gigabit+ FTTH/FTTD (I'm not
| 100% sure of the difference). Given that you quoted
| people per sq km (about 70-84 people per sq. mile),
| you're probably not in the US. In the US, it's hard to
| get fiber outside of areas with the high density I'm
| quoting (at least in my experience).
|
| But yes, that density seems fine for Starlink (although
| maybe it isn't in the end, who knows yet.)
| freeopinion wrote:
| My understanding is that StarLink is aiming for 100M un-
| guaranteed in beta. So that's considerably below gigabit.
|
| But I also know that most households with FTTH around
| here use considerably less than 50M.
|
| So perhaps you meant that gigabit internet kills
| Starlink. FTTH has some advantages over Starlink. But
| Starlink also has advantages over FTTH. If you need more
| than 100M, Starlink is not in the game yet. But if you
| want some leverage with the local monopoly and have
| typical usage...
|
| Or, if you snowbird (common case here) and want the same
| provider on the border of Canada and the border of
| Mexico...
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I wasn't referring to the speed (although obviously fiber
| has higher speed and reliability, and that will likely
| never change). I was referring to the fact that it seems
| like if you have the population density (in the US, at
| least in my knowledge) to justify a local ISP rolling out
| fiber to homes, you have a population density that will
| oversubscribe even the completed Starlink constellation
| (locally). Starlink just is never going to work in NYC or
| SF or areas with significantly less density there.
| Although it may work for a lucky few who manage to enroll
| before the area is full and locked down.
| driverdan wrote:
| LTE makes a lot more sense if you have a decent signal. The
| cost is lower and speeds are comparable in many areas if
| you have good hardware.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| I have five different Wi-Fi APs on my property. The handoff
| between them results in roughly 40-60ms dropout. That still
| interrupts audio calls. 1-2 seconds is huge.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Yeah, I am on lots of video and audio calls for work. 1-2
| second drops while doing a client presentation are
| absolutely not ok.
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| I'm a multiplayer developer and I'm waiting to get a Starlink
| to test on (I have tested a few times on my moms). I want to
| makes games tolerate of the latency and instability of
| Starlink. Mobile networks deal with similar issues so I think
| it's possible to make games with Starlink in mind.
| lordofgibbons wrote:
| I believe these kinds of latency and dropped packet issues
| be easily simulated on a normal PC without the need for a
| Starlink connection
| funkaster wrote:
| exactly. Just use charles proxy (or mitmproxy) and ask it
| to drop packets/throttle the connection. No need to wait
| for starlink.
| wtallis wrote:
| Most tools for simulating latency and packet loss locally
| are a pretty poor model of the kinds of behavior
| encountered on real networks. In particular, latency due
| to bufferbloat rather than speed of light delays is
| extremely important to simulate, but not well-supported
| by many tools.
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| I do simulate these conditions, but there's no
| replacement for real world condition testing.
| tigershark wrote:
| I'm not sure if it's an endeavour worth taking honestly..
| Starlink is still in beta, and once they can use starship
| to launch the satellites (hopefully somewhere next year)
| the launch capability will increase to 400 satellites
| compared to 60 on falcon 9. At that point they will be
| limited just by the satellites build throughput, so they
| will reach the 11k coverage very quickly.
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| I'm already getting a Starlink and I have one available
| to test on at my parents house so I think it's worth it.
| I'm also evaluating it as a way for me to move closer to
| my family. I'm stuck in Portland because I require really
| good internet as I'm a 100% remote game dev working on
| multiplayer games. And the only option in Albany is
| really bad and expensive Comcast service.
| ajklsdhfniuwehf wrote:
| > They had 1000 or so satellites when I first started
| testing, and there are now something like 1600 or so. Most of
| the time, I don't even notice when it switches satellites.
|
| Enjoy the early adopter moment. Even if they keep increasing
| the numbers, they will probably move those new satellites in
| a much wider net to cover more subscribers the second they
| must show a profit.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| They are planning to increase the number of satellites by
| an order of magnitude. They're launching extremely fast
| with Falcon 9, and prepping Starship for launch as well,
| which has 5-10 times the payload. May see Starlink launches
| on Starship join Falcon9 within a year or so.
|
| So the opposite is true. They're likely to massively
| increase the number of satellites.
|
| If you want to argue the per user bandwidth might be
| different than for early users, that's somewhat more
| plausible. But the number of satellites will increase. They
| can't actually significantly change the inclination of the
| satellites once launched as it takes an insane amount of
| propellant, and even for solar electric thrusters, so your
| concern about them moving the satellites to other orbits is
| very unlikely.
| zizee wrote:
| > Even if they keep increasing the numbers, they will
| probably move those new satellites in a much wider net
|
| The only way to make a wider net whilst simultaneously
| adding satellites would be to raise the altitude of the
| satellites, which I am fairly certain is not possible for
| the existing satellites.
| [deleted]
| bugfix wrote:
| What about an SSH connection? Do you have to reconnect when
| it switches satellites?
| geerlingguy wrote:
| No, the connection seems to be paired up through the ground
| station, so I wouldn't get disconnected via SSH. Mosh may
| be a better option if you want to make it feel rock solid
| though.
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| My mom has been using Starlink in Albany, OR for 2 months. It
| started spotty, but now works better than her other Comcast
| connection. The only issue is that every day at 7ish they lose
| connection for about 5 minutes. She's said it's not been a huge
| issue and plans to cancel her Comcast at the end of her
| contract. She works remote and Starlink has been great for
| video calls and video streaming. She's getting 30-40 down and
| 20-30 ms latency; Comcast is 20 down and 25 ms latency.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" It's sort of mentioned, but not emphasized in this review
| that connection dropouts happen every few minutes for a few
| seconds."_
|
| He mentions that this is due to the Starlink dish's view of the
| sky being partially obscured by trees.
|
| This will presumably improve as the number of Starlink
| satellites grows, as it will be more likely that there will be
| an unobstructed satellite in view at any moment, and less
| frequent switching between satellites.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| And he also mentions that if this were his only Internet, he
| would trim the tree branches to get a better view of the sky.
| That's not what I'd do though; I'd put the satellite dish on
| a radio mast. Anyone who's ever done any kind of radio work
| knows that antenna height is everything, and in his specific
| case it's important for a different reason: avoiding line-of-
| sight obstructions.
| imhoguy wrote:
| Maybe mounting the dish to tree would save your trees?
| https://asadotzler.com/2021/03/11/starlinks-view-of-the-
| sky/
|
| https://asadotzler.com/2021/03/13/starlink-tree-mount/
| robocat wrote:
| I mounted a point-to-point link in a tree at either end.
|
| 1. Trees sway. It did matter for the PtP link in my case.
|
| 2. Installation and maintenance took time and it was
| dangerous.
|
| 3. Leaves and branches grow. Obstruction and misalignment
| over time were problems.
|
| Advantages: it did work, and it was cheap and fun to do.
| I probably could not have installed a tall enough mast
| (too ugly to be accepted).
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Repending on height of the mast, it could be more expensive
| than the rest of your setup combined
| manquer wrote:
| trimming trees is a recurring activity, it might be
| expensive over time depending on type of trees and access
| etc
| olyjohn wrote:
| Yeah holy shit. The dude has obstructions and then writes a
| review about it? It's like putting bad gas in your car, then
| writing a review about how bad it was... Admittedly getting
| rid of the obstructions was a TON of work. It took me a few
| weeks of moving my dish around, and fiddling around with
| different mounts and options. I even topped a tree. But once
| I got rid of the obstructions, the service improved
| dramatically. Now with the launches that we have had of new
| satellites and other updates, I don't see hardly any drops at
| all. The most common annoyance with mine right now is the
| router/dish crashing. This happens maybe once every two
| weeks. Not much worse than the shitty Comcast-supplied modem.
| My next step is to use my own router and I think that'll take
| care of a lot of it.
| freedomben wrote:
| I get the crashes every week or so too and I use my own
| router. I think it's the firmware in the dish.
| mapt wrote:
| Partial obstructions are not going to be rare for
| customers. While not a best-case review, this is arguably a
| more authentic review.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Zoom handles intermittent dropouts better than anything else I
| have seen and I don't quite understand the whole mechanism.
|
| When you lose a connection for a few seconds, maybe even 10
| seconds, the video will pause, but when your connection
| reconnects, it continues where it paused. So you don't miss
| anything. I believe at some point when the speaker stops
| talking, like waiting for a response, it will jump cut their
| video to a more live feed again. So that you don't get too far
| behind.
|
| I'm curious if anyone here knows about how this works and if it
| is common practice in live video chat?
| chromakode wrote:
| WebRTC adjusts playback speed to accommodate variable network
| latency. Here's a paper which describes it a bit.
|
| https://www.isca-
| speech.org/archive/PQS_2016/abstracts/19.ht...
| xoa wrote:
| > _but not emphasized in this review that connection dropouts
| happen every few minutes for a few seconds_
|
| I don't see this at all. I have constant uptime monitoring, and
| connection drops are now a minute or two per week. We use it
| for VoIP, there is no cellular coverage at all where I have it
| deployed.
|
| _Edit_ : Also, I mentioned this in my fuller main comment but
| this is around the 45th parallel in New England, and around
| 1500' (500m) above sea level. This location is also within
| approximately 50-70 miles ground level of two separate Starlink
| ground station installations. The nature of Starlink is that
| there is much more of a geographic component than most people
| are used to in a WAN link, so it's probably important when
| talking experience to specify rough area of the world one is
| in. Once the network is completely built up that may not matter
| much anymore, but at this point there are definite coverage
| density differences, and with the current bent-pipe usage
| ground stations matter too more. Anyone interested in getting
| an idea of current planetary station and sat deployments might
| find this site interesting:
|
| https://satellitemap.space/
| robscallsign wrote:
| I'm in Ontario, Canada, 46.5 degrees latitude and typing this on
| Starlink.
|
| Even with the occasional dropouts Starlink is 10-100x better than
| any other option that we have here (the only options are LTE, or
| other satellites, like xplornet).
