SpaceX Launches 12th Starlink Mission, Says Users Getting 100Mbps Downloads (arstechnica.com) 91
On Thursday morning a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Kennedy Space Center, carrying SpaceX's 12th batch of Starlink Internet satellites. The mission went nominally, with the first stage making a safe landing several minutes after the launch, and the full stack of satellites deploying shortly thereafter. From a report: Prior to launch, webcast commentator Kate Tice, a senior program reliability engineer at SpaceX, offered several details about development of the space-based Starlink Internet service. "We are well into our first phase of testing of our private beta program, with plans to roll out a public beta later this year," Tice said. For several months, SpaceX has been collecting names and addresses for people interested in participating in the public beta here. Tice also revealed the first official public information about internal tests, saying that SpaceX employees have been using Starlink terminals, collecting latency statistics, and performing standard speed tests of the system. "Initial results have been good," she said. These tests reveal "super-low latency," and download speeds greater than 100 megabits per second. This, she noted, would provide enough bandwidth to play the fastest online games and stream multiple HD movies at once.
what are the caps / slow down points? (Score:2)
what are the caps / slow down points?
Re: what are the caps / slow down points? (Score:4, Insightful)
One slowdown point is the speed of light going to LEO or GEO and back. The RTT of geo is 600ms on top of any other latency on the networks. LEO can get as fast as 40ms RTT for that single hop. So for gamers, an extra 40ms might be a problem, certainly 40ms. Audio packets are encoded in 20ms samples per packet. If they arrive out of order they need to be buffered or discarded. This is referred to as jitter. The larger the buffer, the more likely you will accidentally talk over someone when there is a pause in conversation. We call this stepping on each others call. Its like when two people almost run into each other and then all the stop and go when one tries to go ahead and you both move at the same time. 40ms would be tolerable as long as the rest of your total end-to-end travel never exceeds another 20ms. Typical RTT for a layer 7 OPTIONS message is 10 - 50ms. Thats all the way down the stack and back up on the other side.
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more like the slow down points after useing XX data?
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One slowdown point is the speed of light going to LEO or GEO and back.
Starlink is LEO. You should delete "Geo" from your post.
The RTT of geo is 600ms on top of any other latency on the networks.
But Starlink is LEO, so that's irrelevant.
LEO can get as fast as 40ms RTT for that single hop. ...
Which is what we're talking about here.
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Very proportional to the number of users, I would imagine.
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Right, this service is not for people in the urban population centers, those people should just use wired.
Mobile Modem (Score:2)
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If it's big enough, I can make a hat out of it and get rid of my tin foil.
submitter got title wrong (Score:2)
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Are we talking about a large, medium or small?
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Are we talking about a large, medium or small?
We're talking mondo [youtu.be]
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"Never, it requires an antenna about the size of a pizza box."
I'm sure future Teslas will have one built-in.
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They canned the pizza box a while ago. Now it's a small UFO
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It's a fixed location network at this point.
Uplink side? (Score:2, Insightful)
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You aren't going to get a straight answer. The claims that they have "super low latency" are obvious bollocks, the laws of physics prevent it being competitive with fibre.
Look, some games already have a wifi filter. You can choose not to play with people who are on wifi in games like Mortal Kombat, so that's the baseline any other wireless service will be measured by. The thing with wifi is it's not just the added latency, it's the variable latency, something Starlink will have to contend with as well.
On th
speed of light in fiber is 2.2x10^8 m/s (Score:2)
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"The company projects that Starlink latency (or lag time) will be as low as 15 milliseconds." - from here: https://www.satelliteinternet.... [satelliteinternet.com].
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Fibre connection a fair way out in the sticks. Ping to Google server is sub 1ms. Even if it they put servers in orbit Starlink isn't going to be that fast.
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Is it a connection directly to that server because one doesn't typically even always see sub 1ms on their LAN and it isn't unusual for last mile hops to add more latency than that by themselves without any consideration for distance.
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I guess it goes into central Tokyo and then to a nearby CDN, maybe actually in the same building because it's NTT. Light travels about 300km per millisecond, say half that in fibre with switching...
