Starlink revisions, Nov 2018
Starlink revisions, Nov 2018 on HackerTube: recommended by 4 Hacker News commenters across 3 separate months, 2018–2023.
Mark Handley of UCL looks at how SpaceX's November 2018 revisions to the Starlink constellation affect network behavior. The video visualizes the orbits and routing and estimates latencies, building on his earlier video and research paper.
What HN commenters said
11 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
cagenutMay 2019Strongly recommends
this guy made an excellent youtube video modeling and visualizing the satellite orbits, the network routing paths across them, and the resulting latencies: ▶ this video NYC to London on the current internet is 76ms, he shows it across starlink's updated plans as working out to around 46ms. Later in the description he points out a mistake in his own math and says that starlink paths should be 8.7% faster than the video shows, so really jfk<->lhr ~ 42ms.
in “First SpaceX Starlink satellites loaded into Falcon fairing” · View on HN
paranoidrobotFeb 2021Recommends
Mark Handley has done a bunch of videos analysing this on his channel[0]. The TLDR is that there is a lot of room for Starlink to beat existing terrestrial options IF they can get the laser links working on-orbit. This video[1] shows estimates using what was known about proposed configurations in 2018 [0] [link] [1] ▶ this video
in “SpaceX says Starlink now has over 10k users” · View on HN
cagenutJun 2020Recommends
If you want a really great visualization and latency estimates for starlink check out the models and videos this guy came up with: ▶ this video [link] The comment from the FCC about it not accounting for "processing [&] routing" is kindof nonsense on its face, those are not novel problems they're already done by ever other router and switch, including several other satellite networks.
in “FCC has “serious doubts” that SpaceX can deliver latencies under 100ms” · View on HN
rashomonMay 2019Recommends
The FCC filing has a lot of good technical details on the deployment and frequency usage. Additionally, Mark Handley has a good primer on it. It may kill actual east-west terrestrial traffic due to latency improvements: ▶ this video North-South will still be terrestrial.
in “First SpaceX Starlink satellites loaded into Falcon fairing” · View on HN
positr0nMay 2019Recommends
Here's some great visualizations of the orbits and an explanation of what it means that the orbits are optimized for the northern hemisphere. (This confused me at first since obviously any orbit has to go just as far south as it does north of the equator.) ▶ this video
in “Starlink – SpaceX’s broadband internet system” · View on HN
kobalskyApr 2023Cites it
> This might as be considered a law of physics - electromagnetic energy will always travel faster, more... through a conductive medium than through air. it actually travels faster through air (no vacuum necessary) than through fiber or copper as those transmit information at 2/3rd of the speed of light while air transmits it at 99% [1]. which is why starlink could in theory achieve better latency than a straight run of fiber optic across the world [2]. this of course doesn't mean that it's better in a mouse because of the overhead of processing such a short distance. [1] [link] [2] ▶ this video
in “Ask HN: What lesser-known accessories do you use with your computer?” · View on HN
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lgatsJan 2021Cites it
Forward and back looking lasers would have minimal speed difference, side laser links don't appear to be at extreme speed differences according to these hypothesized connections: ▶ this video
in “SpaceX sends laser-linked Starlinks to the polar orbit” · View on HN
iso1210Aug 2020Cites it
▶ this video is an animation of how it's supposed to work, including latencies There are enough satelites and low enough routing on the lasers to mean packets will arrive from London to NY faster than even a great-circle fibre. In reality how much bandwidth is available is a function of money, and HFTs tend to have a lot of money.
in “SpaceX Starlink average speedtest is 42.3Mbps down / 9.7 Mbps up” · View on HN
mhandleyJun 2020Cites it
There's no doubt that this sort of technology can in principle deliver sub-100ms latencies. Take a look at my analysis here with inter-satellite links: ▶ this video And here without ISLs: [link] Now, these videos assume no queuing delay. It's really hard to guarantee low queuing delay in a traditional IP network, but there's been a lot of research over the years, and we have a range of ideas that can be used to deliver minimal queuing with reasonable utilization. In fact doing this for Starlink is something I'm actively researching at the moment. I'm convinced it can be done, but it won't look like a conventional IP network internally. I don't know what SpaceX will actually do, so if the FCC has doubts, this is perhaps where they are concerned. Other delays might be in the ground segment, but that's more or less the same for SpaceX's terestrial competitors, and the FCC seems to think they can do it.
in “FCC has “serious doubts” that SpaceX can deliver latencies under 100ms” · View on HN
gvbMay 2019Cites it
At 5:03 [1] he talks about how the laser links give good connectivity east-west but not as good north-south. [1] ▶ this video
in “Starlink – SpaceX’s broadband internet system” · View on HN
TrueDualityNov 2018Cites it
There were recently two simulations done on possible latencies based on the FCC filings. You can find the video simulations in the links at the bottom of this post. You can see international links that have latencies lower than the existing internet by a significant margin. Unfortunately neither of those simulations take into account that the first iteration has been changed to only use radio and no laser links. [0]: [link] [1]: ▶ this video
in “SpaceX just got FCC approval to launch 7,518 satellites” · View on HN