|
| Even though we're only a few minutes drive from a municipality of
| 160,000 people and on a major highway, there, is no wired
| connection, and doesn't really seem likely that a wired
| connection will ever happen. Since moving here 7 years ago the
| pricing/data rates for the LTE data packages available have
| doubled in price. Literally doubled.
|
| With Covid we had two adults working from home, and two kids home
| schooling, on a slow LTE connection with a total bandwidth of
| 100GB up/down. Even things like windows updates required planning
| and rationing of the internet.
|
| The state of connectivity in Canada is so abysmal. At this point
| I hope Starlink matures enough to add a voice service.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| I recall reading that Starlink orbits below the usual level that
| other satellites are at, so they shouldn't be too much of a
| threat for Kessler syndrome.
| qayxc wrote:
| They still are. The lower orbit only means that the satellites
| themselves deorbit within a few decades at most.
|
| Debris from a collision, however, goes every which way
| including higher orbits and can still damage other spacecraft.
|
| The satellites in geostationary orbits will stay up there for
| millions of years, but there's _much_ more room between them
| and there 's orders of magnitude fewer of them.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| how much available bandwidth can starlink support? I thought the
| primary users would be remote users, or mobile users or sailboats
| but apparently people here are considering it an alternative to
| cables
| sudhirj wrote:
| Each satellite supports 20GBPS, from what I've read. So if you
| have an exclusive lock on one satellite, and that has a
| direct/exclusive route to a ground station, that's probably a
| theoretical max.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Starlink is supposed to operate 30k satellites, and it currently
| has something around 1,5k (correct me if I am wrong).
|
| What this means is we can expect that in future obstructions will
| be much less of a problem, because there will be much better
| chance that at any point in time there will be a satellite on
| visible part of the sky.
|
| Also, I think, main reason of Starlink is to have access
| _anywhere_ , even in extremely remote areas. I think some
| inconvenience is expected and fair. I don't expect Starlink is
| going to replace a traditional broadband -- for that it will
| never have the bandwidth necessary.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| That 30k / 42k number is mostly Musk lies. It's very unlikely
| to ever happen given the size of the market, the cost of
| launches, and the short lifetime of satellites in LEO.
|
| Basically, they would have to constantly launch significantly
| more satellites than they do today to ever maintain a 30-40k
| satellite network in LEO. And even Musk estimates like 500k
| customers - this would basically mean 1 satellite for every
| 10-20 customers, once every few years. There is no way for that
| to make economic sense.
|
| My prediction is that they will stop somewhere around the
| current number of satellites, in fact. At the very most, they
| might triple the current number.
| sschueller wrote:
| I am curious how long Startlink will remain in beta. Looking at
| FSD at Tesla it has always been in beta and will probably never
| leave beta. The next question is if it is acceptable to sell a
| product to customers that will never be what it was promised to
| be. So in essence I sell a promise of a product but never really
| deliver since you know, it's still beta.
| ecpottinger wrote:
| Ask Microsoft first. As far as I can tell Windows 7 was they
| first 'good' OS since DOS.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| That title should go to Windows 2000. I still miss it.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Getting FSD out of beta requires significant technological
| advances.
|
| Getting Starlink out of beta, to oversimplify a _bit_ , mostly
| just requires more launches.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Even if it never advanced beyond its current state, Starlink
| would still be a massive improvement over what I have now. My
| internet looks like the "farm" example in the article, and I'm
| only a 1:15 drive to downtown SF. I'll take it, beta or not.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Starlink in beta does exactly what it is supposed to do: you
| get internet, and possibly with a better connection than in the
| final version, because of the limited number of users.
|
| With FSD beta, the car doesn't fully drives itself.
|
| I have absolutely no problem with the first scenario. It is not
| available to everyone, but for those who do, they get what they
| pay for. The second is more dubious, you don't get what you
| paid for, but promise, later, you will.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| If starlink doesn't satisfy, you can stop paying them or get
| a refund.
|
| If the autopilot kills you, the market doesnt have a
| mechanism to make you whole again.
| matz1 wrote:
| It shouldn't matter if they called beta forever or whatever.
|
| As consumer you should never believe what the company promise
| anyway.
|
| I would evaluate it myself or refer to trusted third party
| reviewer based on what it can actually do right now not what it
| may become.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Maybe beta is just part of the name that we've all just
| misunderstood the meaning of? Maybe the next version will be
| called BetaMax
| matz1 wrote:
| yes assume its just a part of name.
| bussierem wrote:
| In specific to Tesla: they have found that this exact business
| model works astonishingly well with their customer base, so I
| can't imagine they'll have any reason to stop without some kind
| of backlash to their bottom line.
|
| RE: the problem in general, I don't have any specific answer,
| but this also relates directly to the "Early Access" program
| that Steam and games in general have, along with the whole "Day
| 1 DLC" that may or may not be there for you. It's becoming
| pretty endemic to our society and I do think it's just because
| _it works incredibly well_ on us.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Day 1 DLC is a consequence of spinning shiny discs is it not?
| They have to finalize a version to send to disc manufacturing
| months in advance of actual release date just like any
| typical physical goods manufacturing/distribution. There's
| clearly lots of work that can and is done on the code during
| that shiny disc making period. So it stands to reason that
| what ever the code is on the shiny disc once released is so
| antiquated it is not even worth the plastic is stamped in.
|
| Do digital release only games suffer from Day 1 DLC like
| this? I'm not a gamer, so I have no experience with this.
| wongarsu wrote:
| It's a great funding strategy: sell the MVP to get the funds
| to develop the full product (either directly or by showing
| the product is worth dedicating resources to). It also
| enables the most important element from agile development:
| early and frequent feedback from all stakeholders.
|
| Imagine an alternative world SpaceX had launched a fleet of
| rockets to bring the constellation up in a couple days while
| shipping receivers to customers; only to then find out that
| the satellites reflect too much light and the receivers are
| too temperate sensitive. The slow beta program is just the
| better development approach
| piptastic wrote:
| Google was one of the frontrunners, Gmail was in beta for 5
| years
| jacquesm wrote:
| And still doesn't support fractional word search.
| eplanit wrote:
| And feels like it still is.
| Retric wrote:
| StarLink hasn't even filled enough of their constellation for
| global coverage so calling it beta is quite reasonable. Many
| major features are still missing such as the ability to use
| StarLink with RV's. If they still call it beta in 5 years then
| sure, but for now customers should realize it's not ready to be
| their only form of internet access.
|
| FSD isn't ready either. I don't know if it will ever be but as
| much as people harp on their marking of self driving, calling
| it beta is more realistic.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Tesla and Starlink / SpaceX are two entirely different
| businesses. FSD is a feature of a car, where Starlink is an
| entire business -- it's not just an "experimental feature",
| it's an entire business out of itself.
|
| Secondly, FSD having bugs could cause actual deaths, which is
| not the case for Starlink.
|
| I would be surprised if Starlink would still be in beta in
| 2023.
| josefx wrote:
| > Secondly, FSD having bugs could cause actual deaths, which
| is not the case for Starlink.
|
| One of the issues reported with Starlink in its current state
| seems to be overheating receivers. If those where buggy you
| would have a few burned down houses instead of complaints
| about unreliable internet in the summer due to automatic
| shutdown.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Don't these satellites evaporate in the atmosphere before
| they reach the ground?
| josefx wrote:
| You need a specialized receiver / satellite dish on the
| ground to connect with them.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| That's fair enough, but I still don't consider it as
| problematic as autonomous driving; it's more the
| equivalent of a microwave overheating, and it's fairly
| easy to build in a fail safe for this. As a matter of
| fact, as far as I understand, the receivers actually shut
| down when they overheat.
|
| This problem is not nearly as big as solving autonomous
| driving, in terms of "how to prevent deaths".
| stefan_ wrote:
| Why on earth would you continue this test when the app already
| tells you about one third of the dishs FoV is obstructed?
|
| It's impossible to tell what part of this is a meaningful result
| and what is just a broken setup.
| panzagl wrote:
| Oddly enough rural areas have a lot of trees too, so reporting
| on a non-optimal setup is very valuable.
| parksy wrote:
| One thing that caught me as interesting about the article was the
| obstruction map and what could be achieved with that kind of data
| if it was gathered and correlated with millions of other users. I
| am no expert but it seems that traditional observation from space
| has always been limited by the resolution from up on high. Flip
| the problem and have ground-based observers in densely populated
| areas track shadows in a rotating grid of point sources in the
| sky, and you can build a 3d map outwards instead, the only
| problem being how to increase the density, consistency, and
| spread of the ground-based sensor array.
| kalefranz wrote:
| Real-time visualization of the Starlink constellation:
|
| https://satellitemap.space/
| dylan604 wrote:
| That's interesting to see with knowing that just a fraction of
| the planned constellation is there. That's a lot of dots
| already. I'm guessing that the few visible string of dots are
| more recent launches that haven't quite reached their final
| positions yet. That's also interesting to see how long it takes
| the train to not be a train any longer, while at the same time
| showing how frequently new launches have been occurring.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| I believe the constellation is about 90-95% complete now. The
| first shell at least. There's plans for more shells but
| that's for redundancy, not coverage.
| mastax wrote:
| I was going to comment about how surprised I was that they
| almost finished the first shell without deploying laser
| links but apparently they have:
| https://arstechnica.com/information-
| technology/2021/01/space...
| scrumbledober wrote:
| I think the laser interlinks are proving more difficult
| than SpaceX anticipated. I had expected them much earlier
| in the deployment than now, and it seems they are
| currently only planning them for polar orbits.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| That is a lot redundancy. Current satellite count is around
| 1,600, and FCC approved plans through phase 2 would bring
| that up to ~12,000
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| I think they need quite a lot of satellites in polar orbits
| to get coverage at the poles, and they have barely launched
| any yet. They are close to 100% coverage of the rest of the
| world already though.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| They're doing polar launches but compared to the number
| of customers in sub-70 latitudes it's a pretty small
| market.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Well, 9/10 is still a fraction, just not as small as I
| thought it was. ;-) I must have fallen behind on launches,
| not realizing they were this far along.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| What are the dense lines of satellites?
| nomel wrote:
| At least for the short lines, they're launched in batches
| from one point, so they take some time to spread out to their
| final orbits. These are neat to view after a launch.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Is that really how many Starlink satellites are up there? Foo.
| I had no idea.
| XCSme wrote:
| That is honestly a lot better than I expected. I think it is a
| game-changer for remote areas. You could build a house anywhere
| and still have energy (solar panels) and internet (Starlink).
