11 ms·

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

132 points by deadcoder0904 9y ago

sly010 9y ago
It's not "internet" then, it's a communications network. On top of which third parties will probably implement IP. He also says peer to peer, but perhaps he just means point-to-point, in which case it will be very similar to existing satellite communications network, perhaps just more and faster.
- lallysingh 9y ago
  Sounds like something analogous to ATM or whenever frames. The IP layer would probably start from the satellite transceiver on The customer premesis.
Numberwang 9y ago
For those of you in the know here. Is this a realistic project/enterprise he is working on? Seems both costly to deploy that many satellites and risky in the sense that you can't count on getting a lot of customers. Especially with the new super speedy 5G networks and so on.
- rkangel 9y ago
  Even in the developed world, coverage of high speed wireless broadband (e.g. 3G and up) isn't complete. In the less developed world the coverage is even worse[1]. I don't know the costs to set up and run the network, but I do feel like there is a large possible customer base. [1] https://opensignal.com/reports/2016/08/global-state-of-the-mobile-network https://opensignal.com/reports/2016/08/global-state-of-the-m...
  - mtgx 9y ago
    I think there was a recent report from the FCC that said only ~60% of Americans have access to 25+ Mbps internet. So, at least in theory, SpaceX has an enormous market.
  - swarnie_ 9y ago
    Well populated and tech heavy parts of the UK have spotty and unreliable 4g which is baffling to me. If Elon can deliver a low latency satellite network even just for peering it will be a big step potentially.
    - vidarh 9y ago
      Even parts of London have spots where even 3G coverage is poor.
      - zimpenfish 9y ago
        Can confirm that there's a radius of about 600m around my flat (SE3) which has spotty 3G coverage on Three with the inner ~100m being as good as zero (and my flat has had nailed-on zero 3G signal since 2010.)
      - swarnie_ 9y ago
        Yeah fully agree. Going down the M4 from London to Bristol i will constantly drop between 2g 3g and 4g. Really disappointing situation for one of the richest areas of the world
- derekp7 9y ago
  I was at Motorola when Iridium went up, and witness first hand the changing market dynamics that were happening even before their first satellite was deployed. Was thinking then that if they mad the satellites generic data switches instead of a flying phone switch, they would have had a much bigger market. So for Musk's network, it really depends on if 80% of the potential customers (people with money to spend on the service) get saturated with ground-level 3G - 5G by the time the network is operational or not. Something else to consider, if the system allows for land-based carriers to tap into it and re-broadcast it on 5G (with different pricing). Imagine if there is no coverage in your area, and anyone can purchase a box to put on their roof that pulls down the satellite Internet and makes it available to everyone's 3G - 5G phones in the area. You lease the box from someone, and you get a commission on every client connection.
  - zaarn 9y ago
    It would be most interesting indeed if the satellite network allowed operating your own ISP for extremely low cost. Making 3-5G available to phones and peering to existing networks maybe? (I'm not that familiar with Mobile ISP Politics, unlike BGP Politics)
    - vidarh 9y ago
      An "ISP in a box" is something I've toyed with, but on the basis of connectivity options ranging from a leased line, a microwave link and high gain wifi, but that stills ranges from expensive to "just" allowing you to extend out from the borders of nearby services. Having a cheap satellite option so that people can start providing that in rural locations where they are effectively an island of coverage would certainly be very interesting.
- Quarrelsome 9y ago
  it avoids all of the annoying issues that cartels spent a lot of time setting up on a state-by-state basis in the US (which results in limited choice). Effectively you could connect to this anywhere in the world without the approval of local (e.g. Chinese citizens could get an unfiltered internet and the only "tell" is that they have a satellite dish). That makes the potential of this reasonably neat but it will depend on bottoming out the price and having enough capacity.
  - ec109685 9y ago
    And governments not interfering with its operation.
  - geomark 9y ago
    The equipment will no doubt be illegal to own in places like China. So it would get smuggled in or produced locally and sold on the black market. So far so good. But even if you install it surreptitiously I am pretty sure it will not be a LPI signal. So the government has a fleet of vans driving around sniffing for the spurious emissions and away you go to the gulag.
- sho 9y ago
  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 dependent on you! There are certainly challenges, though. Latency is a huge problem with satellite internet, for obvious reasons. I'm not sure what the intended bandwidth is but satellite will always "feel" slower than mobile data of equivalent speed. The fact that it's a mesh network with who knows how many "hops" presumably makes it even worse. So it won't ever compete with mobile, not even 3G probably.
  - jelder 9y ago
    StarLink will be mostly in LEO, so latency will be competitive with terrestrial services.
    - jsjohnst 9y ago
      Depends on the terrestrial service. When I used to have FIOS, many places on the web were sub-10ms. HFC ISPs however are typically in the range Starlink will be in though (25-35ms) which is already better than many cellular data networks by a factor of ~2.
  - mrep 9y ago
    > Don't forget aviation and to a lesser extent maritime either. And trains, busses (it might be orders of magnitude cheaper than paying for cell data to provide those local hotspots people use on busses to/from work everyday), cars (I could easily see teslas using it over cell for data in the future), and rural areas where laying fiber is expensive.
