6 ms·

Starlink enters the chat. Most people don't know but Starlink's ambition is to capture only a small part of retail market (a person buying a starlink terminal)

by kjksf 3y ago

Starlink enters the chat. Most people don't know but Starlink's ambition is to capture only a small part of retail market (a person buying a starlink terminal) but a big chunk of backbone traffic. That's why latest version of the satellites have lasers to beam data between satellites so that they don't need to go back and forth between satellites and base stations. That business will be direct competitor to under sea cables. Fun fact: light travels a bit faster in space than in an optic cable. Microsoft has already did partnership with Spacex for Azure: https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/digital-transformation/azure-space-partners-bring-deep-expertise-to-new-venture/ https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/digital-transform...

dotnet00 3y ago
I doubt Starlink has the bandwidth needed to beat out an underwater cable, it's good as a backup option though.
- andrewpolidori 3y ago
  I'm curious to know what is more expensive to roll out capacity for. starlink launches are expensive but so is doing work under the sea.
  - sandworm101 3y ago
    Starlink uses wireless connections, be them laser or radio. That just cannot scale in the same way that fiber can. It's an apples and oranges comparison.
    - davidmurdoch 3y ago
      Why can't space optics scale as well as undersea fiber optics?
      - ceejayoz 3y ago
        Because there's a non-space part of the route you have to deal with. Lasers + clouds = unfun.
        davidmurdoch 3y ago
        Aren't the lasers in space? I don't think the satellites beam lasers to/from earth.
        ceejayoz 3y ago
        Until you put all of Sweden (and the people they want to talk to, like Estonia) in space, that data's going to have to come down at some point. Fast inter-satellite data doesn't help you if it has to queue to get in/out of space.
      - sandworm101 3y ago
        Because the "beam" in a fiber is tiny and can be controlled, while the beam between two sats is actually very large and runs in free space. Most of the transmitted energy will always overshoot the receiver, resulting in significant crosstalk issues once multiple sats are in sight of each other. You cannot have two beams running the same path on the same frequency, not in space. But new fiber can be laid down infinitely along identical paths without any degradation.
    - dboreham 3y ago
      Quick note that: yes, but free space laser is a bit different than wireless because bandwidth can be extremely high and adjacent transmitter interference is essentially zero.
      - ceejayoz 3y ago
        It still has to get to/from space at some point on each end.
        perihelions 3y ago
        Couldn't you scale horizontally, e.g. with thousands of satellite base stations scattered across a continent? Then each one could occupy a separate, non-overlapping spatial channel. Perhaps you could split up and distribute your network backbone over something like that?
        ceejayoz 3y ago
        That'd require scaling up either the number of satellites or their size (talking to thousands of base stations at once = more power, more antennae) dramatically.
        londons_explore 3y ago
        It is possible with micromirror devices to have a single lens on a satellite to send thousands of beams in different directions. That opens up the idea of N satellites having N^2 bandwidth... Which scales much better than optical fibers, where in general to have double the amount of bandwidth, you have double the cable laying effort. Current starlink satellites do not have this ability - they can connect to max 3 other satellites I believe, which is pretty much the minimum for a fully connected network.
        sandworm101 3y ago
        >> in general to have double the amount of bandwidth, you have double the cable laying effort. Getting double the bandwidth just means laying a slightly thicker cable, and I do mean slightly. Adding a bundle of extra fiber when laying a cable adds maybe a millimeter to the cable width. The cost of the fiber is almost irrelevant to the cost of the other layers and the effort of placing it. Most cables are therefore laid with plenty of extra "dark" fiber for later expansion/redundancy.
  - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    Both are expensive, for sure, but the undersea cables will be used and paid for by major internet providers, whereas finding customers for Starlink is still proving to be tricky.
  - lxgr 3y ago
    On the other hand, submarine cables can work for decades; Starlink satellites each last only very few years.
timmg 3y ago
> Fun fact: light travels a bit faster in space than in an optic cable. Doesn't it have to travel farther, tho? Does that cancel it out?
- cronin101 3y ago
  Starlink is only an extra ~10% of the Earth radius at orbit height, but optic cables slow light by ~30%. So it's actually counterintuitive but "could" be just as fast. (Depending on how far you need to send data, it will regress for intra nation but will theoretically improve long distance communication).
  - jagrsw 3y ago
    What's the theoretical max bandwidth in LEO's near-vacuum? Could we use a wide 1GHz-1THz channel for directional beams to hit 1Tbps, given a decent SNR? Cosmic dust and H atoms seem like non-issues for 1000km links? Would power or thermal reqs be an issue here? I understand it's only about satellite-to-satellite, but still it's interesting.
  - sidewndr46 3y ago
    You're missing the fact that Starlink doesn't take your traffic to the destination. It takes to a nearby downlink station. Then it goes on those same optic cables to the destination.
    - dotnet00 3y ago
      It can take your data to the destination via inter-satellite laser links. That's how they offer service over water and near/at the poles, where downlink stations are not in line of sight for the satellites.
      - sidewndr46 3y ago
        "can take your data" is not the same as thing as "takes the shortest path". There is no way that Starlink is using precious inter-satellite capacity when your data can go direct to a downlink station and transit on dirt cheap fiber
vsnf 3y ago
