5 ms·

That's unfortunate. Looks like we don't have an objective measurement of satellite internet speeds, then.

meritt 7y ago
Sure we do, we have the laws of physics. HughesNet has geostationary satellites. They orbit at ~22,200 miles up. Assuming speed of light, it's going to take ~120ms per hop. There's a minimum of 4 hops (you -> satellite -> ground station -> satellite -> you), or 480ms. And that's assuming perfect conditions and ignoring the rest of the normal latency encountered online. It's physically impossible to have a latency lower than ~480ms with geostationary satellites.
- studentrob 7y ago
  Color me skeptical that Starlink will reach its theoretical maximum capabilities, or that it is competitive with 5G. I'm fine with fiber until then. It's affordable in most of the world. The problem of broadband monopolies in the US is not going to be resolved by a new privately-owned technology. We should hold local politicians' feet to the fire, not throw money at new tech from a monorail salesman.
  - icelancer 7y ago
    >> We should hold local politicians' feet to the fire, not throw money at new tech from a monorail salesman. We need to do both, as Seattle has proven with its sporadic availability of gigabit fiber and the shutdown of third parties attempting to bring it here. In fact, doing the latter IS doing the former.
    - metildaa 7y ago
      Centurylink covers 70÷% of the city with gigabit for $65 a month, take a look at the cable franchise map before throwing stones: http://www.seattle.gov/tech/services/cable-service/cable-franchises http://www.seattle.gov/tech/services/cable-service/cable-fra...
      - icelancer 7y ago
        Yeah, I happen to live in an area that CL offers 6mbps maximum to, and it is weirdly in a minority-dense part of Seattle metropolitan. They have zero plans to expand to our area, they've stated repeatedly. I'll throw stones as much as I like, thanks.
        metildaa 7y ago
        The city contract requires they service the lowest income parts of the city first, hence the extremely patchwork rollout over the last few years. Due to the mandatory client base skew, the city is causing them to redline middle and high income areas of the city. Fiber is in Georgetown and Rainer Valley, but your SoL in Fremont's built up areas and in Sand Point. Universal coverage should have been mandated, but its easy to end up like Kenmore (which required total Fios coverage from Verizon, now Frontier) and has seen Finn Hill go unserviced for years. Enforcement of the franchise contract is just as critical as initial negotiation. Outside of a few select areas, most of Seattle only ever saw ADSL (or no DSL in parts of the north end) as we didn't allow large VDSL2 cabinets in the public ROW. I think this has caused Centurylink to build fiber in the city, as they've rarely overbuilt VDSL2 areas like Bellevue, Kent & Auburn.
        icelancer 7y ago
        >> Rainer Valley Nope. I live square in the middle of it, can't get double digit mbps download speeds from them.
        metildaa 7y ago
        I would encourage you tp double check during the daytime on https://shop.centurylink.com/MasterWebPortal/freeRange/shop/guidedShoppingStart?bones https://shop.centurylink.com/MasterWebPortal/freeRange/shop/... I've noticed they seem to offer ADSL (6mbps) after 6pm or so at addresses that already have fiber, presumably their prequal database for fiber goes offline for a few hours a day.
  - tuxxy 7y ago
    > it's affordable in most of the world I'm afraid you are drastically underestimating how much it actually costs to install fiber.
    - studentrob 7y ago
      Good point. I meant the developed world. Regarding the 3rd world, Facebook offered India free internet with strings attached, and IIRC they rejected it. That idea wasn't too popular there or here. Would Musk be given a pass for offering discounted or free internet to 3rd world countries, and what strings would investors suggest he attach?
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        > Would Musk be given a pass for offering discounted or free internet to 3rd world countries, and what strings would investors suggest he attach? Why would he want to do that? Facebook wanted to do that, because that would drive more users to their platform. SpaceX wants to use Starlink in order to bankroll BFR[0], so what they want is to simply sell the service at a price point that generates them enough money. It's not beneficial to them to discount it, make it free, or play other shenanigans. -- [0] - Or whatever it's called now; it'll always be the BFR in my heart.