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| It's been a very long time since I worked with directional
| radios, but it feels very weird to learn that a tree counts as a
| sky obstruction significant enough to kill the signal. It's just
| a tree, not a giant steel building or a mountain. Leaves are
| barely there, relatively speaking.
| bbarnett wrote:
| I have a backup 4G modem here, and when the leaves come out on
| the trees in the summer, I see a signal drop. 4 bars to 2 bars.
|
| The trees (forest) is line of sight between me and the only
| tower.
|
| I presume it's all that water in the leaves.
| qchris wrote:
| I think that your observation of water is probably spot-on.
| When it comes which RF frequencies get absorbed, with water
| the answer is pretty much "yes". Combined with what I'd
| imagine is some really fun scattering math tossed in, tree
| cover is a pretty good bet for reducing signal quality,
| especially if it's more than one.
| djrogers wrote:
| Leaves are mostly water, which does a good job of absorbing
| 10Ghz RF.
| bityard wrote:
| For RF absorption, the rule of thumb is that the higher the
| frequency, the more the signal is attenuated. Once you get into
| the gigahertz range, things like leaves block (actually:
| absorb) a huge amount of the energy.
|
| This is why if you have a wifi router with both 2.4 and 5 GHz
| bands, the 2.4 GHz band usually has much better range.
|
| Visible light is in the THz spectrum which is blocked by
| anything solid that isn't clear or translucent.
| DanTheManPR wrote:
| Is that a function of the wavelength it's using? A quick search
| suggests that starlink uses 10-12ghz, are trees opaque at those
| frequencies?
| ecpottinger wrote:
| I had a digital TV antenna in Oshawa pointed direct at the CN
| Tower in Toronto, there was only one tree in my direct line of
| sight, come summer when the leaves were fully developed I lost
| a number of channels because the signals was not strong enough.
| The tree was not on my property so I could not cut it.
| varelse wrote:
| I've had Starlink for about 6 months and it is a massive
| improvement on upload speed at 10-25 Mb. Download speed is a
| mixed bag wildly oscillating from 5 to 100 Mb and back. It's okay
| for downloading things but it's terrible for any sort of video
| conferencing. There are brief dropouts on average every 6 minutes
| or so and my obstruction map is better than the author's. My
| neighbor up the street got slightly better service by mounting
| his dishy on a 20-ft antenna pole above his house.
|
| Local ground service is 20 Mb download and 2 Mb upload. And
| that's just barely sufficient for watching streaming video and
| video conferencing. Gigabit service is but a mile and a half away
| but no one is going to pay to lay the fiber into our
| neighborhood. So the last mile and a half is copper from 20 years
| ago. I think that's going to require political will to fix and I
| don't think that political will exists right now nor will it in
| the near future. We could have paid $5,000 per house to lay it
| ourself but our own neighborhood couldn't come to consensus on
| that. Now imagine that at a national level.
|
| So if they just deliver 100/100 within a year or two, this is an
| epic win IMO and I will cancel ground service. And if they don't
| someone else will so I'm not worried. But it took Teslas to spark
| the electric vehicle industry. Now there's a lot of choice. I
| wouldn't be surprised if something similar happens here.
| mdasen wrote:
| > So if they just deliver 100/100 within a year or two, this is
| an epic win
|
| It's unlikely that they (Starlink or someone else) will offer
| symmetrical speeds. It's not that they're looking to be mean to
| you. It's that uplink is harder and people use a lot more
| downlink.
|
| Even if they dedicated as much wireless spectrum to downlink
| and uplink, uplink would likely be slower. We see this on
| traditional cell networks. They dedicate as much spectrum to
| uplink as downlink, but their cell tower is able to better
| transmit than your equipment and so the downlink becomes
| faster. Even with so many more users downloading than uploading
| (and causing congestion), the downlink is usually faster.
|
| Newer wireless networks aren't going to dedicate equal spectrum
| to downlink and uplink (using time-division instead of
| frequency division to separate downlink and uplink). Again,
| this isn't to be mean to you. It's just a reality that people
| use a lot more downlink bandwidth than uplink. Starlink isn't
| immune from that reality.
|
| Elon Musk has already said that they should be able to hit
| 500,000 customers, but that scaling to millions of customers
| will be difficult. They're going to have to cap how many people
| get service in an area and/or put in network management to make
| sure that some users don't use up all the bandwidth from others
| nearby.
|
| They're also going to need to focus on downlink capacity to
| serve what users need. That doesn't mean unusable uplink. As
| you noted, 10-25Mbps uplink is an important improvement. But
| wireless internet options (including Starlink) will need to
| balance that with the downlink capacity users need.
|
| > We could have paid $5,000 per house to lay it ourself but our
| own neighborhood couldn't come to consensus on that
|
| Over 10 years, that's $42/mo. Over 20 years, $21/mo. That's
| non-trivial if the solution to your internet woes might just be
| a couple years away. It's probably one of the big reasons why
| wired companies won't want to be spending money expanding
| networks in suburban/rural areas. Let's say that you invest in
| a network expansion and you expect to make it back over the
| next 20 years. Then 3 years into your investment, Starlink,
| T-Mobile, and Verizon are all offering home internet service to
| your customers. Sure, your fiber network might be "better", but
| that will only attract some users. Others might get a package
| deal from their wireless carrier giving them a better price.
| Now you go from having 90% of households to 50% of households
| and the investment that you made probably won't work out. For
| most people, 100Mbps is plenty. Sure, some people love the low-
| ping times of fiber and love gigabit speeds. People like us
| here on HN. For most people, they want to be able to use
| Netflix/YouTube/Facebook/etc. and there's going to be a lot of
| competition for that market.
|
| > Now imagine that at a national level
|
| Realistically, this already exists on the national level in
| that we spend billions subsidizing rural connections. Starlink
| is receiving lots of government money to provide rural
| internet. I think a big question is whether Starlink is looking
| to grow well beyond what the government will subsidize and
| whether government subsidies will flow to other companies more.
| I'm sure that AT&T/T-Mobile/Verizon are all looking at what
| rural internet subsidies might come their way as they launch
| rural home internet.
|
| We do have some political will to fix the situation, but it's a
| very expensive situation to fix for a lot of rural areas in a
| wired way. Should people in cities subsidize suburban/rural
| lifestyles? As a country, we pour money into roads, low fuel
| prices (even as climate change ravages the planet), rural
| telecommunications, etc. If every home in your area is on 2
| acres of land, it's going to cost more to wire up the place,
| it's going to cost more to get roads everywhere, it's going to
| use more fuel to get from place to place.
|
| We do spend a lot making rural internet happen. It's just an
| expensive proposition. Heck, Starlink is very expensive at a
| $550 startup cost + $100/mo. That isn't cheap competition to
| wired internet - and that's after large government subsidies
| that might end up being $2,000 per user. Starlink has received
| $900M in federal money and Elon Musk is hoping to serve 500,000
| users so that would be $1,800 per user from the government.
| That's not the $5,000 your service provider wanted to extend
| fiber, but it's still a lot of money. Plus, Starlink is likely
| to be getting more federal money in the future (and they might
| end up serving a couple million users).
|
| There is political will and we've spent incredible amounts of
| money over many decades and continue to spend even more. It's
| just hard to serve many rural areas. If one is in an area with
| 5 people per square mile, that's a lot of wire for very few
| users. Wireless/satellite might make the most sense since
| installing one thing could serve hundreds or thousands of
| users. Even 20-50 people per square mile can be a lot of work
| to wire up.
|
| While wireless home internet is in its infancy right now, I'd
| expect it to get a lot better over the next 5 years. As you
| noted, your neighbor installed a 20-foot mount to get better
| reception. T-Mobile Home Internet customers are rigging up
| directional antennas mounted on the outside of their homes to
| get better speeds. Given that people install satellite dishes
| for TV, it seems very reasonable that we'll see wireless
| antennas installed to offer internet service. Again, when
| something is in its infancy, there are less options and it's
| less fully realized. But that will change over time.
|
| I think the next 5 years will be an exciting time for home
| internet. I don't think that Starlink is going to be doing most
| of the exciting stuff and I don't think we'll see symmetrical
| connections, but I think we'll see great stuff that will bring
| better connections to people who need it and will bring
| competition to the marketplace to prevent monopoly providers
| from taking advantage of their customers.
| varelse wrote:
| >Over 10 years, that's $42/mo. Over 20 years, $21/mo. That's
| non-trivial if the solution to your internet woes might just
| be a couple years away.
|
| Except... The value of each house would probably increase by
| $10K-$15K or so:
|
| "Controlling for speed, homes in CBGs where fiber is
| available have a price that is about 1.3 percent more than
| similar homes without fiber."
|
| https://realtorparty.realtor/community-outreach/rural-
| outrea...
|
| My new neighbors are increasingly tech TLAs as the former
| generation sells their homes off for 2-3x what they paid 20+
| years ago. Median house price in my neighborhood is ~$1.1M
| ATM.
