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I like the ETH result and it is an impressive feat (I know some people involved in that work). That said the article is a lot of rubbish. First there is the wei

I like the ETH result and it is an impressive feat (I know some people involved in that work). That said the article is a lot of rubbish. First there is the weird focus on lasers, all (relevant) Optical Communication uses lasers, including fibre comms. Then they make it sound like this is to replace fibre, again rubbish. The amount of data going through fibres is absolutely staggering, replacing this with intersatellite links is just not going to happen. First you still need fibre to connect your ground stations (and you need quite a bit of redundancy due to weather) and there are still a lot of unsolved problems (tracking and pointing for example). However there are many interesting applications of optical satellite links and quite a few players are investing in it, the big one is actually data connections for scientific space missions.

eqvinox 3y ago
(really off-topic) The Z on ETHZ is important, ETH on its own is just (loosely) "university", the Z makes it the Zürich one ;D. There is exactly one other: EPFL in Lausanne. (And you can technically call them EPFZ and ETHL if you really want to confuse people.) (EPF [École Polytechnique Fédérale] is just the French version of German ETH [Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule]. Funnily enough both have pretty good international reputations, but due to the primary regional language being different are rarely recognized to be the same type of Swiss education entity.)
- spicybright 3y ago
  Half the reason I log onto HN is for the obscure random facts like these :) ty!
- dermesser 3y ago
  ...yet, when saying "ETH" everyone knows what is being referred to. Except for crypto bros.
  - looofooo 3y ago
    ETH Lausanne or Zürich?
    - dermesser 3y ago
      I know about two newspapers who regularly say "ETH Lausanne", and I suspect these articles are written by similar pedants as some commenters here appear to be.
      - foo-bar-bat 3y ago
        Internet points for you!
      - eqvinox 3y ago
        My original motivation in posting was really to spread the understanding that ETHZ and EPFL are sibling institutions; I knew both institutions from some comp sci bits but never made the connection until a while ago. And then I noticed a bunch of other people didn't connect them either… (I mean, it's not super important to understand these two are related, but honestly I feel like it makes them even more impressive. ETHZ already has a MIT-like reputation, with EPFL not far behind. The Swiss are clearly doing something right with their technical universities. And it's a 100% quota too, these two are the only ETHs/EPFs.)
      - looofooo 3y ago
        It is just its German Name. Also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETH_Domain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETH_Domain
- atq2119 3y ago
  Continuing with the off-topic, the E in ETH is pretty significant if you're going to loosely translate, as it stands for "Swiss federal", which is a big part of where those institutions' standing comes from.
  - eqvinox 3y ago
    Funnily enough that part is completely absent in the official French version… it's just "Fédérale" there… and shouldn't any of DE, FR or IT be valid as a "source" for a Swiss to English translation? So if you choose to do FR→EN, it's just "federal polytechnic institute"… (… to be fair, yes, "Fédérale" translates to "eidgenössisch" when the source is known to be Swiss French / fr_CH, but still. Oh the joys of locale details and translating natural language…)
voxelghost 3y ago
The focus of the article seems to reflect the focus of the work it is describing quite well? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41377-023-01201-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41377-023-01201-7
notfish 3y ago
Reddit seems to think that Starlink is already serving users via sat-to-sat optical links https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/xsupcn/laser_links_are_active/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/xsupcn/laser_link...
- raverbashing 3y ago
  Can't imagine how hard it is to align those in space (and keep them aligned) in a low altitude satellite, but it sounds pretty cool. I'm guessing the range is something like 1000km/2000km?
- lxgr 3y ago
  Sure, high-bandwidth inter-satellite links are essential for providing service to remote regions (or even just to make ground station placement more economical), but the question here is whether they could ever economically compete with fiberoptics outright. For extremely latency sensitive applications, I guess they will (e.g. for trading and real-time communications), but for everything else that can wait a few more milliseconds, I'd guess that the operational overhead and reduced reliability will never be worth it, especially if fiber already exists on the same path.
foobiekr 3y ago
The article is 100% rubbish. Just complete trash. Each submarine cable is 12+ strands which are DWDM multiplexed to 20-40 channels at 100-400gbps. The entire _planned_ starlink constellation has less aggregate switching capacity than a pair of current generation core routers. The market for terrestrial ethernet _routed_ 400Gbps ports is 10k+ annually and 800Gbps is just getting warmed up. Satellite is not going to even make the slightest dent in terrestrial networking. Starlink isn't even viable without most of the traffic doing two leg ground-satellite-ground for SP-network connected ground stations. 100% of that traffic is landing on the terrestrial internet.
- Retric 3y ago
  That Starlink estimate must be low, they currently have 1.5 million customers and a significant percentage of total bandwidth is over ocean and thus mostly wasted. If you assume a pessimistic 100x over subscription and 50% waste over oceans and non serviced countries * 50mbps (upload + download) * 1.5 million customers that’s well over 1.5 TBPs current capacity for customers which then doubles when you include their base stations. And they that’s today when the current 3887 Satilites which mostly v1.0 and v1.5 which have dramatically less individual bandwidth than v2.0. PS: Also your port estimate overstates total bandwidth as each point to point link requires a port on each side, and packets generally make multiple hops through the internet.
  - zirgs 3y ago
    Does it count as a waste if their main selling point is to deliver internet access to places that are hard or impossible to reach otherwise?
    - ilyt 3y ago
      Well you're calculating bandwidth so yes
      - zirgs 3y ago
        But Starlink would have no reason to exist in the first place if it didn't offer service in those remote places.
dheera 3y ago
Even if it becomes possible it's a recipe for disaster, we'll lose a lot of mission critical systems of sorts in the event of a bad solar flare. There aren't too many common natural disasters that could take out a huge fraction of undersea cables in one go.

