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SpaceX Starlink average speedtest is 42.3Mbps down / 9.7 Mbps up

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Re: SpaceX Starlink average speedtest is 42.3Mbps down / 9.7 Mbps up

#91
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Light travels 47% slower in a fiber optic cable than it does in the vacuum of space. [1] [1] https://youtu.be/giQ8xEWjnBs?t=288 (the whole video is worth watching, but that timestamp answers your specific question.

Too lazy to watch it -- does it take into account the multiple criss-crossing satellite hops? I watched it -- no it doesn't :) It is comparing fiberoptics latency with straight line light propagation. So the worst case scenario of non-existing inter-satellite communication could easily be worse than fiberoptics. But I guess if the hedgefunds knew exactly which packet travels in a straight line, they could send one pa…

yes

Re: SpaceX Starlink average speedtest is 42.3Mbps down / 9.7 Mbps up

#92
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Light travels 47% slower in a fiber optic cable than it does in the vacuum of space. [1] [1] https://youtu.be/giQ8xEWjnBs?t=288 (the whole video is worth watching, but that timestamp answers your specific question.

Too lazy to watch it -- does it take into account the multiple criss-crossing satellite hops? I watched it -- no it doesn't :) It is comparing fiberoptics latency with straight line light propagation. So the worst case scenario of non-existing inter-satellite communication could easily be worse than fiberoptics. But I guess if the hedgefunds knew exactly which packet travels in a straight line, they could send one pa…

Too lazy to answer

Re: SpaceX Starlink average speedtest is 42.3Mbps down / 9.7 Mbps up

#93
post #54

I prefer a clean sky and earth telescopes to work instead of 42.3Mbps down / 9.7 Mbps up. see: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02480-5

I don't think SpaceX would break Earth satellites. Isn't it trivial to remove a light streak from a picture? Satellites were a problem before SpaceX and I'm sure it's 1 click in some software astronomers use. The surface area of a streak of light must be less than 1% of the total surface area so virtually no information is lost. If you use multiple exposures it's even less. Seriously, an astronomer who can't deal with this problem should just give back their PhD. The idea that humanity should be prevented from extending internet access to the entire planet because an astronomer finds it too inconvenient to click a button is example of entitled behaviour on a scale I've never encountered in my life.

Re: SpaceX Starlink average speedtest is 42.3Mbps down / 9.7 Mbps up

#97
post #80
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understood it correctly Starlink doesn't send between satellites yet, only sat ground. Sat sat is a big point of starlink and when they roll that out the latency should go down, especially for starlink starlink comms I imagine.

I don't understand how this is meant to lower the latency. Currently: ground satellite ground With satellite links: ground satellite satellite ground How can the latter possibly be faster? Edit: Thanks for all the responses. I'd been assuming it was a test of Starlink latency only, but if it's Starlink -> ground station -> open internet -> ISP then it would make sense how that would be slower than a pure Starlink con…

This is a good question, I see three main reasons but I may miss something:

1. Hop count is not one on the ground to go same distance.

2. Speed of light is significantly faster in vacuum.

3. The path is potentially straighter for longer distances.

Re: SpaceX Starlink average speedtest is 42.3Mbps down / 9.7 Mbps up

#98
post #55

Fantastic. I'm keenly curious on how this will work with national regulations. Having a single global ISP is very attractive on the surface and that's with the huge caveat on monopoly, but as an additional option. I'm just not sure how this will interact with some nations' policy/restrictions. Looking at this aspect very much.

It's going to be very interesting for me. I plan to live on a sailing yacht and travel the world permanently, StarLink will make my working options a lot more flexible. Presently people are forced to see out their contracts over potentially dodgy marina WiFi. The regulatory situation might get quite complicated I think, for example if you're in international waters, connected to the internet by a global ISP whose inf…

Hard question. We will see. Take GDPR, only applicable, though extraterritorial, to EU residents. So if on a yaught or extra-EU for 183+ days? Plus multiple other territories doing GDPR similar.

Interesting to watch. And most of the world does not live on yaughts. I think the answer will be a lot of deals. I'm in China and Elon is putting in a lot of energy here, and with Starlink a big potential conflict of interest with Starlink vs Tesla. Not sure how fickle that is. We will see.

Re: SpaceX Starlink average speedtest is 42.3Mbps down / 9.7 Mbps up

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Count yourself lucky you don't live in either South America, Africa or Asia, where +100ms latency is more common than not. Fortunately I can count on one hand the applications that don't work with +100ms latency (not counting gaming). Usually it's the fault of the application developers (or rather the infrastructure team) where they put too low timeouts for requests rather than letting the requests go for a bit longe…

> Fortunately I can count on one hand the applications that don't work with +100ms latency (not counting gaming). Pardon my ignorance, but what are some exampes of applications that wouldn’t work with +100 latency?

Depends on where on the +100ms range we're on. Once you start hitting 1s latency, lots of applications (or rather, their servers) have a hard limit on 1s for every request. So when loading data from the backend, you have to continue to retry the request until it gets below 1s and then you will finally get the data.

I think Adobe been one of the worst companies I've dealt with personally, as many of the endpoints have ridiculously low timeouts (for someone with really shitty latency).

Re: SpaceX Starlink average speedtest is 42.3Mbps down / 9.7 Mbps up

#100
post #54

I prefer a clean sky and earth telescopes to work instead of 42.3Mbps down / 9.7 Mbps up. see: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02480-5

I would also be glad, if you could just look at the sky and don't be disturbed by satellites and air and light pollution. I think, SpaceX and others will eventually manage to make the satellites less or mostly not disturbing. But lets face it, SpaceX actually enables better professional astronomy because launching a telescope into space is now much more affordable. Also all those remote locations, where normal earth based astronomy still kind of works will have a usable internet connection to transfer the results e.g. for computation and further instructions. Also scientists will be able to e.g. video-talk home which should make these long trips into nowhere more socially acceptable in their respective families. I can imagine, that would make some of that research more surmountable.
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