The combination of low latency (20-40ms) and high bandwidth (100+Mbps) has never been available in satellite internet before.
A public beta may start later this year for some users in the northern US, around the 14th launch. Today is the 7th launch of v1 satellites. SpaceX is hoping to do more than two launches per month but haven't reached that pace yet.
The ground stations look like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/gkkm9c/starli...
The user antennas can be seen in that picture; they are the smaller circular things on black sticks. They are flat phased array antennas, and don't need to be precisely pointed like satellite dishes do. They are about the size of an extra-large pizza, so you won't be able to get a Starlink phone.
The user antennas are likely to be quite expensive at first (several thousand dollars). Cost reduction of the user antennas is the biggest hurdle Starlink currently faces. Nobody knows yet how much SpaceX will charge for the antenna or service.
Starlink can't support a high density of users, so it will not be an alternative to ISPs in cities. Rural and mobile use are the important applications. The US military is doing trials with it. Cell tower backhaul may also be a possibility.
Starlink V1 doesn't have cross-satellite links, so the satellites can only provide service while over a ground station. There will be hundreds of ground stations in North America; no information about other regions yet. Starlink V2 is planned to have laser links between satellites, which will enable 100% global coverage 24/7, though local regulations are likely to prevent SpaceX from providing service in many places.
Because the speed of light in a vacuum is 30% faster than in optical fiber, the latency of Starlink over long distances has the potential to be lower than any other option once laser links are available.
Each launch of 60 Starlink satellites has nearly as much solar panel area as the International Space Station. Once SpaceX's Starship is operational they should be able to launch several hundred satellites at once instead of just 60.
Starlink's only current competitor, OneWeb, just filed for bankruptcy after only launching a handful of satellites, and is fishing for acquisition offers. Amazon is also planning something called Project Kuiper but not much is known about it.
Starlink V2 will have 30,000 satellites, requiring hundreds of launches. Even once the initial fleet is launched, SpaceX will still need to maintain the constellation with many launches per year indefinitely.
> Because the speed of light in a vacuum is 30% faster than in optical fiber, the latency of Starlink over long distances has the potential to be lower than any other option once laser links are available.
Not to mention the dramatic reduction of hops. My route from the USA east coast to the university of Melbourne in Australia[1] is 30 hops reported by traceroute, with at least as many switches in the way. You could make the same link with only a few satellites.
[1]www.ie.unimelb.edu.au
EDIT: 30 is actually just the default max hops in traceroute, its really 32 hops from me to Melbourne.
I'm in Switzerland and have 25 hops, which can be broken into:
- 1-7: Hops within my ISP's in-country network (~4ms total latency)
- 8-10: Hops within my ISP's in-Europe network (~28ms total latency)
- 11: London -> New York (~93ms total latency)
- 12: New York -> Los Angeles (~160ms total latency)
- 13: Transfer in LA from my ISP to AARNet (about the same latency)
- 14: LA to somewhere in NSW (guessing Sydney, 305ms total latency)
- 15-25: Routing within AARNet and Unimelb (319ms total latency)
So most of the latency looks to be attributed to large hops across oceans rather than internal switching. Even if you could narrow it down to London -> NY -> LA -> NSW you'd have 277ms.
> Because the speed of light in a vacuum is 30% faster than in optical fiber
Non-Australians, don't get too excited. Those satellites are at 340 miles, so that adds 680 miles of latency (3.66 ms) plus two to three Starlink hops, which cancels out some of that "speed in a vacuum."
The way to get almost c on earth is via direct microwave links.
there's probably double or triple the switches in between. they're not really switches though. more like super fast packet routers. the latency is much less than any normal or carrier grade switch. they don't touch the IP layer at all. (I manage a bunch of them)
I wonder how many hops it will actually remove. I just tested it, and from my apartment in Mountain View, CA to my VPS in a data center ~20 miles away in Fremont, CA I get 14(!) hops.
And as of 1846 pacific time, we have another fully successful launch. Second stage nominal low orbit. The first stage has been recovered for the 5th time. All sixty satellites released.
>Because the speed of light in a vacuum is 30% faster than in optical fiber, the latency of Starlink over long distances has the potential to be lower than any other option once laser links are available.
50% faster than light in fiber, fiber is 30% slower.
But isn't it still relatively very low bandwidth? I think they tested a v2 with ~700Mbps. In terms of normal everyday consumers, what are the implication of Starlink outside of Rural area?
