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Elon Musk said SpaceX's multi 1000 satellite Internet service will be IP-less

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Re: Elon Musk said SpaceX's multi 1000 satellite Internet service will be IP-less

#81

Post by lostapathy »

zingmars wrote: post #77
mrep wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question is what happens when they launch all 1000 satellites? The plan is for 12,000 satellites and they are only designed to last a few years and then be replaced. This keeps launch rates constant, allows them to make much larger use of economies of scale by having that many satellites, and to constantly improve speed by building the new satellites with state of the art technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…

That's a lot of satellites. What are they going to do with the deprecated ones?

LEO orbits degrade fairly steadily - without constantly boosting them back up they will de-orbit on their own. Because of that, they won't leave space junk in orbit.

From how they describe these satellites, they will be small enough to burn up in the atmosphere and not cause any issues on the ground either.

Re: Elon Musk said SpaceX's multi 1000 satellite Internet service will be IP-less

#82

Post by simonvc »

patrickaljord wrote: post #80
devit wrote: post #73

Is there an estimate on the magnitude of the maximum total bandwidth achievable with a LEO satellite, both for a smartphone client and for a fixed home antenna? How far would it be to 4G and gigabit fiber respectively?

It's not the bandwidth I'm curious about, I'm wondering what the latency will be like. Satellite connections usually have bad latency because of obvious physics laws limitation. This can be bad for real time apps. Still great for most web applications though.

These are MEO sats, not Geo stationary at 30,000km.

The round trip for these will be about London to Edinburgh and back and we video conference that distance all the time.

Re: Elon Musk said SpaceX's multi 1000 satellite Internet service will be IP-less

#83

Post by squarefoot »

imtringued wrote: post #28

The headline is completely misleading. The transport layer won't use IPv6. It's like saying ethernet doesn't use IPv6. That's unsurprising.

Not to mention that "IP" may indicate not just Internet Protocol. My first reaction after reading the title was: "Wow! A satellite service using no patented hardware/software! Can't wait to find the project on Github!".

Re: Elon Musk said SpaceX's multi 1000 satellite Internet service will be IP-less

#84

Post by westbywest »

mozumder wrote: post #76
cornholio wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He specifically mentions a much lower protocol overhead, implying a translation of some sort, as opposed to just encapsulation. As an ex-programmer, is unlikely Musk would make that confusion.

It's most likely a version of the ATM protocol[1]. Point-to-point, small packets, etc.. We used a version of that when I was working on the Iridium project. Likely the exact same thing here, especially if they hired the same engineers. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_Transfer_Mode

Indeed, and I'd expect ATM's fixed packet size to make for more manageable flow control over variable (and simultaneous) pipes.

Re: Elon Musk said SpaceX's multi 1000 satellite Internet service will be IP-less

#85

Post by kakarot »

petee wrote: post #57
imtringued wrote: post #28

The headline is completely misleading. The transport layer won't use IPv6. It's like saying ethernet doesn't use IPv6. That's unsurprising.

Beyond that, there is entirely no substance here - unless he wants to release details, this is non-news, just more business fluff - "Ours will be even better. It'll be huge. The best. Others, so sad" "And if its hacked, we'll just patch the firmware. So easy."

I'd be bragging about my satellite fleet, too. The guy's only human.

Re: Elon Musk said SpaceX's multi 1000 satellite Internet service will be IP-less

#86

Post by westbywest »

gnode wrote: post #29

I wonder if the reason here is that the topology of the network will change rapidly. E.g. as equatorial and polar satellites cross each other, they will be in direct communication with each other for only brief periods of time. There are ways to cope with routing changes in IP, but I don't know if it'd be seamless enough.

Comments up-thread speculate Musk may be looking at something like ATM, which uses small, fixed packet sizes for better flow control, along with expectation packets may arrive out of order due to traversing multiple paths. ATM has implementations for reordering packets, and the fixed packet size ensures reordering can be accomplished within a fixed latency.