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| I think it is difficult to overestimate how much other rural
| internet providers have over-promised for their federal $$. I
| know that in my area (northwestern Montana), a variety of
| ISP's have received rural internet funds, and it seems like a
| fair bit of money has been spent on very little additional
| high-speed coverage. There are many towns from 350 - 2000
| population that are under-served, even with a lot of federal
| subsidy (I'm told the local telco removed internet capacity
| from our town of 400 to provide it to a nearby school system.
| I know that if I pay $5K to get a telephone wire to my house,
| I can have dial-tone, but not internet, not because of
| distance, but because of capacity limits.) Perhaps when those
| ISP's applied for their grants, they simply underestimated
| the costs.
|
| Regardless, we do have Starlink, and it is transformative.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| I think nearly 100% chance we'll get at least ~1T in infra
| spending on the 'hard' stuff which includes broadband. But that
| cost makes me wonder is it worth it when we could instead
| support efforts like Starlink?
|
| Or build a government run version. though while lots of good
| reasons to - e.g. low rates, free access for kids etc - letting
| Gov own even more of our internet is probably not great.
| jld89 wrote:
| > But it took Teslas to spark the electric vehicle industry.
| Now there's a lot of choice. I wouldn't be surprised if
| something similar happens here.
|
| I really hope not. There are enough satellites out there, there
| are already too many, space pollution is real. Maybe we can
| find a better solution to this particular problem.
| ncallaway wrote:
| I think these LEO constellations are actually the least
| concerning part of space pollution.
|
| There are _many_ more LEO satellites, true, but their orbital
| placement is such that the satellite 's orbit naturally
| decays in a few years. Which means if a satellite becomes
| uncontrollable (or is destroyed in some way), the debris will
| clear in a relatively short period of time.
|
| I'm actually much more concerned about the much smaller
| number of satellites in medium and geostationary orbits,
| where the decay time is decades or centuries.
|
| Failed satellites or debris in these orbits will take a
| _very_ long time to clear, and strikes me as a much larger
| concern than the larger number of LEO sats
| tialaramex wrote:
| This doesn't make much sense. MEO is _huge_ and GEO is only
| "relatively" small because it's narrow along two of three
| dimensions we care about+, which has no influence on any
| debris from a collision and thus it would most likely leave
| GEO altogether.
|
| Would a volcanic eruption in New York be very bad? Yeah, I
| guess it would, but, that's not going to happen. Whereas
| California has several volcanoes that - while we've no
| reason to expect them to erupt this year - certainly can't
| be ruled out for our lifetimes, so, makes sense to manage
| that risk not worry about New York.
|
| + A Starlink, or a GPS bird, has a "ball of yarn" orbit, it
| doesn't really matter which part of the planet it's over at
| any particular time so long as we can predict where it'll
| be for the near future. But the whole point of a
| Geostationary satellite is its apparent fixed location in
| the sky from a point on the ground. To do that it needs to
| orbit at the same rate the Earth spins, limiting the
| orbital radius to a tight band - and it also needs to orbit
| over the equator, the result is all GEO birds are in more
| or less identical orbits, just offset in time.
| ncallaway wrote:
| We're looking at two different axes. You're considering
| "how much of the orbit is occupied". I'm looking at "how
| long does a dead or destroyed satellite continue to
| occupy space".
|
| If we have a collision that causes a significant amount
| of debris in a medium earth orbit, that debris will
| continue to exist for a very long time, so a wide portion
| of that orbit will be unusable or dangerous.
|
| > Would a volcanic eruption in New York be very bad?
| Yeah, I guess it would, but, that's not going to happen.
|
| That's fair, but I think your analogy might fall down on
| the comparative risks of damaged or destroyed satellites
| in LEO/MEO compared to the comparative risks of volcanic
| activity in CA/NY.
|
| Yes, it's true that there is a larger risk of collisions
| in LEO with the number of satellites operating there. And
| it's true with the larger number of satellites, there are
| more risks of a satellite losing control. But that
| doesn't mean GEO and MEO satellites are without risk.
| Just last year there was a significant risk that a GEO
| satellite had the potential to explode due to a failing
| battery (https://spacenews.com/directv-fears-explosion-
| risk-from-sate...).
|
| I'm mostly interested in hedging against worst case
| scenarios, and the worst case scenario for a LEO
| constellation is much less problematic than the worst
| case scenarios for MEO constellations.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| What is "too many"
| bsdetector wrote:
| > Gigabit service is but a mile and a half away but no one is
| going to pay to lay the fiber into our neighborhood. So the
| last mile and a half is copper from 20 years ago. I think
| that's going to require political will to fix
|
| I imagine once Starlink is an actual choice, the telecoms will
| install wireless at the end of the fiber and offer you faster,
| more reliable service than Starlink.
|
| They don't do it now because they get your money without having
| to do anything at all.
| varelse wrote:
| I imagine the more immediate threat is 5G internet. But
| currently the reception in this neighborhood is terrible for
| T-Mobile (despite their coverage map insisting otherwise) yet
| one of my neighbors claims he can get 50 Mb download with an
| AT&T hotspot. I have approximately zero faith in our current
| ground-based providers. They are the PG&E of broadband IMO.
|
| Upgrading to my first 5G phone recently made voice service
| work at my house but did nothing for data.
| bluedino wrote:
| There are too many places that don't get 5G in the first
| place.
| varelse wrote:
| Yet unlike ground-based service in my experience, the
| situation is improving with time. It took 15 years for my
| old place to go from 2.4 Mb/300 kb to bidirectional Gb
| and that only happened because AT&T was feeling generous
| briefly in 2019 w/r to expanding service (in that case,
| 400' of fiber to my cluster of houses). They stopped
| expanding shortly thereafter because so many people were
| in exactly the same situation that they were swamped with
| requests.
| turtlebits wrote:
| I get around 48-56Mb down tethered to my 5G T-mobile phone.
| (in the north Seattle area)
| [deleted]
| varelse wrote:
| Same latitude, lucky to get 2 Mb in either direction. But
| down in Roseburg, Oredgon I got 135 Mb/s download sitting
| in a parking lot so it's not my phone.
|
| Edit: I just walked through the neighborhood repeatedly
| invoking speed test and I can get 50 megabits at various
| points. But I can't get it anywhere on my own property.
| There's no real rhyme or reason that I can see as to
| where it's good and to where it's bad.
| driverdan wrote:
| With an external antenna aimed correctly I'm sure you'd get
| a much better cell signal. That may be what your neighbor
| has.
|
| Keep in mind T-Mobile and AT&T are entirely different
| providers. AT&T coverage may be better where you live.
| mdasen wrote:
| Starlink isn't driving the telecoms to install wireless. The
| telecoms were already planning this before Starlink.
|
| T-Mobile Home Internet is already available to 30M households
| in the US (out of around 130M households so around 20-25% of
| US households). T-Mobile is looking to have 7-8M subscribers
| within the next 5 years which would make them the 4th largest
| ISP (behind Xfinity, Spectrum, and AT&T). Verizon is looking
| to cover 50M households by the end of 2024 which is years
| away, but shows that 5G home internet is coming.
|
| Wired home internet companies aren't avoiding installing a
| wireless link at the end of their fiber out of spite. It's a
| combination of who has wireless spectrum and the
| technology/capacity available. If you're talking about
| Xfinity or Spectrum, they don't have the wireless spectrum to
| offer that. If you're talking about Verizon/AT&T/T-Mobile,
| they're working on it, but it takes time for the technology
| and spectrum to be there to provide the capacity people
| expect for a home internet connection. The recently concluded
| C-Band auction means that wireless carriers are going to have
| more spectrum available to provide more capacity (and they
| spent nearly $100B getting it). 5G NR provides more speed and
| capacity.
|
| If it was just out of spite, Verizon/AT&T/T-Mobile would have
| been offering wireless home internet for years in areas where
| they had no wired network. They weren't getting the money in
| places where they didn't own the local telco (which for
| T-Mobile is everywhere and for Verizon/AT&T is most places).
| Even when they owned the local telco, most people would be
| buying cable internet.
|
| The problem is that home internet isn't easy. A wireless
| customer probably uses 10GB of data on average. Streaming HD
| Netflix is 2-3GB per hour. Home internet usage is usually an
| order of magnitude higher (and can be even higher than that).
| Basically, you need to increase your network capacity by at
| least 10x if you're going to be signing up home internet
| customers. With new technologies and spectrum, that's what
| wireless carriers are doing over the next 1-5 years.
|
| I think that terrestrial wireless will be big in the future,
| but it's not because of Starlink putting pressure on
| telecoms. It's because their networks are going to be seeing
| massive capacity upgrades over the next few years that will
| enable it. Verizon/AT&T/T-Mobile would have loved to offer
| wireless home internet years ago, but the technology and
| capacity simply wasn't there. I mean, they did offer home
| internet years ago, but it often cost hundreds of dollars a
| month and was only available in really rural areas (not just
| places that might hate 20Mbps service). But new tech and
| capacity gains are allowing them to offer new service.
| T-Mobile is first out of the gate because it got new spectrum
| earlier, but Verizon and AT&T will be following in the coming
| years.
| varelse wrote:
| I personally don't hate 20 Mb service and I don't think it
| is the problem except for streaming video.
|
| The problem is the metastasis of ridiculous dynamic content
| that is driving up bandwidth requirements and latency and
| delivering a reduced quality Internet experience in return,
| not because dynamic content is intrinsically bad, but
| because of how it's being utilized.
|
| But in both situations I've lived through recently, the
| fiber has been just out of reach along main roads for some
| time now. And I know a bunch of people in similar
| situations on side streets where AT&T and XFinity declined
| to extend service after building the infrastructure along
| main roads to do exactly that.
|
| Anecdote: during 2019's power shut offs because of high
| winds, my house lost power for 3 days, but my neighbor 25'
| from me did not lose power. Seems like a similar situation
| in some ways. Both of our houses were on hills served by
| separate power lines less than a quarter mile from a main
| road. The only qualitative difference I can think of is
| that the last 200 ft to my house is below ground.
| jjeaff wrote:
| I don't believe that TMobile home internet is available to
| 30 million households. The only numbers i can find say 30
| million people. Some announcements from T-Mobile say 20
| million households.
|
| But it appears to only be available to people in mid sized
| cities. In other words, people that already have somewhat
| acceptable internet service options.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| I'm in a rural area (the nearest town's population is
| about 1,000) and I know someone that has T-mobile's home
| internet, fwiw.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| T-Mobile's home internet is cellular. 4G/5G. And I've
| heard it's pretty good from a friend that runs a WISP.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > And if they don't someone else will so I'm not worried... I
| wouldn't be surprised if something similar happens here.
|
| I'm a little worried about it. Other than Amazon's Project
| Kuiper, I don't really see who else can compete.
|
| Unlike EVs there's not an existing industry that's doing
| _mostly_ the same thing, that just needs to start offering a
| new line. Running a LEO megaconstellation is extremely
| different than putting up a handful of massive geostationary
| satellites. I just don't see the existing satellite internet
| players being able to compete.
