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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

#421

Post by 01100011 »

busterarm wrote: post #240
bargl wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A lot of what you're saying isn't actually true here. You're talking latency not bandwidth. There is only so much spectrum to go around. My understanding is that there is only a certain amount of bandwidth to go around and there are diminishing returns on adding people beyond a set capacity. I am not arguing that fiber is faster, I'm arguing that fiber has is cheaper at the bandwidth/cost in more dense areas. I don'…

I worked for an ILEC providing cable/dsl/fiber service and just the rough napkin math around SpaceX's launch costs makes it look significantly cheaper. Besides the whole digging and laying cable costs, last mile work is expensive. You have to employ huge crews. Construction crews constantly dig up & cut your infrastructure "by accident" and the cost of recovering the fines from them is as much as the fines pay out. H…

FWIW, last mile costs only matter if your last mile isn't wireless, more or less. Terrestrial internet doesn't imply wire/fiber to the premises, does it?

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

#422

Post by waheoo »

kalium-xyz wrote: post #403
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.

I can think of two reasons which are purely non-techincal: - The bigger the game, the less space for other games. - Much like adding metal to the inside consumer headphone purely to weight it down and give a premium feeling (they do this with other products as well). A larger program may be perceived as more significant.

That backfired, I chose my last premium headset over the other because it was lighter.

Who wants a rock attached to their ears? In their carry on?

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

#423

Post by jv22222 »

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.

"and it will just get better." is proven with any Musk co (that I know of).

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

#424

Post by insta_anon »

medion wrote: post #409
insta_anon wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds very interesting (I am also in Australia). Would you mind sharing (roughly) where you live?

Let's say, beyond 42deg south.

Oh, based on your comment I was also expecting more or less a place in QLD. What were your main reasons for Tassy? Climate? House prices?

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

#425

Post by oh_sigh »

ianai wrote: post #61
grecy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for the Telco that services all of Northern Canada (world's largest operating area for a telco). We installed one of the world's first 3G towers that uses only satellite as backbone. Think fly-in only communities that are thousands of kilometers away from anything in the Arctic. Many of our sites are served by radio backhaul for that reason. The sat backhaul tower is extremely expensive and temperamental. It…

This is what turns me away from the astronomers complaining about the constellations. They’re not interested at all in the community whose problems satnet helps resolve. Society has had plenty of time to run data lines out to the hardest to reach areas and clearly cannot and will not do it any other way.

Funny that astronomers and space types were all about setting aside other people's problems when it came to doing cool stuff in space, e.g. the famous NASA reply to Sister Mary Jucunda[0]. But now, it's "won't somebody please think of the astronomers"

[0] https://lettersofnote.com/2012/08/06/why-explore-space/

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

#426

Post by gdubs »

dougmwne wrote: post #18

This is already quite an achievement! In just 10 launches, SpaceX is operating the world's largest satellite constellation and can already provide broadband of reasonable quality to some customers. In rural areas, I have struggled to catch weak LTE signals with fixed antennas that often didn't hit these speed and latency numbers. This absolutely seems on track to be an excellent alternative to rural LTE or existing s…

Yea, I’m currently on a mix of cellular and traditional satellite. The combo is fairly expensive but necessary because one or the other goes out on occasion. It’s fine, but ideally you don’t want to ever think about your internet. You just want it to work. No data cap, no noticeable latency.

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

#427

Post by war1025 »

dylan604 wrote: post #375
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.

When I was growing up, 56.6kbps was the hotness. However, in the boonies where I lived, the best I could do was 33.6kbps. Most of the time, I was lucky to get 28.8, but would never get less than 14.4. Turned out, that the central switch for our town was so old and we were so far from it that there was no way for it to provide a clean enough signal for >33.6. When HughesNet came out, we tried it. It was horrible. Only…

I remember as a teen I'd go on Digg and open all the articles in separate tabs so that by the time I was done reading the text ones some of the images would be loaded on the ones with pictures. We've come a long way.

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

#428

Post by ckocagil »

busterarm wrote: post #240
bargl wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A lot of what you're saying isn't actually true here. You're talking latency not bandwidth. There is only so much spectrum to go around. My understanding is that there is only a certain amount of bandwidth to go around and there are diminishing returns on adding people beyond a set capacity. I am not arguing that fiber is faster, I'm arguing that fiber has is cheaper at the bandwidth/cost in more dense areas. I don'…

I worked for an ILEC providing cable/dsl/fiber service and just the rough napkin math around SpaceX's launch costs makes it look significantly cheaper. Besides the whole digging and laying cable costs, last mile work is expensive. You have to employ huge crews. Construction crews constantly dig up & cut your infrastructure "by accident" and the cost of recovering the fines from them is as much as the fines pay out. H…

The costs of installing and maintaining infrastructure scale down to nothing with population density. Also you can upgrade a switch but not if it's on a satellite. I am very convinced that the two approaches will complement each other in the foreseeable future.

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

#429

Post by wlesieutre »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #348
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.

I assume it must be a massive refusal to deduplicate. For example in the Verdansk map, many of the houses and buildings are cut and pasted. In theory, these could be aliases of the same model, but I suspect they are all baked in. Other than that I just don't know. Maybe they used bad settings for whatever is their compression algo and they don't have any experts who could actually identify the problem? It's a prepost…

The house models themselves might use the same geometry and textures, but if you pre-bake any lighting then that’s a unique texture across every single surface in the world that can’t be deduplicated.

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

#430

Post by ckocagil »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #256
busterarm wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for an ILEC providing cable/dsl/fiber service and just the rough napkin math around SpaceX's launch costs makes it look significantly cheaper. Besides the whole digging and laying cable costs, last mile work is expensive. You have to employ huge crews. Construction crews constantly dig up & cut your infrastructure "by accident" and the cost of recovering the fines from them is as much as the fines pay out. H…

The SpaceX approach also completely bypasses a ton of the nonsense local bureaucracy, stonewalling by existing ISPs, etc that a company would have to deal with to put in cables, towers, etc in the first place, saving both time and money.

This is not a good thing. Eventually countries will heavily regulate satellites and then SpaceX will be the monopoly that keeps small players out. Instead of postponing the problem of getting rid of an evil monopoly, citizens should realize that last mile internet delivery is practically identical to water, sewage and power systems that can be owned by the city and leased out to providers.
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