Musk’s recent involvement in Ukraine’s use of starlink makes me deeply hesitant to rely on SpaceX for communications, especially when Russia is involved as is likely the case here. A service that is like starlink not run by Musk could be the way forward, of course.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  Amazon's trying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_Systems SpaceX's (not so) secret sauce is the cheap launches, though. That's going to be hard to beat for at least 5-10 years.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  That story was widespread, and ultimately false, with the correction never reported as loudly. SpaceX had always had the cells over Crimea disabled, Ukraine was not aware. Ukraine asked for the service to be enabled there for their drone, this went against SpaceX's policies and the US's policies, so they refused. At that point, the US had not given Ukraine any guided weaponry that had enough range to hit Crimea, Ukraine was looking to use Starlink as a guidance system, this would've created all sorts of issues and since Ukraine had asked for the cell to be unblocked IIRC a day beforehand, there wasn't enough time to even consider working through the various risks it'd expose SpaceX to.
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    Even if it didn't happen, it highlights the fact that it might be possible, right?
    - dotnet00 3y ago
      Sure, no country or company that needs reliable communications should rely on the stability of any single point, similar to how the DoD insists on dissimilar redundancy in national security launch providers, expecting the options to have supply chains with very little overlap such that issues with one don't affect the other.
  - 3y ago
bryanlarsen 3y ago
Starlink laser capacity is 100Gbps. Undersea cables often carry more than 100Tbps.
- mycall 3y ago
  > more than 100Tbps Might be much more than that once twisting light for lossless compression becomes mainstream.
- sigmoid10 3y ago
  I will probably come at a premium, but I think it's pretty much given that governments and the military will have a huge interest in this, if only for the fact that you can't cut a laser beam in space. At least not without anyone seeing it - unlike undersee cables. '
  - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    Governments and the military already have their own space internet; I doubt the US would want to go into an agreement with a commercial entity owned and controlled by someone with dubious allegiances. They will require heaps of legal changes and certifications first, including making sure Musk does not have control over it.
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      The military has already engaged in such an agreement, known as Starshield. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities > SpaceX also designs, builds, and launches customized military satellites based on variants of the Starlink satellite bus, with the largest publicly known customer being the Space Development Agency (SDA). > In 2019, tests by the United States Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) demonstrated a 610 Mbit/s data link through Starlink to a Beechcraft C-12 Huron aircraft in flight. Additionally, in late 2019, the United States Air Force successfully tested a connection with Starlink on an AC-130 Gunship. In 2020, the Air Force utilized Starlink in support of its Advanced Battlefield management system during a live-fire exercise. They demonstrated Starlink connected to a "variety of air and terrestrial assets" including the Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker. The military wants far more bandwidth than is available with their current setup, for everything from drone swarms to far-flung observation bases wanting to check their email.
haizhung 3y ago
Considering Musk’s history of far-right tendencies, I hope that countries and companies alike are thinking very carefully whether they want critical infrastructure to be backed by this guy.
- tyho 3y ago
  What do you mean by "far-right" tendencies?
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1601894132573605888 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1601894132573605888 https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-san-francisco-d1db5688e11f0b7a82fb4a815f8149f6 https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-... https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/elon-musk-conspiracy-theory-texas-mall-shooter-1234732103/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/elon-m... Further examples abound.
    - junofan 3y ago
      Eh, seems like guilt by association. Plus the 3 A.M. Fauci tweet is objectively funny.
      - ceejayoz 3y ago
        https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1627669410629701636 https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1627669410629701636
  - perihelions 3y ago
    "We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it" is unfriendly diplomacy from the perspective of small countries not allied to the US.
  - haizhung 3y ago
    I am a bit surprised that this has to be elaborated here (as stories like the following are posted here fairly often), but here you go: - musk openly sharing a German nazi party stance and equating migration with “invasion” [1] - he allows hate speech to proliferate on twitter [2] - he regularly shares conspiracy theories that are common in right wing circles, eg. casted doubt on the fact that the shooter of Allen, Texas was a white nationalist (even though he literally had swastikas tattooed) [3] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/30/german-government-rebukes-elon-musk-over-refugee-rescue-criticism https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/30/german-governm... [2] https://phys.org/news/2023-04-analysis-speech-significantly-twitter.html https://phys.org/news/2023-04-analysis-speech-significantly-... [3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65539698 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65539698
danw1979 3y ago
You might be right in pointing out that for latency-sensitive low-bandwidth applications (HFT basically) starlink trunks over long distances should beat undersea optical. As others have pointed out though, starlink as it currently stands isn’t going to corner the market on general internet backbone traffic.
jve 3y ago
Unfortunately, Starlink is not yet available in neither Sweden, Finland or Estonia: https://satellitemap.space/?norad=48119 https://satellitemap.space/?norad=48119 Too much North.
- oittaa 3y ago
  Why didn't you link to the official map that shows availability in the Nordics? https://www.starlink.com/map https://www.starlink.com/map
ChatGTP 3y ago
Bit of a shame this is the top comment, it has almost nothing to do with the article?
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. What the top comment is is a factor of time anyway, check again later; commenting on the position a comment has doesn't add anything to the discussion either.
chinchilla2020 3y ago
Backbone traffic will never occur over starlink. The bandwidth is tiny. The latency is high. Starlink barely works when you are on a moving boat or away from the coast. Believe me, I've tried.
- inemesitaffia 3y ago
  With the appropriate dish?
  - chinchilla2020 3y ago
    Possibly. If you find a solution, please forward it to me and I will share it with the nautical community.

