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SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed

arstechnica.com

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Re: SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed

#301

Post by pmontra »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #65
katzgrau wrote: post #7

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 wireless internet lets every device in your home spy without an easy way to firewall it off.

They'll have local connectivity to the satellite antenna

> Home Internet customers would receive a "low-profile user terminal that is easy to mount and operate on walls or roofs."

You can place your firewall between your LAN and the antenna.

However there could be devices with their own antenna, much like iridium phones. I googled for them and they are not cheap. Mass production could shave off a zero and bring them under $50. Maybe.

Re: SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed

#303

Post by adamsea »

krige wrote: post #278
imw wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because they're numerous doesn't mean they're not a lunatic fringe.

Just because you disagree with them doesn't mean they're any more lunatic than, say, Podesta.

Yes lets legitimize white nationalism /snark

Re: SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed

#304

Post by Something1234 »

noahdesu wrote: post #302

Perhaps the next step will be selling cloud services from in-orbit data centers that have no cooling bill.

Although the temperature in space is very low, the ability to dissipate heat is reduced. So you wouldn't be saving that much, unless my understanding is wrong.

Re: SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed

#306

Post by kbart »

Retric wrote: post #153
gibybo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People aren't generally using a 1 gbps connection at 100% capacity 100% of the time. If we assume customers use an average of 1 TB of data per month and the time they use it is pretty spread out (seems reasonable since they are going to be spread out accross timezones eventually), you can serve about 6 million customers with 800 satelites @ 23 GBPS, and with 4400 @ 23 GBPS you could do ~33 million. Admittedly these n…

Using the 4400 example. People pay ~20$ per month for under 10GB cellular data. So 100GB for 150 million globally people globally seems viable. If that 150 million is paying 15$ per month that's 30 billion per year. Optionally, I suspect a few customers would pay a lot more for a larger monthly cap. The issue is the antenna needs to be around 2 foot by 2 foot. But, with autonomous cars people may want significant ban…

"People pay ~20$ per month for under 10GB cellular data."

It depends on a country. Where I live, you can get unlimited 4G Internet for 15-30 eur/month (depending on a provider).

Re: SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed

#307

Post by pmontra »

Is this going to scale? "Each satellite will provide aggregate downlink capacity of 17 to 23Gbps". Some 20 Gb/s per satellite times 4425 satellites spread around the globe is not that much bandwidth for any given densely populated area. We're going to keep having our local ISP in cities (they're giving between 0.1 and 1 Gb/s on fiber right now) but it will be great to get connectivity in the countryside and the mountains. And when traveling abroad, if they'll sell a small antenna that can be operated on a battery or connected to a laptop over usb. I wonder if there are chances that those antennas can be made so small to fit into a phone and tablet. Iridium's ones are still pretty big, like the ones of wifi routers.

Re: SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed

#308

Post by metafunctor »

Something1234 wrote: post #304
noahdesu wrote: post #302

Perhaps the next step will be selling cloud services from in-orbit data centers that have no cooling bill.

Although the temperature in space is very low, the ability to dissipate heat is reduced. So you wouldn't be saving that much, unless my understanding is wrong.

I think the heat would be just radiated out passively. Most space hardware, I'm told, needs to operate at -10°C – 50°C, and withstand continuous temperature fluctuations between those extremes caused by solar heat.

Re: SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed

#309

Post by pmontra »

mycall wrote: post #250
katzgrau wrote: post #7

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).

As China proved, it is easy to blow up satellites. I don't know how reliable this will be under global pressure.

It's thousands of satellites. You're going to create a debris cloud so big to shutdown satellite access for everybody. Much better to go to the headquarter and tell them to shut down operation, or ban its usage in your country. I bet transmitting antennas can be detected even if hidden from sight.

Re: SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed

#310

Post by schiffern »

setq wrote: post #27

I don't know how they're going to get 25/35ms hops. If they're using low orbits to reduce latency, the surface coverage is going to be lower so they're going to have to mesh them in some way to span large areas. That means routers and intelligence which means uplink, interlink, downlink hops in both directions. 600ms here we come again.

> That means routers and intelligence which means uplink, interlink, downlink hops in both directions. 600 ms here we come again.

The story from Musk is 20-30 ms latency anywhere on Earth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHeZHyOnsm4&t=7m00s

Fiber has an order of magnitude greater number of hops/routers/repeaters, moves 50% slower, and has to travel more distance to route around continents. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12984991

In the linked video Musk says 4 hops to go from Seattle to South Africa, so they're skipping satellites. It works out that at 1100 km altitude they have vacuum line-of-sight for any satellite within 6000 km ground track in any direction.

>I don't know how they're going to ...

>Managing that ... hurts my head.

It is indeed a Hard Problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHeZHyOnsm4&t=5m18s

>So it's something that would both provide optionality for people living in advanced economies, as well as people in poor countries that don't even have electricity or fiber or anything like that. So it's a real enabler for people in poor regions of the world and it gives optionality for people in wealthier countries.

>So I think it's something that definitely needs to be done. And it's a really difficult technical problem to solve. So that's why we need the smartest engineering talent in the world to solve the problem.

>And, you know, at the same time to make sure that we don't create Skynet. So... [laugh] Ironically, the server room at Spacex (jokingly!) was called Skynet. [laugh] Though fate has a great sense of irony, so we really need to make sure that doesn't come true...

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