6 ms·

"Starlink's median latency, 45 milliseconds (ms) is close to fixed broadband's 14 ms. " How is 3 times as much 'close'?

jeroenhd 5y ago
It's close compared to latencies over traditional sattelite internet where a ping of over 400ms is not uncommon. The article quotes a latency if over 600 or 700ms. At least 45 is in the same order of magnitude of common broadband. 45ms reminds me more of 3G than of any normal internet connection, but that's still much more useful than the latencies the sattelite competition offers.
db48x 5y ago
We’re talking about humans here. A human might notice 45ms in a shooter, but not when just surfing the web. Compare that with 500-1000ms latency from older forms of satellite service, or 250ms from old dial–up service.
- cma 5y ago
  >A human might notice 45ms in a shooter, but not when just surfing the web. You are forgetting round-trip request latency, handshakes, and dependent resources (don't know what to fetch until receiving the first thing, then the second level of things, etc., this can stack to multiple seconds). High latency is very bad for browsing. The main things it is fine for are streaming audio/video (non-interactive), large downloads, and backing up/uploading files.
  - db48x 5y ago
    You’re not wrong, but not relevant either. If your RTT to the server is 15ms, then connecting to that server with TLS1.2 will take 4×15ms = 60ms. On Starlink that will currently take 4×45ms = 180ms. Yes, 180ms is three times 60ms, but to a human that is irrelevant. Humans can’t detect time intervals of less than 100ms, and can only barely detect intervals less than 200ms. In a direct comparison between the two, humans will rate the 60ms connection as instantaneous and the slower 180ms connection as nearly instantaneous. This makes them “close” as the article described, especially when compared to old–school satellite links where the RTT can be insane. And the handshake time doesn’t compound; there is no need to open a new connection to the server for every resource needed by a webpage. The web browser just keeps reusing the same connection until it runs out of resources to fetch from the server.
    - cma 5y ago
      > And the handshake time doesn’t compound; there is no need to open a new connection to the server for every resource needed by a webpage. The web browser just keeps reusing the same connection until it runs out of resources to fetch from the server. Third party analytics and other resources often means it compounds even for handshaking, but dependent resources can compound too even on the same server even if they don't each need a handshake.
only_as_i_fall 5y ago
>By comparison, Viasat, 630 ms, and HughesNet, 724 ms, are almost unusable for these purposes. They're saying it's close compared to starlink's competitors which aren't even the same order of magnitude. In context I think it's a fair assessment.
- abstractbarista 5y ago
  Yea a buddy tried out HughesNet and the latency was 1~1.5 seconds. Loading anything was death.
- sschueller 5y ago
  They are also thousands of miles further out. I believe hugesnet services almost the entire globe with just 3 satellites.
jjeaff 5y ago
Who is getting 14ms on their fixed broadband. Last 3 places I can remember, I had cable and fiber to the home. My two cable connections would get 25-35ms at best. The fiber to the home wasn't much different but did go sub 20ms on occasion.
- montecarl 5y ago
  I am on Google Fiber and I get < 10 ms to anything served out of a CDN or to servers in my own state. If I ping google, reddit, amazon, etc they are all about 8 ms.
- vel0city 5y ago
  AT&T FTTH in Texas. Its 2-3ms from my home to Google's CDNs. 2-3ms to Cloudfront. 4ms to akamai. Its 3ms to my friend's house, 1ms to my work's office. Its 2ms to my colo in town. 40ms is me essentially connecting halfway across the country. A Digital Ocean droplet in SF or NY is ~40ms.
  - jjeaff 5y ago
    How are you measuring this? Because I just ran a ping from my colo server in a datacenter and am seeing 11-12 ms when I ping google CDN.
    - vel0city 5y ago
      All of this was measured on my residential FTTH internet from a wired desktop just using the Windows ping utility. 11-12ms to a Google CDN from your colo? That's insane to me. Pinging from my colo to Google using the ping utility from iputils for 50 packets gives an average ping of 1.6ms. Akamai pings at 2.1ms.
      - jjeaff 5y ago
        Ok, so I ran a ping again from my data center server. And for CDN.google.com, I get average of less than 0.2ms ping. But, when pinging www.gstatic.com, that is when I get more like 7-10ms. I'm not sure what the difference is between the two.

