4 ms·

You'll not be able to get anywhere near the throughputs that we have with today's fibre communication networks using satellite communications, unless there is s

You'll not be able to get anywhere near the throughputs that we have with today's fibre communication networks using satellite communications, unless there is some revolutionary breakthrough (and by revolutionary I mean completely changing of how we understand losses in free-space, so extremely unlikely). This means we will not really use satellite comms instead of fibre. That said there is definitely applications that benefit from optical satellite comms.

londons_explore 3y ago
But even getting 1% of the throughput is enough to prevent modern life grinding to a halt. sure - people won't be able to watch netflix, but basic things like credit card processing, sending emails, getting emergency alerts out, ordering an uber, etc. would all work fine with a 99% reduction in bandwidth. To cripple a countries infrastructure, you need to cut 100%. And satellite links mean you can no longer do that.
- redeeman 3y ago
  > sending emails you had better hope people stop using modern webmails then, have you seen how insanely huge those pages are? we'd have to sit for HOURS to download them at dialup speeds
  - nickpeterson 3y ago
    They want to style every element four different ways. Hello World marketing emails are like 70kb. Reminds me of the days of Microsoft frontpage.
  - andylynch 3y ago
    I remember in the mid 90s a fellow intern scratching his head about why a short video clip he'd emailed to his school hadn't made it through - it eventually did, but took about 36 hours to send through the local OpenMail -> internet gateway. Every other email out the door did as well.
- cycomanic 3y ago
  I think you seriously unterestimate the amount of data society uses to function. If e.g. Australia would suddenly go to only 1% of it's throughput it would cause economic chaos and likely cause hyperinflation amongst many things. Too many things rely on data essentially being free (the development of data traffic prices over the last 4 decades is absolutely mind blowing), in fact even if data throughput prices would stop dropping that would likely have significant economic impact as business plans rely on those projections.
- KineticLensman 3y ago
  > To cripple a countries infrastructure, you need to cut 100%. You could do a lot of damage with a few %, targeted in the right places, such as the so-called operational nets (as opposed to their business/IT nets) used by organisations that run critical national infrastructure. E.g. those that monitor / control power distribution.
- vidarh 3y ago
  In the 90's at one point one of Sprints connections between the US and Northern Europe had a problem, and a lot of traffic was routed south towards backups. The congestion caused made connections to the US nearly impossible but also severely hampered a lot of intra-European traffic for many hours. While it may not entirely grind to a halt, taking out part of the capacity can still cause a lot of problems.
  - funnymony 3y ago
    Possibly there should be emergency scenarios considered. Where government turns off video things (youtube and netflix) in case of major network degradation.
- bob1029 3y ago
  Consider that with a 100x reduction in aggregate bandwidth that many clients currently connected to the internet effectively become DDoS agents. My MacBook doesnt know to not try for an Xcode update because a fiber link got cut somewhere. I feel like everything would get congested and stay that way for a very long time.
andy_ppp 3y ago
WiFi will be too slow forever compared to Ethernet until suddenly it isn’t.
- gambiting 3y ago
  People have been saying this literally for 20 years now, yet even the fastest 6E wifi with compatible devices and router can barely break 1Gbps barrier in real life use(for me), and majority of the time I see it's much less than that. I mean it's great seeing real life 300-500mbps over wifi, don't get me wrong, but all this incredibly fancy(and very expensive) tech doesn't seem to beat a basic £5 cable quite yet.
  - BiteCode_dev 3y ago
    Not to mention, ping, jitter and packet loss are all better with ethernet. Most users never until you put them in a situation where their performance is dependent of those factors, like gaming.
    - yomlica8 3y ago
      I feel like they do notice but they blame other parts of the chain first, like their ISP.
  - bdavbdav 3y ago
    You're right - its just too unpredictable. The bit that gets me is the hardware in laptops / devices. Apple seem to take some care in antenna design etc, and appear to be fairly fast / reliable, but many device manufacturers stick in whatever, if you get a link then great, call it a day.
- rasz 3y ago
  Are you planning on discovering some new laws of physics?

londons_explore 3y ago

But even getting 1% of the throughput is enough to prevent modern life grinding to a halt. sure - people won't be able to watch netflix, but basic things like credit card processing, sending emails, getting emergency alerts out, ordering an uber, etc. would all work fine with a 99% reduction in bandwidth. To cripple a countries infrastructure, you need to cut 100%. And satellite links mean you can no longer do that.

redeeman 3y ago
> sending emails you had better hope people stop using modern webmails then, have you seen how insanely huge those pages are? we'd have to sit for HOURS to download them at dialup speeds
- nickpeterson 3y ago
  They want to style every element four different ways. Hello World marketing emails are like 70kb. Reminds me of the days of Microsoft frontpage.
- andylynch 3y ago
  I remember in the mid 90s a fellow intern scratching his head about why a short video clip he'd emailed to his school hadn't made it through - it eventually did, but took about 36 hours to send through the local OpenMail -> internet gateway. Every other email out the door did as well.
cycomanic 3y ago
I think you seriously unterestimate the amount of data society uses to function. If e.g. Australia would suddenly go to only 1% of it's throughput it would cause economic chaos and likely cause hyperinflation amongst many things. Too many things rely on data essentially being free (the development of data traffic prices over the last 4 decades is absolutely mind blowing), in fact even if data throughput prices would stop dropping that would likely have significant economic impact as business plans rely on those projections.
KineticLensman 3y ago
> To cripple a countries infrastructure, you need to cut 100%. You could do a lot of damage with a few %, targeted in the right places, such as the so-called operational nets (as opposed to their business/IT nets) used by organisations that run critical national infrastructure. E.g. those that monitor / control power distribution.
vidarh 3y ago
In the 90's at one point one of Sprints connections between the US and Northern Europe had a problem, and a lot of traffic was routed south towards backups. The congestion caused made connections to the US nearly impossible but also severely hampered a lot of intra-European traffic for many hours. While it may not entirely grind to a halt, taking out part of the capacity can still cause a lot of problems.
- funnymony 3y ago
  Possibly there should be emergency scenarios considered. Where government turns off video things (youtube and netflix) in case of major network degradation.
bob1029 3y ago
Consider that with a 100x reduction in aggregate bandwidth that many clients currently connected to the internet effectively become DDoS agents. My MacBook doesnt know to not try for an Xcode update because a fiber link got cut somewhere. I feel like everything would get congested and stay that way for a very long time.

andy_ppp 3y ago

WiFi will be too slow forever compared to Ethernet until suddenly it isn’t.

gambiting 3y ago
People have been saying this literally for 20 years now, yet even the fastest 6E wifi with compatible devices and router can barely break 1Gbps barrier in real life use(for me), and majority of the time I see it's much less than that. I mean it's great seeing real life 300-500mbps over wifi, don't get me wrong, but all this incredibly fancy(and very expensive) tech doesn't seem to beat a basic £5 cable quite yet.
- BiteCode_dev 3y ago
  Not to mention, ping, jitter and packet loss are all better with ethernet. Most users never until you put them in a situation where their performance is dependent of those factors, like gaming.
  - yomlica8 3y ago
    I feel like they do notice but they blame other parts of the chain first, like their ISP.
- bdavbdav 3y ago
  You're right - its just too unpredictable. The bit that gets me is the hardware in laptops / devices. Apple seem to take some care in antenna design etc, and appear to be fairly fast / reliable, but many device manufacturers stick in whatever, if you get a link then great, call it a day.
rasz 3y ago
Are you planning on discovering some new laws of physics?