4 ms·

I'm not sure benchmarks on an unloaded beta system are extremely useful. Once they add more satellites it may go down, but more users counter that... It's dece

I'm not sure benchmarks on an unloaded beta system are extremely useful. Once they add more satellites it may go down, but more users counter that... It's decent early indicator, but hard to say long term if it's useful.

TaylorAlexander 6y ago
When Verizon 4G first launched I had a 45mbps connection all over silicon valley. Then adoption spread and my data rates on the same device dropped to 5mbps. Loading matters!
- ofrzeta 6y ago
  I always think about uplinks when I hear about "guaranteed" bandwidths to users, fiber to the home and such. Maybe I can get 1 Gbps to the next hop but can you realistically expect the uplink to be n times 1 Gbps? Also I guess it wouldn't be economically feasible to provide uplinks that can cope with that. Can anyone expand on the technological assumptions (average saturation etc) and the economics of such ISP setups?
- ObsoleteNerd 6y ago
  Our Wireless NBN install in rural(ish, 1 hour from a capital city) Australia went from 25mbps to 0.1-0.5mbps and has sat there for 2 years until we gave up calling them monthly to complain, and switched to a 4G booster and just tethered to our phones. Due to blatant corruption there’s zero competition for broadband here, just resellers of the same system. If Starlink can even sustain 20mbps+ and rolls out to rural Australia they’ll pretty much own the market, let alone similar stories across the entire globe. Considering it doesn’t require any infrastructure, I can’t see how our tech-illiterate decrepit government can stop it. Just sell the modems online and ship directly worldwide.
  - mschuster91 6y ago
    > Considering it doesn’t require any infrastructure, I can’t see how our tech-illiterate decrepit government can stop it. Just sell the modems online and ship directly worldwide. Make unlicensed operation of the dishes illegal, detect violators using an AWACS plane if detector vans are not sensitive enough to detect beams formed directly to the sky. Even if a country's government can't touch SpaceX directly, the users are still a good target.
    - AlgorithmicTime 6y ago
      That seems like it would require far more effort.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - em-bee 6y ago
      for comparison, look at restrictions for satelite phones in some countries. those same restrictions will apply here
  - zizee 6y ago
    > Due to blatant corruption there’s zero competition for broadband here, just resellers of the same system. Can you tell us more about this blatent corruption? Are you saying corruption has stopped multiple players entering into the highly profitable internet market of the sparsely populated rural Australia?
    - Johnythree 6y ago
      In 2009 a Labor government planned an Australian "National Broadband Network" (NBN) which was to serve 93% of Australians with direct fiber connections, the remainder to be covered by Wireless and Satellite. Unfortunately in 2013 the coalition government won power and immediately set about to destroy the NBN. It has since has been widely reported that this was at the behest of Rupert Murdoch who saw that his Cable network would be threatened by a high-speed broadband network. Whatever, do your own research. There have been thousands of words written on this. Here's just one: https://theqlder.com/2019/05/11/how-the-liberals-sabotaged-the-nbn/ https://theqlder.com/2019/05/11/how-the-liberals-sabotaged-t... And here's the very detailed Wikipedia version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_National_Broadband_Network#Principal_contractor_agreement_with_Silcar_(1_June_2011) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_National_Broadb...
      - zizee 6y ago
        > Whatever, do your own research. Is it not ok to ask people making bold statements to backup their claims? The wikipedia article (which I admittedly only quickly scanned) doesn't appear to mention corruption, murdoch, or newscorp. The other is a hyperbolic opinion piece that doesn't provide any references whatsoever. Regardless of all this, you completely missed my point. The grandparent was complaining about lack of competition whilst being in a semi-rural (read low population density) and there being only one real option, with multiple resellers. Corruption isn't stopping rollout of companies from rolling out multiple competitive networks to rural australia. There is not going to be any return on investment. For a country like australia we need internet as publicly owned infrastructure, with "zero competition...just resellers of the same system". The coalition really ballsed-up what should have been a great resource for the so called "clever country". However, if starlink lives up to the marketing promises "our tech-illiterate decrepit government"s opinion that it would be a waste to provide fibre coverage to 93%* of our population, and their decision to instead to wait for technological advances to provide solutions better suited to australia is suddenly not a bone headed as people make out. * Australian urban population is 86.2% https://knoema.com/atlas/Australia/ https://knoema.com/atlas/Australia/ Australi
  - Johnythree 6y ago
    The catch is that international law prevents satellite to satellite links to bypass any country. To be issued frequency allocations within each country, the satellite communications must be routed via multiple ground stations within that country.
    - mrDmrTmrJ 6y ago
      "international law prevents satellite to satellite links to bypass any country" Fascinating, which treaty or 'law'? My understanding is that Starlink is authorized to operate in Australia: https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/australia https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/australia
wahern 6y ago
The latency numbers are useful because lots of people, including the FCC, doubted the ability to achieve sub-100ms latencies at all. See https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-has-serious-doubts-about-spacexs-broadband-service/ https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-has-serious-doubts-about-space...
- mtgx 6y ago
  And I believe they promised much lower than that with laser links (although only the Polar North satellites will use those for now).
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  Oh yeah, that is probably the one piece of this which is useful.
- new_realist 6y ago
  10K users, one ten users per launched satellite, is not "mass market" as defined by the FCC. Latency issues are queuing issues at the scale (and thus load) of users needed to achieve breakeven.
jcims 6y ago
I joined a Starlink pilot program where there are 90 households within 3-4 miles of me that also got dishes. I was one of the first to set it up, and since then haven’t noticed any decline in average/peak throughput or latency.

