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Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

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Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#131

Post by AlotOfReading »

huijzer wrote: post #97
AlotOfReading wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bandwidth is limited on a per-cell basis, somewhere around 700Gbps max per cell. Actual capacity at any time is somewhat less. If everyone is actively using theirs, you might get single digit Mbps or less at cell capacity limits, even if there aren't bottlenecks elsewhere. It's fine , but it's highly dependent on having extremely low customer density. The system doesn't work well if everyone is using it all the t…

Oversubscription is also an issue on wired networks. It might be a problem but usually you shouldn’t notice; on wired at least. What is your extremely low customer density source? In theory they could reduce beam size and throw more satellites in space. How much they can handle is up for speculation, but your “extremely low” claim could use a source.

Do you really need a source? It's obvious from the numbers. Starlink limits to low hundreds (~300) of terminals per cell. We'll round that to 1k to be generous for future improvements. Let's say each terminal serves 4 customers. Cell size is in the neighborhood of 150 sq. mi. That's a customer density of 27 customers per sq. mi, or 9% of the density threshold for "rural areas" in the US. Using more reasonable numbers gives us an effective max density around the same as Mongolia, the least densely populated country on earth.

It's just the nature of the technology.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#132

Post by CorrectHorseBat »

Retric wrote: post #96
CorrectHorseBat wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5G is going exactly the opposite way to provide higher bandwidth, more cells with each less users. With satellite internet you're sharing the medium with everyone, and that doesn't scale well. Beamforming probably helps a lot, but I don't how accurate it can be on that distance.

You can have essentially unlimited satellites the issue is the percentage of time each one spends over high density areas. Design for NYC density and 99% of satellites would be redundant at any given moment. The solution for increasing density is dropping costs so it’s viable for satellites to be idle 95% of the time. At least as a first approximation, there’s some tricks with how you setup orbits after the basic net…

You're still sharing the medium (the sky), so at some point interference is going to be an issue. A quick search tells me the beams a satellite uses is measured in km, so you can only have one satellite serving several square km (you could have more channels of course).

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#133

Post by ryanianian »

neveroddoreven wrote: post #49
wtallis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has using encryption on amateur radio been legalized?

How is this even enforced? Don't you have plausible deniability by claiming you just wanted to send high entropy random noise?

It is largely unenforced by the FCC directly, but ham operators can (and do) use directional antennas to find you in many cases. Once reported the FCC does take violations seriously.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#134

Post by astroid »

svnt wrote: post #88
usrusr wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be both at the same time, nothing wrong with that. Win-win is real, not everything is zero sum.

My comment has little to do with zero sum, but I’ll assume you’re trying to imply that people in rural NC are going to re-subscribe to their local ISP and keep the promotional ISP, you know, once everything is repaired. But let’s change the story a little: Local ISP has all their infrastructure destroyed, but Comcast’s network is still online. Comcast offers a one-month-free promotion but you have to purchase several…

Wouldn't it be better if more local people were subscribed to StarLink to begin with?

People like you literally cannot be happy about anything. Good grief.

I mean, Comcast and Xfinity will probably not go down the next time this happens, right? At worse this is nice gesture that will result in a slight market correction and better outcomes for all next time.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#135

Post by pkaeding »

nynx wrote: post #65
renewiltord wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the government started this project tomorrow I would stall it in the courts until they could prove that they did the necessary environmental reviews. Besides, privacy is a big concern and we can’t have the government use the opportunity to become Big Brother as the sole Internet provider for so many people. We must protect freedom. Sometimes that costs the lives of children and sometimes that of adults. But freedo…

Environmental review for blimps?

Of course! The shadow from the blimp might impact the habitat of an endangered newt living in the now-wetland.

I mean, it might not, but you won't know until the environmental impact assessment is complete.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#136

Post by kortilla »

threeseed wrote: post #119
huijzer wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oversubscription is also an issue on wired networks. It might be a problem but usually you shouldn’t notice; on wired at least. What is your extremely low customer density source? In theory they could reduce beam size and throw more satellites in space. How much they can handle is up for speculation, but your “extremely low” claim could use a source.

> Oversubscription is also an issue on wired networks Wired networks can include fibre optic to the house like we have in Australia where the speeds can reach a consistent 1Gbps even in highly dense areas at peak times. And internal testing is happening on 10Gbps. If US cares about supporting the internet of tomorrow satellite services like Starlink will never be capable enough.

