61–70 of 112 posts
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A high bandwidth dynamically directed laser-based mesh network of 12k-42k tiny satellites 340 km above the earth is a pretty ballsy concept to begin with. I'm curious about who came up with this idea. It's kind of brilliant.
Arthur C. Clarke, in a way. http://lakdiva.org/clarke/1945ww/
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Pretty neat. I guess they could vendor out to Google. GCP Spanner relies on reliable low ping fiber between zones so this might be a clear throughput win for them.
A high bandwidth dynamically directed laser-based mesh network of 12k-42k tiny satellites 340 km above the earth is a pretty ballsy concept to begin with. I'm curious about who came up with this idea. It's kind of brilliant.
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Distance is still a huge problem. The Starlink signal still needs to travel up to the satellites 500 KM up, and then another 500 KM back down. That should be around 2 ms (thanks user jobseeker990, corrected from previous 15ms) of added latency, so anything that is already below 4 ms of latency probably wouldn't be improved.
Light travels 1000km in under 4ms. What else are you adding to that time?
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No. Starlink will follow all local laws, including licensing the bandwidth they are using. They are not going to run a pirate internet network. Due to complications in US laws, this actually means that Starlink cannot directly offer service in much of the world, instead having to let a local company resell access. (Because SpaceX as a US company cannot do certain kinds of filtering without running afoul of US laws.)
How do the satellites know the precise location of the client? Wouldn't it possible to buy a subscription in one country and go use it in another country?
Also, you presumably keep track of where your antenna is pointing anyway.
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Why not just use any of the number of existing satellite telecoms providers?
I do. I have a Garmin inReach, and it helps. But it takes ~5 minutes for one exchange of a text message. It's not enough to diagnose and fix a complex problem remotely.
I'm really excited about this technology for selfish reasons. I love disconnecting and spending time in remote wildernesses. But paradoxically, being disconnected from technology gives me a lot of anxiety about technology. Working on devops roles over the last decade, I've almost never had a time when I can just forget about it all. Even when I'm not on call, and no matter how well I try to document things, I'm often…
I have had a lot of times when I thought I was indispensable but things were just fine without me. This can be liberating because you can now focus on other things and don’t get stuck with the same stuff.
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No. Starlink will follow all local laws, including licensing the bandwidth they are using. They are not going to run a pirate internet network. Due to complications in US laws, this actually means that Starlink cannot directly offer service in much of the world, instead having to let a local company resell access. (Because SpaceX as a US company cannot do certain kinds of filtering without running afoul of US laws.)
How do the satellites know the precise location of the client? Wouldn't it possible to buy a subscription in one country and go use it in another country?
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Why not just use any of the number of existing satellite telecoms providers?
I do. I have a Garmin inReach, and it helps. But it takes ~5 minutes for one exchange of a text message. It's not enough to diagnose and fix a complex problem remotely.
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How do the satellites know the precise location of the client? Wouldn't it possible to buy a subscription in one country and go use it in another country?
Well, if you are going to demand payment of the service you need to be able to ID each client, so just apply filtering according to the rules for the country of that user. Also, you presumably keep track of where your antenna is pointing anyway.
I find it very interesting because the governments see the control(or lack of) of the internet as an existential issue.
I am hoping for a censor-fee internet but I don't believe that it's possible. Someone will blow up these satellites if anyone happens to create a free(as in freedom) global communication network.