3 ms·
That's definitely true for solutions in geostationary orbit where the signal needs to traverse 36000km twice between two ground stations, adding about 0.2 secon
by _Microft 8y ago
That's definitely true for solutions in geostationary orbit where the signal needs to traverse 36000km twice between two ground stations, adding about 0.2 seconds delay for the request and again for the response.
SpaceX is planning a constellation in low earth orbit, that is supposed to route the traffic around the globe and down to a ground station near the point where the server is. That's saving the delay from having to go through an optically dense medium (fiber, speed of light is there about 200000km/s) and taking advantage of the much higher speed of light in vacuum.
- Scaevolus 8y agoI'm very skeptical that satellite-to-satellite connections have sufficient bandwidth to make that more effective than downlinking to base stations.
- gpm 8y agoWhy? (Genuinely curious if there is a reason, I'm not an expert on this) Satellite-to-satellite connections are handled by pointing lasers at eachother. Ground-ground connections are handled by pointing lasers at eachother through a fiber. Fundamentally they seem pretty similar to me.
- shaklee3 8y agoI wouldn't be skeptical about the bandwidth, I would be skeptical about the execution. There are existing inter-satellite links, but they are far lower bandwidth. You need much more precision and signal processing at higher bandwidths.
- intrasight 8y agoMy understanding is that satellite-to-satellite is not legal.