10 ms·
Starlink Beta Has Outperformed Most Internet in the US
- refulgentis 6y ago"For now, Starlink internet cuts off for seconds at a time every couple of minutes" - wait, what?
- vaidhy 6y agoSo, does that mean 95% of internet users are facing even worse quality of service? or does it mean that given a very small number of participants so far, starlink is able to allocate more bandwidth to everyone? I remember reading an analysis here on a previous posting about starlink that under load, it is going to have pretty limited throughput (on top of higher latency). I do not see how that will get solved.
- skavi 6y ago> So, does that mean 95% of internet users are facing even worse quality of service? The first sentence of the article makes it clear the 95% figure is in reference to speed.
- Someone 6y ago…and only is reported by some users. Full sentence: “Some of the participants in SpaceX’s public Starlink beta are reporting internet speeds higher than 95 percent of U.S. internet users.”
- jobigoud 6y agoSo the same could be said of regular providers? "Some users report speeds higher than 95% of the other users"... This really needs more precise wording. What percentage of Starlink users (more than 5%?) and what's the speed difference?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- integer42 6y agoWhen 4g/LTE was new, a coworker was an early adopter of whatever cellphone that was one of the first to support it. They were getting somewhere ~250 mbps on speed test. Fast forward to everyone having 4g phones, now in practice I see like 1-2% of those speeds typically. I have no idea the inner workings of starlink's protocol, but these aspects of wireless seem inevitable. once theres more simultaneous connections than in limited beta, each connection gets a smaller time slice or less frequency band, no? I do not see how its solved either. Currently I have rural DSL, approximately 3mbps down, 1 mbps up, but cheaper and reliable. The one person who has starlink beta is posting 200+ mbps screenshots but if everyone here connects I'm skeptical the result isn't slower, less reliable, more expensive than what's already here.
- kalleboo 6y agoI can see that just over a day. During off-peak hours, I've speedtested around 260 Mbit/s on LTE on my iPhone (it's 10:20 PM on a weekday and I just got 230 Mbit down[0]), but during peak hours (commute hours or lunch rush), it drops to like... 20 Mbit [0]https://www.speedtest.net/result/i/4226615772 https://www.speedtest.net/result/i/4226615772
- fomine3 6y agoIIRC initial LTE (UE category 3) only supports max 100Mbps (on spec) by 15MHz bandwidth. So I had measured max 50Mbps on 75Mbps (on spec, 10MHz) network.
- teruakohatu 6y ago"but those interruptions will likely fade as more satellites are launched and coverage becomes more comprehensive."
- colechristensen 6y agoCoverage is incomplete as they’re not nearly done deploying satellites. Satellite TV comes from single satellites orbiting in geosynchronous orbit, way out there where the orbital period is exactly one day. Starlink satellites are a swarm which operates in a low earth orbit with a period of around 90 minutes, you’re constantly changing satellites much like a cell phone switches towers as you drive.
- londons_explore 6y agoA coverage gap would probably lead to multi-minute gaps in service. Instead I'd guess this is a delay during reorientation of the physical antenna or repointing of the phased array. The phased array can theoretically be repointed in milliseconds, but in a rush to launch I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't take a few seconds to lock on to the signal, do channel characterization, and adjust data routing stuff to use the new link. During that time, a bunch of packets are lost, and you then have to wait for the TCP timers to expire before retransmission. End user ends up seeing a 5 second glitch.
- ricktdotorg 6y agodownload speed is great, but what’s the latency like?
- michelb 6y agoSeems low. https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/jltvk8/way_out_in_rural_montana_where_our_alternative_is/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/jltvk8/way_out_in... more info here: https://www.businessinsider.com/starlink-internet-satellite-public-beta-speed-spacex-mbps-elon-musk-2020-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/starlink-internet-satellite-...
- modeless 6y ago30-40ms round trip generally. It's Starlink's biggest advantage vs. existing satellites, along with greater capacity per user due to the huge number of satellites, so they don't need draconian data caps.
- bryanlarsen 6y agoThey'll need some sort of congestion control in urban areas. They might just refuse to sell into urban areas, or use fair queuing, but urban users are going to be limited or capped one way or another.
