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Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage

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61–70 of 109 posts

Re: Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage

#61
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use starlink and find it fast and reliable - far more reliable than any cabled connection I ever had elsewhere, and faster than the fibre that’s available around me, which is contended to hell and back. Yes, it’s gigabit in theory, but in practice you get 20Mb/s, and any time there’s a power outage, which is often, it’s down.

And if you live a rural, mostly wooded area like I do, fallen trees are constantly taking out the fiber services for days at a time.

They aren’t buried? Or do the roots tear the fibre?

Re: Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the Bladerunner reference in your about.

Yeah, but the Blade Runner Replicants lived longer than most FANG coders churn positions. One of the best Sci-Fi movies of all time. =3

THE best.

Re: Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage

#63
post #18

[flagged]

Maybe I'm missinformed, but doesn't starlink have to comply with rules made by local authorities? Afaik, when the internet goes down, like it happened in Thailand, Starlink can't be used too, because it always roots traffic to a ground station near the source.

If this would not happen, I would agree that Starlink is the future. But as it is right now, I don't see the point, unless you are living in or travelling to remote places.

Re: Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage

#64
post #53
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if I've misunderstood sarcasm and taken your comment at face value, but are you really unaware of current developments? There are fields literally covered with thick webs of optical fibre near front lines. "Fibre optic drone" even has its own Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_optic_drone I understand that keeping track of news can be difficult, and staying out of that depressing information c…

I had no idea. A kilometers long wire sounded completely infeasible to me, though clearly I underestimated the fiber optics. I would have thought kilometers of wire would be too heavy to keep on a spool on the drone itself, and without the spool on the drone you probably can't have fly by wire. That's why I was dismissive, it sounded to me like a completely infeasible idea.

Fair enough, I remember being sceptical myself when I first read about that. Well, learnt something new today, at least. (In that WP article I see that wire-guided war devices are much older invention than I thought.)

Re: Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage

#65
post #18

[flagged]

Not a time to get philosophical when your drone team on the zero line in Ukraine loses comms

They should always have had a second, back-up option, because relying on such a brittle a thing as satellite comms when fighting a military power like Russia was bound to have issues.

Re: Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage

#66
post #18

[flagged]

> the technological miracle and marvel that it is

Its not a miracle or a marvel, its basic physics.

LEO satellites will provide better internet experience than traditional satellites because they are closer to the earth.

Now, whether you want to blow smoke up Mr Musk's backside because he was the first to market with Starlink is a different subject. But it also not a subject worthy of the "miracle" or "marvel" title.

Personally I look forward to the day where there's a competitor product available, its merely a case of when not if.

Most Western countries are also busy improving fibre coverage to rural areas as old copper networks get decommissioned.

Re: Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage

#68
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're just gonna have a kilometers long "wire" to control a drone? Yup. Fiber optic cables are lightweight and thin, so you can stick 10 km+ in a spindle on the drone that unwinds as you fly. > I'd much rather just lose some drones to jamming. They seem to be cheap and replaceable. They *are* cheap and replaceable, but you don't send them out for the fun of it. If the drones don't hit the vehicles/soldiers/whateve…

In general, your notions of front-line combat strategy is wrong. People on both sides used the fiber-optic platforms to target the RF Jammers/platforms first, and then deploy normal FPV platforms to chase down the soldiers. Note, one may buy a fiber network link kit for drones for around $650 USD off China online stores. Try to be more precise if you don't know something. =3

The drone tactics are changing by the week, to not say by the day, as I just saw a video 3-4 days ago of an Ukrainian soldier who had just cut the wire on a Russia fiber-optic drone and then a second fiber-optic drone came and took his life. So making generalisations like that might not be always right on the spot.

Re: Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage

#69
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a time to get philosophical when your drone team on the zero line in Ukraine loses comms

They should always have had a second, back-up option, because relying on such a brittle a thing as satellite comms when fighting a military power like Russia was bound to have issues.

I'm pretty sure they know that. Especially as Starlink is brittle mostly because of its (rather disgusting at this point) founder figure and his ramblings. But this is armchair advice: what other options do they have and how do you fund them?

(most of Starlink for the Ukrainian army is being paid for by Poland)

Re: Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage

#70
post #43
post #27

Everything I heard about Starlink indicates that it's very fickle and unreliable.

The technology, or the business owner? Because the fickleness and unreliability of the latter is a serious concern. Once other LEO constellations come online, who is going to stick with Starlink, knowing they may pull the plug at anytime on a whim of "Space Karen"?

> Once other LEO constellations come online

... it's time to "pick one's poison" again. It's either Amazon which is US based (and thus vulnerable to the same kind of political pressure that Starlink is) or it's IRIS2 (which is good if you're European, but might not be that optimal if US-EU relations go catastrophically sour).

On top of that, Kuiper isn't live yet (IIRC scheduled until 2026 for minimal coverage) and IRIS2 is only predicted for 2029 (and everyone who knows a thing about European cooperation projects knows that this is a seriously optimistic example - we don't even have a flight proven cheap rocket yet).

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