|
| Frankly, it's a _massive_ investment of resources to get
| started (which is true for auto manufacturers as well), but
| doing it economically requires launch costs that only SpaceX is
| currently able to provide.
|
| Nobody else wants to build a competitor to Starlink by paying
| SpaceX. Which is why I think Amazon's Kuiper is the best shot
| to compete--but it requires Blue Origin's New Glenn to come
| online to really get the economics working. I know Amazon has
| tapped ULA as a launch provider in the interim, so they'll be
| able to start getting satellites up and running soon, but the
| economics seem...painful if they're going to use expendable
| rockets for the bulk of the constellation.
|
| It's definitely possible that we see a flourishing of
| offerings, but I could also see a world where in 5 years time
| there's really only still Starlink.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Nobody else wants to build a competitor to Starlink by
| paying SpaceX_
|
| I'm not sure what you mean here. Outside of, say, military
| usage, every single telecom company is a competitor to
| Starlink. Internet is internet.
|
| This commercial product is turning out to be what the
| "naysayers" thought it would be; brilliant if you're in a
| place with terrible internet, but noncompetitive in any kind
| of urban environment.
|
| Again, imho, the huge thing here is the ability to get a
| quick internet set up anywhere in the world that can't easily
| be taken down (...military).
| ncallaway wrote:
| > I'm not sure what you mean here. Outside of, say,
| military usage, every single telecom company is a
| competitor to Starlink. Internet is internet.
|
| That's certainly true, but there are real physical
| limitations that make it hard to compete with Starlink
| without a LEO constellation.
|
| Sure, you could do ground based infrastructure build outs,
| but the population density means it's not profitable or you
| have to charge really high rates to make up the fixed
| costs. Other satellite providers can compete in the rural
| areas, but Geo and LEO are have important differences. The
| first is latency (internet is internet but 60ms internet is
| not the same as 600ms internet).
|
| When I made the statement I did, I was mostly referring to
| satellite internet providers, because land based providers
| have largely abandoned or drastically underserved this
| market segment.
|
| I don't see a GEO constellation being able to provide a
| similar internet offering to Starlink ever, due to light
| delay. I don't think ground based solutions will pop up to
| start competing for these low density market, because
| they've already been written off as unprofitable even
| _before_ there was serious competition for the market.
|
| > This commercial product is turning out to be what the
| "naysayers" thought it would be; brilliant if you're in a
| place with terrible internet, but noncompetitive in any
| kind of urban environment.
|
| Well that's probably because the naysayers were predicting
| the exact same thing as the supporters. Spaced has
| described Starlink consistently as being designed to
| service rural and suburban areas that are underserved by
| existing providers. The goals never were to compete with
| providers in super high density urban markets.
|
| I've been a huge supporter of Starlink since the first
| announcement, and it's shaping up pretty much how I
| imagined which also lines up with your description.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| If you want to build a competitor to Starlink that does the
| same thing and is ideal for terrible internet areas, you
| need to put up satellites, and SpaceX is the only company
| that you can pay to do so economically.
| skissane wrote:
| > I'm not sure what you mean here. Outside of, say,
| military usage, every single telecom company is a
| competitor to Starlink. Internet is internet.
|
| With regard to satellite Internet mega-constellations, it
| is true thus far. The two other major constellations
| (OneWeb and Kuiper) have avoided SpaceX as a launch
| provider, choosing competitors instead - OneWeb has gone
| with Arianespace Soyuz and Virgin; Kuiper has chosen ULA
| (and is assumably going to choose Blue Origin too once they
| are ready). SpaceX has said they are happy to launch
| competitor constellations, but it makes sense that its
| competitors aren't happy to fund their competition. It is
| very unlikely that Arianespace or ULA can actually beat
| SpaceX on price, so avoiding funding your competition is
| the only logical explanation for OneWeb and Kuiper's
| decisions.
|
| SpaceX is launching other satellite telecommunications
| systems, that obviously also compete with Starlink to some
| extent, but less head-on. For example, they are contracted
| to launch one of the ViaSat-3 satellites. ViaSat-3 is a
| satellite Internet constellation, so in that sense does
| compete, but it only has 3 satellites in geostationary
| orbit, so it isn't really going after the same direct
| market as Starlink. (ViaSat appears to be getting scared of
| Starlink, as evidenced by their anti-Starlink applications
| to FCC and threats of a lawsuit; given that, I wonder how
| much longer they'll be willing to buy launch services from
| SpaceX.)
| ncallaway wrote:
| Is OneWeb still in the game? I saw that they had been
| financial issues and were sold to the UK and I kind of
| assumed that they had ended their constellation goals.
|
| It'd be great if they were still working on it, though
| dnadler wrote:
| A bit of a tangent, but is there any information about how
| many constellations are physically possible? Obviously
| there's a lot of space in LEO, but it's still limited. Given
| that each provider would need their own very dense
| constellation of satellites in different orbits, things would
| eventually start getting crowded.
|
| I don't think we'll get there any time soon (or ever), but
| kind of an interesting thought experiment.
| ncallaway wrote:
| I haven't done the math and I'm certainly not an expert,
| but my lay understanding is that the number of
| constellations is much more limited by spectrum frequency
| availability, rather than the space constraints in LEO.
|
| That is, if we had an very large number of companies
| wanting to create satellite internet constellations, we
| would run out of useful EM spectrum before we would run out
| of LEO orbits.
|
| I'm not positive about that, though!
| rcxdude wrote:
| The limit is far more how tight you can beamform the
| signals and how much usable spectrum there is: this is the
| fundamental thing limiting the density and hence number of
| users starlink can have.
| lazide wrote:
| You're underestimating the amount of space in space (sorry,
| couldn't resist). Volume increases exponentially as
| diameter increases.
|
| I don't think anyone would worry about 1800 or even 180000
| things spread over the entire surface of the earth. We have
| billions of cars, and they mostly avoid running into each
| other. Even 100 miles up? Far, far more space - and a lot
| less 'stuff' to worry about too.
|
| They could pack a million satellites up there and basic
| traffic management would be more than enough to avoid
| collisions.
| rini17 wrote:
| We will see.
|
| But it's definitely don't comparable to cars. Say you
| want safety margin of mere 1 second, that means reserving
| 8 kilometers free corridor in front of every satellite.
| At all times. That isn't a small volume.
| relativ575 wrote:
| Why one second and 8km? Satellites are not manually
| maneuvered.
|
| Airplanes are only required to keep 1,000 to 2,000 feet
| vertical separation. They travel at much slower speed
| than satellites (550 mph vs. 17,200 mph), but they are
| also much bigger. They tend to travel in narrow
| corridors, as opposed to being spread out like
| satellites.
|
| NASA and SpaceX have started working together to address
| the collision issues with their fleet:
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-spacex-sign-
| joint-sp...
| itzprime wrote:
| But it is not the same thing, due to the speed that
| satelites travel.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Satellites aren't going to swerve, though.
| varelse wrote:
| HughesNet and ViaSat have both been around for a while but
| their rates and their service are terrible. But unlike
| Starlink, their service is reliably and predictably crappy so
| there's that I guess. There's nothing stopping them from
| improving their own services.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > There's nothing stopping them from improving their own
| services.
|
| Well, they can't improve the latency of their service due
| to light delay. If they want to compete on that front, they
| need to move to a LEO constellation.
|
| Neither HughesNet nor ViaSat has started working on LEO
| constellations (publicly anyway), and these things take
| years. If they want to get into LEO constellations, they've
| ceded a 5 year head start to SpaceX.
|
| I'm not optimistic that either of them will be able to
| remain competitive with Starlink over the next decade.
| agency wrote:
| > There's nothing stopping them from improving their own
| services.
|
| Except the laws of physics I guess. Geosynchronous orbit is
| about 36,000 km out so best case scenario if you were going
| straight up to a satellite in such an orbit and back down
| even at the speed of light in a vacuum that's a lower bound
| of a quarter of a second of latency. So unless these legacy
| satellite internet companies launch LEO constellations of
| their own, which there's no indication they're capable of
| doing, it seems pretty hopeless for them.
| IPTN wrote:
| I don't know when the project started, but ViaSat has
| been working toward constellation service of their own
| for at least 6 years: https://www.viasat.com/space-
| innovation/satellite-fleet/vias...
| ncallaway wrote:
| ViaSat-3 is a geostationary constellation of 3
| satellites, which I don't really consider to be a
| competitor to Starlink due to its physical inability to
| ever reduce the latency lower than 500ms
| fy20 wrote:
| > So the last mile and a half is copper from 20 years ago
|
| In the UK, BTs 'fibre' rollout is almost exclusively FTTC and
| then copper phone lines after that. My parents have a phone
| line from 35 years ago, and the cabinet is maybe half a mile
| away, but they can get 50 Mbit down (I can't remember upload,
| maybe around 15 Mbit). The provider rolled this out a lot
| quicker than ADSL (we never got ADSL2), so I assume it's
| technically not that complicated.
| robocat wrote:
| Using copper is weird.
|
| The New Zealand government invested ~ PS750 million into
| fibre to the premises infrastructure, in partnership with
| other companies. About 80% of NZ homes have access, with say
| half of those actually using it, but percentage is growing.
| Usable plans are about PS40 per month. In my city you can't
| sign up to a cable connection, even if the house is already
| wired up for it. I belive you even have trouble signing up
| for copper, because the infrastructure companies just don't
| want to support it. The main competitor left is mobile,
| although I would love to see StarLink be available here.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-Fast_Broadband
| tialaramex wrote:
| About 15% of that Openreach rollout is Fibre to the Premises.
| Overall about a quarter of UK homes can get FTTP/FTTH either
| from Openreach or another provider. A lot more in Northern
| Ireland, somewhat less in Scotland.
|
| However actual _usage_ is quite different. If your Internet
| seems fine, why would you buy a more expensive service that
| claims to be "faster"? In my city Toob are trying to
| aggressively acquire customers for FTTP with a price they're
| presumably losing money on, but I don't expect that to last.
