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> Bandwidth still might not be great Right, compared to reasonable in-ground ISPs. I think Starlink sat to Starlink sat links will also help bandwidth, specif

> Bandwidth still might not be great Right, compared to reasonable in-ground ISPs. I think Starlink sat to Starlink sat links will also help bandwidth, specifically in the case where a given downlink connection is heavily utilized, the system can shunt traffic to another slightly less ideal but less utilized ground station. > unlocks a very financially lucrative consumer use case That's a bingo! I think there's a pretty good chance that this could turn into a pretty epic cash cow for Starlink.

rtkwe 6y ago
I do wonder how much of a draw Starlink will be versus terrestrial microwave for things like HFT firms. Guess it will do really well for linking further afield exchances like Hong Kong and NYSE where a straight line microwave route isn't practical so the extra distance added by the orbit doesn't matter as much.
- walrus01 6y ago
  a lot of serious HFT for transcontinental stuff moved to HF radio some years back, with big-ass yagi-uda antennas aimed between locations like the CME datacenter, london, tokyo, new york. it's very low data rate but also guaranteed lower latency than the submarine cables.
  - rtkwe 6y ago
    OK so even that will be hard to break into except as a wider bandwidth option which would have some applications the HFT, but it'd be hard since latency is king there. Maybe with that out of the picture other uses like telepresence for remote surgery can edge in. I've been waiting for a while for that to really take off seems like an awesome way to provide services you couldn't afford to to remote places.
    - Diederich 6y ago
      > latency is king there I have read that Starlink, given sat to sat relays, should be able to beat any possible ground based system as long as the distances are great enough. Does that match your understanding of this?
      - walrus01 6y ago
        a lot of theory and conjecture about sat-to-sat laser relays has been published by people (and youtube videos made, etc), but many of these theoretical topologies are dependent on plane-to-plane communications which will be difficult to aim and maintain links on. if you google 'starlink train' and look at some videos, when a batch of 60 starlink satellites is launched ,they're all at the same orbital inclination. they remain at the same inclination but as the weeks go past after their launch, they are spread out to follow each other at several hundred km spacings. but they're still following each other in what is basically a strung out conga line of satellites. communications between forward/rear satellites in the same batch should not be nearly as difficult to aim. what would be difficult to aim and maintain links on would be cross-plane links between two different sets of satellites, with very high differing relative velocities.
        rtkwe 6y ago
        This video goes a bit into the probable topology of the links and gives a good look at how the eventual constellation would look. Eventually in the full constellation there will be 4 easy links to the birds in front, behind, left and right, those 4 will stay in largely the same relative position until they reach the highest latitude of their orbit. Those alone will make an ok link with a bit of a zig zag. The tough ones are those ~180 degrees out of phase those will be crossing roughly perpendicular and at a really high speed. https://youtu.be/AdKNCBrkZQ4 https://youtu.be/AdKNCBrkZQ4
      - rtkwe 6y ago
        My understanding is it's tough to beat point to point microwave arrays for directness in a lot of cases, they're already pretty close to the straightline path between some locations. The same is basically true for the longer range low bandwidth links that curve around the Earth. Starlink is at a disadvantage because fundamentally it's pathing across a sphere with a larger radius so even when the path is direct across the Starlink cluster it still has to traverse a longer distance than the equivalent path on the ground. Adding to that the path won't always be directly across the surface of the constellation, depending on where you are and where the destination is you'll find some pockets where the link has to zig zag across the constellation slightly adding to the additional link distance. This [0] isn't necessarily a perfect representation but it does show how starlink's linking may work and how it's not a perfect net. It also doesn't account for the acquisition times for new laser links which were on the order of 20 seconds in another laser sat link test. [0] https://youtu.be/AdKNCBrkZQ4?t=103 https://youtu.be/AdKNCBrkZQ4?t=103 (it's also comparing fiber to Starlink where the best in class now is radio links generally)
chasd00 6y ago
i'll certainly be a customer when it comes online. I'm building a cabin where no connectivity is currently available. (well aside from spotty 3g cell)
- Tepix 6y ago
  It's online already (still labelled "beta" but works with interruptions of only a few minutes per day) in certain latitudes (as far south as Rome 41.8° N-52.1° N as far north as The Hague), check the starlink subreddit for reports.