  - jsjohnst 9y ago
    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
- castratikron 9y ago
  For a while the Trump administration considered building a government 5G network to prevent Chinese companies from doing it first. American telecoms are dragging their feet so much that they are starting to pose a threat to national security. They say building a nationwide network could take three years, so I don't see much threat to SpaceX now. https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-memo-urges-big-push-on-5g-wireless-technology-1517200319 https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-memo-urges-big-push-on-5g-w...
- endymi0n 9y ago
  Thinking at the scale of Musk's ambitions real quick, this makes a lot of sense. At Tesla: Think about every Tesla car worldwide being able to phone home with self-driving learning data. Being able to remote operate them in the 0.001% of cases where human intervention is neccessary, no matter whether in the Australian outback or the Alps (without "no network"). At SpaceX: Being able to communicate with every Mars-bound spacecraft 24/7 by laser transmission, without having to rely on NASA's expensive Deep Space Network.
  - andygates 9y ago
    The antennas for this are the size of pizza boxes - which puts a question over the car connectivity. That's a lot of flat sky-facing surface to hide.
    - yeldarb 9y ago
      They will be to start. But think about how big the first briefcase cell phones were. They’ll shrink over time.
    - onion2k 9y ago
      Putting it on the roof (or the hood) in a color that matches the car would work well enough.
Quarrelsome 9y ago
How would the tech work exactly? Would this make it more difficult for the government to tap into connections as one could technically (outside of an ISP) jack straight into that network?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- derekp7 9y ago
  I would imagine that those governments would make it illegal for people to own the receiver equipment. Just like some (in the past) have made it illegal to own a shortwave radio.
  - john_minsk 9y ago
    Agreed. Or Musk will have to agree to filter traffic.
deweller 9y ago
So the topography here is: Individual router <-> satellite mesh net <-> SpaceX router connected to the internet. Is there any reason why the protocol between satellites matters? They clearly aren't aiming for interoperability with other companies.
- zitterbewegung 9y ago
  Elon probably wants a mesh net so that SpaceX plans on satellites either failing or being able to add capacity at will. Elon designs his systems to be cheaper by making the systems more fault tolerant so it seems like that pattern would extend to this network. Also, he will be using extra capacity from SpaceX having more launch windows to put the satellites in orbit.
- walrus01 9y ago
  the protocol and modulation/coding scheme between satellites (for in-space RF links) matters a great deal, because coding efficiency can vary... If would have a great deal of protocol overhead and wasted bps if they were to optimized it to actually speak Ethernet between satellites (eg: to pass standard 1600B or 9000B frames) versus something that has been designed from the ground up for a very specific amount of latency, and designed for a satellite-to-satellite trunk link. However they're breaking up the data also has to deal with the possible earth station architecture. I have not personally seen the design of a Starlink satelilte, but the concept is basically similar to a very small version of o3b. Each satellite will have basically three different RF setups on it: 1) L or S-band TT&C (tracking, telemetry and control). This is the admin and OOB management for the satellite and some of the frequencies can be seen in SpaceX's recent FCC filing, with earth stations in the Seattle and Los Angeles area. 2) Multiple Ka/V-band or other multiple spot beam antennas aimed straight down, serving CPEs. 3) There will be at least two dedicated high capacity dish antennas per satellite aimed at large, high capacity fixed earth stations (2.4 to 5 meter size) operating in the Ka-band or higher. The earth stations will need to be geographically distributed around the globe at various fiber IX points, similar to how o3b has done things now, so that the satellite-to-satellite trunk links can take the fewest possible number of hops before downlinking to the terrestrial internet. The more medium sized earth stations the better, because it increases the chance that a link to an individual CPE can take a bent-pipe path rather than traveling through multiple satellite-to-satellite hops. For example a CPE in far rural Wyoming, and a satellite passing over the general area of Wyoming, might be able to "see" a 3.0m sized high capacity earth station located near fiber in Cheyenne. Data from CPE, up to satellite, down to Cheyenne, one hop.
gagabity 9y ago
How will this actually work? Will individuals be able to tap into it skipping the local ISP? I also wonder how the issue of government censorship/control be dealt with in various countries around the world.
- mtgx 9y ago
  It would be nice if it used unlicensed spectrum in all countries, and then all anyone would have to do to connect to the SpaceX internet is get their hands on a modem that supports it. That would be very liberating for many countries, and I'm not sure there would be much the local governments could do other than throw a tantrum. They could start requiring a license for all free spectrum, but that would have non-insignificant consequences for their local economy, too.
  - dboreham 9y ago
    In general use of unlicensed spectrum for satellite communications is not permitted.
  - netsec_burn 9y ago
    You forget that local governments can heavily fine SpaceX or, at worst, destroy their satellites.
  - jsjohnst 9y ago
