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

Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

starlink.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 541 posts

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#231

Post by Dylan16807 »

walrus01 wrote: post #175
treelovinhippie wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested in mounting it laying flat (no stand) to the top of a van. I don't expect it to work while on the move. But do you think it would still work in a fixed configuration like that? And how much do you think tree coverage would affect service?

It needs to be able to tilt and angle itself. Trees cannot be in the way. 11GHz+ doesn't like trees.

It tries to give itself an optimal angle but it doesn't move while operating and the satellites are zipping in and out of its beamforming cone all the time anyway. The technology is capable of running with a flat mount.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#232

Post by [deleted] »

CrazyStat wrote: post #107
gpm wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So are the early adopters subsidizing the masses down the line? "Subsidizing"? No, they're paying for a service. It may or may not get cheaper over time... but that's rather irrelevant. SpaceX isn't a charity, they are in this to make money. It's also not like SpaceX is making a ton of money off of the early adopters. The satellite dish almost certainly costs the vast majority of those 600 dollars to produce, and t…

Estimates for the satellite dish from people in the industry are well over $1000 (see e.g. [1] https://spacenews.com/news-analysis-spacex-has-a-lot-riding-... ) Unless SpaceX has made a huge unannounced breakthrough in phased arrays they're actually taking large losses on the up-front cost at this point.

[deleted]

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#233

Post by fy20 »

radres wrote: post #222

I see that some people think we can do much better in latency. But you need to realize an information will never, never ever, travel from Europe to US West under 30 ms. Why? Light travels from Berlin to SF in 30 milliseconds. That is absolute minimum you can do. This is not even roundtrip time. So when Starlink tells you it will be 20 ms, just think about 20 ms to where? To the nearest satellite? Sure.

There probably are routes where RTT time for Starlink is faster than the RTT over a dedicated fibre optic link. Fibre optic links need to follow geographical and political constraints, which these do not.

These satellites are at an altitude of 560km, so it's not hard to imagine there are some places where it could be faster to use Starlink (say Spain - Turkey). You also need to consider the speed of light in the atmosphere is faster than fibre optic cables by around 40%. However if there is a need for something like that, then it's probably already going via satellite.

For the average consumer these will probably be faster for Western US - EU just because there are less hops and less companies involved (as I understand the backhaul isn't yet going between satellites).

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#234

Post by nickik »

Plutoberth wrote: post #216
40four wrote: post #201

”Starlink satellites are over 60 times closer to Earth than traditional satellites ” Goodness! I really need to learn more about satellites! For some reason that statement really strikes me. I wonder what the ‘band’ of distance from earth most satellites fall into. The range of area a satellite can orbit earth must be pretty wide if this is the case. Now I need to look up what is the closest & furthest distance a sma…

Starlink roughly orbits at 1200km. The most common orbit for internet sats is geostationary orbit, which means that the satellite is stationary with regards to an observer on Earth. It works because a satellite on a circular orbit at that height moves at the same speed as the rotation of Earth. This way you can have a simple, pointed antenna and not an obscenely expensive phased array like Starlink. That being said,…

They are orbiting at 550 km, 1200km was the original constellation plan that was later changed.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#235

Post by kalleboo »

new_realist wrote: post #152
walrus01 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a. absolute lowest latency I've seen to a major IX point in seattle is about 15.8ms. More often it's 22-23ms. On a longer term, averages between 20-30ms. That's for the combined total of four 550km paths through space plus terrestrial latency from their earth station to seattle. Keep in mind that on something like a DOCSIS3 cable coax last mile segment can have a minimum latency of 12-16ms from just the cablemodem to…

DOCSIS 3 latency is 8ms in my experience; fiber is 1.5ms.

And of course everything depends on the implementation. On my home fiber, the minimum latency to anything IPv4 is 20ms since the PPPoE concentrators are all on the other side of the country. IPv6 on the same line (which uses IPoE instead of PPPoE) gives me 5ms to a friend in the same city.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#236

Post by lgats »

supernova87a wrote: post #85

Note, it says you cannot take your Starlink to a different address (or I suppose, put it on a boat, plane, RV, etc): https://www.starlink.com/faq "Can I travel with Starlink, or move it to a different address? Starlink satellites are scheduled to send internet down to all users within a designated area on the ground. This designated area is referred to as a cell. Your Starlink is assigned to a single cell. If you mov…

Beta users have indicated service cuts of 90 miles from the home address

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#237

Post by nickik »

shaklee3 wrote: post #205
reustle wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels weird that I pay some small SaaS products more than this. You'd think slinging a few hundred satellites into space would be a more difficult / expensive endeavor.

It is. The antennas are heavily subsidized to get that $500 price point.

We don't actually know that. There was one unknown source who once said it was some number X but the reliability of that claim is highly questionable.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#238

Post by dragonelite »

supernova87a wrote: post #85

Note, it says you cannot take your Starlink to a different address (or I suppose, put it on a boat, plane, RV, etc): https://www.starlink.com/faq "Can I travel with Starlink, or move it to a different address? Starlink satellites are scheduled to send internet down to all users within a designated area on the ground. This designated area is referred to as a cell. Your Starlink is assigned to a single cell. If you mov…

Maybe it has to do with regulation, don't think states and nations would like a company bypass this.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#239

Post by Dylan16807 »

space_fountain wrote: post #89
walrus01 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, quite literally, if you move a beta terminal from your designated service location, it won't work. I know at least 4 people who also have beta terminals who have tried it. It depends on the size of your 'cell' - some people have been able to go a few km away, some people report it doesn't work even a few hundred meters away from their house. When you sign up for the beta you have to specify your street address an…

I have heard speculation that the issue is actually satellite signal steering. They’re using phased array antennas on both sides so the satellites need to know where to be listening

If it was just knowing where to focus, the terminal could send a low bitrate signal with that information. And/or they could let you punch in new coordinates before you go somewhere.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#240

Post by andbberger »

rlt wrote: post #229
walrus01 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in terms of raw capacity, I do not think that the intersatellite laser links (if/when they do get that working, which is a long ways off, 10 out of the 1050+ satellites right now have them, and none in production use), will approach anywhere near the capacity of a 40 or 80 channel, coherent 100/200/400GbE DWDM submarine line terminal. it's a whole other order of magnitudes.

Why couldn’t intersatellite laser links have similar capacity to fiber? In principle, if not practice? Is it because ISLs will require more powerful lasers because the light is focused through a lens instead of guided through a fiber?

probably less (literal) bandwidth, lasers are expensive
Post reply on HN