by kjksf 3y ago

dotnet00 3y ago

I doubt Starlink has the bandwidth needed to beat out an underwater cable, it's good as a backup option though.

andrewpolidori 3y ago
I'm curious to know what is more expensive to roll out capacity for. starlink launches are expensive but so is doing work under the sea.
- sandworm101 3y ago
  Starlink uses wireless connections, be them laser or radio. That just cannot scale in the same way that fiber can. It's an apples and oranges comparison.
  - davidmurdoch 3y ago
    Why can't space optics scale as well as undersea fiber optics?
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      Because there's a non-space part of the route you have to deal with. Lasers + clouds = unfun.
      - davidmurdoch 3y ago
        Aren't the lasers in space? I don't think the satellites beam lasers to/from earth.
        ceejayoz 3y ago
        Until you put all of Sweden (and the people they want to talk to, like Estonia) in space, that data's going to have to come down at some point. Fast inter-satellite data doesn't help you if it has to queue to get in/out of space.
    - sandworm101 3y ago
      Because the "beam" in a fiber is tiny and can be controlled, while the beam between two sats is actually very large and runs in free space. Most of the transmitted energy will always overshoot the receiver, resulting in significant crosstalk issues once multiple sats are in sight of each other. You cannot have two beams running the same path on the same frequency, not in space. But new fiber can be laid down infinitely along identical paths without any degradation.
  - dboreham 3y ago
    Quick note that: yes, but free space laser is a bit different than wireless because bandwidth can be extremely high and adjacent transmitter interference is essentially zero.
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      It still has to get to/from space at some point on each end.
      - perihelions 3y ago
        Couldn't you scale horizontally, e.g. with thousands of satellite base stations scattered across a continent? Then each one could occupy a separate, non-overlapping spatial channel. Perhaps you could split up and distribute your network backbone over something like that?
        ceejayoz 3y ago
        That'd require scaling up either the number of satellites or their size (talking to thousands of base stations at once = more power, more antennae) dramatically.
        londons_explore 3y ago
        It is possible with micromirror devices to have a single lens on a satellite to send thousands of beams in different directions. That opens up the idea of N satellites having N^2 bandwidth... Which scales much better than optical fibers, where in general to have double the amount of bandwidth, you have double the cable laying effort. Current starlink satellites do not have this ability - they can connect to max 3 other satellites I believe, which is pretty much the minimum for a fully connected network.
        sandworm101 3y ago
        >> in general to have double the amount of bandwidth, you have double the cable laying effort. Getting double the bandwidth just means laying a slightly thicker cable, and I do mean slightly. Adding a bundle of extra fiber when laying a cable adds maybe a millimeter to the cable width. The cost of the fiber is almost irrelevant to the cost of the other layers and the effort of placing it. Most cables are therefore laid with plenty of extra "dark" fiber for later expansion/redundancy.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  Both are expensive, for sure, but the undersea cables will be used and paid for by major internet providers, whereas finding customers for Starlink is still proving to be tricky.
- lxgr 3y ago
  On the other hand, submarine cables can work for decades; Starlink satellites each last only very few years.

