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Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map

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Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map

#91

Post by lutorm »

Veedrac wrote: post #61
teruakohatu wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a screenshot of the default view on my web browser. The satellites appear to be around 100km in diameter, but they are in reality 7m wide, so they are 14,000x larger on the map than in reality. The entire constellation would fit within 0.2% of one of the white dots as they appear in the map. Then you need to remember that the space is 3D, unlike road surfaces (ignoring bridges etc.)

Space is not really 3d in the intuitive sense from a packing perspective, because satellites take up orbits rather than stationary points and orbits don't pack densely. It's more like an embedded 2d space, the intuition for that being that a ring, think Saturn's, is 2d and intersects any orbit.

Yes, the key is that all circular orbits at the same altitude must cross, and if the orbits cross there is a potential collision. Satellites at the same altitude can only avoid collisions by controlling the position in the orbit.

Also, mean free path in a particle cloud depends on number density, cross sectional area and speed. The cross sectional area is small, but relative speed is also very high, which makes collisions more likely than one would think just based on their number density.

Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map

#93

Post by charcircuit »

mardifoufs wrote: post #57
charcircuit wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does competition look like for Starlink? Will competitors have to launch their own mesh of satellites? If you want to actually have your own IPv4 address you will have to pay $250 per month + $2500 for the terminal. This is despite the fact an IPv4 address only costs them a one time cost of about $40.

I think the closest they have to a competitor is oneweb, which hasn't completed the roll out for their first constellation yet. They are surprisingly close though, and could've been able to actually have an operational internet service if it wasn't for a scrapped launch related to the Russian invasion. I remember thinking they were basically dead, but they have recovered surprisingly well. Though their satellites are…

IPv6 is not a solution when there still is a lot of people whose networks don't support it. Making the network publicly routable shouldn't be any more complex than any other ISP which seem to do this just fine.

Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map

#94

Post by charcircuit »

sgtnoodle wrote: post #60
charcircuit wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does competition look like for Starlink? Will competitors have to launch their own mesh of satellites? If you want to actually have your own IPv4 address you will have to pay $250 per month + $2500 for the terminal. This is despite the fact an IPv4 address only costs them a one time cost of about $40.

For a slight latency cost, you could always VPN to an endpoint in the cloud with a routable IP address.

It's ridiculous to need to add that many hops just to do something as basic as receive a packet from someone else on the internet.

Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map

#95

Post by mardifoufs »

charcircuit wrote: post #93
mardifoufs wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the closest they have to a competitor is oneweb, which hasn't completed the roll out for their first constellation yet. They are surprisingly close though, and could've been able to actually have an operational internet service if it wasn't for a scrapped launch related to the Russian invasion. I remember thinking they were basically dead, but they have recovered surprisingly well. Though their satellites are…

IPv6 is not a solution when there still is a lot of people whose networks don't support it. Making the network publicly routable shouldn't be any more complex than any other ISP which seem to do this just fine.

Wait, I don't know tons about networking but my impression was rhat CGNAT basically does not allow your users to be publically addressable? Have I misunderstood what CGNAT does, or it just that they should've used a publically addressable architecture in the first place?

Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map

#96

Post by mardifoufs »

botanical wrote: post #84
mardifoufs wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet starlink is available where broadband sometimes isn't, so the insensible dreams seem to be coming from those who expect broadband to be deployed even in the most remote parts of the world (not necessarily talking about the place you mentioned, but I certainly wouldn't expect broadband in places like a remote cabin in the woods here in Quebec, or in a lake hunting station). Who cares if Elon is beyond this? I reme…

Why are you framing it as a hate Musk endeavour? So weird. It's pollute the sky because some people are on the hype train. The answer is already radio towers, they can be installed anywhere. We have cheap fibre rolled out throughout South Africa, but now the Square Kilometre Array (which previously had complete radio silence) must deal with this nonsense flying overhead.

But it does not pollute the sky. I don't think my issue about people hating Elon! That's more than fine. It's just that he is polarizing, so it seems like misconceptions and immaculate info about stuff he is involved in are believed very fast and spread very wide. In this case I don't think starlink satellites ever caused long term light/space population and even first gen sats (that didn't get any "cloaking" to avoid reflecting light) aren't visible after they reached their long term orbit.

Even for space debris, I've not seen any credible source that argues the satellites won't easily re enter the atmosphere when they reach their end lives. Leaving little space junk behind.

Fwiw for the most part, i don't really care about the cool stuff Elon gets to put his "brand name on" I just find starlink super neat! Especially since they actually managed to get the inter satellite laser "fabric" working well which which is a concept that I find extremely neat. That's probably the extent of my biais.

Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map

#97

Post by charcircuit »

mardifoufs wrote: post #95
charcircuit wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IPv6 is not a solution when there still is a lot of people whose networks don't support it. Making the network publicly routable shouldn't be any more complex than any other ISP which seem to do this just fine.

Wait, I don't know tons about networking but my impression was rhat CGNAT basically does not allow your users to be publically addressable? Have I misunderstood what CGNAT does, or it just that they should've used a publically addressable architecture in the first place?

CGNAT has multiple users share a single IP address which means that there needs to be some logic to know which user an incoming packet should go to which is why they are normally not publicly addressable. Not all ISPs use CGNAT though.

>just that they should've used a publically addressable architecture in the first place?

I would be okay if there was a way to get assigned a dedicated, though not necessarily a static one, IP address that was not at a massive margin.

Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map

#98

Post by praveen9920 »

crote wrote: post #46
praveen9920 wrote: post #15

I’m curious about how can they ensure connectivity for a particular area. Is it just that they place a bunch of satellites in orbits and hope that they have enough density? Or is there a method to the madness? I am assuming a single satellite covers very small area, in this case a single hexagonal area

The orbits are designed in such a way that the satellites are uniformly spread across the earth, with each part of the earth having at least one sat covering it at all times. That's the easy part: just launch enough satellites for your orbit altitude. The tricky part is ensuring sufficient bandwidth. You either have to launch additional satellites so that there are 1/2/3/4 sats above every location at the same time,…

So, I guess it would become a tricky thing for Starlink if there are a high number of customers around the same location and network congestion becomes a real issue similar to mobile data networks.

Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map

#100

Post by ben_w »

botanical wrote: post #80
kortilla wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad news, it’s already over “your sky” because it’s how LEO works. > Fibre should be rolled out for internet access, not another unsensible Musk dream You want to roll fiber through national forests and parks to serve a few rural people? How do you prefer the ocean faring population to get access?

Why does it have to go through the parks? And radio towers work just as well, it doesn't have to be a satellite hundreds of kilometres up in the sky. Ships already have access to internet through satellites already, there doesn't have to be even more EDIT. I meant why does the fibre have to through parks as a reason for having starlink

Other satellites and ground-based radio towers do as much damage to the abilities of the Square Kilometre Array and other radio astronomy as Starlink.
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