    > It would be nice if it used unlicensed spectrum If you are talking about the bands I think you are referring too (2.4/5ghz) then you aren’t considering the implications. To send a signal from ~800mi away on those bands, you’ll need to be radiating with so much power that you’ll effectively destroy any terrestrial usage of those bands. Literally your Wi-Fi won’t work anywhere on earth due to the channel congestion / noise.
CamTin 9y ago
So is he not planning on offering Internet access then? Just transit to other Starlink stations? Presumably even that would allow somebody to offer a "real" ISP on top of this service with a ground station and then peering to the Internet. Still, paying for Starlink and then separately paying for a Starlink-Internet bridge isn't the greatest consumer experience.
- madengr 9y ago
  Assuming you have to pay for the latter. Similar to the way cellular companies give away free nanocells.
- taneq 9y ago
  Well presumably he'd have peering arrangements in a few key places, it just means that within the network your data would go relatively directly instead of satellite-hopping to a central server and then back out.
grondilu 9y ago
IP is fairly high in the TCP/IP layer stack[1], isn't it? So it shouldn't be too surprising that a transport layer (or link layer? Not quite sure) does not use it, should it? 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite
- nsommer 9y ago
  IP is a network layer protocol, it connects two hosts. TCP is a transport layer protocol, it connects two processes and runs on top of a network layer such as IP. The link layer connects two links (e.g. your computer and your WiFi router), examples are Ethernet or 802.11 (even though they also incorporate management of the physical layer). What the satellites have to deal with is pysical/link level protocol to send packets from one to another (and from and to ground stations) as well as a network level protocol to route traffic inside the SpaceX network.
madez 9y ago
I don't think the market for satellite Internet is only where other services don't provide fast enough internet. Of course, the technology of glass fiber in the ground can't be beaten qualitywise, but glass fiber can more easily be controlled by your ISP and your government, unlike satellite internet. If SpaceX manages to provide unfiltered, net neutral, cheap internet, I'd consider getting it to complement my current connection.
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  > but glass fiber can more easily be controlled by your ISP and your government, unlike satellite internet. What would lead you to believe that? The reality is that the reverse is true, satellite internet is more heavily scrutinized as it’s far easier to intercept and very few companies are doing it.
  - madez 9y ago
    On my earthbound connection my government can influence the ISP, but how is the government of [insert-autocratic-country] here supposed to control what its citizen do over satellite internet? I assume that all communication to, in, and from the satellite network is secured by cryptography to prevent eavesdropping.
zeristor 9y ago
Is this a case of doubling down, whilst SpaceX waits for the demand to launch satellites at the lower price grows. Its one thing to be able to launch satellites far more cheaply than other companies, perhaps the economics demands certain number of launches a year to keep capacity up and price down? The question is what happens when they launch all 1000 satellites?
- swarnie_ 9y ago
  I've always seen this as two things. The first being space x filling in gaps in their launch schedule as you've pointed out. The second is to launch a commercial services which can provide a constant, predictable income to fund other projects. The upfront capital must be huge but with debt markets still this cheap i'm not surprised they're investing.
  - mkirklions 9y ago
    I always thought of it as Elon Musk advertising. But I visit reddit where tesla/elon/spacex topics are boosted with upvotes. Im just bitter because I believed in him, but his promises fell flat.
    - swarnie_ 9y ago
      I find the SpaceX subreddit to be full of good information. Its a bit heavy handed with moderation and over zealous leaving little room for discussion, you're either on team Musk or told to leave.
    - mrep 9y ago
      > I'm just bitter because I believed in him, but his promises fell flat. Which promises are those, because I have seen him deliver most of his goals? Albeit, they are practically always late but everyone who has followed him should know by now that he always underestimates timelines. The running joke is to multiple his estimated timelines by 1.8 (mars year / earth year).
- mrep 9y ago
imtringued 9y ago
The headline is completely misleading. The transport layer won't use IPv6. It's like saying ethernet doesn't use IPv6. That's unsurprising.
- cornholio 9y ago
  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.
  - arbitrage 9y ago
    Are you ever an ex-programmer? I would say, once a programmer, always a programmer.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - SpeciesInvader 9y ago
      I refer to myself as a recovering software engineer/programmer. Never really out of the addiction, but not in the weeds anymore.
  - mozumder 9y ago
    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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_Transfer_Mode
    - walrus01 9y ago
      You worked on the original Iridium satellite architecture? I am sure a lot of people here may not know how fully groundbreaking it was. Considering it is now 20-year-old tech the satellite-to-satellite Ka-band trunk links are an amazing technical achievement. That and the voice codec they came up with to make humans intelligible at 2400bps.
gnode 9y ago
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.
- westbywest 9y ago
  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.
- KMag 9y ago
  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.
  - gnode 9y ago
    I expect that internet traffic will still travel over the network using IP, but encapsulated in the SpaceX protocol. I expect translating the headers to and from IP would not make the protocol "simpler than IPv6", and would not be justifiable complexity to save a few bytes. I think this "simple" protocol is just to simplify routing, and allow non-IP traffic over the network (in-band control messages; phone calls?).