        studentrob 7y ago
        > Why would he want to do that? Because granting internet fast lanes to certain content providers is a way to generate revenue. Zero-rating is already happening [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-rating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-rating
      - Symmetry 7y ago
        If you have a lot of market power and you want to make as much money as possible the rational thing to do is to charge people according to their willingness to pay[1]. You can't do this perfectly but this is what is behind senior discounts and Intel's huge number of SKUs. Since people in Botswana can't profitably resell their internet in England, since Starlink can easily charge different amounts in different countries, and because the marginal cost of servicing a new region is approximately zero it would be crazy for Starlink not to do geographic pricing tiers. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination
  - simonh 7y ago
    Who's the "we" that is throwing money at this? Starlink is privately funded.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - wongarsu 7y ago
    Fiber is affordable in cities (a market nearly impossible to service by satellite anyways). Even developed countries struggle with deploying fiber in rural environments. Every satellite internet offering targets rural settings, ships and planes. StarLink is no different, just that they will be competitive in a wider range of such settings.
- vlovich123 7y ago
  Why can't you avoid the ground station and just do satellite to satellite for relay? I believe that's precisely how starlink works.
  - jhauris 7y ago
    In GP's post the second satellite is the same satellite, just on the way back. The post assumes for demonstration that the ground station is the destination.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - isostatic 7y ago
    You're pinging a device on the ground t=0 You send out ICMP request t=120ms it hits the satelite t=240ms it arrives at the ground station, ICMP reply occurs t=360ms hits satelite t=480ms arrives back at the originating machine The only way doing satelite-satelite at a GEO level would be useful would be 1) You're pinging a device on satellite in GEO (one you don't have LOS to) 2) You're pinging a device that's also connected via a different GEO 120 degrees away from the first in this case you'll t=0 You send out ICMP request t=120ms it hits the satelite t=240ms it arrives at the ground station 1 t=280ms arrives at ground station 2 t=400ms hits satelite #2 t=520ms arrives back at the destination t=640ms response arrives at sat #2 t=800ms response arrives at ground station 2 t=840ms response arrives at GS#1 t=960ms response arrives at sat #1 t=1080ms response arrives back at originating machine You could change that, but you won't save much in GEO as you're connecting to two different satelites, 120 degrees apart or 70,000km (235ms) t=0 You send out ICMP request t=120ms it hits the satelite t=355ms hits satelite #2 t=475ms arrives at destination t=595ms response arrives at sat #2 t=830ms response arrives at sat #1 t=950ms response arrives back at originating machine Reality of course is that typical satelite latency is 800ms or more (depending how much you pay to skip buffering) rather than 480ms.

Sure we do, we have the laws of physics. HughesNet has geostationary satellites. They orbit at ~22,200 miles up. Assuming speed of light, it's going to take ~120ms per hop. There's a minimum of 4 hops (you -> satellite -> ground station -> satellite -> you), or 480ms. And that's assuming perfect conditions and ignoring the rest of the normal latency encountered online. It's physically impossible to have a latency lower than ~480ms with geostationary satellites.

studentrob 7y ago
Color me skeptical that Starlink will reach its theoretical maximum capabilities, or that it is competitive with 5G. I'm fine with fiber until then. It's affordable in most of the world. The problem of broadband monopolies in the US is not going to be resolved by a new privately-owned technology. We should hold local politicians' feet to the fire, not throw money at new tech from a monorail salesman.
- icelancer 7y ago
  >> We should hold local politicians' feet to the fire, not throw money at new tech from a monorail salesman. We need to do both, as Seattle has proven with its sporadic availability of gigabit fiber and the shutdown of third parties attempting to bring it here. In fact, doing the latter IS doing the former.
  - metildaa 7y ago
    Centurylink covers 70÷% of the city with gigabit for $65 a month, take a look at the cable franchise map before throwing stones: http://www.seattle.gov/tech/services/cable-service/cable-franchises http://www.seattle.gov/tech/services/cable-service/cable-fra...
    - icelancer 7y ago
      Yeah, I happen to live in an area that CL offers 6mbps maximum to, and it is weirdly in a minority-dense part of Seattle metropolitan. They have zero plans to expand to our area, they've stated repeatedly. I'll throw stones as much as I like, thanks.