- Yoofie 6y agoI think Starlink has always marketed itself as a service provider for remote and hard to service areas. I'm not sure why people here keep thinking they will provide service to urban areas.
- navaati 6y agoSometimes you have not-great connection even deep in the city. I’m in a city touching Paris right now, 60k persons on a 1.5 by 1.5km square, one of the densest part of France. Well I have a shit ADSL (not VDSL !) connection, despite everyone else in the street having FTTH, because the HOA of my building won’t bother…
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- lolc 6y agoWhile that bandwidth is impressive, I'd be interested to know what the expected packet-delays through the atmosphere are. The lowest orbit they plan to use is 340 km which translates to a minimum 2 ms delay. While the equipment will rarely align like that, even 10 ms is fine for most human use.
- octoberfranklin 6y agoThey're bidding in FCC Auction 904 (currently in progress), which requires an absolute maximum round-trip latency of 100ms. Given the FCC penalties they wouldn't be bidding if they weren't damn sure they would be significantly lower than that bar.
- octoberfranklin 6y agoDetails: https://auctiondata.fcc.gov/public/projects/auction904 Auction should conclude in 2-3 weeks.
- modeless 6y agoPeople are getting 30-40ms ping times generally. Far lower than other satellite options, as you would expect.
- pixelbreaker 6y agoI'm amazed that the latency appears so low. I used satellite broadband for years here in very rural England, latency was more like 1000ms!
- tigershark 6y agoLEO vs GEO, that is the main advantage of starlink
- octoberfranklin 6y agoGeosynchronous (35,786km from surface) versus VLEO (550km from surface). Basically the difference in altitude between your satellite and these satellites is almost three times the earth's diameter.
- Aldipower 6y agoIf you take the US to Europe round-trip, the latency is even faster then the cable bound connection, because the light in vacuum (space) travels around 1/3 faster then in fiber.
- FrojoS 6y agoOnly once they have inter satellite communication working.
- bifrost 6y ago> because the light in vacuum (space) travels around 1/3 faster then in fiber Pretty sure the speed of light is a constant... You may be confusing the latency of the network framers/etc.
- Aldipower 6y agoSo, you are wrong. The speed of light is not constant. :) The speed of light depends on the medium, where the reference (or max speed) is the speed of light in vacuum. The speed of light in a diamond is only half of the speed in vacuum for example! This is why the latency of the low orbit satellites is lower then the cable bound connection.
- lambda_dn 6y agoHow many users are using it though compared to incumbents. Once the load goes up they will need to deploy more and more satellites. However seems like they can do this at will now. This gives remote working outside urban areas an attractive potential.
- Darmody 6y agoWhat blows my mind is how a lot of parts in highly developed countries like the US or Germany don't have access to a broadband internet connection. We had a lot of investment from the EU to install optical fibre everywhere, even in small towns. Now we have even small companies that only operate locally with very, very competitive prices.
- fabian2k 6y agoAt least the US has the excuse of being huge, which does make it much harder to provide good coverage. We don't have that excuse here in Germany. The situation isn't entirely terrible in Germany, but extremely variable depending on your location. I have 1Gbit for 40 EUR per month, but there are certainly places that aren't even remote that get no reasonable broadband.
- Darmody 6y agoYeah, the US is huge, but technologically we could say they are the most advanced country in the world. All the big boys are there. I would expect a lot more from them. And in some places, even big cities, people don't even have a choice as there's only company.
- ben_w 6y ago> At least the US has the excuse of being huge, which does make it much harder to provide good coverage. Why does that excuse America? The continent of Europe is also huge. It isn’t like this stuff is installed by one solitary overworked technician going house-to-house, big countries (and regions) can employ more people to do more work, and can raise more money from more customers.
- fabian2k 6y agoThe US has around 15% of the population density of Germany. It's much easier to provide broadband to larger cities than to rural areas.
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- fanf2 6y agoAlternative headline: “ISP with hardly any users and therefore no congestion turns out to be really fast!”
- whamlastxmas 6y agoAlternative title: "Brand new company with no existing market share successfully provides vital service that billion dollar companies with decades of experience failed to do"
- kilroy123 6y agoI'm very curious how the system will hold up when 10s of thousands are using it. I think it will be a while until that happens though.