|
| The technology for a setup like your parents is either VDSL
| or G.fast. Near to their old (perhaps slightly battered)
| green BT cabinet is a newer one, the newer one has fibre to
| it, and a DSLAM, the DSLAM ties to the old cabinet with
| copper, and so only that "maybe half a mile away" distance is
| covered by the DSL technology, from there it's fibre.
| bluepanda928752 wrote:
| Technology is pretty solid (no comparison to FSD), order of
| magnitude better than previous iterations of satellite internet.
| The solution is still getting our collective heads out of our
| asses and running fiber everywhere though
| verytrivial wrote:
| 100W 24x7? That's quite a lot, right?
|
| This adds some color perhaps to the argument that this is for
| underserviced regions -- they don't mean third-world or
| impoverished even though it sounds like that, at least when I
| heard people defending Starlink.
| oscardssmith wrote:
| It totally can make sense in third world improved regions, just
| not in homes (and/or possibly not on all the time). You could
| pretty easily run a small business off of 100 mb down, 50 up,
| and in that setting, you can probably power it with a small
| solar panel and just turn it off at night.
| humanistbot wrote:
| A "small" solar panel? A 100W solar panel is 2 x 3 ft (.60m x
| .90m). You'd need multiple panels even if you run it only
| during the day, because fixed solar doesn't just go from 0%
| to 100% once the sun rises.
| cyberge99 wrote:
| Solar technology, including the footprint is advancing
| rapidly. I believe there are panels that can do much higher
| wattage around that size. Your point stands though. "Small"
| is a relative term.
| qayxc wrote:
| > Solar technology, including the footprint is advancing
| rapidly.
|
| Is it, though? The price drops have been significant,
| yes, but the efficiency of COTS panels hasn't seen any
| dramatic improvements in the past 20 years. Silicon
| panels have a theoretical limit of 29% efficiency and
| current models are close to 20%. There's not much room
| for improvement left there.
| skellington wrote:
| You would need 1 standard 400 watt solar panel ($250)
| plus batteries and inverter ($???) to power starlink 24
| hours a day in this mythical zero power area that you all
| seem to be worried about.
| ecpottinger wrote:
| That is what batteries are for. and you don't need many to
| do the job.
| turtlebits wrote:
| Yes, 2.4kw in a day is a lot. I was hoping to switch to it from
| tethered cell service for my off-grid cabin. (I need 24/7 for
| security cameras), but it looks like I won't be able to without
| a substantial solar and battery addition.
| ecpottinger wrote:
| A single 400 watt solar panel and batteries could power this
| 24/7, no problem.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Only if you live in the Sahara. Panels are rated for power
| they produce at 1,000W/m2 irradiance, in UK average is 100W,
| that panel will produce 40W on average.
| turtlebits wrote:
| That seems absurdly low. My 250w panels get within 90% of
| rated output and I'm in Seattle.
| coder543 wrote:
| I think they're averaging throughout the year, using the
| number of "Mean Annual Sunshine Hours" * "Percent
| Possible Sunshine", which would account for average cloud
| cover and such.
|
| I'm sure that for a few hours during the summer, the
| solar irradiance in London is probably 90% of what it is
| at the equator. That doesn't help most of the year.
| bick_nyers wrote:
| Gotta remember the double whammy here. Starlink is mostly
| rolled out at higher latitudes where solar power is less
| effective. Still, solar is cheaper than utility power most of
| the time. Might need 1.5 of those panels. Maybe I'm crazy,
| but I wouldn't consider off-grid unless I had like a 5KWh
| array at a minimum. Probably with wood burning stove as
| primary heating source if I really couldn't expand that solar
| for electric heating due to cost.
|
| With heat inverter pump tech. taking over fridges, water
| heaters, AC, etc. and making them so much more efficient, it
| can give a lot of headroom on energy requirements.
| Syonyk wrote:
| No. It can't.
|
| My office has 5kW of panel hung, 10kWh of battery, and my
| Starlink terminal is on the house system (grid tied) because
| an extra 2.4kWh/day isn't workable with my system in the
| winter, short of a _LOT_ of generator time - I 'm severely
| power limited during inversions, and the Starlink dish more
| than doubles my office's "idle power draw" (it's the property
| network hub, one of our internet connections, inverter idle,
| sleeping computers, etc).
|
| Yesterday, the 15.9kWh system on the house produced 78kWh for
| a "sun factor" of about 4.9, so a 400W panel would produce
| about 2 kWh. Whoops. That's not 2.4.
|
| In the dead of winter, the same system can produce 2.5 kWh -
| yes, 2.5 kWh on a 15.9kW nameplate system. A 400W panel won't
| even power on the charge controller in those conditions.
|
| To reliably power a 100W load, 24/7, in most areas, requires
| probably 1500-2000W of panel and 20+kWh of battery - or
| someone willing to light a generator, which is the far
| cheaper option. But "a 400W panel and batteries" (implied as
| a trivial thing to set up) definitely won't. It won't even
| run it 24/7 in peak sun most of the year.
|
| ... and that's before it tries to melt the snow off. From the
| blog post:
|
| > _During the heavy snowfall, Dishy quickly spiked up to
| 125W, peaking at 175W towards the end of the snowstorm._
|
| Solar panels don't produce much covered in snow, either.
| skellington wrote:
| You are probably technically correct, but most people don't
| need 24hr internet access, so that one 400 watt panel would
| provide high speed internet for let's say 12 hours a day
| and that's plenty for this odd scenario of living in a
| place with no power but still needing high speed internet.
| Syonyk wrote:
| The claim was 24/7 powering with "a 400W panel and some
| batteries" - which is simply false.
|
| I deal with the realities of off-grid power in my office
| on a daily basis, and a vast majority of what's written
| about solar and batteries by people who don't have
| experience with them is simply wrong. I try to correct it
| where I can.
|
| With a 400W panel and a few kWh of batteries, you could
| reasonably accomplish 14-16 hours of access during peak
| sun in the summer, 8-12 hours in spring and fall, and 0-3
| hours in winter, except for 5-6 hours on sunny winter
| days.
|
| Although I've heard that the newer Dishys use somewhat
| less power (50-70W), which does improve things.
| turtlebits wrote:
| Doubtful. Most of the US does not get 6 hours of full/peak
| sun (2400w/6 = 400w)
| stordoff wrote:
| It would cost me about PS11/month to run. For context, I
| currently pay ~PS80/month for electricity (UK average is
| ~PS60[1]). Not prohibitive, but it's a pretty sizeable
| increase. When you consider I can get 4G connectivity[2] for
| PS22/month, with significantly less power consumption,, it
| doesn't seem that attractive unless you have no other options.
|
| [1] Table 2.2.1 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-
| sets/annual-d...
|
| [2] Claiming typical down speeds of 50Mbps-100Mbps
| SamBam wrote:
| Anyone know if Starlink is happy turning off and on again
| throughout the day?
|
| I know we are all used to 24 hour internet, but if I were
| energy-conscious or off-grid, I might want to turn it on for
| 3-4 half-hour sessions during the day.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| I tested it a few times (putting in stow mode, turning off
| while I was rebuilding network rack, etc.), and it always
| picked back up within 2-4 minutes.
|
| I know a few people who have Starlink on an outlet timer or
| WiFi switched outlet, and only have it run during the day. It
| seems to be okay with that.
| [deleted]
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Is this power requirement just because the hardware hasn't had
| a chance for years of iteration or is it a "hard" requirement
| that no amount of product iteration can fix?
|
| In other words is it 100W all the time because of physics or is
| it just "sub optimal" hardware that in theory can be mitigated
| through smarter protocols and fancier hardware?
| qayxc wrote:
| For the foreseeable future it's mostly physics.
|
| The "all the time"-part is of course something that can be
| worked on even without changing the hardware. A simple switch
| on the outlet to turn it off during the night or if everybody
| is at work/school and thus doesn't need it would reduce power
| consumption a lot already.
|
| "Fancier hardware" could also mean a timer for the outlet
| switch or a "smart home"-solution. This could mitigate
| connection time by turning the router back on before you
| arrive at home/wake-up.
|
| There's a lot of potential for not having to use 100W all the
| time without hardware changes.
| aWidebrant wrote:
| Presuming that a large part of those 100 W go to the power
| amps for uplink transmissions, it seems that it should be
| possible to make at least that part scale with how much
| outgoing data the terminal is actually sending. But that may
| require new hardware, and it may conflict with the ambition
| of reducing cost per unit.
| flyingfences wrote:
| 100W is a couple of light bulbs. It's not nothing, but it's not
| all that much. It'd be challenging off-grid, but not a concern
| anywhere with electrical infrastructure.
| humanistbot wrote:
| 100W is a lot. It is a couple of very old incandescent bulbs
| or ten 60W equivalent LED bulbs.
| ls612 wrote:
| It is a lot but it's also outside so it won't heat up your
| house and in most places it only adds up to about $10 a
| month or less on your power bill
| katbyte wrote:
| perspective i guess - i used to use 2 100watt bulbs to
| light a single room.
| tialaramex wrote:
| A more durable reference comparison: 100W is similar to a
| human. An adult human, not exercising heavily, but not
| asleep, maybe reading a book, or talking to a friend,
| something in that ballpark.
|
| Also, if you aren't off-grid, you're apparently not so far
| from civilisation that _previous_ utility suppliers couldn 't
| be bothered to provide service to you. Maybe if this
| generation's utility suppliers got their act together you
| wouldn't need Starlink anyway.
| martincmartin wrote:
| At 25c per kWhr, that's 60 cents a day, ~ $18/mo.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| To be clear, electrical rates are much different in different
| parts of the country. At my house in the suburbs outside St.
| Louis, MO, the cost is about $9/month. Not nothing, but not
| too significant compared to the total cost of the service.
| NDizzle wrote:
| 8c per kWh here where I'm using it here in rural Arkansas.
| phire wrote:
| If it's your only (or best) option for decent internet, that
| cost probably won't consern you at all.
|
| People who are off grid might grumble at having to provision
| more solar, battery and inverter capacity.
|
| But for people who have other Internet options, $18/month
| might influence their decision.
| SamBam wrote:
| That's actually non-trivial. That makes the monthly cost
| nearly 20% higher.