    - 9y ago
qaq 9y ago
I think people are ignoring one very lucrative application Military.
- mkirklions 9y ago
  People on here, you bet there are companies that lobby for this...
- gnode 9y ago
  Not that I don't think it will be useful for this. But Iridium is already offering LEO satellite service for low-latency government / military use.
220V_USKettle 9y ago
IPX/SPX?
- jgrahamc 9y ago
  As long as they fix the "SPX window size can only be 1" it'll be fine.
- rebelde 9y ago
  I think Appletalk.
- mAd-1 9y ago
  Nahh, NetBEUI! Non-routable and peer to peer, wcgw?
- walrus01 9y ago
  well, we can play Quake 1 across it...
sailfast 9y ago
I am excited for any option that would allow me to actually choose my provider as a consumer, rather than rely on embedded infrastructure. This is super exciting for that reason and many others (potential breaking national control of a global connection, for one) and I can’t wait to see how it progresses.
nugga 9y ago
If they can make it so you could get a cheap subscription to starlink, without needing your own receiver, to route your udp traffic I would pay for sure. Since it's going to be a LEO constellation the pings will be crazy low round the world and you could play US-EU games at under 100 ms even if you had to have a hop or two via fiber to the nearest starlink connected hub.
mentos 9y ago
I am excited about Space and self driving cars but I think this could have much greater positive effects on humanity. Freedom of the internet could be the thing that saves this planet when it comes to thinking on a thousand year term.
staltz 9y ago
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/ https://zerotier.com/
- deadcoder0904 9y ago
  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
zerostar07 9y ago
what are the ping times for satellite networks?
- mAd-1 9y ago
  Horrible. I tested it on a plane for a client and we were getting between 1800ms to 2500ms at 28000feet.
- gizmo385 9y ago
  Depends on the network. The current satellite internet systems all use satellites parked in a geosynchronous orbit. This means that ping times are measured in the hundreds of milliseconds in most cases. The satellite network that Musk is talking about uses a very large web of satellites in low Earth orbit, which would mean ping times of less than 100 milliseconds.
walrus01 9y ago
Musk is talking about the OSI layer 1 and layer 2 of the satellite network, which by definition needs to be something unique and custom. Nobody has ever built a LEO dual-satellite-CPE make-before-break architecture before. The closest thing is the o3b architecture which is intended for very large, costly customer terminals. This will still speak ipv4 and ipv6 just fine. To gain a better understanding of why this needs to be totally unique/custom/proprietary, it is helpful to first have a thorough understanding of current high capacity dedicated geostationary orbit based systems (1:1 SCPC/MCPC with dedicated kHz) and various shared-bandwidth VSAT type systems (TDMA timesliced architecture between one large earth station, one piece of satellite transponder kHz, and a number of N fixed CPE terminals within the satellite's spot beam. After understanding current geostationary architectures, dig into the "How" and "why" o3b was created and has been such a success, and its general system architecture which is proprietary. Satellite engineer here: The OSI layer 1/2 needs to be totally custom because we're dealing with a unique architecture of, just off the top of my head: a) dual satellite LEO architecture b) possible satellite-to-earth station trunk links, and satellite-to-satellite c) CPE terminals that have no moving parts and use phased array antenna systems to talk to two satellites at the same time. From the stationary point of view of a rooftop CPE, the satellite that is currently "rising" from the horizon and will be soon overhead, and the satellite that is currently overhead and will soon pass out of sight. d) Densely packed high frequency spot beams on a moving LEO satellite. The closest thing that's ever been built to this before is again the o3b satellites, but there are a great deal fewer of them, they orbit much higher, and have much larger spot beams than these small LEO high-Ka/V-band satellites will have. e) Custom indoor modem RF tech to talk to the rooftop CPE and provide a standard 100/1000 copper ethernet handoff (and possibly integrated 802.11ac dual band wifi). TDMA timeslicing per CPE and bandwidth allocation - there is no way that an individual CPE will get 1:1 dedicated bandwidth 24x7x365, the amount of capacity in an individual spot beam sized area will be oversold based on standard network architecture principles that most people don't try to max out the capacity of their circuit 24x7.
- kartickv 9y ago
  For people who're not technical engineers and without the knowledge to understand all the technical details: - Does it make sense to make a phone that acts as a receiver (assuming the phone is outdoors), because it's one fewer device to buy and power, or does it bring down the cost significantly to have a fixed unit installed on your terrace? - If we want to provide remote regions with Internet access, would you go with Starlink or O3b? Would your answer change if the requirement was affordable internet access, no matter the speed? - Under what conditions can Starlink or O3b compete with terrestrial internet in cities? Basically, I'm trying to understand the impact these programs might have on the world, not the technicalities.
devit 9y ago
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?
- patrickaljord 9y ago
  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.
  - simonvc 9y ago
    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.
  - kamaal 9y ago
    They were talking to Astronauts going to moon with resources way more smaller than this. There is a saying that goes like "To build fast software, use a slow computer".