PS: Thanks for the summary and NO Starlink phone. I have gotten sick and tired of people jumping to conclusion suggesting Starlink taking over ISP and Mobile Network. And that is even on HN.
> But isn't it still relatively very low bandwidth? I think they tested a v2 with ~700Mbps
Are you saying 700mbps is slow? Or is that all the bandwidth that the single link can provide (meaning 700 divided by the number of subscribers)? Living in a fly over state, I was lucky at first to get much more than 10mbps. Spectrum has now provided service to my area and I can get 400mbps and am super happy.
From 1 minute before liftoff, the computers in the Falcon 9 take control of the whole process. From then on those computers monitor all relevant sensors to decide go vs no go, and control the ignition etc.
They added sunshades which should make the satellites nearly invisible from the ground, but they are only effective once the satellites have assumed their final orientation and orbit. They start in a much lower orbit and will likely be very visible in the first few days after launch. Then they enter a phase of orbit raising during which they deliberately rotate to be less visible, though they can still sometimes be seen until they reach their destination several weeks later.
The "first" launch was v0.9 satellites. There was also an earlier launch of prototype satellites. Numbering of Starlink launches is a little confused as a result.
The first and second stages of a Falcon 9 use a combined ~163 000 litres (43 000 gallons) of RP-1 fuel. This is less than the fuel capacity of a Boeing 777-300ER.
So if the Starlink launches happen twice a month, the carbon footprint from the fuel would be at least an order of magnitude smaller than that of a single long haul route of an airline.
Building the satellites and the rocket (including the expendable second stage) is obviously pretty carbon intensive too, but fuel is probably what you were thinking about when posing this question.
Everyday Astronaut on YouTube has a great video on the environmental impact of rockets. 55 minutes long but it's fascinating. The TL;DW is they're not as bad as you'd expect. But not zero-emissions, obviously.
> The user antennas are likely to be quite expensive at first (several thousand dollars). Cost reduction of the user antennas is the biggest hurdle Starlink currently faces. Nobody knows yet how much SpaceX will charge for the antenna or service.
Considering the pay-over-time model that SolarCity implemented, should we not expect the same here? Assuming the user antenna can be removed, it can be rented, just like a modem or router.
Relying on the antennas having a long ‘useful life’, it may not be too prohibitive if rented out.
The hardware for existing geostationary consumer-grade (cheap, sub $150/month service) Ku and Ka-band VSAT terminals, for use in really remote locations in the USA, is about a $800 to $1200 cost. It's absorbed into 24/36 month contract terms.
People who live in a really remote plate and sign up for a 24 month term for some barely-usable VSAT service are usually disappointed to find out how firmly they're locked into the contract, when somebody builds a WISP in their area.
I would not be surprised if there's a terminal rental charge or 12/24/36 month contract terms offered.
>Considering the pay-over-time model that SolarCity implemented, should we not expect the same here?
Considering the pay-over-time model essentially bankrupted SolarCity, forcing Tesla to buy them out, for which Tesla are being sued by shareholders...I'm not sure that's the model to resurrect.
Random thought: are the satellite trajectories "dense enough" that in the future when ships/people are trying to leave the Earth have to get a delay/launch window and the Starlink satellite(s) may get diverted around the area you're going through.
No, think of the sky in terms of the surface of the earth. The star link satellites paths are like a few highway stretched across the surface. Not only is it a tiny sliver cut across the glob, it’s also at a very specific LEO so the spacecraft wouldn’t even stop there in the vast majority of cases.
>The user antennas are likely to be quite expensive at first (several thousand dollars). Cost reduction of the user antennas is the biggest hurdle Starlink currently faces. Nobody knows yet how much SpaceX will charge for the antenna or service.
One of Starlink's competitors OneWeb was able to aquire a user antenna which is apparently a breakthrough in cost reduction at $15 [0]. I would assume the manufacturer has a contractual agreement with OneWeb, but I can imagine that Starlink could develop a similarly priced antenna with it's greater resources.
Just Curious. Have you been using zettelkasten, org-roam or similar tool to take notes whenever you came across this topic and publishing now as the compiled version ?
> They are about the size of an extra-large pizza, so you won't be able to get a Starlink phone.
I'll be surprised if this doesn't shrink. I worked for a company in the mid-2000s that had some pretty cool IP which effectively shrank a briefcase-sized BGAN terminal down to a Pocket PC (pre iPhone days!) with Pocket PC-sized antenna strapped on the back.
