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Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day

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Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day

#71

Post by ianburrell »

mschuster91 wrote: post #6

> The lasers, which can sustain a 100Gbps connection per link > Brashears also said Starlink’s laser system was able to connect two satellites over 5,400 kilometers (3,355 miles) apart. The link was so long “it cut down through the atmosphere, all the way down to 30 kilometers above the surface of the Earth,” he said, before the connection broke. How do these tiny satellites achieve this kind of accuracy and link qua…

The current Starlinks satellites aren't small. They are almost a ton and 13ft by 9ft.

Even the original ones weren't that small weighing 570lb.

Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day

#72

Post by theropost »

jstummbillig wrote: post #69
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10 minutes of 4k video is ~30GB.

Knowing the size of a video file is exactly not the information, that would help me put this number in a meaningful perspective with any comparable operation. How do I think of 42 petabytes in terms of an ISP? Is that a lot? How does it compare to other satellite providers? How does it compare to 4G capacities? Is this a small country worth of traffic or just any ol' data center? I have no intuition about traffic at…

42 million gigabytes per day, or if we are working with 30GB for 10min of 4k movies - 233,000 hours of ultra HD movies per day

Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day

#73

Post by stefan_ »

mschuster91 wrote: post #6

> The lasers, which can sustain a 100Gbps connection per link > Brashears also said Starlink’s laser system was able to connect two satellites over 5,400 kilometers (3,355 miles) apart. The link was so long “it cut down through the atmosphere, all the way down to 30 kilometers above the surface of the Earth,” he said, before the connection broke. How do these tiny satellites achieve this kind of accuracy and link qua…

Their exact position in space can be calculated very precisely. The Starlink terminals do this as well.

Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day

#74

Post by deathanatos »

theropost wrote: post #72
jstummbillig wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing the size of a video file is exactly not the information, that would help me put this number in a meaningful perspective with any comparable operation. How do I think of 42 petabytes in terms of an ISP? Is that a lot? How does it compare to other satellite providers? How does it compare to 4G capacities? Is this a small country worth of traffic or just any ol' data center? I have no intuition about traffic at…

42 million gigabytes per day, or if we are working with 30GB for 10min of 4k movies - 233,000 hours of ultra HD movies per day

It's 42 PB per day, though.

Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day

#75

Post by lizhang »

colordrops wrote: post #70
jstummbillig wrote: post #65

I have absolutely no idea how that number relates to any comparable operation. Can anyone add a banana for scale?

If you've got a laptop with a terrabyte drive, it would be 42,000 full laptops worth of data.

If you've got a server farm with a petabyte of storage, it would be 42 server farms

Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day

#76

Post by besnn00 »

theropost wrote: post #72
jstummbillig wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing the size of a video file is exactly not the information, that would help me put this number in a meaningful perspective with any comparable operation. How do I think of 42 petabytes in terms of an ISP? Is that a lot? How does it compare to other satellite providers? How does it compare to 4G capacities? Is this a small country worth of traffic or just any ol' data center? I have no intuition about traffic at…

42 million gigabytes per day, or if we are working with 30GB for 10min of 4k movies - 233,000 hours of ultra HD movies per day

per day*

Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day

#77

Post by e12e »

theropost wrote: post #72
jstummbillig wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing the size of a video file is exactly not the information, that would help me put this number in a meaningful perspective with any comparable operation. How do I think of 42 petabytes in terms of an ISP? Is that a lot? How does it compare to other satellite providers? How does it compare to 4G capacities? Is this a small country worth of traffic or just any ol' data center? I have no intuition about traffic at…

42 million gigabytes per day, or if we are working with 30GB for 10min of 4k movies - 233,000 hours of ultra HD movies per day

> 42 million gigabytes per second

Per day?

Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day

#78

Post by mytailorisrich »

mschuster91 wrote: post #6

> The lasers, which can sustain a 100Gbps connection per link > Brashears also said Starlink’s laser system was able to connect two satellites over 5,400 kilometers (3,355 miles) apart. The link was so long “it cut down through the atmosphere, all the way down to 30 kilometers above the surface of the Earth,” he said, before the connection broke. How do these tiny satellites achieve this kind of accuracy and link qua…

The rate of change of their relative positions is what matters. At 5400km distance this is likely slowish so that tracking is not a big issue as long as position is well known, which it is.

Re. Link quality: laser, line of sight, most of the trip is in vacuum and the rest in very sparse atmosphere. So interferences are likely quite low.

Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day

#79

Post by bee_rider »

colordrops wrote: post #70
jstummbillig wrote: post #65

I have absolutely no idea how that number relates to any comparable operation. Can anyone add a banana for scale?

If you've got a laptop with a terrabyte drive, it would be 42,000 full laptops worth of data.

Implementing a “comparable operation” to this satellite network using laptops instead is going to be really expensive fuel-wise, I think.

Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day

#80

Post by whycome »

jstummbillig wrote: post #65

I have absolutely no idea how that number relates to any comparable operation. Can anyone add a banana for scale?

> If you took a petabyte's worth of 1GB flash drives and lined them up end to end, they would stretch over 92 football fields.

https://info.cobaltiron.com/blog/petabyte-how-much-informati...

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