41–50 of 540 posts
Free, global internet access is the next step toward a smarter, more progressive planet. I don't even care about the speed - if the only thing users could access was wikipedia, I'd still personally donate to the project. I cannot emphasize how important democratizing knowledge is to me (and many others).
Free, global internet access is the next step toward a smarter, more progressive planet. I don't even care about the speed - if the only thing users could access was wikipedia, I'd still personally donate to the project. I cannot emphasize how important democratizing knowledge is to me (and many others).
you could totally do this, almost free. I think the entire (pictureless) wikipedia is ~8gb ? maybe more ? That file could be broadcast over multicast off these things on their unused frames. For instance, the bird knows that when it flies over some impoverished region, there's maybe 0-3 paying customers probably not maxing out the capacity at any given time. They could freely broadcast wikipedia or other educational…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download#En...
Free, global internet access is the next step toward a smarter, more progressive planet. I don't even care about the speed - if the only thing users could access was wikipedia, I'd still personally donate to the project. I cannot emphasize how important democratizing knowledge is to me (and many others).
you could totally do this, almost free. I think the entire (pictureless) wikipedia is ~8gb ? maybe more ? That file could be broadcast over multicast off these things on their unused frames. For instance, the bird knows that when it flies over some impoverished region, there's maybe 0-3 paying customers probably not maxing out the capacity at any given time. They could freely broadcast wikipedia or other educational…
Definitely an interesting idea. Since SpaceX will control the pipe and terminal they could use some of the bandwidth to prime a cache in the terminal with content they know will be commonly accessed.
HTTPS makes doing this transparently difficult, though.
> “Optical inter-satellite links permit flexible routing of traffic on-orbit. Further, the constellation ensures that frequencies can be reused effectively across different satellites to enhance the flexibility and capacity and robustness of the overall system.” Is optical communication between satellites an existing technology that's already known to work, or is this new? Also, is this sort of thing done (or expecte…
[1] http://www.osa-opn.org/home/articles/volume_27/may_2016/feat...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed and very high price.
Doubt it. Elon's made his fortune by replacing existing products with superior alternatives. He's said in every case that driving cost down is one of the most important parts of creating something people want. Why do you think he wouldn't do the same here? He knows everyone hates existing telecoms. He's trying to create a better alternative.
Not true everywhere. I'm paying < $40/month for a 100 MBit connection and I don't hate my telecom.
How do you get an uplink? I generally thought of satellites as providing pretty good downlink, but high latency because the uplink was through some alternative network - eg. phone/dsl lines.
How do you get an uplink? I generally thought of satellites as providing pretty good downlink, but high latency because the uplink was through some alternative network - eg. phone/dsl lines.
Uplink bandwidth has been an issue in the past (phone/dsl is fairly slow speeds, at least in the places you'd want satellite internet)