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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

#181

Post by Thlom »

krageon wrote: post #147
jfindley wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consistent 30ms would be pretty excellent, and make it useful for many things. Consistent 50ms, similarly. It starts to get a bit more of an issue at 80ms or 100ms, but my worry is more that jitter may be huge, and 30-100ms is a huge jitter window that could limit usefuless not just for games, but also many other things such as voice calls.

A 100ms ping is perfectly playable in everything except twitch-based shooters. In voice calls you will notice it, but it won't get in the way like say a 1-2s delay would (like you get if you phone from one end of the world to the other). It's really a very good result bearing in mind that this can work absolutely anywhere.

I speak a lot with customers on satellite phones more or less every day. When they are calling from a BGAN terminal the latency can be a problem. Latency is around 1000-1500ms. But when speaking on a VSAT Ka-band terminal the latency is less of a problem. Data latency is around 600-800ms on VSAT. So I doubt latency of 100ms would be a problem at all. Most VOIP solutions have some mechanisms to reduce the perceived latency.

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

#183

Post by dmd »

krageon wrote: post #147
jfindley wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consistent 30ms would be pretty excellent, and make it useful for many things. Consistent 50ms, similarly. It starts to get a bit more of an issue at 80ms or 100ms, but my worry is more that jitter may be huge, and 30-100ms is a huge jitter window that could limit usefuless not just for games, but also many other things such as voice calls.

A 100ms ping is perfectly playable in everything except twitch-based shooters. In voice calls you will notice it, but it won't get in the way like say a 1-2s delay would (like you get if you phone from one end of the world to the other). It's really a very good result bearing in mind that this can work absolutely anywhere.

I'm struggling to imagine a network path that could induce a 1-2 second delay from one side of the world to the other. Even at just 50% of c-in-vacuum that's only a tenth of a second.

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

#184

Post by qayxc »

kumarvvr wrote: post #46
moritonal wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you expand on which industries will be improved? My normal life is covered entirely by 4G, with 5G now appearing. I guess you mean things like internet on planes, shipping internet, off-shore rigs? But what things can't they do at the moment because of prohibitorily slow/costly satellite internet?

Imagine the military setting up an internet base station and releasing remote controlled drones for surveillance or military operations. Having satellite based high speed internet would be a game changer for remote locations. Imagine being able to conduct a robot controller surgery in Africa, by a doctor in the US. Currently, not possible, but with high speed satellite based internet, it could be. Imagine an electric…

> Imagine being able to conduct a robot controller surgery in Africa, by a doctor in the US.

Highly unlikely for many reasons: latency too high, cost of equipment way too high, only very few hospitals are even equipped for remote surgery even in the West, let alone underdeveloped countries...

> Imagine an electrical engineer being able to help his colleagues in Africa

That's already possible even without satellite-based internet and doesn't require it at all.

The only point I agree with is the military - surveillance and remote controlled drones could benefit from greatly from low-latency high-bandwidth satellite internet.

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

#185

Post by londons_explore »

y04nn wrote: post #133

This is easy to have a lot of bandwidth when you only have 10s of users, but when the bandwidth will be shared between 10000 users will it plummet? I remember when 4G was new and only few user where using it, it was very fast, but when more users arrived on the spectrum, the bandwidth per user decreased and the latency incised.

It depends what is limiting the speed... The limits might be due to regulations like "The user terminals may not transmit with more than X watts". If that's the case, more users might lead to a (nearly) linear increase in performance.

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

#186

Post by qayxc »

Torkel wrote: post #26
moritonal wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you expand on which industries will be improved? My normal life is covered entirely by 4G, with 5G now appearing. I guess you mean things like internet on planes, shipping internet, off-shore rigs? But what things can't they do at the moment because of prohibitorily slow/costly satellite internet?

Here's one: Teleoperation / autonomy in remote areas. Forestry. Mining. Not sure how big this, objectively speaking money-wise, but for teleop/autonomy it sure does enable new things when there is true 100% coverage everywhere on earth.

> it sure does enable new things when there is true 100% coverage everywhere on earth

But there won't be. Not with Starlink at least. Even at their envisioned full constellation size of 40000 satellites, coverage won't be 100%. The Arctic and Antarctic regions won't have any coverage at all, for example.

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

#187

Post by londons_explore »

y04nn wrote: post #133

This is easy to have a lot of bandwidth when you only have 10s of users, but when the bandwidth will be shared between 10000 users will it plummet? I remember when 4G was new and only few user where using it, it was very fast, but when more users arrived on the spectrum, the bandwidth per user decreased and the latency incised.

There are suggestions that traffic from user A might go up to a satelite, then down to user B, up to another satellite, and then down to the ground station.

If that's the case, more users leads to more efficient paths and potentially a higher peak throughput for each user (assuming most links are idle most of the time, which they are).

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

#188

Post by qayxc »

joshxyz wrote: post #140
ezoe wrote: post #127

People talk about latency but what about packet loss?

I think as long as the sats don't leave blind spots as they move around this won't be an issue? Or are there other factors? Anyone confirm pls..

Weather could be an issue. Would be interesting to see how Starlink internet fares when there's thunderstorms or heavy rain.

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

#189

Post by londons_explore »

alias_neo wrote: post #159
y04nn wrote: post #133

This is easy to have a lot of bandwidth when you only have 10s of users, but when the bandwidth will be shared between 10000 users will it plummet? I remember when 4G was new and only few user where using it, it was very fast, but when more users arrived on the spectrum, the bandwidth per user decreased and the latency incised.

I have been on EE 4G in central London (Westminster) for several years now while at work. A speed test back when it was new would get me 85/85 Mb, these days, with a much more capable device, I am lucky if I get 15/30 Mb (download is being taxed more). It's not horrific, but it's a far cry from what I was advertised when I started. I guess I'll just upgrade to their 5G plan and start the cycle again sigh

I think they throttled all users to get them to pay for their "double speed" plan upgrade.

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

#190

Post by lazharichir »

alias_neo wrote: post #159
y04nn wrote: post #133

This is easy to have a lot of bandwidth when you only have 10s of users, but when the bandwidth will be shared between 10000 users will it plummet? I remember when 4G was new and only few user where using it, it was very fast, but when more users arrived on the spectrum, the bandwidth per user decreased and the latency incised.

I have been on EE 4G in central London (Westminster) for several years now while at work. A speed test back when it was new would get me 85/85 Mb, these days, with a much more capable device, I am lucky if I get 15/30 Mb (download is being taxed more). It's not horrific, but it's a far cry from what I was advertised when I started. I guess I'll just upgrade to their 5G plan and start the cycle again sigh

Same. EE 4G in CENTRAL LONDON with a SIM-card Home Router and the speeds are horrific — mostly 5Mb, and maybe 15Mb for an hour or two each day.

Used to be consistently 50Mb+ back in the days.

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