timmg 3y ago

> Fun fact: light travels a bit faster in space than in an optic cable. Doesn't it have to travel farther, tho? Does that cancel it out?

cronin101 3y ago
Starlink is only an extra ~10% of the Earth radius at orbit height, but optic cables slow light by ~30%. So it's actually counterintuitive but "could" be just as fast. (Depending on how far you need to send data, it will regress for intra nation but will theoretically improve long distance communication).
- jagrsw 3y ago
  What's the theoretical max bandwidth in LEO's near-vacuum? Could we use a wide 1GHz-1THz channel for directional beams to hit 1Tbps, given a decent SNR? Cosmic dust and H atoms seem like non-issues for 1000km links? Would power or thermal reqs be an issue here? I understand it's only about satellite-to-satellite, but still it's interesting.
- sidewndr46 3y ago
  You're missing the fact that Starlink doesn't take your traffic to the destination. It takes to a nearby downlink station. Then it goes on those same optic cables to the destination.
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    It can take your data to the destination via inter-satellite laser links. That's how they offer service over water and near/at the poles, where downlink stations are not in line of sight for the satellites.
    - sidewndr46 3y ago
      "can take your data" is not the same as thing as "takes the shortest path". There is no way that Starlink is using precious inter-satellite capacity when your data can go direct to a downlink station and transit on dirt cheap fiber

vsnf 3y ago

Musk’s recent involvement in Ukraine’s use of starlink makes me deeply hesitant to rely on SpaceX for communications, especially when Russia is involved as is likely the case here. A service that is like starlink not run by Musk could be the way forward, of course.

ceejayoz 3y ago
Amazon's trying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_Systems SpaceX's (not so) secret sauce is the cheap launches, though. That's going to be hard to beat for at least 5-10 years.
dotnet00 3y ago
That story was widespread, and ultimately false, with the correction never reported as loudly. SpaceX had always had the cells over Crimea disabled, Ukraine was not aware. Ukraine asked for the service to be enabled there for their drone, this went against SpaceX's policies and the US's policies, so they refused. At that point, the US had not given Ukraine any guided weaponry that had enough range to hit Crimea, Ukraine was looking to use Starlink as a guidance system, this would've created all sorts of issues and since Ukraine had asked for the cell to be unblocked IIRC a day beforehand, there wasn't enough time to even consider working through the various risks it'd expose SpaceX to.
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  Even if it didn't happen, it highlights the fact that it might be possible, right?
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    Sure, no country or company that needs reliable communications should rely on the stability of any single point, similar to how the DoD insists on dissimilar redundancy in national security launch providers, expecting the options to have supply chains with very little overlap such that issues with one don't affect the other.
- 3y ago

bryanlarsen 3y ago

Starlink laser capacity is 100Gbps. Undersea cables often carry more than 100Tbps.

