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

Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 607 posts

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

#331

Post by dzhiurgis »

yencabulator wrote: post #271
hesdeadjim wrote: post #53

Anyone complaining about this has never experienced the frustration of rural living when it comes to internet. This is absolutely amazing, and it will just get better. Even a reliable 10mbps would be a godsend in many places.

What he said. From the article: > While 60Mbps isn't a gigabit, it's on par with some of the lower cable speed tiers and is much higher than speeds offered by many DSL services in the rural areas LOWER?! Cable doesn't even serve non-television use near me. Phone lines can carry 5 Mbps DSL if you're lucky . I happen to have a line-of-sight to a major radio tower so I get wifi from a mom-and-pop ISP, with a 10 Mbps cap…

Modern VDSL can reach around 200mbps at distances something around 3-5 km from exchange. DSL obviously lower but possibly similar to Starlink.

All that said you can those speeds with Starlink anywhere, for much less than installing a phone line.

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

#332

Post by serf »

hesdeadjim wrote: post #53

Anyone complaining about this has never experienced the frustration of rural living when it comes to internet. This is absolutely amazing, and it will just get better. Even a reliable 10mbps would be a godsend in many places.

>Even a reliable 10mbps would be a godsend in many places.

my first foray into 'rural' internet was during the late 90s, using a satellite+modem setup.

The bandwidth was fairly decent -- equivalent to a fast ISDN line -- but the reliability was horrendous.

Drops constantly, only to wait for a whole new modem negotiation and reconnect. Think about the idea of an analogue phone modem but over an unreliable aerial connection.

My point in this anecdote : don't take the upstream/downstream values at face value -- there are more things that go into a connection that's actually worth using.

That said , I have nothing but hope for Starlink. I still frequent rural areas that , if broadband is available, it's severely limited bandwidth. I'm glad there will soon exist an alternative -- let's hope that efforts are made to keep the astronomers happy so that this network can be a real boon to humanity.

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

#333

Post by csharptwdec19 »

antris wrote: post #315
csharptwdec19 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That MIGHT be happening, honestly not sure.

There are possibly challenges in that however, my understanding of most compression algos (which may be inaccurate or incorrect) is that you'd run into limitations either with size of data overall or the memory requirements.

Of course, I'm sure there's other ways around that (And I have no clue if they are in use). One option would be to send over the assets in a master 'assets' package and then duplicate/assemble the data as intended during installation.

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

#334

Post by awad »

Alupis wrote: post #118
LinuxBender wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The land I am looking at is in the south western part of Wyoming. Could you link the law? My understanding is that once a line is run, there is a process to decom the line, but that no line is required for a home. Many homesteaders do not have phone lines or on-grid power. The only requirements I am aware of are around septic systems.

Interesting. I couldn't find the exact law to link to, but did turn up this WaPo article talking about 4 states starting to relax the requirement. > The universal landline requirement has been repealed in Florida, North Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin. There, new homeowners have no guarantee that they could order phone service at affordable rates, consumer advocates say. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy…

There was a loophole in the various provisions created to ensure rural connectivity that allowed for companies to advantage of the fact that independent and competitive local exchange carriers were able to bill higher per minute fees than average. This led to a boom in free conference and long distance calling companies that would be spun up to terminate at one of these destinations, splitting the fee with the telco.

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

#335

Post by manquer »

bargl wrote: post #167
t-writescode wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the satellites are moving, so there's no "Wyoming satellite customers" in the same way as existing satellite internet. The Wyoming customers will be sharing satellites with several other places as they move in and out of their regions

The constellation is moving but they are moving in a formation. Meaning you have a rotation of 2-4 satellites above your head at any give time. Each satellite can service a radius the size of Wyoming. So you have a limit on the number of satellites and the number of customers per satellite. The article says 5 million in the USA. That makes sense given what I'm thinking. That's about 100,000 per state, but it's not go…

Their current plans talk about a constellation of 40,000 says.

While there is limit to number of connections per sat that applies to any routing equipment really, there is not much limit to how many sats can be there .

Sure spectrum is limited today ,however if 5million people use it already, other spectrum could be freed up for this purpose , if there is demand .

The constellation today is not ready for high density usage , it is not that it will never be ready .

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

#336

Post by CloudNetworking »

blocked_again wrote: post #192
hesdeadjim wrote: post #53

Anyone complaining about this has never experienced the frustration of rural living when it comes to internet. This is absolutely amazing, and it will just get better. Even a reliable 10mbps would be a godsend in many places.