| minhazm wrote:
| 25c per kWh is pretty high, I think that's high even for CA.
| Most states are in the 12-13 cents per kWh range [1].
|
| 1. https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-
| state/
| skellington wrote:
| Electriciy in CA is ridiculously expensive. $0.27/kWh
| average rate is common in CA. Going up to $0.40+ if you get
| into the higher tiers.
|
| But even with insane generation rates, most of the electric
| bill is the power company service fee, not the generation
| fee.
|
| For example, out of a $200/mo bill, maybe $50 is electric
| generation, the rest is the service fee. PG&E is insanely
| badly run.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Many places are tiered, so if you go above a certain kW/h
| the rate doubles or triples. Cali and parts of NY state are
| like that (never lived anywhere else tho).
| geerlingguy wrote:
| It's a little less than a modern efficient fridge (2-3
| kWh/day). I used to have 100W light bulbs in the house, so it's
| not a crazy amount of power, but it's most significant to
| anyone planning on using Starlink 'off-grid', since it's a lot
| more than just a little 4G or 5G hotspot, or a standard DSL or
| Cable modem and router.
| morsch wrote:
| A modern efficient fridge uses way less than 1 kWh/day. The
| one I bought in 2018 uses 0.44 kWh/day. 2-3 kWh/day is awful.
|
| Three random examples:
|
| https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/kge36awca/bosch-
| kge36aw...
|
| https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/ffu3dx1/hotpoint-
| ffu3dx...
|
| https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/htf-540dp7/haier-
| htf540...
| geerlingguy wrote:
| I should be more specific: an efficient 'USA-megahome-
| sized' fridge. Our typical fridge is often 25-35 cubic feet
| (850 litre)... that's about double the size of the small
| fridges used in many parts of the world.
| clvx wrote:
| I'm in a rural area in Montana and luckily I have access to a 5G
| tower. My impression is if you are close to one, it's better and
| cheaper than going with Starlink even if you have to pay extra
| money to set up an external MIMO antenna to improve your signal.
|
| I think Starlink is useful in many areas and industries, but 5G
| home internet is reliable for many cases at least in the US.
| Starlink will do great in the South hemisphere where providers
| struggle even in metropolitan areas. I see that as a huge win for
| many as long as the prices go down as the current prices could be
| a barrier for not so wealthy countries.
| adkadskhj wrote:
| I don't know much about Starlink, but isn't one point of
| Starlink that eventually it _could_ even beat wired connections
| for distance latency? Ie it 's a shorter and more direct trip
| to use Starlink to get from US West to US East, for example.
|
| Though this is quite a ways out i imagine.
|
| Best of all this idea works in current tech, and can get even
| better with future tech when Starlink starts going Satellite
| <-> Satellite, avoiding unnecessary land hops.
|
| I'm interested in Starlink for all use cases, once they get
| more satellites up.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| My understanding is that in addition to distance latency
| there is some non-trival amount of latency due to the use of
| TDMA. Unlike CDMA where everybody piles on the same spectrum
| at the same time, TDMA gives a timeslot to every station and
| you gotta wait your turn before TX/RX (this is a gross
| oversimplification of course).
|
| While it doesn't add _that_ much latency it is more than
| CDMA.
| syncsynchalt wrote:
| Not just TDMA - lasers in vacuum travel at the speed of
| light, but signals in optical fiber and coax copper are
| both 2/3 of that. This means that if (and that's still an
| if, not yet a when) starlink does laser between satellites
| it can beat terrestrial speeds.
|
| I could see the end result being that we still do bent-pipe
| signaling over land and only laser interlinks for crossing
| oceans and for customers that pay for low ping to financial
| markets.
| gdubs wrote:
| 5G speeds are decent but the main issue for me is caps. I'm
| waiting on StarLink -- early signup to beta, never got in,
| purchased day it was available, no sign of order being
| fulfilled - and what I'm counting on is being able to upload
| large files, etc, without a cap.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Starlink will most definitely add caps, IMHO. If you have
| tens of millions of subscribers trying to download terabytes
| of video per month... yeah, that's gonna be a problem.
| clvx wrote:
| Currently I have no caps on T-Mobile. I understand Starlink
| plans to have caps at some point.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I'm waiting for my turn (I had a beta offer last year but
| declined to proceed at the time, now I get to wait like everyone
| else). Hoping that real soon it gets opened up for mobile use. I
| have a campsite about 50 miles away that I'd spend a _lot_ more
| time at if I could work from there. Trees would be a little bit
| of an issue, but not a deal killer for me.
| rdca wrote:
| Amazing how starlink reviewers never bother to mention if it is
| possible to run a publicly available web server - at least over
| IPv6.
| soheil wrote:
| > Starlink uses CGNAT
|
| Just curious what is the security implications of using carrier
| grade NAT? If I start DDoS'ing a bunch of websites and get
| blocked, does that mean effectively I also block all my neighbors
| sharing the same IP4? This seems like a lot of power over their
| internet usage.
| bityard wrote:
| Yes, it has all of the pitfalls of other kinds of NAT.
|
| However, in 2021, blocking all traffic from entire subnets or
| NATted IPs is an extremely blunt defense and doesn't even work
| for certain kinds of attacks like UDP floods. "Websites" do not
| typically do their own traffic filtering or attack mitigation
| for this reason and many others. They leave that up to their
| upstream provider. And any provider worth their salt is paying
| big bucks for a system that can recognize and mitigate attacks
| based on traffic patterns and deep packet inspection while
| letting most of the "good" traffic through.
|
| Source: I work for a company that makes these products.
| soheil wrote:
| You're basically saying it's magic and trust me because I
| work on this stuff. That's fair, but how can you tell if I
| send you 1MM curl commands to download
| _large_ugly_cow{i}.bmp_ from your server or if it 's my
| neighbor doing that if we both share the same IP address?
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > your server or if it's my neighbor doing that if we both
| share the same IP address?
|
| It depends on how sloppy you are running your attack. Most
| of the time the attacker will be sloppy and hit the system
| using the same useragent with the same cookies. Or maybe
| they'll go the other way and every single request will have
| some random BS for a useragent and random cookies. Plus
| they will only hit that exact single URL and won't bother
| loading the rest of the page.
|
| So if you look at your logs, you'll see a million requests
| for "large_ugly_cow.bmp" coming from the same IP with a
| useragent that doesn't bother loading anything else.
|
| In short, to a human such an attack usually stands out like
| a sore thumb. Writing the filter rules to block them...
| that is a different beast. With the right tools and a smart
| tech, it is totally possible though.
| soheil wrote:
| But how do you do that with CG-NAT?
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Good question! The fact you've got a thousand users on
| the same IP doesn't really change much honestly. Like I
| said, when you see this kind of attack happening it
| usually stands out in your monitoring. The trick is
| writing the filter rules to target it.
|
| Using IP addresses as filter / block criteria isn't very
| effective so most don't do it. Any attacker even a slight
| clue is hopping all over IP blocks to route around IP
| blocks so effective filtering rules use things other than
| IP addresses.
|
| In short, the fact that your "signal" (attacker) is using
| the exact same IP address as the "noise" (everybody else
| using the IP address) shouldn't be a problem.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Commonly on CGNAT your connection will be assigned a
| range of source ports. The web server can see that all
| your connections have a source port number between 10,000
| and 20,000, for instance, so they block new connections
| in that range. This would not directly target you (unless
| there's only 6 customers per NATted IP) but it does
| reduce the blast radius.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| Google itself regularly blocks CGNAT IPs with annoying
| captchas or outright blocks on usage of google.com entirely.
|
| If Google does it, so do lots of other companies.
| xoa wrote:
| I've had Starlink deployed for a client since mid-January or so
| up around the 45th parallel (near the US/Canadian border).
| Installed it in a brisk -20 windchill too, good times. That was
| kind of a best place replacement scenario even early beta, as
| their previous solution was a 10/2 connection that cost
| >$200/month, so Starlink didn't have to be stellar to beat the
| competition there. I was able to place it with zero obstructions.
| This was never used with the native router which just stayed
| unopened in the box, it was right into a OPNsense gateway. We
| left the old landline connection up for a few months with
| Starlink as primary and the old one as a failover. For the first
| month and a half or so, there were regular dropouts every day,
| though only for a minute or two. That noticeably dropped over the
| course of March, and we dumped the previous service by mid-April.
| Overall experience has been excellent for wireless, as good as a
| high quality WISP despite the much greater technical challenges.
| And it's continued to improve: as well as latency and uptime,
| bandwidth u/d has increased from around 100-130/10-30 to nearly
| always 220-250/30-45. At no extra price. Tell me the last time
| you got that from an ISP ;).
|
| Overall experience is similar to this review, a few observations
| following along the review:
|
| >Hard cable
|
| This is annoying, but my perspective is coming from someone who
| does a lot of network termination and has thousands of dollars in
| fluke testing gear, rolls of cat8 cable and certified jacks and
| so on which is obviously absolutely not the norm. I needed it to
| go farther, but I ended up just plugging the 802.3bt injector it
| comes with into fiber optic anyway which thus also gave me
| guaranteed isolation from the rest of the network without having
| to worry about grounding. I suspect once it's in full service and
| they start to branch out they'll do a "Business Class" version or
| something aimed at more advanced deployments.
|
| >Your own router
|
| This does work fine. In order to get statistics though you'll
| need to static route 192.168.100.1. It's not needed for it to
| operate, but probably still a good idea. Lots of instructions
| around on the net for that. When I first set it up, IPv6 was
| still wonky whether you had your own router or not. Easily worked
| around with a permanent WireGuard tunnel for a VLAN to a cheap
| VPS with a static IP. Anything that needs a static IP can just
| get put there.
|
| >Power consumption
|
| Real, but as the article said in the context of rural internet
| pricing it's frankly fairly meaningless. Effectively means it's
| $105-115/month which is still so much frigging better than most
| options available at the speed that it's plenty competitive. If
| we had fiber we'd use it, but we don't.