rtkwe 6y ago

I do wonder how much of a draw Starlink will be versus terrestrial microwave for things like HFT firms. Guess it will do really well for linking further afield exchances like Hong Kong and NYSE where a straight line microwave route isn't practical so the extra distance added by the orbit doesn't matter as much.

walrus01 6y ago
a lot of serious HFT for transcontinental stuff moved to HF radio some years back, with big-ass yagi-uda antennas aimed between locations like the CME datacenter, london, tokyo, new york. it's very low data rate but also guaranteed lower latency than the submarine cables.
- rtkwe 6y ago
  OK so even that will be hard to break into except as a wider bandwidth option which would have some applications the HFT, but it'd be hard since latency is king there. Maybe with that out of the picture other uses like telepresence for remote surgery can edge in. I've been waiting for a while for that to really take off seems like an awesome way to provide services you couldn't afford to to remote places.
  - Diederich 6y ago
    > latency is king there I have read that Starlink, given sat to sat relays, should be able to beat any possible ground based system as long as the distances are great enough. Does that match your understanding of this?
    - walrus01 6y ago
      a lot of theory and conjecture about sat-to-sat laser relays has been published by people (and youtube videos made, etc), but many of these theoretical topologies are dependent on plane-to-plane communications which will be difficult to aim and maintain links on. if you google 'starlink train' and look at some videos, when a batch of 60 starlink satellites is launched ,they're all at the same orbital inclination. they remain at the same inclination but as the weeks go past after their launch, they are spread out to follow each other at several hundred km spacings. but they're still following each other in what is basically a strung out conga line of satellites. communications between forward/rear satellites in the same batch should not be nearly as difficult to aim. what would be difficult to aim and maintain links on would be cross-plane links between two different sets of satellites, with very high differing relative velocities.
      - rtkwe 6y ago
        This video goes a bit into the probable topology of the links and gives a good look at how the eventual constellation would look. Eventually in the full constellation there will be 4 easy links to the birds in front, behind, left and right, those 4 will stay in largely the same relative position until they reach the highest latitude of their orbit. Those alone will make an ok link with a bit of a zig zag. The tough ones are those ~180 degrees out of phase those will be crossing roughly perpendicular and at a really high speed. https://youtu.be/AdKNCBrkZQ4 https://youtu.be/AdKNCBrkZQ4
    - rtkwe 6y ago
      My understanding is it's tough to beat point to point microwave arrays for directness in a lot of cases, they're already pretty close to the straightline path between some locations. The same is basically true for the longer range low bandwidth links that curve around the Earth. Starlink is at a disadvantage because fundamentally it's pathing across a sphere with a larger radius so even when the path is direct across the Starlink cluster it still has to traverse a longer distance than the equivalent path on the ground. Adding to that the path won't always be directly across the surface of the constellation, depending on where you are and where the destination is you'll find some pockets where the link has to zig zag across the constellation slightly adding to the additional link distance. This [0] isn't necessarily a perfect representation but it does show how starlink's linking may work and how it's not a perfect net. It also doesn't account for the acquisition times for new laser links which were on the order of 20 seconds in another laser sat link test. [0] https://youtu.be/AdKNCBrkZQ4?t=103 https://youtu.be/AdKNCBrkZQ4?t=103 (it's also comparing fiber to Starlink where the best in class now is radio links generally)

chasd00 6y ago

i'll certainly be a customer when it comes online. I'm building a cabin where no connectivity is currently available. (well aside from spotty 3g cell)

Tepix 6y ago
It's online already (still labelled "beta" but works with interruptions of only a few minutes per day) in certain latitudes (as far south as Rome 41.8° N-52.1° N as far north as The Hague), check the starlink subreddit for reports.