mycall 3y ago
> more than 100Tbps Might be much more than that once twisting light for lossless compression becomes mainstream.
sigmoid10 3y ago
I will probably come at a premium, but I think it's pretty much given that governments and the military will have a huge interest in this, if only for the fact that you can't cut a laser beam in space. At least not without anyone seeing it - unlike undersee cables. '
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  Governments and the military already have their own space internet; I doubt the US would want to go into an agreement with a commercial entity owned and controlled by someone with dubious allegiances. They will require heaps of legal changes and certifications first, including making sure Musk does not have control over it.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    The military has already engaged in such an agreement, known as Starshield. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities > SpaceX also designs, builds, and launches customized military satellites based on variants of the Starlink satellite bus, with the largest publicly known customer being the Space Development Agency (SDA). > In 2019, tests by the United States Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) demonstrated a 610 Mbit/s data link through Starlink to a Beechcraft C-12 Huron aircraft in flight. Additionally, in late 2019, the United States Air Force successfully tested a connection with Starlink on an AC-130 Gunship. In 2020, the Air Force utilized Starlink in support of its Advanced Battlefield management system during a live-fire exercise. They demonstrated Starlink connected to a "variety of air and terrestrial assets" including the Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker. The military wants far more bandwidth than is available with their current setup, for everything from drone swarms to far-flung observation bases wanting to check their email.

haizhung 3y ago

Considering Musk’s history of far-right tendencies, I hope that countries and companies alike are thinking very carefully whether they want critical infrastructure to be backed by this guy.

tyho 3y ago
What do you mean by "far-right" tendencies?
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1601894132573605888 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1601894132573605888 https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-san-francisco-d1db5688e11f0b7a82fb4a815f8149f6 https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-... https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/elon-musk-conspiracy-theory-texas-mall-shooter-1234732103/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/elon-m... Further examples abound.
  - junofan 3y ago
    Eh, seems like guilt by association. Plus the 3 A.M. Fauci tweet is objectively funny.
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1627669410629701636 https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1627669410629701636
- perihelions 3y ago
  "We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it" is unfriendly diplomacy from the perspective of small countries not allied to the US.
- haizhung 3y ago
  I am a bit surprised that this has to be elaborated here (as stories like the following are posted here fairly often), but here you go: - musk openly sharing a German nazi party stance and equating migration with “invasion” [1] - he allows hate speech to proliferate on twitter [2] - he regularly shares conspiracy theories that are common in right wing circles, eg. casted doubt on the fact that the shooter of Allen, Texas was a white nationalist (even though he literally had swastikas tattooed) [3] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/30/german-government-rebukes-elon-musk-over-refugee-rescue-criticism https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/30/german-governm... [2] https://phys.org/news/2023-04-analysis-speech-significantly-twitter.html https://phys.org/news/2023-04-analysis-speech-significantly-... [3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65539698 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65539698

danw1979 3y ago

You might be right in pointing out that for latency-sensitive low-bandwidth applications (HFT basically) starlink trunks over long distances should beat undersea optical. As others have pointed out though, starlink as it currently stands isn’t going to corner the market on general internet backbone traffic.

jve 3y ago

Unfortunately, Starlink is not yet available in neither Sweden, Finland or Estonia: https://satellitemap.space/?norad=48119 https://satellitemap.space/?norad=48119 Too much North.

oittaa 3y ago
Why didn't you link to the official map that shows availability in the Nordics? https://www.starlink.com/map https://www.starlink.com/map

ChatGTP 3y ago

Bit of a shame this is the top comment, it has almost nothing to do with the article?

Cthulhu_ 3y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. What the top comment is is a factor of time anyway, check again later; commenting on the position a comment has doesn't add anything to the discussion either.

chinchilla2020 3y ago

Backbone traffic will never occur over starlink. The bandwidth is tiny. The latency is high. Starlink barely works when you are on a moving boat or away from the coast. Believe me, I've tried.

inemesitaffia 3y ago
With the appropriate dish?
- chinchilla2020 3y ago
  Possibly. If you find a solution, please forward it to me and I will share it with the nautical community.