> Even a reliable 10mbps What are some applications that requires more than 10mbps speed in rural places?

A family.

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

#337

Post by est31 »

macintux wrote: post #198
badloginagain wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Larger amounts of people mean more chances of exposure. Being in urban environment means higher dependence on fragile supply chains- food security is totally dependent on JIT grocery store inventories. Rural homes, by virtue of being isolated, are easier to self isolate.

However, if you’re able to work from home, you can self-isolate pretty much anywhere, and drive wherever you need to get food. If urban environments start seriously breaking down due to a food supply chain problem, rural areas won’t be safe from desperate people. Anyway, both approaches have their pros and cons, but as someone who has a fairly severe back problem and not much inclination to try to live off the grid,…

> rural areas won’t be safe from desperate people.

That's why you need to buy yourself a private, remote island, or at least a farm on a remote island. Also, if you don't live on it alone (regardless of ownership), it may not import more food than it exports, otherwise the other inhabitants will want to get your food.

Of course this is hard to find such an island as there aren't many such places and unless you're very rich it'll be beyond your budget anyways.

Also want to stress again that it won't be enough to just have an island, it has to be remote as well otherwise people just swim over. The number of boats is limited usually so likely few people will get to you.

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

#338

Post by bargl »

rconti wrote: post #300
hpkuarg wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> over a decade to get fiber internet in the middle of Silicon Valley This is not a physics problem. This is a local government problem.

The comment was "physics being cheaper/easier" I'm just not convinced the "physics of trenching and stringing cables from poles" (whatever we're taking this to mean) is cheaper and easier than wireless points popped up, either terrestrially or in space.

Let me be super clear about what I meant in my first comment.

Satellites are VERY susceptible to overcrowding, this is what I mean by physics. Co-Channel interference and Adjacent Satellite Inteference play a big role. The more signal you use the more of a problem it becomes.

Think about it like this. Your car radio, has how many available stations? Have you ever gotten multiple signals at the same time? This is all a really big problem for space based communication you just can't solve with more signal.

Don't get me wrong we can do a lot with our spectrum, but there is a limited amount and if we both want to communicate with a satellite and we live 100 feet apart, our signals will interfere much more than if we live 1000 feet apart.

I'm not saying stringing cables is cheaper, I'm saying laying fiber from hub to hub and then connecting to those hubs is cheaper if you're within 50 mile radius. Maybe cellular is cheaper, maybe a wire to your house is cheaper. It depends on how many people you have close to you.

There just isn't enough spectrum for everyone.

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

#339

Post by manquer »

xenadu02 wrote: post #25
jasonpeacock wrote: post #12

Honestly, this is just awesome. It's a working demonstration of high-speed satellite internet, showing this approach is a viable solution for "anywhere on Earth" internet. For all those people who don't have broadband available, this will be life-changing. It'll only get better from here, welcome to the future :) (and remember that perfect is the enemy of good)

Having this kind of network is a good thing but the idea that any kind of satellite or wireless can replace wires is just fantasy. Delivering just 10Mbps to 100 million customers is over 900 Tbps. There is absolutely no way a satellite network can clear that kind of downlink bandwidth. And that's just a tiny fraction of the market. Physical cables/fiber represent several orders of magnitude more capacity and always w…

One satellite cannot route 900tbps of course , just like your local ISP cannot handle that either .

However over 40,000 satellites that’s just 22.5 gps per sat , quite achievable

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

#340

Post by quink »

apendleton wrote: post #325
quink wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am with one of the world’s biggest telcos, Telstra, on a fully owned and operated fibre-to-the-premises network. I live in a decade old estate half an hour from the centres of the third and sixth largest cities in the country. The maximum upload speed currently on sale on that network is 1 Mbps. And it’s a monopoly. Inequality in Internet access aside, that maximum is below the average fixed upload speed of 170 out…

Unfortunately it seems like Starlink in particular probably won't be useful for urban areas with poor competition. I'd be interested if it were, but from the sounds of it, they won't be able to handle lots of users in a small area.

Likely, but Australia might have a bit less of that because all the big cities are very distant from each other. A Starlink satellite with a view of Perth, for example, is going to have close to absolutely nothing else on its horizon. Above the US, for instance, that’s unlikely with many people living in between too.
Post reply on HN