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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

#461

Post by shaklee3 »

vardump wrote: post #286
AmbientNomad wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a rural area where both of these services are available. They both come with seriously outdated data caps. Hugesnet, if I recall, charges $150/month for their fastest tier, but after 50gb, your speed is reduced to 300kbps. I haven't experienced either service, but I regularly read that they are riddled with disconnects and spotty service. Currently we're paying a ridiculous amount, $200/month, to Unlimitedv…

"I have some serious concerns about Starlink..." Curious, what kind?

Both the speeds and the latency are worse than what was originally promised. there have also been no pricing for the plans, nor have there been pricing for the equipment. This has been the biggest downsides since day one.

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

#462

Post by shaklee3 »

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…

How could you possibly tell that they're able to provide reasonable quality to customers by looking at a single speed test? There is a whole bunch of other stuff that goes into running a network other than doing a single speed test. A lot of the things that people complain about other satellite providers fall into that category.

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

#463

Post by Dylan16807 »

enkid wrote: post #329
antris wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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's not how compression would work. Think about if they are adding a new level. The algorithm would have nothing to compare the files against except what is actually being sent. If the texture appears in each level, and each level comes in a separate update, there's no way for the algorithm to reference or incorporate the files that are already in your computer, so it has to compress it like it's a brand new file.…

You have this completely wrong. "there's no way"? It's extremely easy to make a patch file that references existing data. This is a problem that has been solved many times.

And that's not relevant to initial install anyway, which can/should be a single download.

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

#464

Post by shaklee3 »

bargl wrote: post #79
alwaysdoit wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also raises the baseline across the board by injecting a new competitor to every ISP and wireless service in the world

This is 1000% my point. There is now a baseline amount of signal per KM. That signal is now the same everywhere. It will be (about) the same speed everywhere. This is really great for more rural areas and over the ocean.

That's not how it works. There are intentionally launching satellites at different inclinations so that they can cover more densely populated areas with more bandwidth. The speed and capacity is absolutely not uniform over the entire globe.

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

#465

Post by shaklee3 »

busterarm wrote: post #210
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…

A lot of what you're saying isn't actually true here. Light moves significantly (47%) slower through optical fiber than through space. This drastically reduces the latency of long distance connections. We're talking NY round trip to Japan in the same time it takes NY roundtrip to the UK now. The cost of backhaul and ongoing maintenance of cables is a lot more than SpaceX launching their own satellites by an entire or…

SpaceX has to pay the same fiber cost in terms of latency as everyone else. They do not have gateways near every PoP, and will need to backhaul a nontrivial distance to add latency.

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

#466

Post by shaklee3 »

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…

Please post your napkin math. That seems to disagree with all the other analysts' math.

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

#467

Post by shaklee3 »

busterarm wrote: post #248
bargl wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>last mile work is expensive. What do you mean there?

SpaceX isn't doing the install work work on these Starlink kits. They just sell you some hardware. If you're a terrestrial-based internet provider, you need a fleet of installers and they also have to do constant maintenance work. They have salaries and they make (lots of) overtime pay. At a lot of the smaller companies (like the one I worked at) they have pensions. We had a lot of guys who started with the company o…

This is absolutely not true. They are still selling you a dish in a terminal that most of the population could not install themselves on their house. The majority of the installs will be professionaly done.

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

#468

Post by Dylan16807 »

shaklee3 wrote: post #456
yencabulator wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possible != commercially available. I talked to the guy doing DSL installs in my area, he says 5 Mbps max if you get lucky. Starlink is leapfrogging the cable/telco industries by not needing the same infrastructure.

No, it's not. So far you don't know anything about the price or the actual speeds that will be offered. So far all we know is that the latency numbers that were promised of sub 20ms are clearly not going to happen.

> So far all we know is that the latency numbers that were promised of sub 20ms are clearly not going to happen.

What? How do we 'know' that?

This is only a beta, and we don't know how carefully the testing was done, and we don't know how far away the servers were from the ground stations.

And some users already managed results of 20ms.

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

#469

Post by shaklee3 »

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…

Their target launch cadence has been missed by quite a bit for many years. At this point they are only launching their own satellites at a cost to them, and not launching very many paying customer payloads at all.

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

#470

Post by PopeDotNinja »

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.

I've been a digital nomad for almost a year now. If I can get 5 Mbps down/up, I can do my work without interruption. In a couple places where I could only get 1 Mbps down/up, I could still do my work w/ a bit of patience on transfer speeds & good enough audio, as long as I didn't need to do much screen sharing & video uploading, and I could usually compensate when I really had to by tethering/hotpotting to my mobile phone. !0 Mbps would be fine for one person for most things. Might feel slow for a family during peak times.
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