Sort of, but none of the debris will reach the ground. The current version of Starlink is designed to burn up completely in the atmosphere upon re-entry.
Could someone explain the technical notability beyond what can be inferred from the Wikipedia page?
> An autonomous system (AS) is a collection of connected Internet Protocol (IP) routing prefixes under the control of one or more network operators on behalf of a single administrative entity or domain that presents a common, clearly defined routing policy to the internet.
> Originally the definition required control by a single entity, typically an Internet service provider (ISP) or a very large organization with independent connections to multiple networks.... The newer definition ...came into use because multiple organizations can run Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) using private AS numbers to an ISP that connects all those organizations to the internet. Even though there may be multiple autonomous systems supported by the ISP, the internet only sees the routing policy of the ISP. That ISP must have an officially registered autonomous system number (ASN).
> A unique ASN is allocated to each AS for use in BGP routing. ASNs are important because the ASN uniquely identifies each network on the Internet.
It’s the ISP equivalent of setting up stall at a wholesale market.
To exchange traffic, providers advertise the IP ranges they can route.
The starter pack for this consists of an AS number (which is fundamentally just a nominal integer identifier for your organisation), an interconnect (either to an internet exchange or a transit provider), and some address space to call your own.
Can you delve into the possible business models (not military)_ and commercial applications if this remains?
Starlink is seriously this biggest mystery to me about SpaceX's over all trajectory, I find it fascinating but ,my mind doens't conjure up many more thoughts than they'll either be an ISP or work with ISPs to reach a currently unavailable demographic, the nuts and bolts of how are entirely lost on me as I realistically don't understand the Industry.
Network engineers are tribal but also very cooperative (in the right geographic areas). You can get about 240,000 ipv4 routes out of the entire 840,000 size ipv4 routing table by peering with the SIX route servers. And for any entity that is big enough to be seen as a real serious player, places like where the SIX if physically located are also optimal to establish direct sessions (PNIs) with other large/serious ISPs. All settlement free. Major content sources, CDNs and hosting providers have a strong interest in getting outbound traffic off their networks as efficiently as possible. And downstream eyeball ISPs (starlink) have the same interest in reverse.
ISP senior neteng here: It means they're starting to get serious about becoming their own facilities-based ISP at the most fundamental "core" level of the Internet. In this case the facilities will be their earth stations for trunk links to the starlink satellites, the satellites themselves, and their routers at major carrier-neutral interconnections points such as where the SIX is physically located.
A number of the earth station filing geographic coordinates, in public FCC documents, correlate with the known location of regen huts for north america's largest dark fiber/DWDM/transport carriers on intercity fiber paths. Such as Centurylink and Zayo. The typical thing to do in this case is that they'll be buying 'lit' circuits from carrier-of-carrier ISPs to reach those IX points.
It means that they're a first-class part of the internet in their own right, rather than part of someone else's network. Without an AS number, you're a client of whatever ISPs are providing you with connectivity. If you have your own AS number you are at least nominally a "peer" of other ISPs and responsible for routing a (possibly very small) part of the internet.
I've reached some geostationary and orbiting weather satellites with Software-Defined Radio (SDR) in the past. I'd love to try and snag some signals from these... Anyone know of a more formal scientific write-up on these to find the frequency/modulation?
The FCC filings are probably your best bet, 95% of the technical details we know are from them (92% of statistics are made up). I'm not sure if they contain enough information for you though.
From what sparse info I can find, it appears ground > sat > ground comms will be encrypted in some fashion so listening with an SDR and doing anything meaningful with the data might be hard, but I'm curious if there will be opportunities for it to be abused for anonymous downlink connections like the Turla spyware group used to do (https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/09/how-h...)
A RTL-SDR with whatever antenna you whipped up to listen to NOAA sats is not going to have enough link margin to tune in a SpaceX transmission. IIRC the example user terminal SpaceX demoed ages ago is a phased array hooked up to a fairly beefy modem.
I have an SDR module and have played around listening to things (and having a blast doing it) but nothing like that! That sounds really cool. Do you have any resources you could point?
/24 has 7 addresses that return pings from nmap -sn, all have about the same ping as the previous hop on the traceroute so my ping probably isn't reaching space.
Nothing too fancy for now. Two tiny, I assume test, prefixes (one v4, one v6) that aren't even verified by IRR/RPKI. Happy to see, however, that they peer openly (at least for now).
Probably with the same process as currently some regimes are handling satellite phones - the receiver hardware becomes a regulated item where it's a crime to import, operate or possess one without an appropriate permit.