This was a few years ago when it was only 2Gb, now it's 10Gbps.
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Sorry that wasn't an invitation for people to brag about their own personal gear. Your typical user on off the shelf consumerware crap does not always see sub ms latency for every ping... hitting the ISP gear on your block usually adds a few ms.
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You would have to do a number of hops through your local ISP and esp. if you are overseas and shooting for it.
The absolute BEST that Starlink could do is straight up and then straight down. IOW, 1 hope. 8 ms for the light and ~1 ms for routing, so ~9 ms. Yes, it is POSSIBLE for a land based ISP to route faster, IFF you are bo
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Starlink is 550km up. In fibre light travels at 66% the speed of radio waves worst case, newer fibre is faster.
So best case, Starlink satellite directly overhead and sat right next to the ground station, which happens to contain the server you want, zero contention and interference, anything closer than 360km will still have a lower RTT on fibre.
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A circle with a radius of 360km has an area of roughly 400,000 km^2. The surface area of the earth is roughly 500,000,000 km^2. If your numbers are correct and I haven't messed up the math in some embarrassing way, can we naively claim that StarLink will have a lower RTT to 99.92% of locations on earth?
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That's an interesting point. With all the caveats about shared bandwidth and interference and angle between the satellite and ground and the location of the base stations... Yes, potentially it may be faster.
Starlink has further to go due to being higher up, and fibre is getting faster (66% speed of light is worst case, modern fibre is better) but there will be some instances where it is quicker.
So it will depend a lot on the content being accessed. A lot of stuff is cached by CDNs or served dynamically fro
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Yeah, it's certainly a naive description of the situation...for most users. But if there's a Starlink groundstation at $newYorkStockExchange and a Starlink groundstation at $europeanStockExchange, Starlink can charge a comically large amount for "priority" access that guarantees near to the theoretical minimum latency between the two points. They could probably fund the whole project on just that.
A fairly lucrative sector of the finance industry would have to either pay Musk whatever he asks, or regulations
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I wonder though, would variable latency make it a lot less attractive?
And don't they enforce minimum latency now? Spindles of fibre optics just to make it fair for everyone?
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If you're interested in the subject, I recommend "Flash Boys" by Michael Lewis, of "Moneyball" and "The Big Short" fame. It's not as engaging as his most popular works, but I just finished it myself and found it to be an interesting introduction to the subject of high-frequency trading.
IEX [wikipedia.org], which is just one of the dozen+ stock exhanges in the US, does implement the exact "speed bump" you're describing in the form of a spindle of fiber. That's certainly not universal, though. The founders of IEX set out
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Thanks, I shall look that book up.
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Just try to get someone to lay that fibre "way out in the sticks" though. I wouldn't hold my breath on any of the major ISPs doing so anytime soon.
P.S. I guess it all comes down to what you call "way out in the sticks" though.
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There are millions of people like me, AT&T took goverment money and installed fiber along my road. The goverment did not pay them to hook anyone up. Most homes are well off the road so it would not be economical to do. I pay $90 a month for 50GB of satellite Internet now.
Anything cheaper or with enough bandwidth for streaming will get my money. I am signed up for the public beta. Please, please, Elon, I need this.
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I only have access to brass internet, you insensitive clod!
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That depends, if you are connecting somewhere far enough that latency is a factor like Europe or Asia Starlink likely kicks the shit out of fiber's latency.
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The claims that they have "super low latency" are obvious bollocks, the laws of physics prevent it being competitive with fibre.
Well that depends on the distance of transmission. The laws of physics state that light travels faster in a vacuum than it does through a solid material like a fiber optic cable. If they get the laser inter-satellite transmission system working, then Starlink could have lower latency than fiber over long distances since the light would travel faster in space. They have already tested an early version of the "space laser" system between two satellites. The current system is really an early version, and even
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"The laws of physics state that light travels faster in a vacuum than it does through a solid material like a fiber optic cable."
