4 ms·
There's a reason that no other company tries to use geosynchronous orbit. Stationary orbit is at a distance of 35800 km above sea level, which implies a one wa
by consciouskernel 9y ago
There's a reason that no other company tries to use geosynchronous orbit.
Stationary orbit is at a distance of 35800 km above sea level, which implies a one way latency of 110 ms based off the speed of light. Since any request from a user requires a total of 2 round way trips (one for request, one for response), the minimum latency for a request is 440 ms.
Avg latency with fiber is something like 30-60 ms, so we can assume an average request with Astranis will have ~500 latency.
Most modern webpages will not be able to support such latency. Astranis will need to essentially cache webpages on demand and deliver them to the end user as a fully rendered page, which will introduce security headaches.
I don't see why Astranis chose this vs a lower orbit.
- wmf 9y agoNo other company... like HughesNet, ViaSat, Inmarsat, Intelsat, etc. Maybe you were led astray by this terrible TechCrunch article.
- jmagoon 9y agoSeriously. Ever used internet on an airplane? You're using one of those companies geostationary satellites. The article is ridiculous.
- blackguardx 9y agoNot necessarily. GoGo Inflight uses ground links for domestic US flights.
- bmcooley 9y agoAnd they're being dropped in favor of geosynchronous providers.
- blackguardx 9y agoI don't know much about their market. A friend of mine works there though, and he said they are growing.
- shaklee3 9y agoThey're not. They lost American, and they're losing market share quickly.
- consciouskernel 9y agoYou're right. I don't really know much about the field at all. I was basing my opinions off the article. I'm still surprised they're touting geostationary satellites as superior though. The speed of light is constant. SpaceX's plan while very expensive, at least theoretically could provide a complete internet experience. Same thing with Google's balloons. Astranis at best can only serve static sites.
- colanderman 9y ago> any request from a user requires a total of 2 [sequential] round way trips (one for request, one for response) Please elaborate? This makes no sense to me. Certainly, this is not the case for terrestrial communication (request/response latency is only 2× the one-way latency).
- robkop 9y agoPossibly they were thinking of first a DNS query then the actual query? That would result in two round trips.
- paragraft 9y agoBy "one way" the OP was referring to the ground-to-satellite trip taking 110ms. So by "round way trip" they meant a packet going from client to satellite to ground station (2 x 110ms). Thus 440ms.
- colanderman 9y agoOH. Of course, that makes sense. Thanks!
- brianshaler 9y agoHow long until we can co-locate application services in geosynchronous orbit to cut that latency in half?
- walrus01 9y ago"no other company tries to use geostationary" - uhm, probably 85% of the satellite industry by gross revenue is based on geostationary platforms. Look at Intelsat, SES, Eutelsat, Asiasat, the various north american Ku, BSS and Ka band TV satellites, etc.