7 ms·

How long before we get space-70-1 cloud region with Cloudflare/Cloudfront serving cached data from orbit?

Dylan16807 6y ago
Even if satellites were free to launch and had unlimited bandwidth, that would be slower than installing servers where the ground stations plug in. So, uh, how much are people willing to pay for novelty?
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  There may be some ground stations owned by WISPs or whatever servicing a whole community, but I think the theory is that a lot will be small end user terminals providing connectivity to just a household or two in a remote location. If these are your users, then yeah, it could very well be advantageous to have and orbital CDN if millions of them are all streaming the same new Cobra Kai episode at the same time or whatever.
  - jandrese 6y ago
    I was thinking it would be more attractive to people who want to host content that is problematic inside of national borders. Basically treat space like international waters so you can host your Pirate Bay or 8Chan or whatever outside of national jurisdictions.
    - mikepurvis 6y ago
      If Starlink was knowingly hosting dubious/illegal content in space, wouldn't the media companies simply make the case that each individual jurisdiction revoke their license to the radio spectrum?
      - jandrese 6y ago
        That would be a tough case to make I think. Spectrum allocations are hard to change. I can't think of any case where they were threatened as part of a legal dispute.
        LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
        Uh. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=starlink+russia https://hn.algolia.com/?q=starlink+russia and from there especially https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25749178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25749178 So you were trying to say what exactly?
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    Oh, we're talking solely about serving the people on starlink? Not a general CDN? Yeah, that should have a small niche or two where you could make it better. > There may be some ground stations owned by WISPs or whatever servicing a whole community I'm talking about the ground stations that provide internet access to the satellites. > all streaming the same new Cobra Kai episode Multicast it.
_Microft 6y ago
Computing produces a lot of waste heat which is difficult to deal with in space. The cooling system of the ISS can radiate a total of 100kW for example. I think it is unlikely that we will see data centers in space unless it is absolutely unavoidable, e.g. because of lag between Earth and the place (in space) where the data is needed.
- hinkley 6y ago
  Starlink's target is lower latency (because speed of light in low earth orbit is 30% higher than speed of light in fiber optics). A CDN sending or storing their consumer facing data via satellite makes no sense. But control plane data? Maybe. Cut 30 ms off of SF to NYC and how you manage consensus might change quite a bit.
  - yazaddaruvala 6y ago
    Keep the stateless, replicated, CDN content all on the ground. Put the global (no longer replicated) datastore in space, and let me run some simple Lambda functions. Low latency, atomic transactions from anywhere in the world! Yes please!
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
  That could be solved by 'spray cooling', where you have a liquid cooling medium which is sprayed out of some nozzles on a beam in one direction through open space for some distance, and then recaptured by some other beam/vane/paddle opposite the spraying nozzles.
fastball 6y ago
I had this same thought back in December! https://twitter.com/acnebs/status/1336078364046667777 https://twitter.com/acnebs/status/1336078364046667777
benlivengood 6y ago
Caches are to trade off latency and bandwidth for cost. It's cheaper to put normal servers in regional colos to serve a lot of local customers, probably not cheaper to put expensive servers in orbit to serve a varying and small set of customers below a satellite. I can see running HSMs in space; probably the most cost-effective physical security available.
- bob1029 6y ago
  HSM in space is a compelling idea. You don't need a big satellite either. You really just need to keep a few hundred bytes of key material and then process crypto operations against it from the ground.
friseurtermin 6y ago
If you're interested, I recommend these two papers: 1. https://people.inf.ethz.ch/asingla/papers/hotnets20-inorbit.pdf https://people.inf.ethz.ch/asingla/papers/hotnets20-inorbit.... 2. https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.08979 https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.08979 This is actively being worked on in the research community, excited to see if it comes to fruition.
Tepix 6y ago
It would be very cool indeed to have crypto nodes (using Avalanche consensus perhaps?) running locally on all of these satellites. It shouldn't use that much extra power... you could probably do it at less than 50W per satellite. Right not you can run an Avalanche node on a Raspberry Pi 4 which uses 15 W max.