The speed of light is exactly 299,792,458 meters per second in a vacuum. In a transparent solid or liquid, it is divided by the index of refraction. The index of refraction for glass is roughly 1.5. So the speed of light in a glass fiber optic will be close to 199,861,638 meters per second.
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Just for comparison, real world ping times on Exede (Viasat-1) are around 750ms. 30ms would be absolute luxury for current geo sat users.
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Considering it won't even be offered for sale in places that have fibre, it doesn't matter much.
Starlink is only going after rural customers. They don't even have the capacity to handle major metro areas, nor do the plan to offer service there. It's not the business plan at all.
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Sure, and that's fine. Why do they have to exaggerate though? Just be honest about what it is.
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It's an Elon Musk company. They will always upsell it to the point where it generates headlines. Generating hype is far more important than being accurate in the era of easy investor money.
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"Update at 11:18pm ET: A new Reddit post listing more speed tests shows some Starlink users getting even lower latency of 21ms and 20ms."
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the laws of physics prevent it being competitive with fibre..
On the contrary, light in fiber is slower than radio through space. Both system have repeaters. Elon knows if his system is fastest between the NY and Eurpoean stock exchanges, it pays for itself in under a year based on front-running stocks alone.
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It's the distance. I get sub 1ms pings on fibre because there are nearby datacentres. Starlink has to go up and back down first.
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> I get sub 1ms pings on fibre because there are nearby datacentres. Starlink has to go up and back down first.
You're quite fortunate in a way that almost nobody else is! There would be no reason for you to get Starlink (unless you encounter local censorship).
The "last three billion" have no access to high-speed internet at all.
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You aren't going to get a straight answer. The claims that they have "super low latency" are obvious bollocks, the laws of physics prevent it being competitive with fibre.
Damn, your lack of science and logic is REALLY fucking you up. No wonder why you hate Musk and anything he touches.
Laws of physics is EXACTLY what Musk has going for him. For example, if I want to ping www.cnn.com on a comcast, it takes 15-20 ms to hit there. Traceroute get blocked after a certain level. However, just to go 15 miles (I know where this router is located), takes 6 hops. Now, assume that it is all on fiber (it isn't, but we will assume it just to make this easy for you), then you have spee
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You realize this is not a replacement for your in town fiber connection. I have one of the best country wifi connections reaching 20 miles and have typically a 12 ms ping, which is great, which is unlimited. In the country we are lucky to get 50 meg, most places can only offer 25 meg, oh and its 80-120 a month.
Is for us folk that cant get DSL, Fiber, etc. And it blows away the satellite (excede) internet I had before which at best had a 140 ms ping. Oh and you could exceed your cap in a day, then you only g
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I agree fully. I just wish they would agree with you too.
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You aren't going to get a straight answer. The claims that they have "super low latency" are obvious bollocks, the laws of physics prevent it being competitive with fibre.
Actually, Starlink will be very competitive with fibre at my current location. The latency for fibre here is maybe 10+ years but the latency for Starlink will be ~1 yr (if everything goes as Musk plans). 8^)
It really doesn't matter if the latency of fibre is better than the latency of Starlink. Starlink isn't intended to be used in areas that fibre is available. The whole point of Starlink is to service areas of the globe that don't have access to wired high speed Internet.
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The claims that they have "super low latency" are obvious bollocks, the laws of physics prevent it being competitive with fibre.
Apples, meet Oranges....
You are attempting to force a false comparison. Starlink is not (in it's current/initial configuration) a competitor for fiber. If you can get fiber optic to your location, you are not the target market. The initial target market is people (in the rural USA) who rely on dial-up, DSL, wireless point-to-point, or GEO satellite service.
Starlink has talked about the possibility of having a satellite to satellite routing component to allow traffic to remain mostly within the starlink n
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The problem with Speedtest is that it gives you the best ping, not the average ping or min/max.
The reason some games have a wifi filter is because even if wifi pings are good most of the time random lag spikes as someone's Bluetooth kicks in or the microwave turns on can ruin online ranked matches.
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I can't see a single latency figure there.
The only hyperbole that covers it is the word "super-low", which is just marketing hype.