Wouldn't it be possible for someone to fake their location and sign up anyways? Or does starlink require the knowledge of your exact location to operate?
Readit News
Random FAQ about Starlink below:
The combination of low latency (20-40ms) and high bandwidth (100+Mbps) has never been available in satellite internet before.
A public beta may start later this year for some users in the northern US, around the 14th launch. Today is the 7th launch of v1 satellites. SpaceX is hoping to do more than two launches per month but haven't reached that pace yet.
The ground stations look like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/gkkm9c/starli... The user antennas can be seen in that picture; they are the smaller circular things on black sticks. They are flat phased array antennas, and don't need to be precisely pointed like satellite dishes do. They are about the size of an extra-large pizza, so you won't be able to get a Starlink phone.
The user antennas are likely to be quite expensive at first (several thousand dollars). Cost reduction of the user antennas is the biggest hurdle Starlink currently faces. Nobody knows yet how much SpaceX will charge for the antenna or service.
Starlink can't support a high density of users, so it will not be an alternative to ISPs in cities. Rural and mobile use are the important applications. The US military is doing trials with it. Cell tower backhaul may also be a possibility.
Starlink V1 doesn't have cross-satellite links, so the satellites can only provide service while over a ground station. There will be hundreds of ground stations in North America; no information about other regions yet. Starlink V2 is planned to have laser links between satellites, which will enable 100% global coverage 24/7, though local regulations are likely to prevent SpaceX from providing service in many places.
Because the speed of light in a vacuum is 30% faster than in optical fiber, the latency of Starlink over long distances has the potential to be lower than any other option once laser links are available.
Each launch of 60 Starlink satellites has nearly as much solar panel area as the International Space Station. Once SpaceX's Starship is operational they should be able to launch several hundred satellites at once instead of just 60.
Starlink's only current competitor, OneWeb, just filed for bankruptcy after only launching a handful of satellites, and is fishing for acquisition offers. Amazon is also planning something called Project Kuiper but not much is known about it.
Starlink V2 will have 30,000 satellites, requiring hundreds of launches. Even once the initial fleet is launched, SpaceX will still need to maintain the constellation with many launches per year indefinitely.
SpaceX's FCC application has many interesting details: https://licensing.fcc.gov/myibfs/download.do?attachment_key=...
Not to mention the dramatic reduction of hops. My route from the USA east coast to the university of Melbourne in Australia[1] is 30 hops reported by traceroute, with at least as many switches in the way. You could make the same link with only a few satellites.
[1]www.ie.unimelb.edu.au
EDIT: 30 is actually just the default max hops in traceroute, its really 32 hops from me to Melbourne.
- 1-7: Hops within my ISP's in-country network (~4ms total latency)
- 8-10: Hops within my ISP's in-Europe network (~28ms total latency)
- 11: London -> New York (~93ms total latency)
- 12: New York -> Los Angeles (~160ms total latency)
- 13: Transfer in LA from my ISP to AARNet (about the same latency)
- 14: LA to somewhere in NSW (guessing Sydney, 305ms total latency)
- 15-25: Routing within AARNet and Unimelb (319ms total latency)
So most of the latency looks to be attributed to large hops across oceans rather than internal switching. Even if you could narrow it down to London -> NY -> LA -> NSW you'd have 277ms.
Non-Australians, don't get too excited. Those satellites are at 340 miles, so that adds 680 miles of latency (3.66 ms) plus two to three Starlink hops, which cancels out some of that "speed in a vacuum."
The way to get almost c on earth is via direct microwave links.
https://youtu.be/vnXLYr6U3bk
One thing to add is that Starship should enable 400 satellites per launch:
https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-president-teases-starship-s...
50% faster than light in fiber, fiber is 30% slower.
https://youtu.be/m05abdGSOxY
PS: Thanks for the summary and NO Starlink phone. I have gotten sick and tired of people jumping to conclusion suggesting Starlink taking over ISP and Mobile Network. And that is even on HN.
Are you saying 700mbps is slow? Or is that all the bandwidth that the single link can provide (meaning 700 divided by the number of subscribers)? Living in a fly over state, I was lucky at first to get much more than 10mbps. Spectrum has now provided service to my area and I can get 400mbps and am super happy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4xBFHjkUvw&feature=youtu.be...
I thought they were redesigning the satellites to be nearly invisible from the ground so as not to disrupt astronomy? Or is that later launches?