It's close compared to latencies over traditional sattelite internet where a ping of over 400ms is not uncommon. The article quotes a latency if over 600 or 700ms. At least 45 is in the same order of magnitude of common broadband. 45ms reminds me more of 3G than of any normal internet connection, but that's still much more useful than the latencies the sattelite competition offers.

db48x 5y ago

We’re talking about humans here. A human might notice 45ms in a shooter, but not when just surfing the web. Compare that with 500-1000ms latency from older forms of satellite service, or 250ms from old dial–up service.

cma 5y ago
>A human might notice 45ms in a shooter, but not when just surfing the web. You are forgetting round-trip request latency, handshakes, and dependent resources (don't know what to fetch until receiving the first thing, then the second level of things, etc., this can stack to multiple seconds). High latency is very bad for browsing. The main things it is fine for are streaming audio/video (non-interactive), large downloads, and backing up/uploading files.
- db48x 5y ago
  You’re not wrong, but not relevant either. If your RTT to the server is 15ms, then connecting to that server with TLS1.2 will take 4×15ms = 60ms. On Starlink that will currently take 4×45ms = 180ms. Yes, 180ms is three times 60ms, but to a human that is irrelevant. Humans can’t detect time intervals of less than 100ms, and can only barely detect intervals less than 200ms. In a direct comparison between the two, humans will rate the 60ms connection as instantaneous and the slower 180ms connection as nearly instantaneous. This makes them “close” as the article described, especially when compared to old–school satellite links where the RTT can be insane. And the handshake time doesn’t compound; there is no need to open a new connection to the server for every resource needed by a webpage. The web browser just keeps reusing the same connection until it runs out of resources to fetch from the server.
  - cma 5y ago
    > And the handshake time doesn’t compound; there is no need to open a new connection to the server for every resource needed by a webpage. The web browser just keeps reusing the same connection until it runs out of resources to fetch from the server. Third party analytics and other resources often means it compounds even for handshaking, but dependent resources can compound too even on the same server even if they don't each need a handshake.

only_as_i_fall 5y ago

>By comparison, Viasat, 630 ms, and HughesNet, 724 ms, are almost unusable for these purposes. They're saying it's close compared to starlink's competitors which aren't even the same order of magnitude. In context I think it's a fair assessment.

abstractbarista 5y ago
Yea a buddy tried out HughesNet and the latency was 1~1.5 seconds. Loading anything was death.
sschueller 5y ago
They are also thousands of miles further out. I believe hugesnet services almost the entire globe with just 3 satellites.

jjeaff 5y ago

Who is getting 14ms on their fixed broadband. Last 3 places I can remember, I had cable and fiber to the home. My two cable connections would get 25-35ms at best. The fiber to the home wasn't much different but did go sub 20ms on occasion.

montecarl 5y ago
I am on Google Fiber and I get < 10 ms to anything served out of a CDN or to servers in my own state. If I ping google, reddit, amazon, etc they are all about 8 ms.
vel0city 5y ago
AT&T FTTH in Texas. Its 2-3ms from my home to Google's CDNs. 2-3ms to Cloudfront. 4ms to akamai. Its 3ms to my friend's house, 1ms to my work's office. Its 2ms to my colo in town. 40ms is me essentially connecting halfway across the country. A Digital Ocean droplet in SF or NY is ~40ms.
- jjeaff 5y ago
  How are you measuring this? Because I just ran a ping from my colo server in a datacenter and am seeing 11-12 ms when I ping google CDN.
  - vel0city 5y ago
    All of this was measured on my residential FTTH internet from a wired desktop just using the Windows ping utility. 11-12ms to a Google CDN from your colo? That's insane to me. Pinging from my colo to Google using the ping utility from iputils for 50 packets gives an average ping of 1.6ms. Akamai pings at 2.1ms.
    - jjeaff 5y ago
      Ok, so I ran a ping again from my data center server. And for CDN.google.com, I get average of less than 0.2ms ping. But, when pinging www.gstatic.com, that is when I get more like 7-10ms. I'm not sure what the difference is between the two.