      - metildaa 7y ago
        The city contract requires they service the lowest income parts of the city first, hence the extremely patchwork rollout over the last few years. Due to the mandatory client base skew, the city is causing them to redline middle and high income areas of the city. Fiber is in Georgetown and Rainer Valley, but your SoL in Fremont's built up areas and in Sand Point. Universal coverage should have been mandated, but its easy to end up like Kenmore (which required total Fios coverage from Verizon, now Frontier) and has seen Finn Hill go unserviced for years. Enforcement of the franchise contract is just as critical as initial negotiation. Outside of a few select areas, most of Seattle only ever saw ADSL (or no DSL in parts of the north end) as we didn't allow large VDSL2 cabinets in the public ROW. I think this has caused Centurylink to build fiber in the city, as they've rarely overbuilt VDSL2 areas like Bellevue, Kent & Auburn.
        icelancer 7y ago
        >> Rainer Valley Nope. I live square in the middle of it, can't get double digit mbps download speeds from them.
        metildaa 7y ago
        I would encourage you tp double check during the daytime on https://shop.centurylink.com/MasterWebPortal/freeRange/shop/guidedShoppingStart?bones https://shop.centurylink.com/MasterWebPortal/freeRange/shop/... I've noticed they seem to offer ADSL (6mbps) after 6pm or so at addresses that already have fiber, presumably their prequal database for fiber goes offline for a few hours a day.
- tuxxy 7y ago
  > it's affordable in most of the world I'm afraid you are drastically underestimating how much it actually costs to install fiber.
  - studentrob 7y ago
    Good point. I meant the developed world. Regarding the 3rd world, Facebook offered India free internet with strings attached, and IIRC they rejected it. That idea wasn't too popular there or here. Would Musk be given a pass for offering discounted or free internet to 3rd world countries, and what strings would investors suggest he attach?
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      > Would Musk be given a pass for offering discounted or free internet to 3rd world countries, and what strings would investors suggest he attach? Why would he want to do that? Facebook wanted to do that, because that would drive more users to their platform. SpaceX wants to use Starlink in order to bankroll BFR[0], so what they want is to simply sell the service at a price point that generates them enough money. It's not beneficial to them to discount it, make it free, or play other shenanigans. -- [0] - Or whatever it's called now; it'll always be the BFR in my heart.
      - studentrob 7y ago
        > Why would he want to do that? Because granting internet fast lanes to certain content providers is a way to generate revenue. Zero-rating is already happening [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-rating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-rating
    - Symmetry 7y ago
      If you have a lot of market power and you want to make as much money as possible the rational thing to do is to charge people according to their willingness to pay[1]. You can't do this perfectly but this is what is behind senior discounts and Intel's huge number of SKUs. Since people in Botswana can't profitably resell their internet in England, since Starlink can easily charge different amounts in different countries, and because the marginal cost of servicing a new region is approximately zero it would be crazy for Starlink not to do geographic pricing tiers. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination
- simonh 7y ago
  Who's the "we" that is throwing money at this? Starlink is privately funded.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- wongarsu 7y ago
  Fiber is affordable in cities (a market nearly impossible to service by satellite anyways). Even developed countries struggle with deploying fiber in rural environments. Every satellite internet offering targets rural settings, ships and planes. StarLink is no different, just that they will be competitive in a wider range of such settings.
vlovich123 7y ago
Why can't you avoid the ground station and just do satellite to satellite for relay? I believe that's precisely how starlink works.
- jhauris 7y ago
  In GP's post the second satellite is the same satellite, just on the way back. The post assumes for demonstration that the ground station is the destination.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- isostatic 7y ago
  You're pinging a device on the ground t=0 You send out ICMP request t=120ms it hits the satelite t=240ms it arrives at the ground station, ICMP reply occurs t=360ms hits satelite t=480ms arrives back at the originating machine The only way doing satelite-satelite at a GEO level would be useful would be 1) You're pinging a device on satellite in GEO (one you don't have LOS to) 2) You're pinging a device that's also connected via a different GEO 120 degrees away from the first in this case you'll t=0 You send out ICMP request t=120ms it hits the satelite t=240ms it arrives at the ground station 1 t=280ms arrives at ground station 2 t=400ms hits satelite #2 t=520ms arrives back at the destination t=640ms response arrives at sat #2 t=800ms response arrives at ground station 2 t=840ms response arrives at GS#1 t=960ms response arrives at sat #1 t=1080ms response arrives back at originating machine You could change that, but you won't save much in GEO as you're connecting to two different satelites, 120 degrees apart or 70,000km (235ms) t=0 You send out ICMP request t=120ms it hits the satelite t=355ms hits satelite #2 t=475ms arrives at destination t=595ms response arrives at sat #2 t=830ms response arrives at sat #1 t=950ms response arrives back at originating machine Reality of course is that typical satelite latency is 800ms or more (depending how much you pay to skip buffering) rather than 480ms.