eqvinox 3y ago

(really off-topic) The Z on ETHZ is important, ETH on its own is just (loosely) "university", the Z makes it the Zürich one ;D. There is exactly one other: EPFL in Lausanne. (And you can technically call them EPFZ and ETHL if you really want to confuse people.) (EPF [École Polytechnique Fédérale] is just the French version of German ETH [Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule]. Funnily enough both have pretty good international reputations, but due to the primary regional language being different are rarely recognized to be the same type of Swiss education entity.)

spicybright 3y ago
Half the reason I log onto HN is for the obscure random facts like these :) ty!
dermesser 3y ago
...yet, when saying "ETH" everyone knows what is being referred to. Except for crypto bros.
- looofooo 3y ago
  ETH Lausanne or Zürich?
  - dermesser 3y ago
    I know about two newspapers who regularly say "ETH Lausanne", and I suspect these articles are written by similar pedants as some commenters here appear to be.
    - foo-bar-bat 3y ago
      Internet points for you!
    - eqvinox 3y ago
      My original motivation in posting was really to spread the understanding that ETHZ and EPFL are sibling institutions; I knew both institutions from some comp sci bits but never made the connection until a while ago. And then I noticed a bunch of other people didn't connect them either… (I mean, it's not super important to understand these two are related, but honestly I feel like it makes them even more impressive. ETHZ already has a MIT-like reputation, with EPFL not far behind. The Swiss are clearly doing something right with their technical universities. And it's a 100% quota too, these two are the only ETHs/EPFs.)
    - looofooo 3y ago
      It is just its German Name. Also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETH_Domain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETH_Domain
atq2119 3y ago
Continuing with the off-topic, the E in ETH is pretty significant if you're going to loosely translate, as it stands for "Swiss federal", which is a big part of where those institutions' standing comes from.
- eqvinox 3y ago
  Funnily enough that part is completely absent in the official French version… it's just "Fédérale" there… and shouldn't any of DE, FR or IT be valid as a "source" for a Swiss to English translation? So if you choose to do FR→EN, it's just "federal polytechnic institute"… (… to be fair, yes, "Fédérale" translates to "eidgenössisch" when the source is known to be Swiss French / fr_CH, but still. Oh the joys of locale details and translating natural language…)

voxelghost 3y ago

The focus of the article seems to reflect the focus of the work it is describing quite well? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41377-023-01201-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41377-023-01201-7

notfish 3y ago

Reddit seems to think that Starlink is already serving users via sat-to-sat optical links https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/xsupcn/laser_links_are_active/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/xsupcn/laser_link...

raverbashing 3y ago
Can't imagine how hard it is to align those in space (and keep them aligned) in a low altitude satellite, but it sounds pretty cool. I'm guessing the range is something like 1000km/2000km?
lxgr 3y ago
Sure, high-bandwidth inter-satellite links are essential for providing service to remote regions (or even just to make ground station placement more economical), but the question here is whether they could ever economically compete with fiberoptics outright. For extremely latency sensitive applications, I guess they will (e.g. for trading and real-time communications), but for everything else that can wait a few more milliseconds, I'd guess that the operational overhead and reduced reliability will never be worth it, especially if fiber already exists on the same path.

foobiekr 3y ago

The article is 100% rubbish. Just complete trash. Each submarine cable is 12+ strands which are DWDM multiplexed to 20-40 channels at 100-400gbps. The entire _planned_ starlink constellation has less aggregate switching capacity than a pair of current generation core routers. The market for terrestrial ethernet _routed_ 400Gbps ports is 10k+ annually and 800Gbps is just getting warmed up. Satellite is not going to even make the slightest dent in terrestrial networking. Starlink isn't even viable without most of the traffic doing two leg ground-satellite-ground for SP-network connected ground stations. 100% of that traffic is landing on the terrestrial internet.

Retric 3y ago
That Starlink estimate must be low, they currently have 1.5 million customers and a significant percentage of total bandwidth is over ocean and thus mostly wasted. If you assume a pessimistic 100x over subscription and 50% waste over oceans and non serviced countries * 50mbps (upload + download) * 1.5 million customers that’s well over 1.5 TBPs current capacity for customers which then doubles when you include their base stations. And they that’s today when the current 3887 Satilites which mostly v1.0 and v1.5 which have dramatically less individual bandwidth than v2.0. PS: Also your port estimate overstates total bandwidth as each point to point link requires a port on each side, and packets generally make multiple hops through the internet.
- zirgs 3y ago
  Does it count as a waste if their main selling point is to deliver internet access to places that are hard or impossible to reach otherwise?
  - ilyt 3y ago
    Well you're calculating bandwidth so yes
    - zirgs 3y ago
      But Starlink would have no reason to exist in the first place if it didn't offer service in those remote places.

dheera 3y ago

Even if it becomes possible it's a recipe for disaster, we'll lose a lot of mission critical systems of sorts in the event of a bad solar flare. There aren't too many common natural disasters that could take out a huge fraction of undersea cables in one go.