132 points by deadcoder0904 9y ago

It's not "internet" then, it's a communications network. On top of which third parties will probably implement IP. He also says peer to peer, but perhaps he just means point-to-point, in which case it will be very similar to existing satellite communications network, perhaps just more and faster.

lallysingh 9y ago
Sounds like something analogous to ATM or whenever frames. The IP layer would probably start from the satellite transceiver on The customer premesis.

Numberwang 9y ago

For those of you in the know here. Is this a realistic project/enterprise he is working on? Seems both costly to deploy that many satellites and risky in the sense that you can't count on getting a lot of customers. Especially with the new super speedy 5G networks and so on.

rkangel 9y ago
Even in the developed world, coverage of high speed wireless broadband (e.g. 3G and up) isn't complete. In the less developed world the coverage is even worse[1]. I don't know the costs to set up and run the network, but I do feel like there is a large possible customer base. [1] https://opensignal.com/reports/2016/08/global-state-of-the-mobile-network https://opensignal.com/reports/2016/08/global-state-of-the-m...
- mtgx 9y ago
  I think there was a recent report from the FCC that said only ~60% of Americans have access to 25+ Mbps internet. So, at least in theory, SpaceX has an enormous market.
- swarnie_ 9y ago
  Well populated and tech heavy parts of the UK have spotty and unreliable 4g which is baffling to me. If Elon can deliver a low latency satellite network even just for peering it will be a big step potentially.
  - vidarh 9y ago
    Even parts of London have spots where even 3G coverage is poor.
    - zimpenfish 9y ago
      Can confirm that there's a radius of about 600m around my flat (SE3) which has spotty 3G coverage on Three with the inner ~100m being as good as zero (and my flat has had nailed-on zero 3G signal since 2010.)
    - swarnie_ 9y ago
      Yeah fully agree. Going down the M4 from London to Bristol i will constantly drop between 2g 3g and 4g. Really disappointing situation for one of the richest areas of the world
derekp7 9y ago
I was at Motorola when Iridium went up, and witness first hand the changing market dynamics that were happening even before their first satellite was deployed. Was thinking then that if they mad the satellites generic data switches instead of a flying phone switch, they would have had a much bigger market. So for Musk's network, it really depends on if 80% of the potential customers (people with money to spend on the service) get saturated with ground-level 3G - 5G by the time the network is operational or not. Something else to consider, if the system allows for land-based carriers to tap into it and re-broadcast it on 5G (with different pricing). Imagine if there is no coverage in your area, and anyone can purchase a box to put on their roof that pulls down the satellite Internet and makes it available to everyone's 3G - 5G phones in the area. You lease the box from someone, and you get a commission on every client connection.
- zaarn 9y ago
  It would be most interesting indeed if the satellite network allowed operating your own ISP for extremely low cost. Making 3-5G available to phones and peering to existing networks maybe? (I'm not that familiar with Mobile ISP Politics, unlike BGP Politics)
  - vidarh 9y ago
    An "ISP in a box" is something I've toyed with, but on the basis of connectivity options ranging from a leased line, a microwave link and high gain wifi, but that stills ranges from expensive to "just" allowing you to extend out from the borders of nearby services. Having a cheap satellite option so that people can start providing that in rural locations where they are effectively an island of coverage would certainly be very interesting.
Quarrelsome 9y ago
it avoids all of the annoying issues that cartels spent a lot of time setting up on a state-by-state basis in the US (which results in limited choice). Effectively you could connect to this anywhere in the world without the approval of local (e.g. Chinese citizens could get an unfiltered internet and the only "tell" is that they have a satellite dish). That makes the potential of this reasonably neat but it will depend on bottoming out the price and having enough capacity.
- ec109685 9y ago
  And governments not interfering with its operation.
- geomark 9y ago
  The equipment will no doubt be illegal to own in places like China. So it would get smuggled in or produced locally and sold on the black market. So far so good. But even if you install it surreptitiously I am pretty sure it will not be a LPI signal. So the government has a fleet of vans driving around sniffing for the spurious emissions and away you go to the gulag.
sho 9y ago
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 dependent on you! There are certainly challenges, though. Latency is a huge problem with satellite internet, for obvious reasons. I'm not sure what the intended bandwidth is but satellite will always "feel" slower than mobile data of equivalent speed. The fact that it's a mesh network with who knows how many "hops" presumably makes it even worse. So it won't ever compete with mobile, not even 3G probably.
- jelder 9y ago
  StarLink will be mostly in LEO, so latency will be competitive with terrestrial services.
  - jsjohnst 9y ago
    Depends on the terrestrial service. When I used to have FIOS, many places on the web were sub-10ms. HFC ISPs however are typically in the range Starlink will be in though (25-35ms) which is already better than many cellular data networks by a factor of ~2.
- mrep 9y ago
  > Don't forget aviation and to a lesser extent maritime either. And trains, busses (it might be orders of magnitude cheaper than paying for cell data to provide those local hotspots people use on busses to/from work everyday), cars (I could easily see teslas using it over cell for data in the future), and rural areas where laying fiber is expensive.
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  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
castratikron 9y ago
For a while the Trump administration considered building a government 5G network to prevent Chinese companies from doing it first. American telecoms are dragging their feet so much that they are starting to pose a threat to national security. They say building a nationwide network could take three years, so I don't see much threat to SpaceX now. https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-memo-urges-big-push-on-5g-wireless-technology-1517200319 https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-memo-urges-big-push-on-5g-w...
endymi0n 9y ago
Thinking at the scale of Musk's ambitions real quick, this makes a lot of sense. At Tesla: Think about every Tesla car worldwide being able to phone home with self-driving learning data. Being able to remote operate them in the 0.001% of cases where human intervention is neccessary, no matter whether in the Australian outback or the Alps (without "no network"). At SpaceX: Being able to communicate with every Mars-bound spacecraft 24/7 by laser transmission, without having to rely on NASA's expensive Deep Space Network.
- andygates 9y ago
  The antennas for this are the size of pizza boxes - which puts a question over the car connectivity. That's a lot of flat sky-facing surface to hide.
  - yeldarb 9y ago
    They will be to start. But think about how big the first briefcase cell phones were. They’ll shrink over time.
  - onion2k 9y ago
    Putting it on the roof (or the hood) in a color that matches the car would work well enough.