TaylorAlexander 6y ago

When Verizon 4G first launched I had a 45mbps connection all over silicon valley. Then adoption spread and my data rates on the same device dropped to 5mbps. Loading matters!

ofrzeta 6y ago
I always think about uplinks when I hear about "guaranteed" bandwidths to users, fiber to the home and such. Maybe I can get 1 Gbps to the next hop but can you realistically expect the uplink to be n times 1 Gbps? Also I guess it wouldn't be economically feasible to provide uplinks that can cope with that. Can anyone expand on the technological assumptions (average saturation etc) and the economics of such ISP setups?
ObsoleteNerd 6y ago
Our Wireless NBN install in rural(ish, 1 hour from a capital city) Australia went from 25mbps to 0.1-0.5mbps and has sat there for 2 years until we gave up calling them monthly to complain, and switched to a 4G booster and just tethered to our phones. Due to blatant corruption there’s zero competition for broadband here, just resellers of the same system. If Starlink can even sustain 20mbps+ and rolls out to rural Australia they’ll pretty much own the market, let alone similar stories across the entire globe. Considering it doesn’t require any infrastructure, I can’t see how our tech-illiterate decrepit government can stop it. Just sell the modems online and ship directly worldwide.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  > Considering it doesn’t require any infrastructure, I can’t see how our tech-illiterate decrepit government can stop it. Just sell the modems online and ship directly worldwide. Make unlicensed operation of the dishes illegal, detect violators using an AWACS plane if detector vans are not sensitive enough to detect beams formed directly to the sky. Even if a country's government can't touch SpaceX directly, the users are still a good target.
  - AlgorithmicTime 6y ago
    That seems like it would require far more effort.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - em-bee 6y ago
    for comparison, look at restrictions for satelite phones in some countries. those same restrictions will apply here
- zizee 6y ago
  > Due to blatant corruption there’s zero competition for broadband here, just resellers of the same system. Can you tell us more about this blatent corruption? Are you saying corruption has stopped multiple players entering into the highly profitable internet market of the sparsely populated rural Australia?
  - Johnythree 6y ago
    In 2009 a Labor government planned an Australian "National Broadband Network" (NBN) which was to serve 93% of Australians with direct fiber connections, the remainder to be covered by Wireless and Satellite. Unfortunately in 2013 the coalition government won power and immediately set about to destroy the NBN. It has since has been widely reported that this was at the behest of Rupert Murdoch who saw that his Cable network would be threatened by a high-speed broadband network. Whatever, do your own research. There have been thousands of words written on this. Here's just one: https://theqlder.com/2019/05/11/how-the-liberals-sabotaged-the-nbn/ https://theqlder.com/2019/05/11/how-the-liberals-sabotaged-t... And here's the very detailed Wikipedia version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_National_Broadband_Network#Principal_contractor_agreement_with_Silcar_(1_June_2011) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_National_Broadb...
    - zizee 6y ago
      > Whatever, do your own research. Is it not ok to ask people making bold statements to backup their claims? The wikipedia article (which I admittedly only quickly scanned) doesn't appear to mention corruption, murdoch, or newscorp. The other is a hyperbolic opinion piece that doesn't provide any references whatsoever. Regardless of all this, you completely missed my point. The grandparent was complaining about lack of competition whilst being in a semi-rural (read low population density) and there being only one real option, with multiple resellers. Corruption isn't stopping rollout of companies from rolling out multiple competitive networks to rural australia. There is not going to be any return on investment. For a country like australia we need internet as publicly owned infrastructure, with "zero competition...just resellers of the same system". The coalition really ballsed-up what should have been a great resource for the so called "clever country". However, if starlink lives up to the marketing promises "our tech-illiterate decrepit government"s opinion that it would be a waste to provide fibre coverage to 93%* of our population, and their decision to instead to wait for technological advances to provide solutions better suited to australia is suddenly not a bone headed as people make out. * Australian urban population is 86.2% https://knoema.com/atlas/Australia/ https://knoema.com/atlas/Australia/ Australi
- Johnythree 6y ago
  The catch is that international law prevents satellite to satellite links to bypass any country. To be issued frequency allocations within each country, the satellite communications must be routed via multiple ground stations within that country.
  - mrDmrTmrJ 6y ago
    "international law prevents satellite to satellite links to bypass any country" Fascinating, which treaty or 'law'? My understanding is that Starlink is authorized to operate in Australia: https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/australia https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/australia

wahern 6y ago

The latency numbers are useful because lots of people, including the FCC, doubted the ability to achieve sub-100ms latencies at all. See https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-has-serious-doubts-about-spacexs-broadband-service/ https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-has-serious-doubts-about-space...

mtgx 6y ago
And I believe they promised much lower than that with laser links (although only the Polar North satellites will use those for now).
ogre_codes 6y ago
Oh yeah, that is probably the one piece of this which is useful.
new_realist 6y ago
10K users, one ten users per launched satellite, is not "mass market" as defined by the FCC. Latency issues are queuing issues at the scale (and thus load) of users needed to achieve breakeven.

jcims 6y ago

I joined a Starlink pilot program where there are 90 households within 3-4 miles of me that also got dishes. I was one of the first to set it up, and since then haven’t noticed any decline in average/peak throughput or latency.