Isn't this the 8th? Jesse the Engineer said it was, too. The stage 1 is also on its 5th mission, so rad!
So if the Starlink launches happen twice a month, the carbon footprint from the fuel would be at least an order of magnitude smaller than that of a single long haul route of an airline.
Building the satellites and the rocket (including the expendable second stage) is obviously pretty carbon intensive too, but fuel is probably what you were thinking about when posing this question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4VHfmiwuv4
Considering the pay-over-time model that SolarCity implemented, should we not expect the same here? Assuming the user antenna can be removed, it can be rented, just like a modem or router.
Relying on the antennas having a long ‘useful life’, it may not be too prohibitive if rented out.
People who live in a really remote plate and sign up for a 24 month term for some barely-usable VSAT service are usually disappointed to find out how firmly they're locked into the contract, when somebody builds a WISP in their area.
I would not be surprised if there's a terminal rental charge or 12/24/36 month contract terms offered.
Considering the pay-over-time model essentially bankrupted SolarCity, forcing Tesla to buy them out, for which Tesla are being sued by shareholders...I'm not sure that's the model to resurrect.
[1] https://youtu.be/m05abdGSOxY
One of Starlink's competitors OneWeb was able to aquire a user antenna which is apparently a breakthrough in cost reduction at $15 [0]. I would assume the manufacturer has a contractual agreement with OneWeb, but I can imagine that Starlink could develop a similarly priced antenna with it's greater resources.
[0] https://spacenews.com/wyler-claims-breakthrough-in-low-cost-...
Greg Wyler, the founder of Oneweb, has a history of making bold claims that are not really supported by facts.
I'll be surprised if this doesn't shrink. I worked for a company in the mid-2000s that had some pretty cool IP which effectively shrank a briefcase-sized BGAN terminal down to a Pocket PC (pre iPhone days!) with Pocket PC-sized antenna strapped on the back.
> An autonomous system (AS) is a collection of connected Internet Protocol (IP) routing prefixes under the control of one or more network operators on behalf of a single administrative entity or domain that presents a common, clearly defined routing policy to the internet.
> Originally the definition required control by a single entity, typically an Internet service provider (ISP) or a very large organization with independent connections to multiple networks.... The newer definition ...came into use because multiple organizations can run Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) using private AS numbers to an ISP that connects all those organizations to the internet. Even though there may be multiple autonomous systems supported by the ISP, the internet only sees the routing policy of the ISP. That ISP must have an officially registered autonomous system number (ASN).
> A unique ASN is allocated to each AS for use in BGP routing. ASNs are important because the ASN uniquely identifies each network on the Internet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_system_(Internet)
To exchange traffic, providers advertise the IP ranges they can route.
The starter pack for this consists of an AS number (which is fundamentally just a nominal integer identifier for your organisation), an interconnect (either to an internet exchange or a transit provider), and some address space to call your own.
The notability is commercial: StarLink is ready, or at least preparing, to negotiate peering with other providers. That’s a whole other ball game, c.f http://drpeering.net/white-papers/Art-Of-Peering-The-Peering....
There’s also a social angle. I’ve seen folks wearing their ASN like an agency windcheater. Network engineers are tribal.
Can you delve into the possible business models (not military)_ and commercial applications if this remains?
Starlink is seriously this biggest mystery to me about SpaceX's over all trajectory, I find it fascinating but ,my mind doens't conjure up many more thoughts than they'll either be an ISP or work with ISPs to reach a currently unavailable demographic, the nuts and bolts of how are entirely lost on me as I realistically don't understand the Industry.
A number of the earth station filing geographic coordinates, in public FCC documents, correlate with the known location of regen huts for north america's largest dark fiber/DWDM/transport carriers on intercity fiber paths. Such as Centurylink and Zayo. The typical thing to do in this case is that they'll be buying 'lit' circuits from carrier-of-carrier ISPs to reach those IX points.
From this: https://bgp.tools/as/14593#asinfo
Is the new part here that they are advertising prefixes?
* https://bgpview.io/asn/14593#peers-v4
Singapore? Any netengs here that can interpret the chicken entrails?
>2019-02-21
There are links here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Starlink/wiki/index#wiki_-_what_fre...
The data will probably be encrypted, but I think theres a good chance you might be able to get some metadata.
how anticlimactic
Nothing too fancy for now. Two tiny, I assume test, prefixes (one v4, one v6) that aren't even verified by IRR/RPKI. Happy to see, however, that they peer openly (at least for now).