Quarrelsome 9y ago

How would the tech work exactly? Would this make it more difficult for the government to tap into connections as one could technically (outside of an ISP) jack straight into that network?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
derekp7 9y ago
I would imagine that those governments would make it illegal for people to own the receiver equipment. Just like some (in the past) have made it illegal to own a shortwave radio.
- john_minsk 9y ago
  Agreed. Or Musk will have to agree to filter traffic.

deweller 9y ago

So the topography here is: Individual router <-> satellite mesh net <-> SpaceX router connected to the internet. Is there any reason why the protocol between satellites matters? They clearly aren't aiming for interoperability with other companies.

zitterbewegung 9y ago
Elon probably wants a mesh net so that SpaceX plans on satellites either failing or being able to add capacity at will. Elon designs his systems to be cheaper by making the systems more fault tolerant so it seems like that pattern would extend to this network. Also, he will be using extra capacity from SpaceX having more launch windows to put the satellites in orbit.
walrus01 9y ago
the protocol and modulation/coding scheme between satellites (for in-space RF links) matters a great deal, because coding efficiency can vary... If would have a great deal of protocol overhead and wasted bps if they were to optimized it to actually speak Ethernet between satellites (eg: to pass standard 1600B or 9000B frames) versus something that has been designed from the ground up for a very specific amount of latency, and designed for a satellite-to-satellite trunk link. However they're breaking up the data also has to deal with the possible earth station architecture. I have not personally seen the design of a Starlink satelilte, but the concept is basically similar to a very small version of o3b. Each satellite will have basically three different RF setups on it: 1) L or S-band TT&C (tracking, telemetry and control). This is the admin and OOB management for the satellite and some of the frequencies can be seen in SpaceX's recent FCC filing, with earth stations in the Seattle and Los Angeles area. 2) Multiple Ka/V-band or other multiple spot beam antennas aimed straight down, serving CPEs. 3) There will be at least two dedicated high capacity dish antennas per satellite aimed at large, high capacity fixed earth stations (2.4 to 5 meter size) operating in the Ka-band or higher. The earth stations will need to be geographically distributed around the globe at various fiber IX points, similar to how o3b has done things now, so that the satellite-to-satellite trunk links can take the fewest possible number of hops before downlinking to the terrestrial internet. The more medium sized earth stations the better, because it increases the chance that a link to an individual CPE can take a bent-pipe path rather than traveling through multiple satellite-to-satellite hops. For example a CPE in far rural Wyoming, and a satellite passing over the general area of Wyoming, might be able to "see" a 3.0m sized high capacity earth station located near fiber in Cheyenne. Data from CPE, up to satellite, down to Cheyenne, one hop.

gagabity 9y ago

How will this actually work? Will individuals be able to tap into it skipping the local ISP? I also wonder how the issue of government censorship/control be dealt with in various countries around the world.

mtgx 9y ago
It would be nice if it used unlicensed spectrum in all countries, and then all anyone would have to do to connect to the SpaceX internet is get their hands on a modem that supports it. That would be very liberating for many countries, and I'm not sure there would be much the local governments could do other than throw a tantrum. They could start requiring a license for all free spectrum, but that would have non-insignificant consequences for their local economy, too.
- dboreham 9y ago
  In general use of unlicensed spectrum for satellite communications is not permitted.
- netsec_burn 9y ago
  You forget that local governments can heavily fine SpaceX or, at worst, destroy their satellites.
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  > It would be nice if it used unlicensed spectrum If you are talking about the bands I think you are referring too (2.4/5ghz) then you aren’t considering the implications. To send a signal from ~800mi away on those bands, you’ll need to be radiating with so much power that you’ll effectively destroy any terrestrial usage of those bands. Literally your Wi-Fi won’t work anywhere on earth due to the channel congestion / noise.