What's super-low? I used to have a sub-1ms ping to some servers in another country, that's "super-low".
I suspect their "super-low" is no better than, say, 4G is capable of, which I wouldn't describe as super-low even if the old fuddy-duddy in me does consider them impressive "despite" the technology involved.
Re:Uplink side? (Score:5, Insightful)
How far away was that other country?
Propagation speed in a wire or fiber-optic cable is about 200,000km/s, so any location further than 200km away can't possibly yield a sub-1ms ping.
Given that a fast and unloaded computer on a gigabit LAN has ~0.2-0.5ms pings, I'd say you were mistaken about <1ms to another country (unless you were in Luxembourg).
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Or unless they were close to a border with the country in question?
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UK-France is only 30 miles. In 200km you can go through three or four European countries.
And I was getting sub-1ms ping response on a bunch of game server I used to run in a datacentre in another country, from ordinary household broadband - measured in-game, via ICMP and traceroute.
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From https://www.satelliteinternet.... [satelliteinternet.com] : "The company projects that Starlink latency (or lag time) will be as low as 15 milliseconds"
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"super low" is marketing hype? It was said by a certification engineer hosting the launch of the last Falcon 9 along with discussing the booster recovery, MaxQ, and a bunch of other stuff. She's not a marketing person. She's one of many SpaceX employees cycling through "hosting duties" as they film every single launch.
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HOWEVER, 2 things about Elon.
1) he is so-so to bad on timing (he is getting better).
2) he is so-so to bad on figuring either costs or prices. Not sure which. After all, the prices they at Tesla is not really connected to their core costs. It is connected to the expansion.
Waste of Technology (Score:2)
I love the idea but i have reservations (Score:4, Insightful)
Elon Musk has assembled a remarkable group of people that can do some pretty amazing things, but before I sign up for their internet product we need some major assurances from them about privacy and how they are going to monetize data streams. Obviously we have been making this transition for a while what with the larger ISP's and mobile providers already doing certain amounts of user tracking, but i feel like spacex is uniquely positioned to kick that into overdrive, especially with its immediately ubiquitous nature. in the past, ISP networks were spread all over the place, so collecting information from them was tricky. with Starlink, it will almost come pre-engineered for easy sigint and data collection.
there's a lot to be excited about but there's also a lot to be fearful of. musk and his companies are attaching themselves even more fundamentally to humanity. google and facebook rely on other providers, but with starlink, musk and team control the transport layer and that is a tremendous amount of power held by what amounts to a monopoly.
Re:I love the idea but i have reservations (Score:4, Insightful)
WTF do people think everything is a monopoly now (Score:3, Insightful)
i feel like spacex is uniquely positioned to kick that into overdrive, especially with its immediately ubiquitous nature.
What on earth? How are they different than any other terrestrial ISP? They are just a carrier.
in the past, ISP networks were spread all over the place, so collecting information from them was tricky. with Starlink
In the PRESENT how many ISP's are there really? You really think Starlink will have more scope to capture data than Comcast or Spectrum?
there's a lot to be excited about but t
Multitasking ... (Score:2)
This, she noted, would provide enough bandwidth to play the fastest online games and stream multiple HD movies at once.
Can't wait to play online games *and* watch several movies at the same time ...
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I can You're out on the run barely write Under the gun comments on And playin' to win Slashdot while Raise your hands listening to music.
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Can't wait to play online games *and* watch several movies at the same time ...
... while in Antarctica ! ;)
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That'll be one the last locations to receive service. Originally they were going to have some up at 1,000km for polar orbits but I think they're going to back that down to 550km now and just toss more of them up there if needed.
Starlink Bandwidth (Score:1)
Just performed another Starship hop test (Score:2)
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> Hop test of SN6 just completed. How many of these satellites can a starship deliver once it is in operation?
420 is my best guess. There are multiple reasons.
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Wait till everyone is using it (Score:2)
Yeah, things look great now when only a handful of people are using it. Just wait until a buttload of people are hammering it with internet banalities.
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Mobile? (Score:2)
When will I be able to get this on my yacht?