Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps • Hacker News Board

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

#571

Post by jasonwatkinspdx » Sat, Aug 15, 2020, 5:56 PM UTC

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #547

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are underlying physical limitations to spectral efficiency. The best modulation schemes in use today can hit about 60 bits per second per hz of bandwidth. Meanwhile, single fibers top out above 40 terabit. To duplicate the bandwidth of just a single fiber link with a radio downlink, you'd need over 600 ghz of available spectrum. That'd require advances pushing deep into the thz gap, but beyond that, the physics…

> 60 bits per second per hz of bandwidth Between one transmitter and receiver. Starlink is designed to cheat Shannon by utilizing SDMA on a truly massive scale. Every antenna in the system, both on the satellites and on the ground stations, is a large phased-array antenna, capable of simultaneously emitting different signals on the same wavelength in different directions, and capable of discriminating between multipl…

Phased arrays aren't magic. The directivity of the beam scales logarithmically with array size / element count. The limitations are such that you should think of it as being able to send Nebraska one signal while you send Kansas a different one. You can't get much more specific than that.

Elon has been very explicit about starlink never being competitive vs telcos in urban areas.

And independent people have done the math too. The system geometry maxes out at less than a single fiber: http://www.mit.edu/~portillo/files/Comparison-LEO-IAC-2018-s...

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

#572

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Aug 15, 2020, 6:02 PM UTC

enkid wrote: post #563

Dylan16807 wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But thats not compression. That's downloading and running an executable that duplicates files.

Having a reference dictionary is a type of compression.

You need a program that decompresses no matter what, and the ability to reference existing files barely changes it. It's not a post-processing stage where files get copied around. It's the ability to reference arbitrary chunks of data inter-file just like it can reference arbitrary chunks of data intra-file.

At the most basic level it's like taking a compressed file and chopping it in half. The user already has the first half, then they download the second half and "resume" decompressing.

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

#573

Post by ac29 » Sat, Aug 15, 2020, 6:10 PM UTC

J0_k3r wrote: post #568

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.

this has been done with radio-based meshnets like the puget sound data ring for years, the government hasn't updated the legislation to allow encryption and commercial data on said meshnets, making them useless. we could already be providing free internet to millions if it weren't for the government and their dumb regulations.

I know encryption is controversial, but I cant say I've ever heard someone say that ham radio bands should be allowed to carry commercial traffic (other than people who want to just get rid of those bands all together and auction them off).

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

#574

Post by Marsymars » Sat, Aug 15, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

hansvm wrote: post #433

est31 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ver…

> unless you're very rich it'll be beyond your budget anyways I mean, there's a decent supply of islands (many with houses) that go for barely more than a Bay Area single-family home.

Not even "barely more". With 30 seconds on Google I found a 6 acre private island in Northern Ontario with a fully furnished 2200 sq ft house connected to marine electric and phone service for 360k USD.

Something more remote is even cheaper, because there's a ton of supply of islands that are only accessible by float plane, and not much demand.

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

#575

Post by ac29 » Sat, Aug 15, 2020, 6:30 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #515

foota wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine they mean GB/s of capacity, not per GB.

This was back in ~2014, though last I looked into it significant amounts of data from a sat is still many thousands of dollars per GB. (NOT GB/s)

Home based satellite internet wouldnt be viable if it cost thousands of dollars per GB. There are low-volume satellite services that do have a pretty high charge per megabyte, but thats because they are intended for applications that only need a few dozen KB per day or so.

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

#576

Post by Marsymars » Sat, Aug 15, 2020, 6:30 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #551

ekianjo wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In rural areas you have more space to stock food to live completely off the usual distribution networks for a longer time. In cities if you live in a small apartment you are tributary to shopping very often or having deliveries frequently, which increases the chance of contamination.

You can keep a years supply of food in a small closet. Everyone can’t suddenly buy a years supply of food in a crisis. Which is how this really plays out, if everyone tries to suddenly stock up on supplies that fails. So space is not a limiting factor in a pandemic. Further, going to work is a larger concern. A higher percentage of people in cities can WFH indefinitely.

> You can keep a years supply of food in a small closet.

Yeah, I worked out the space requirements once, and it's actually feasible to stock a lifetime's worth of Calories in a fairly small apartment.

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

#577

Post by Marsymars » Sat, Aug 15, 2020, 6:34 PM UTC

myself248 wrote: post #440

war1025 wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh, you had tabs! We had to use new browser instances! Uphill, in the snow! Seriously though, I still do this out of habit, as it's just how I like to read. Skim a front page, open all the articles in tabs, and then go back and peruse them.

Tabs in 2000 with Opera v4, before it even had a freeware option!

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

#578

Post by e12e » Sat, Aug 15, 2020, 6:38 PM UTC

ckdarby wrote: post #567

freemint wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because HTTPS caching is not possible.

What I hear you saying is, they'd need to build out an actual CDN service that individual companies would have to sign up and use. This service would allow Starlink to be able to use their own certs themselves or have the owner's certificate. My understanding is Cloudflare's service works this way. I believe this would be a good partnership between both companies. I'm guessing the other approach is similar to Netflix…

Now that would be interesting - 42.000 satellites running a cloud computing platform in space....

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

#579

Post by ac29 » Sat, Aug 15, 2020, 6:40 PM UTC

jagger27 wrote: post #326

Reason077 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

The sad part about what you said is that there is definitely fibre in your area. After all, there’s a 5G tower within spitting distance.

Cell towers are often connected with microwave links, though in a dense city, its more likely fiber.

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

#580

Post by wlesieutre » Sat, Aug 15, 2020, 7:31 PM UTC

taneq wrote: post #544

NickNameNick wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on how the models are expressed in the environment, theres a good chance they end up as triangle meshes with unique coordinates by the time the running game eversees them.

Unless it’s changed a lot since I worked in game dev, models absolutely are instanced but poly counts, texture resolutions and number of textures have gone through the roof. You used to have a texture and maybe a light map, now you have separate diffuse, specular, bump, glow, decals, etc. etc.

Everyone’s doing physically based rendering, so now it’s base color, roughness, metallic, and specular. Plus the glow, decals, etc.