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Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

arstechnica.com

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Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#311

Post by neckardt »

arrty88 wrote: post #216

Can anyone tell me why this was not previously possible? Both latency and speed? What did Starlink do differently

I believe the innovation is that the satellites sit in low earth orbit.

Traditional internet satellites operate in geostationary orbit, which is around 35,000km above the surface of the earth. This was preferable because with only a handful of satellites you could give the entire globe internet connection. However you have much higher latency due to the distance. Not exactly sure why the bandwidth is so slow, distance probably doesn't help here either. Maybe those companies are also running outdated systems.

Starlink satellites operate in low earth orbit which is around 400km, which is way closer, leading to far lower latency. However, at that distance you need to basically cover the sky with satellites in order to always see one. That's why they're planning to launch thousands of them.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#312

Post by reaperducer »

jonny_eh wrote: post #169
trothamel wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially with COVID showing the downsides to living in urban areas.

I'd rather live in an urban area during a pandemic. It's counter-intuitive but the access to testing and hospitals is very important. https://theconversation.com/rural-america-is-more-vulnerable...

I'd rather live in an urban area during a pandemic.

Consider yourself an outlier. I subscribe to several regional real estate newsletters, and for the last five months they've been all about people moving out of the cities and into small towns.

It's counter-intuitive but the access to testing and hospitals is very important.

As with any disease, the best treatment is prevention. Which is what being rural gives you.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#313

Post by [deleted] »

kortilla wrote: post #295
Frondo wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if rural folks may realize how well-armed we are in the cities. Nearly everyone I know has a gun, and none of us is the crowd you'd normally associate with gun owners in cities.

Well the the stats don’t lie. Gun ownership is significantly lower in cities than in rural areas/small towns.

[deleted]

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#314

Post by bargl »

busterarm wrote: post #296
bargl wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX can't scale regionally, they have to scale globally. The nature of their satellites is that if they want to accommodate 2x as many users in a city they have to double their capacity. The push I'm discussing is the cost to get a baseline internet out there for 10k people per 100 miles. I'm assuming the cost per last mile is higher in rural areas than in urban areas. If that's true right now the majority of our…

Yeah but we're talking about a company that has in their near-term plans the capability to _launch 4 rockets per day_. They're completely capable of adding capacity like that and having a high satellite count. I'm not saying that it doesn't have a cost, but they have no middleman. They don't need to buy space on somebody else's rocket. They also don't have to pay any ongoing maintenance cost beyond equipment replacem…

The bandwidth here is 100K per state not 2 counties. That's my issue with your calculations, we're probably somewhere in the middle. They might stop servicing people outside of town. I'd probably use the metric, if you're on septic you're probably better served by SpaceX than Comcast. If you're on sewer then Comcast will probably be better (no not always, I'm no sith).

We'll have to agree to disagree. Honestly, I hope you're correct and I'm wrong. I think ground based infrastructure is still going to be much cheaper at medium to high population densities. You don't agree with me, but I learned a lot in this back and forth. Thanks.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#315

Post by antris »

csharptwdec19 wrote: post #310
kickopotomus wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone come out with a reason for the size? I mean they seem to reuse a lot of the same textures throughout the game so I have a hard time understanding how it managed to swell to that.

IDK if they do this for PC versions... But a lot of these games not only Reuse textures but also duplicate them. They do this to improve load times for levels/etc (less seeking). Playstation DOOM is an early example of this pattern. The WAD files were actually 'per-level' and contained all sprites/textures/etc used in said level.

Wouldn't duplicated textures get de-duplicated by any halfway-decent compression algorithm though? I'd assume the game is sent over the wire compressed

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#316

Post by boyter »

Reason077 wrote: post #172
bargl wrote: post #45

Starlink internet is not meant to replace hard line internet. There is no getting around the physics of cable being so much cheaper/easier. Even terrestrial cell towers are more efficient and cheaper than satellites. This is 100% meant to supplement existing infrastructure not to replace it. You will almost always get cheaper and faster internet (for both you and the company providing internet) over a cable to your h…

> "You will almost always get cheaper and faster internet (for both you and the company providing internet) over a cable to your house." Not true for me, and I live 10 minutes walk from the financial centre of a major world city. Because there's no fibre installed to my building, unlimited ~300 Mbps 5G wireless internet is both cheaper and faster than any available fixed alternative. Even if fibre was available, the…

Sydney?

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#317

Post by fuzxi »

jonny_eh wrote: post #169
trothamel wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially with COVID showing the downsides to living in urban areas.

I'd rather live in an urban area during a pandemic. It's counter-intuitive but the access to testing and hospitals is very important. https://theconversation.com/rural-america-is-more-vulnerable...

I'd argue that there's less need for testing in the first place when your nearest neighbors live a mile away.

Re: Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

#318

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

TheSkyHasEyes wrote: post #294
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #259

I recall when Iridium was going up, there was discussion about the complexity of the software that managed the pattern of transmitting packets among the satellites. The description indicated it was a complex software problem and they were struggling to get it right. (I went looking for articles from the time period, but couldn't track one down, however, came across MIT/Motorola FCC application for what would become I…

What happened to the Iridium satellites?

After multiple bankruptcies, primarily offering nautical communication services.

https://www.iridium.com/products/iridium-go/

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