Even if satellites were free to launch and had unlimited bandwidth, that would be slower than installing servers where the ground stations plug in. So, uh, how much are people willing to pay for novelty?

mikepurvis 6y ago
There may be some ground stations owned by WISPs or whatever servicing a whole community, but I think the theory is that a lot will be small end user terminals providing connectivity to just a household or two in a remote location. If these are your users, then yeah, it could very well be advantageous to have and orbital CDN if millions of them are all streaming the same new Cobra Kai episode at the same time or whatever.
- jandrese 6y ago
  I was thinking it would be more attractive to people who want to host content that is problematic inside of national borders. Basically treat space like international waters so you can host your Pirate Bay or 8Chan or whatever outside of national jurisdictions.
  - mikepurvis 6y ago
    If Starlink was knowingly hosting dubious/illegal content in space, wouldn't the media companies simply make the case that each individual jurisdiction revoke their license to the radio spectrum?
    - jandrese 6y ago
      That would be a tough case to make I think. Spectrum allocations are hard to change. I can't think of any case where they were threatened as part of a legal dispute.
      - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
        Uh. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=starlink+russia https://hn.algolia.com/?q=starlink+russia and from there especially https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25749178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25749178 So you were trying to say what exactly?
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  Oh, we're talking solely about serving the people on starlink? Not a general CDN? Yeah, that should have a small niche or two where you could make it better. > There may be some ground stations owned by WISPs or whatever servicing a whole community I'm talking about the ground stations that provide internet access to the satellites. > all streaming the same new Cobra Kai episode Multicast it.

_Microft 6y ago

Computing produces a lot of waste heat which is difficult to deal with in space. The cooling system of the ISS can radiate a total of 100kW for example. I think it is unlikely that we will see data centers in space unless it is absolutely unavoidable, e.g. because of lag between Earth and the place (in space) where the data is needed.

hinkley 6y ago
Starlink's target is lower latency (because speed of light in low earth orbit is 30% higher than speed of light in fiber optics). A CDN sending or storing their consumer facing data via satellite makes no sense. But control plane data? Maybe. Cut 30 ms off of SF to NYC and how you manage consensus might change quite a bit.
- yazaddaruvala 6y ago
  Keep the stateless, replicated, CDN content all on the ground. Put the global (no longer replicated) datastore in space, and let me run some simple Lambda functions. Low latency, atomic transactions from anywhere in the world! Yes please!
LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
That could be solved by 'spray cooling', where you have a liquid cooling medium which is sprayed out of some nozzles on a beam in one direction through open space for some distance, and then recaptured by some other beam/vane/paddle opposite the spraying nozzles.

fastball 6y ago

I had this same thought back in December! https://twitter.com/acnebs/status/1336078364046667777 https://twitter.com/acnebs/status/1336078364046667777

benlivengood 6y ago

Caches are to trade off latency and bandwidth for cost. It's cheaper to put normal servers in regional colos to serve a lot of local customers, probably not cheaper to put expensive servers in orbit to serve a varying and small set of customers below a satellite. I can see running HSMs in space; probably the most cost-effective physical security available.

bob1029 6y ago
HSM in space is a compelling idea. You don't need a big satellite either. You really just need to keep a few hundred bytes of key material and then process crypto operations against it from the ground.

friseurtermin 6y ago

If you're interested, I recommend these two papers: 1. https://people.inf.ethz.ch/asingla/papers/hotnets20-inorbit.pdf https://people.inf.ethz.ch/asingla/papers/hotnets20-inorbit.... 2. https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.08979 https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.08979 This is actively being worked on in the research community, excited to see if it comes to fruition.

Tepix 6y ago

It would be very cool indeed to have crypto nodes (using Avalanche consensus perhaps?) running locally on all of these satellites. It shouldn't use that much extra power... you could probably do it at less than 50W per satellite. Right not you can run an Avalanche node on a Raspberry Pi 4 which uses 15 W max.