CamTin 9y ago

So is he not planning on offering Internet access then? Just transit to other Starlink stations? Presumably even that would allow somebody to offer a "real" ISP on top of this service with a ground station and then peering to the Internet. Still, paying for Starlink and then separately paying for a Starlink-Internet bridge isn't the greatest consumer experience.

madengr 9y ago
Assuming you have to pay for the latter. Similar to the way cellular companies give away free nanocells.
taneq 9y ago
Well presumably he'd have peering arrangements in a few key places, it just means that within the network your data would go relatively directly instead of satellite-hopping to a central server and then back out.

grondilu 9y ago

IP is fairly high in the TCP/IP layer stack[1], isn't it? So it shouldn't be too surprising that a transport layer (or link layer? Not quite sure) does not use it, should it? 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite

nsommer 9y ago
IP is a network layer protocol, it connects two hosts. TCP is a transport layer protocol, it connects two processes and runs on top of a network layer such as IP. The link layer connects two links (e.g. your computer and your WiFi router), examples are Ethernet or 802.11 (even though they also incorporate management of the physical layer). What the satellites have to deal with is pysical/link level protocol to send packets from one to another (and from and to ground stations) as well as a network level protocol to route traffic inside the SpaceX network.

madez 9y ago

I don't think the market for satellite Internet is only where other services don't provide fast enough internet. Of course, the technology of glass fiber in the ground can't be beaten qualitywise, but glass fiber can more easily be controlled by your ISP and your government, unlike satellite internet. If SpaceX manages to provide unfiltered, net neutral, cheap internet, I'd consider getting it to complement my current connection.

jsjohnst 9y ago
> but glass fiber can more easily be controlled by your ISP and your government, unlike satellite internet. What would lead you to believe that? The reality is that the reverse is true, satellite internet is more heavily scrutinized as it’s far easier to intercept and very few companies are doing it.
- madez 9y ago
  On my earthbound connection my government can influence the ISP, but how is the government of [insert-autocratic-country] here supposed to control what its citizen do over satellite internet? I assume that all communication to, in, and from the satellite network is secured by cryptography to prevent eavesdropping.

zeristor 9y ago

Is this a case of doubling down, whilst SpaceX waits for the demand to launch satellites at the lower price grows. Its one thing to be able to launch satellites far more cheaply than other companies, perhaps the economics demands certain number of launches a year to keep capacity up and price down? The question is what happens when they launch all 1000 satellites?

swarnie_ 9y ago
I've always seen this as two things. The first being space x filling in gaps in their launch schedule as you've pointed out. The second is to launch a commercial services which can provide a constant, predictable income to fund other projects. The upfront capital must be huge but with debt markets still this cheap i'm not surprised they're investing.
- mkirklions 9y ago
  I always thought of it as Elon Musk advertising. But I visit reddit where tesla/elon/spacex topics are boosted with upvotes. Im just bitter because I believed in him, but his promises fell flat.
  - swarnie_ 9y ago
    I find the SpaceX subreddit to be full of good information. Its a bit heavy handed with moderation and over zealous leaving little room for discussion, you're either on team Musk or told to leave.
  - mrep 9y ago
    > I'm just bitter because I believed in him, but his promises fell flat. Which promises are those, because I have seen him deliver most of his goals? Albeit, they are practically always late but everyone who has followed him should know by now that he always underestimates timelines. The running joke is to multiple his estimated timelines by 1.8 (mars year / earth year).
mrep 9y ago

imtringued 9y ago

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

cornholio 9y ago
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.
- arbitrage 9y ago
  Are you ever an ex-programmer? I would say, once a programmer, always a programmer.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - SpeciesInvader 9y ago
    I refer to myself as a recovering software engineer/programmer. Never really out of the addiction, but not in the weeds anymore.
- mozumder 9y ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_Transfer_Mode
  - walrus01 9y ago
    You worked on the original Iridium satellite architecture? I am sure a lot of people here may not know how fully groundbreaking it was. Considering it is now 20-year-old tech the satellite-to-satellite Ka-band trunk links are an amazing technical achievement. That and the voice codec they came up with to make humans intelligible at 2400bps.

gnode 9y ago

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.

westbywest 9y ago
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.
KMag 9y ago
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.
- gnode 9y ago
  I expect that internet traffic will still travel over the network using IP, but encapsulated in the SpaceX protocol. I expect translating the headers to and from IP would not make the protocol "simpler than IPv6", and would not be justifiable complexity to save a few bytes. I think this "simple" protocol is just to simplify routing, and allow non-IP traffic over the network (in-band control messages; phone calls?).
  - 9y ago

qaq 9y ago

I think people are ignoring one very lucrative application Military.

mkirklions 9y ago
People on here, you bet there are companies that lobby for this...
gnode 9y ago
Not that I don't think it will be useful for this. But Iridium is already offering LEO satellite service for low-latency government / military use.