|
| >Latency
|
| Where that will REALLY get interesting is once intersat optical
| links go live constellation-wide (can't remember the timeline on
| that, v0.9 for polar went up last year, I think they're now on
| new ones going forward). Most latency tests are local hops only,
| which is relevant of course and Starlink will always be at a
| disadvantage for. But once you start cross continents or oceans,
| Starlink definitely has the potential to easily beat many
| people's fiber connections (particularly rural ones its aimed
| at). CDNs are a lot, but not everything. It'll be cool to see how
| that affects the market.
|
| > _it 's potential to increase the risk of the Kessler syndrome_
|
| This is a meme, not reality. I wish it would stop coming up.
| Starlink sats are in quite Low Earth Orbit (LEO), and the
| majority of the constellation yet to be launched will be V-band
| ones in V(ery)LEO. At those altitudes, natural orbital decay will
| eliminate debris or sats even if they fail, and if they don't
| they deorbit themselves. SpaceX has thought this through, part of
| the delay on optics was specifically figuring out how to make
| sure they'd all burn up.
|
| Other planned megaconstellations higher up do indeed represent
| more concern, but Starlink does not. SpaceX is leveraging its
| overwhelming and soon to grow more-so advantage in launch
| capability and economics in a host of self-reinforcing ways, and
| this is one of them. They get to lean on higher numbers and
| faster replacement to get more performance _and_ stop Kessler
| risk.
|
| >Astronomy
|
| They've been working on shading them to reduce apparent
| magnitude, but that only fully works when sats are fully deployed
| and the trains going up are there. Even reduced magnitude will
| still affect some instruments and observations. I'm afraid though
| astronomy is just going to have to deal with that for a decade,
| looking forward to major development of cheap space based
| industry allowing lunar/space telescopes like never before
| eventually supplanting ground-based entirely. Cold comfort to a
| few who really will be messed up at a point in their careers that
| will be awkward for that, but this is frankly more important.
|
| >Other
|
| This will be MIND BLOWING FOR MARINE/AEROSPACE. If you think your
| rural connection is bad go look at merchant marine pricing.
| Aircraft too obviously, but one area I think many people haven't
| thought about yet is the potential for other satellites
| themselves. SpaceX is really setting themselves up as a major
| space infrastructure company.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Can these satellites provide service to higher orbit
| satellites? I don't know anything about this tech but I would
| assume switching from a concave blanket over the orb to a
| convex lens shooting out into space is very different.
| xoa wrote:
| These ones cannot. But with intersat optical links, it'd be
| perfectly feasible to have some percentage of sats as part of
| the constellation in the future that talked up rather than
| down, using either radio or optical links themselves (no
| atmosphere to worry about obviously). No need to have any
| single satellite do it all. If commercial satellites could
| simply plug into Starlink in a standard fashion and then it's
| normal internet from there, no groundstations or any other
| infra to worry about, that itself would be a big deal in
| terms of further removing obstacles to wider spread
| commercialization of space. It's something I haven't seen
| considered much but I think is another really exciting
| example of how many things SpaceX is shifting in concert and
| finding self-reinforcing effects for. Scary thing to be up
| against though for competitors.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| >> _it 's potential to increase the risk of the Kessler
| syndrome_
|
| > This is a meme, not reality. I wish it would stop coming up.
|
| I do too, but since that's probably the first or second most
| prevalent thing that people mention in response to _anything_
| not completely negative on Starlink, I figured I 'd give it a
| mention.
| qayxc wrote:
| > This is a meme, not reality. I wish it would stop coming up.
|
| Kessler syndrome has begun decades ago. The question is not
| whether it happens, but whether mega-constellations have the
| potential to make it significantly worse.
|
| So it's not a meme at all, but a question whether it's a
| relevant concern in the context of Starlink. At a failure rate
| of ~3% [0] this would be relevant, but as the failure rate has
| dropped significantly since and the company aims for 1%, it
| probably isn't.
|
| [0] https://phys.org/news/2020-10-starlink-satellites.html
| xoa wrote:
| > _but a question whether it 's a relevant concern in the
| context of Starlink_
|
| I kind of thought it was pretty obvious that my statement was
| specifically in the context of Starlink, given that I
| explicitly acknowledged that higher up megaconstellations are
| a much bigger concern. But it's not at all to a significant
| degree for Starlink due to orbital decay by atmospheric drag.
| Have to get above 550-600km or so for unpowered lifetimes to
| really start to stretch out. You might find this Gabbard
| diagram animation very interesting as a visualization:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/space/comments/ld4vlq/gabbard_diagr.
| ..
|
| It shows all the altitudes against period of all tracked
| space debris since 1959. Watch what happens around the
| 550-600km mark in terms of decay acceleration. Starlink,
| particularly the VLEO ones that are planned to form the
| majority of the constellation when completed, is essentially
| passive failsafe. Planned deorbit is still much better than a
| 1-5 year lifetime of course, but neither will it ever just
| block us off or render an orbit unusable because they're just
| plain too low. Anything below those marks (like ISS) requires
| regular active reboosts to maintain their orbits. When ISS
| wants to get rid of trash, they can literally just let it go
| in a big brick.
|
| Kessler absolutely is worth worrying about very much at
| altitude. But a lot of the coverage and stuff getting shared
| around about it are 100% backwards. They focus purely on raw
| numbers of sats. But the absolute best way to avoid Kessler
| is to go low for as many things as possible, which by
| definition requires more, cheaper sats that get replaced much
| more regularly. Massive VLEO constellations are a good thing
| for space debris not a bad one, because they require both
| active boosting and even aerodynamics to stay up, and even a
| worst case direct collision of two sats at ~300km say would
| result in complete elimination of all debris within at most a
| month. Starship will make lower altitudes and more safety
| systems economically feasible.
| mellosouls wrote:
| _I 'm afraid though astronomy is just going to have to deal
| with that for a decade...this is frankly more important_
|
| At least you are honest in your dismissal.
|
| A counter point of view is that an unelected private
| individual/organisation visibly polluting the night sky of the
| whole world represents extraordinary arrogance.
| relativ575 wrote:
| > A counter point of view is that an unelected private
| individual/organisation visibly polluting the night sky of
| the whole world represents extraordinary arrogance.
|
| That's an emotionally charged argument. I could say that
| denying affordable Internet access to a vast population just
| for the sake of astronomy is equally arrogant. But that'd be
| wrong, and so is your statement. Everything is a trade off
| and we need to live with both.
|
| SpaceX just didn't launch Starlink satellites. They got
| approval from the US regulation agencies, which in turn
| operate in accordance with the Outer Space Treaty that most
| countries are signatories.
| xoa wrote:
| > _A counter point of view is that an unelected private
| individual /organisation visibly polluting the night sky of
| the whole world represents extraordinary arrogance._
|
| Who elected astronomers? Who decides what's "pollution" vs
| "beautiful"? It's just as arguably "extraordinary arrogance"
| to argue that a handful of rarified specialists should get a
| permanent veto on Earth's orbitals, particularly when it's
| about valuable planetary infrastructure for potentially
| hundreds of millions _and_ we can see a clear path towards
| giving astronomers vastly superior capabilities to anything
| that will ever be possible on Earth.
|
| Note that I 100% support mitigation efforts like are being
| undertaken. Magnitude reduction efforts, even if they add
| some cost, are entirely reasonable and appear to help solve
| much of the problem. But I do think it's important to
| acknowledge that no, mitigation isn't going to solve the
| entire problem for Earth-based astronomy, it is a compromise,
| and that the incredible capabilities of vastly better space
| telescope options will not be realized, even in the best
| case, within the remaining careers of some astronomers. That
| stinks. But Starlink will still be life changing for orders
| of magnitudes more and they deserve a say too.
|
| And you say "unelected" but all these companies are regulated
| by a variety of organizations that _are_ elected which is
| close enough. If a majority didn 't want this, it could be
| banned. And if it did come down to a direct democratic
| referendum vote on Starlink vs a subsection of Earth-based
| astronomy, frankly I don't think the result is particularly
| hard to guess so I'm not sure that's a particularly
| productive angle to pursue.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > CDNs are a lot, but not everything
|
| So how much hardware would be required to put the CDN on the
| satellite? Like, if the CDN was for popular video sites like
| youtube or netflix?
| sudhirj wrote:
| Try an google image search for Netflix Open Connect
| appliance. Basically a 2U / 4U rack mountable server. Need to
| put a few of those in orbit.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| My email Feb 24: "Starlink now available to order" So I put an
| order in right away. It's now July 22nd, and I haven't heard
| anything, despite the original email saying "mid-2021" for order
| shipment. So I go to check: _" Starlink is currently at capacity
| in your area through 2021, your order might not be fulfilled
| until late 2022."_ Despite having taken my money for deposit they
| never sent an email at any point to let me know this. I think
| that's a rather dubious customer service practice.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Elon Musk, famous for Tesla, is willing to take your money and
| not deliver a product for several years. I am shocked.
| markandrewj wrote:
| I am not sure if this is a helpful comment, or possible, you
| might want to try attaching the dish to the top of tallest tree
| if you can though. I have had to do this with satellite dishes in
| the past while working in remote locations. When I say remote, I
| am talking surrounded by mountains, deep inside the boreal
| forests of British Columbia.
| bahmboo wrote:
| 100 watt power draw makes off grid solar much more challenging.
| linsomniac wrote:
| @geerlingguy: Consider checking out some global latency
| comparisons between StarLink and cable. I believe their long-term
| plan is to have the satellites route traffic between themselves
| using space lasers rather than hit a ground station and traverse
| undersea cables and the like.
|
| Not sure if they have that fully implemented yet, but might be
| interesting looking at the path and latency traffic to .au or
| Asia or Africa takes on Starlink vs cable. A couple factors may
| come into play: "as the crow flies" and light speed in vacuum vs
| glass.
|
| I know Evi Nemeth (RIP) talking on the CAIDA project showed some
| nice graphs of the "speed of light cone" re: latencies vs.
| geography. See about halfway down on this:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20160103034640/http://www.isoc.o...
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The lasers are more a nice idea than a plan. It's entirely
| possible they are not doable with realistic technology, given
| the speeds and other constraints of space, even in LEO. They
| are certainly not going to be there in the near future, anyway.
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