I don’t understand how you can make functional satellites so small? That they can launch 60 at once. Usually a launch just has one satellite.
Starlink Is a Big Deal
81–90 of 365 posts
Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm glad you think it's worth it. I'm not as sure, personally. Especially since your examples don't hold water with me. Oppressive governments that don't like the internet aren't going to just allow the transceivers. They need line of sight to the sky and even if you hide them, detecting them would be trivial. Super rural areas and 3rd world areas have their own set of problems. I'm thinking of the OLPC type issues h…
Yeah, all that talk about free internet for all the poor and oppressed sounds pretty suspicious set beside the claims that starlink is supposed to make money too. How will a rural Guatemalan farmer that cooks on a three stones fire provide any sort of profit?
He'll pay for Starlink using a microloan and pay back the loan using online gig work or influencing, obviously. :-/
Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal
#83Just going to plug my Starlink tracker here: https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink It tells you when to go outside and look up to see the satellites as they pass over your house. It's a cool sight to see because there are up to 60 of them crossing the sky at the same time in a line.
It tells you when to go outside and look up to see the satellites as they pass over your house
This must be made up. I have been assured repeatedly on HN that Starlink is a visual non-factor, and that nobody would notice them in the sky, they won't get in the way of astronomy, stargazing, or just enjoying the night sky like humans have done for thousands of years.
Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal
#84"HFT firms will be the first customers, seeking a few-millisecond reduction in the transmission of realtime data between markets. Starlink has already said as much, and I think they rely on this as their first and primary source of revenue." I am not sure this is a good prediction ... the shaving of milliseconds that has been pursued by HFT firms (and other such actors) has progressed to the point where they are meas…
> I am not sure this is a good prediction ... the shaving of milliseconds that has been pursued by HFT firms (and other such actors) has progressed to the point where they are measuring cable lengths inside the datacenter.
You're conflating optimisation of latency within a colo - how quickly can you send an order in response to seeing an event on that exchange - with latency between colos - how quickly can you send an order in response to seeing an event on another exchange.
Within a colo, latency is measured in microseconds and fractions of a microsecond. Between colos, it's milliseconds. Some random source here has 4.13 ms for New York - Chicago:
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/11/final-frontie...
At the moment, to play that game, you need to build a microwave network. Someone needs to build towers in a line between your two exchanges - buy the land, get planning permission, placate the locals, build the tower, install microwave antennas, hope the weather is okay. That's expensive!
With Starlink, there will be a reasonably direct path between any two points on earth - on demand! The path will be longer than a dedicated microwave chain, although some of it will be in vacuum, which will save some time, but it will cost the end user no money and no time to build. If you come up with a trade idea that needs a low-latency path from Moscow to Stockholm, you can send a request to the Starlink API and just get one in moments. You can be up and running with your trade months or years before a tower-building competitor even joins the game.
Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal
#85I'm not convinced that Starlink will provide access to the "half of the human beings (who) are not online yet." Of course that would be good, yet my guess is that Starlink will target people in developed nations who are in rural areas, or people who want low latency. Maybe Starlink could serve people w/o internet if a whole village buys a subscription, or if a cell provider uses Starlink as backhaul for voice? Still…
These aren't geostationary satellites. There's no opportunity cost to selling service when flying over poorer countries. Of course, the price has to include the backhaul, and even poor countries have rich residents, but in any event it would be silly to fly over whole landmasses in silence.
in any event it would be silly to fly over whole landmasses in silence.
I imagine if Mr. Musk wants to keep his shiny new Tesla factory in China, he'll make sure this won't be used to circumvent the Great Firewall.
Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal
#86> For reference, my last flat in Berlin (the capital of the largest economy in the EU), on the ground on a main street in the city center, was serviced with approximately 14MBps ADSL, and this was the fastest offering available from any vendor.
14Mbps in Berlin? How is this possible?
I had 20Mbps in Mexico City almost a decade ago. A family member who lived in the same building at the time had 100Mbps symmetrical.
Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal
#87> For reference, my last flat in Berlin (the capital of the largest economy in the EU), on the ground on a main street in the city center, was serviced with approximately 14MBps ADSL, and this was the fastest offering available from any vendor. 14Mbps in Berlin? How is this possible? I had 20Mbps in Mexico City almost a decade ago. A family member who lived in the same building at the time had 100Mbps symmetrical.
Mostly policy. Spain deployed a lot of fiber in the las 10 years that we've got little towns with multiple symmetric 600mbps offerings. If it can be done in Spain, it can be done in Germany.
Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal
#88> "Hundreds of cities and dozens of countries, fine for living but previously entirely unsuitable for a place of business, will blink from red to green on the map once Starlink goes live." this reads like a marketing piece rather than actual analysis. Throughput of a single satellite is 20Gbps. The finished constellation if I recall correctly is supposed to be about 12k satellites. So about ~250.000Gbps. So assuming…
Regarding the social impact, while likely overstated it has the possibility of making a real impact. Rural communities in upstate NY (Catskills, Adirondacks) have had their tourist season drop to ~6 weeks in the summer, basically because people can't take so much time off while being out of contact (there is limited internet and cell phone service. Not having either is the norm). Being able to work remotely from thos…
What is stopping cell providers from adding more towers/capacity to that area?
Are there geographic reasons or just a matter of time and economics?
Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Companies like Viasat are already offering that. A couple of years ago, they were talking about how they wanted to offer free internet to all passangers (with enough bandwidth that everyone could stream HD movies, thanks to the new satellite they launched in 2017). I'm not sure how the rollout is going, though, or if the airlines want to do this. I guess the airlines can make a fortune overcharging passengers for int…
I'm a viasat customer. Most days, github.com doesn't exist for me. Anything using SSL is going to fail 30% of the time anyway, and 50%+ of the time after they restrict our bandwidth for the month. Even if they could provide better service, I wouldn't hold my breath in expectation of it.
if there's an option for turning off caching, or "network speed up" in your modem, turning it off helped for me when I was trapped with hughesnet for a while. moved me up to about 75% of GitHub.com requests working.
essentially, their caching mechanism was broken for a ton of the sites I went to visit.
Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal
#90>access to the global network, intelligent and resourceful people located virtually anywhere can operate on substantially similar footing to anyone else
Great article, but this part is just false.
Africa is blanketed with internet access already - often way ahead of 1st world (I recall reading an article about Seattle getting LTE-A and thinking...wait...got that a year ago). It doesn't quite create the magic the author implies. A bit like writing code doesn't mean you can create the next big app. A lot of ingredients go into it