220V_USKettle 9y ago

IPX/SPX?

jgrahamc 9y ago
As long as they fix the "SPX window size can only be 1" it'll be fine.
rebelde 9y ago
I think Appletalk.
mAd-1 9y ago
Nahh, NetBEUI! Non-routable and peer to peer, wcgw?
walrus01 9y ago
well, we can play Quake 1 across it...

sailfast 9y ago

I am excited for any option that would allow me to actually choose my provider as a consumer, rather than rely on embedded infrastructure. This is super exciting for that reason and many others (potential breaking national control of a global connection, for one) and I can’t wait to see how it progresses.

nugga 9y ago

If they can make it so you could get a cheap subscription to starlink, without needing your own receiver, to route your udp traffic I would pay for sure. Since it's going to be a LEO constellation the pings will be crazy low round the world and you could play US-EU games at under 100 ms even if you had to have a hop or two via fiber to the nearest starlink connected hub.

mentos 9y ago

I am excited about Space and self driving cars but I think this could have much greater positive effects on humanity. Freedom of the internet could be the thing that saves this planet when it comes to thinking on a thousand year term.

staltz 9y ago

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/ https://zerotier.com/

deadcoder0904 9y ago
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

zerostar07 9y ago

what are the ping times for satellite networks?

mAd-1 9y ago
Horrible. I tested it on a plane for a client and we were getting between 1800ms to 2500ms at 28000feet.
gizmo385 9y ago
Depends on the network. The current satellite internet systems all use satellites parked in a geosynchronous orbit. This means that ping times are measured in the hundreds of milliseconds in most cases. The satellite network that Musk is talking about uses a very large web of satellites in low Earth orbit, which would mean ping times of less than 100 milliseconds.

walrus01 9y ago

Musk is talking about the OSI layer 1 and layer 2 of the satellite network, which by definition needs to be something unique and custom. Nobody has ever built a LEO dual-satellite-CPE make-before-break architecture before. The closest thing is the o3b architecture which is intended for very large, costly customer terminals. This will still speak ipv4 and ipv6 just fine. To gain a better understanding of why this needs to be totally unique/custom/proprietary, it is helpful to first have a thorough understanding of current high capacity dedicated geostationary orbit based systems (1:1 SCPC/MCPC with dedicated kHz) and various shared-bandwidth VSAT type systems (TDMA timesliced architecture between one large earth station, one piece of satellite transponder kHz, and a number of N fixed CPE terminals within the satellite's spot beam. After understanding current geostationary architectures, dig into the "How" and "why" o3b was created and has been such a success, and its general system architecture which is proprietary. Satellite engineer here: The OSI layer 1/2 needs to be totally custom because we're dealing with a unique architecture of, just off the top of my head: a) dual satellite LEO architecture b) possible satellite-to-earth station trunk links, and satellite-to-satellite c) CPE terminals that have no moving parts and use phased array antenna systems to talk to two satellites at the same time. From the stationary point of view of a rooftop CPE, the satellite that is currently "rising" from the horizon and will be soon overhead, and the satellite that is currently overhead and will soon pass out of sight. d) Densely packed high frequency spot beams on a moving LEO satellite. The closest thing that's ever been built to this before is again the o3b satellites, but there are a great deal fewer of them, they orbit much higher, and have much larger spot beams than these small LEO high-Ka/V-band satellites will have. e) Custom indoor modem RF tech to talk to the rooftop CPE and provide a standard 100/1000 copper ethernet handoff (and possibly integrated 802.11ac dual band wifi). TDMA timeslicing per CPE and bandwidth allocation - there is no way that an individual CPE will get 1:1 dedicated bandwidth 24x7x365, the amount of capacity in an individual spot beam sized area will be oversold based on standard network architecture principles that most people don't try to max out the capacity of their circuit 24x7.

kartickv 9y ago
For people who're not technical engineers and without the knowledge to understand all the technical details: - Does it make sense to make a phone that acts as a receiver (assuming the phone is outdoors), because it's one fewer device to buy and power, or does it bring down the cost significantly to have a fixed unit installed on your terrace? - If we want to provide remote regions with Internet access, would you go with Starlink or O3b? Would your answer change if the requirement was affordable internet access, no matter the speed? - Under what conditions can Starlink or O3b compete with terrestrial internet in cities? Basically, I'm trying to understand the impact these programs might have on the world, not the technicalities.

devit 9y ago

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?

patrickaljord 9y ago
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.
- simonvc 9y ago
  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.
- kamaal 9y ago
  They were talking to Astronauts going to moon with resources way more smaller than this. There is a saying that goes like "To build fast software, use a slow computer".