Re: Elon Musk said SpaceX's multi 1000 satellite Internet service will be IP-less

#87

Post by KMag »

gnode wrote: post #29

I wonder if the reason here is that the topology of the network will change rapidly. E.g. as equatorial and polar satellites cross each other, they will be in direct communication with each other for only brief periods of time. There are ways to cope with routing changes in IP, but I don't know if it'd be seamless enough.

It's easy to read too much into a tweet, but it sounds like the header size overhead and number of options are the primary reasons for not using IPv6.

Note also that IPv4 and IPv6 are nearly independent of the routing protocol.

Also, my first job was writing discrete event models of wireless communications equipment, including a couple satellite models. You'd be surprised how simple satellites themselves are. A lot of work goes into moving the complexity from the fragile, expensive, and out-of-reach satellites and into the ground stations. I wouldn't be surprised if packets weren't at least partially source-routed, which might very well involve broadcasting GPS-like tables of satellite orbit parameters.

Re: Elon Musk said SpaceX's multi 1000 satellite Internet service will be IP-less

#88

Post by deadcoder0904 »

staltz wrote: post #59

Hi, I'm andrestaltz who Elon answered on Twitter. Like others have mentioned here, it seems like Elon is referring to the link layer between the satellites. "Peer-to-peer" probably meant "without a network switch". I wish I had originally tweeted "... peer-to-peer connections within Starlink-only customers" because I was actually interested in knowing if Starlink could be like ZeroTier. https://zerotier.com/

Sorry I'm the OP. I just stole the title from Reddit for some easy karma because I couldn't understand all the jargon. PS - Admire both your work <3

Re: Elon Musk said SpaceX's multi 1000 satellite Internet service will be IP-less

#89

Post by sho »

jsjohnst wrote: post #56
sho wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell of a lot of places without 5G, or any , mobile internet. Don't forget aviation and to a lesser extent maritime either. People love their onboard wifi. Owning the launch platform could mean that he's able to significantly undercut current players, although funnily enough soon-to-be competitor Iridium recently launched a whole bunch of new satellites using SpaceX. Good position to be in when your competitors are d…

1) Starlink will be in LEO around 800mi up unlike most communications satellites (like HughesNet) which are in geostationary orbit at ~22,200mi. Expect 25-35ms latency as compared to 600+. 2) due to having a lot more birds in the air at lower altitude with newer tech, they should be competitive with 5G networks speed wise as compared to existing satellite internet. Edit: fixed distance typo for HughesNet

Huh. That's really close.

Your numbers are off though. Firstly it's ~40ms up to the bird if it's right above you, then 40 down to the base station if it is next door to your house. If it's on the other side of the world and has to travel around the whole mesh, add a hundred ms at best. Then from the base station to the destination - which could be anywhere in the world, and back, then back up to the bird, then back down to you.

It's not going to be 40ms, probably not even 400ms, and there is no way it will be competitive with mobile 5G.

It might not even be competitive with the geostationary birds for accessing nearby hosts. 22k miles is ~120ms, so 240ms round trip - because the base station is generally pretty nearby. Say ~20ms both ways for in-country ping and you're looking at 520ms -ish total, which is reasonably consistent with my experience using it from the Solomon Islands.

Huawei's saying 1ms to the tower for 5G!

Re: Elon Musk said SpaceX's multi 1000 satellite Internet service will be IP-less

#90

Post by ksec »

imtringued wrote: post #28

The headline is completely misleading. The transport layer won't use IPv6. It's like saying ethernet doesn't use IPv6. That's unsurprising.

The Media will pick it up, start to explain to average Joe that iPv6 is the latest tech, currently still only running x% of Internet. But Elon has something even better then IPv6, using encryption and Peer to Peer design!

I was going to say Stocks going up, then I realize SpaceX is not public yet.

I wonder if the Internet Services part will be sold to Telsa?

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