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

Setting up Starlink

jeffgeerling.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 340 posts

Re: Setting up Starlink

#61

Post by jwcacces »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #47
poisonborz wrote: post #31

> It's powered through PoE++ (using around 100W of power continuously) Not familiar with Sat gear, but this number seems extremely high to me for just powering an antenna (and some motors occasionally)

Other users have measured power consumption around 100W constant in operation. https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/l22f1u/power_cons... Power consumption could probably be a bit lower, but there are limits. Keep in mind that this is a phased array maintaining a relatively high bandwidth and high SNR link with the satellite. This is complicated microwave electronics design, a whole different ball game than old…

And it has 2 motors for dynamic aiming

Re: Setting up Starlink

#62

Post by zikduruqe »

bserge wrote: post #2

Wow, I'm impressed! I thought it would take more than a decade to implement when it was announced, but it's here and it works. Just amazing. 100/16 Mbps is pretty decent I guess, hopefully it doesn't go down as the number of users goes up. The latency is great imo, 40ms using satellites? I don't think anyone has achieved that before. Would a bigger dish work better or not?

> 40ms using satellites?

Starlink sats are low earth orbiting (about 250 miles away). The really high latency sats that people used to use were geosynchronous sats that are parked about 30,000 miles away, and the round trip delay between earth, bird, earth.

Re: Setting up Starlink

#63

Post by [deleted] »

gameswithgo wrote: post #19
bserge wrote: post #2

Wow, I'm impressed! I thought it would take more than a decade to implement when it was announced, but it's here and it works. Just amazing. 100/16 Mbps is pretty decent I guess, hopefully it doesn't go down as the number of users goes up. The latency is great imo, 40ms using satellites? I don't think anyone has achieved that before. Would a bigger dish work better or not?

The latency may well be better than landlines in some cases. For instance, data from an edge cache in your city will be faster than starlink. But data from china? Starlink may win. I wonder if it could improve gaming/video conferencing with people far away.

[deleted]

Re: Setting up Starlink

#64

Post by User23 »

lxgr wrote: post #14
person_of_color wrote: post #5

The prices aren’t competitive for metros.. what am I missing?

I live in the city center of a major city and the only wired provider available at my address peaks out at 0.3 Mbit/s upload during workdays. 4G is better, but not by much (given that apparently everyone of my neighbors has already switched to that in favor of the cable provider). One of my neighbors has already pre-ordered Starlink.

I lived downtown in a major city and my landlords had an exclusive deal with AT&T so while my neighbors were getting 400 Mb cable I was getting 15 Mb DSL.

Re: Setting up Starlink

#65

Post by tyingq »

Denvercoder9 wrote: post #54
gameswithgo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latency may well be better than landlines in some cases. For instance, data from an edge cache in your city will be faster than starlink. But data from china? Starlink may win. I wonder if it could improve gaming/video conferencing with people far away.

Right now, that's not really the case though, as the satellite interlinks aren't operational yet. All your traffic goes through a base station relatively close to you, and continues over "regular" fiber around the world.

This article and accompanying videos are interesting in that regard: https://www.circleid.com/posts/20191230_starlink_simulation_...

It suggests they could be lower latency than a great-circle path ground fiber without the satellite interlinks.

Re: Setting up Starlink

#66

Post by modeless »

tyingq wrote: post #51
nevi-me wrote: post #10

The cell grouping is interesting. A colleague likes the outdoors, so he's preordered one for his Suzuki Jimny, to mount on it. I wonder if Starlink are considering this use case. I haven't been able to preorder mine, because we're planning on moving out from the city to a small village next year, but the Starlink website requires a street address. Our villages are quite primitive, no street names (I think it's cos no…

"he's preordered one for his Suzuki Jimny, to mount on it. I wonder if Starlink are considering this use case." It sounds like they don't support a roaming base station for now. From the FAQ: https://www.starlink.com/faq Can I travel with Starlink, or move it to a different address? Starlink satellites are scheduled to send internet down to all users within a designated area on the ground. This designated area is ref…

This is changing soon. SpaceX filed with the FCC for approval for mobile ground stations on vehicles like RVs, boats, and planes. It's coming! https://fcc.report/IBFS/SES-LIC-INTR2021-00934/3877177.pdf

Re: Setting up Starlink

#67

Post by kube-system »

BurningFrog wrote: post #56
Gwypaas wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aiming for 20 ms later this year. (Elon time) A bigger dish would not lower latency but may increase signal strength leading to better throughput. But it's not a simple parabolic antenna. It is the first consumer oriented phased array antenna tracking the satellites as they move across the sky, so that would increase the antenna cost even more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array

I read that as "future versions of the antenna will be much improved", in price and performance. I know Moore's Law is being repealed, but that's still how new types of electronics work, right?

Moore’s law was specific to the way IC manufacturing worked. While it does (/did?) help reduce the price of electronic simply because they relied on ICs, the big price decreases you see in products after their early-adopter phase are likely just general economies of scale.

Making small early batches of anything is more expensive per unit than making a ton of them —- regardless of whether it’s cutting edge tech or a plastic chair.

Re: Setting up Starlink

#68

Post by oxplot »

tyingq wrote: post #3

Aside: The router design is as impractical as it is futuristic. The thing would fall over if you looked at it sideways, and the solitary LED on the front was hard to see unless in a dark room or looking closely, straight at it. Hopefully a 2nd iteration will be better! Wow, he's right about the shape of the router. It also looks like it forces the ethernet cable in front if you want to be able to see the LED, and the…

Note that one can use any router with the dish. Basically the dish provides you with a NATed private IP which you can assign to the WAN interface of your router of choice and go from there.

Re: Setting up Starlink

#69

Post by tyingq »

oxplot wrote: post #68
tyingq wrote: post #3

Aside: The router design is as impractical as it is futuristic. The thing would fall over if you looked at it sideways, and the solitary LED on the front was hard to see unless in a dark room or looking closely, straight at it. Hopefully a 2nd iteration will be better! Wow, he's right about the shape of the router. It also looks like it forces the ethernet cable in front if you want to be able to see the LED, and the…

Note that one can use any router with the dish. Basically the dish provides you with a NATed private IP which you can assign to the WAN interface of your router of choice and go from there.

Oh, that's interesting. Is the router then completely just a commodity thing that has no specific Starlink functionality at all?

Edit: Some reddit posts suggests the Starlink App doesn't work if you don't use the router. But also that the app isn't terribly useful outside of the "obstructions view", which is mostly a one-time need during installation.

Re: Setting up Starlink

#70

Post by labcomputer »

Reventlov wrote: post #52
Gwypaas wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aiming for 20 ms later this year. (Elon time) A bigger dish would not lower latency but may increase signal strength leading to better throughput. But it's not a simple parabolic antenna. It is the first consumer oriented phased array antenna tracking the satellites as they move across the sky, so that would increase the antenna cost even more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array

« A bigger dish would not lower latency but may increase signal strength leading to better throughput. » A better signal strength would probably lead to better modulations being used, therefore, less transmission and reception time, and a better latency, or am I wrong ? (at least that's the case for Wi-Fi: the better the signal strength, the lower the transmission time so the better the latency).

Latency in this case is dominated by time-of-flight to the satellite.

At 100 Mbps with a 40 ms latency, there are about 2 megabits in the air between the ground station and CPE.

Post reply on HN