Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 607 posts

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#271

Post by yencabulator »

hesdeadjim wrote: post #53

Anyone complaining about this has never experienced the frustration of rural living when it comes to internet. This is absolutely amazing, and it will just get better. Even a reliable 10mbps would be a godsend in many places.

What he said. From the article:

> While 60Mbps isn't a gigabit, it's on par with some of the lower cable speed tiers and is much higher than speeds offered by many DSL services in the rural areas

LOWER?! Cable doesn't even serve non-television use near me. Phone lines can carry 5 Mbps DSL if you're lucky. I happen to have a line-of-sight to a major radio tower so I get wifi from a mom-and-pop ISP, with a 10 Mbps cap. If I was on the other side of a hill, I'd be screwed.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#272

Post by medion »

CarelessExpert wrote: post #70
hesdeadjim wrote: post #53

Anyone complaining about this has never experienced the frustration of rural living when it comes to internet. This is absolutely amazing, and it will just get better. Even a reliable 10mbps would be a godsend in many places.

Honestly, one of the barriers to my moving to a more rural area and working remotely was broadband access, but Starlink could very well solve that problem...

In Australia I moved to a very rural place, buying a house based on where I could get wireless broadband as part of our nationwide broadband rollout - I now live in a beautiful remote place overlooking the ocean with 50/20mbps Internet. Before here, I lived in another rural place near the ocean, however there was no broadband and 4G was too expensive. I ended up making friends with someone who had a 1gbps fibrelink 10km away - we spent weekends building a point to point network, and I ended up with an extremely reliable 20mbps connection for about $300 in parts over Mikrotik routers.

As other people have said, you can make it happen if you really want!

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#273

Post by busterarm »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #259

I recall when Iridium was going up, there was discussion about the complexity of the software that managed the pattern of transmitting packets among the satellites. The description indicated it was a complex software problem and they were struggling to get it right. (I went looking for articles from the time period, but couldn't track one down, however, came across MIT/Motorola FCC application for what would become I…

IIRC, Starlink satellites operate at a much lower orbit, are much more numerous and are a lot closer together which reduces the tracking complexity a fair bit. Also the inter-satellite links on the Iridium network are radio whereas the Starlinks have 4 motorized optical links (laser). They're highly reflective objects against the background of space.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#274

Post by medion »

jonny_eh wrote: post #169
trothamel wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially with COVID showing the downsides to living in urban areas.

I'd rather live in an urban area during a pandemic. It's counter-intuitive but the access to testing and hospitals is very important. https://theconversation.com/rural-america-is-more-vulnerable...

I guess it depends on whether you are vulnerable health-wise. If you're fit and healthy and not of retirement age I really can't understand this kind of thinking.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#275

Post by chris_overseas »

radlad wrote: post #264
chris_overseas wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That NEOWISE photo was 17 photos deliberately stacked to emphasise the problem rather than minimise it, so it's not really a fair datapoint. Astrophotograhy stacking software will generally remove items that don't appear in all photos in the stack rather than retain them (previous discussion on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23926699 ). That said, I love taking photos of the night sky myself and had…

> it is a real issue - just not quite as crazy as it looks from that photo Aren't they planning to add a bunch more satellites?

Yes, but they're also trying to darken them so later launches should end up significantly less problematic than the initial ones[0]. I'm not trying to defend them here (in fact I'm quite annoyed from a photography perspective) but appreciate there's two sides to the story and they're at least trying to minimise the problem.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/24/21190273/spacex-starlink-...

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#276

Post by smabie »

semicolon_storm wrote: post #246
iaw wrote: post #237

Latency runs 31 mS to 70 mS in the speedtests shown. I don't buy their claims that you can game with >100 mS latency, that is not a good experience. This is a great step forward for internet accessibility but I really wish they wouldn't oversell the capabilities before we're there.

As someone who lives in the middle of the ocean with ~70ms to the nearest major data center, you get used to it. You’re at a disadvantage to people with low ping, but it’s certainly not unplayable.

It really depends on the game. I would say 70-100ms is the upper acceptable limit for FPSs (though some like CS:GO or Valorant require even lower), but even like 150-250ms is okay for casual MOBA play.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#277

Post by hackstack »

xienze wrote: post #260
hesdeadjim wrote: post #53

Anyone complaining about this has never experienced the frustration of rural living when it comes to internet. This is absolutely amazing, and it will just get better. Even a reliable 10mbps would be a godsend in many places.

Bandwidth is great and all, but satellite latency is a killer. Been there, done that.

This is mentioned on literally every Starlink thread I read, and the response is always that unlike previous satellite internet offerings, Starlink operates in low earth orbit, drastically reducing the ping time. Do you have more to add?

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#278

Post by mmm_grayons »

macintux wrote: post #198
badloginagain wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Larger amounts of people mean more chances of exposure. Being in urban environment means higher dependence on fragile supply chains- food security is totally dependent on JIT grocery store inventories. Rural homes, by virtue of being isolated, are easier to self isolate.

However, if you’re able to work from home, you can self-isolate pretty much anywhere, and drive wherever you need to get food. If urban environments start seriously breaking down due to a food supply chain problem, rural areas won’t be safe from desperate people. Anyway, both approaches have their pros and cons, but as someone who has a fairly severe back problem and not much inclination to try to live off the grid,…

> rural areas won't be safe from desperate people

At least for America, most city folk don't seem to understand just how armed their rural counterparts are. They'd be pretty darn safe.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#279

Post by yencabulator »

xienze wrote: post #260
hesdeadjim wrote: post #53

Anyone complaining about this has never experienced the frustration of rural living when it comes to internet. This is absolutely amazing, and it will just get better. Even a reliable 10mbps would be a godsend in many places.

Bandwidth is great and all, but satellite latency is a killer. Been there, done that.

This ain't your grandpa's Hughes.

> latencies or ping rates ranging from 31ms to 94ms

That's on par or better than what I can get with either point-to-point wifi to small ISP or LTE.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#280

Post by loufe »

Alupis wrote: post #164
ShakataGaNai wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

11mbps is amazing for what this is. Sure, it's "slow DSL" speed, but if you can get slow DSL you don't care about satellite internet. This is for all the places in the world that you can't get 4G cell service, let alone DSL. 11mbps plus a ping time of sub100 ms means that most people could telework anywhere in the world, even in the middle of an ocean. Unless your job requires you to download/upload huge amounts of d…

OK maybe, but Elon promised 1Gbps speeds. 11Mbps is very, very far cry from that.

Ok, but at the same time this is the BETA period. Attacks on his claim should wait until the public availability of the service begins.
Post reply on HN