1gbps to the house doesn’t mean you’re not oversubscribed. An ISP that has a 10,000 homes on 1gbps connections absolutely does not pay for 10 tbps of transit capacity or even internal capacity to carry all that to its peering points.

Cheaper fiber to homes definitely made last mile scale better bandwidth-wise, but it didn’t change the fundamental nature of needing to heavily oversubscribe to make it affordable.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#137

Post by threeseed »

astroid wrote: post #128
1970-01-01 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FEMA has no budget for it

What did they spend this years budget on specifically? I think the majority of this country views them as the go to for "Emergency Management" at the federal level. Are they using their money on other things that are not related?

The recent spending bill did not include additional funding for the Disaster Relief Fund.

https://www.newsweek.com/johnson-house-passes-spending-bill-...

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#138

Post by threeseed »

kortilla wrote: post #136
threeseed wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oversubscription is also an issue on wired networks Wired networks can include fibre optic to the house like we have in Australia where the speeds can reach a consistent 1Gbps even in highly dense areas at peak times. And internal testing is happening on 10Gbps. If US cares about supporting the internet of tomorrow satellite services like Starlink will never be capable enough.

1gbps to the house doesn’t mean you’re not oversubscribed. An ISP that has a 10,000 homes on 1gbps connections absolutely does not pay for 10 tbps of transit capacity or even internal capacity to carry all that to its peering points. Cheaper fiber to homes definitely made last mile scale better bandwidth-wise, but it didn’t change the fundamental nature of needing to heavily oversubscribe to make it affordable.

Many major services e.g. Youtube, Netflix, Cloudflare have servers colocated with ISPs.

So they don't need to have equivalent transit capacity.

Which is not a capability Starlink can provide.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#139

Post by why_at »

threeseed wrote: post #130
kortilla wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 700Gbps max per cell > having extremely low customer density I think you need to define “extremely low” because 700gbps is plenty for several thousand people. And the question was specifically about everyone in rural areas switching. If you go by rural being That sounds fine considering standard consumer usage patterns mean you’ll get 10x that as an individual even in peak times. That’s also assuming maximum densit…

> that lands at 7.2 mbps per person Which is ridiculously poor. This would simply create a digital divide further increasing inequality in rural areas.

>This would simply create a digital divide further increasing inequality in rural areas.

Not sure what you mean? The more remote you get the better your bandwidth gets because you are sharing it with fewer people. This is the opposite of most ISPs which tend to ignore rural areas.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#140

Post by astroid »

threeseed wrote: post #137
astroid wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did they spend this years budget on specifically? I think the majority of this country views them as the go to for "Emergency Management" at the federal level. Are they using their money on other things that are not related?

The recent spending bill did not include additional funding for the Disaster Relief Fund. https://www.newsweek.com/johnson-house-passes-spending-bill-...

I appreciate the insight, this prompted me to poke around the FEMA site and see how transparent they are - to my shock, they actually did a good job of presenting the cost breakdowns and where the money goes.

This kind of surprised me though: https://www.fema.gov/grants/preparedness/shelter-services-pr...

I knew that the government was paying big money to buy up hotels and other migrant shelters, but had no idea $640 Million was spent out of FEMA's budget on this year alone.

This will surely turn into a powerful right wing talking point if the word gets out to that side of the media.. (assuming it hasn't already)

I'm not going to lie though, given the current situation and in hindsight how poorly Maui and East Palestine, OH were handled I think it's probably reasonable to ask whether this is what we want/expect from our Emergency Management services.

It seems at first glance like they are creating the emergency via deliberately imported avoidable costs, then short changing the tax payers when they are most likely to need their help in a genuine life or death situation.

It feels like this money should be coming out of the ICE budget or some other agency, but I'm just a proletariat.

The relevant bit: "For Fiscal Year (FY) 2024, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will provide $640.9 million of available funds to enable non-federal entities to off-set allowable costs incurred for services associated with noncitizen migrant arrivals in their communities.

The funding will be distributed through two opportunities, $300 million through SSP – Allocated (SSP-A) and $340.9 million through SSP – Competitive (SSP-C)."

I haven't even gotten to the other areas where they almost certainly had a similar level of waste, but I suspect over half a billion could be mighty useful right now.

EDIT: Looks like once you know the magic number the news talking about it is easy to find, and it's not just right wing media highlighting this issue: https://www.newsweek.com/fema-migrant-funding-hurricane-disa...

If this doesn't stir the pot, I don't know what will. No matter what happens, people are going to be irrationally (or I guess maybe rationally to an extent) angry.

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