
Elon Musk tweets using SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet - ryzvonusef
https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/22/elon-musk-tweets-using-spacexs-starlink-satellite-internet/
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tpmx
I saw something interesting the other day that I had previously missed:

Starlink has the potential to provide lower latency around the globe than
terrestrial fiber because light travels faster in vacuum than in optical
silica fiber.

"Delay is Not an Option: Low Latency Routing in Space"

[https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10062262/](https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10062262/)

[http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/starlink-
draft.pdf](http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/starlink-draft.pdf)

"We conclude that a network built in this manner can provide lower latency
communications than any possible terrestrial optical fiber network for
communications over distances greater than about 3000 km."

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jb775
I wonder how the Starlink latency compares to the current microwave
technologies used by high frequency trading firms. Any slight latency
improvement is a game-changer in the HFT industry.

~~~
windsurfer
Distance is still a huge problem. The Starlink signal still needs to travel up
to the satellites 500 KM up, and then another 500 KM back down. That should be
around 2 ms (thanks user jobseeker990, corrected from previous 15ms) of added
latency, so anything that is already below 4 ms of latency probably wouldn't
be improved.

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alextingle
Light travels 1000km in under 4ms. What else are you adding to that time?

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windsurfer
I have updated my comment above. I was off by about an order of magnitude.

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jniedrauer
I'm really excited about this technology for selfish reasons. I love
disconnecting and spending time in remote wildernesses. But paradoxically,
being disconnected from technology gives me a lot of anxiety about technology.
Working on devops roles over the last decade, I've almost never had a time
when I can just forget about it all. Even when I'm not on call, and no matter
how well I try to document things, I'm often the one with the answers. When
things break, I need to be able to step in. Being able to go off the grid,
while still being able to step in when SHTF, would increase my quality of life
significantly.

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DGAP
Why not just use any of the number of existing satellite telecoms providers?

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jniedrauer
I do. I have a Garmin inReach, and it helps. But it takes ~5 minutes for one
exchange of a text message. It's not enough to diagnose and fix a complex
problem remotely.

~~~
jupp0r
Why not use a standard satellite phone instead? Rates are reasonable and in
the $2/minute range. Your use case sounds like it's easy to justify that.

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sebringj
This is an amazing time to be alive. Starlink opens up bandwidth potential and
global service reliability to bring completely new business models and
capabilities. There is no more edge for trading on fiber under the ocean wires
either (It seems so to me at least).

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sschueller
For us non-Americans this is not that great. How would you feel if China or
Russia launched such a system? Or even Germany?

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Klathmon
Why would I feel anything but good about this?

At the worst it doesn't impact me at all, at best it means a large number of
people are going to be able to get online for cheap who previously weren't.

~~~
z3ncyberpunk
Given the cesspool of trolls, advertisements, fake media, bullshit social
media (all of it), mass surveillance, the harvesting and sale of your personal
information at every turn, and what is essentially unchecked psychological
warfare taking place all across the net, I'm not sure just dumping people on
it is the best thing

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asenna
I'm not denying the bad things the Internet brings but are you saying because
of those things you listed, it's better to have remote/poor people with
limited access in third world countries remain disconnected?

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mrtksn
How is the censorship going to work with Starlink? Twitter is heavily censored
in many countries like Turkey.

Other countries censor other things, be it on political, commercial or
"criminal" grounds.

Can someone explain a bit on these issues? Is the global internet going to be
governed on US laws if Starlink becomes a thing?

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Tuna-Fish
No. Starlink will follow all local laws, including licensing the bandwidth
they are using. They are not going to run a pirate internet network.

Due to complications in US laws, this actually means that Starlink cannot
directly offer service in much of the world, instead having to let a local
company resell access. (Because SpaceX as a US company cannot do certain kinds
of filtering without running afoul of US laws.)

~~~
mrtksn
How do the satellites know the precise location of the client? Wouldn't it
possible to buy a subscription in one country and go use it in another
country?

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ctdonath
Starlink animations depict each sat servicing a narrow cone below. Remember,
these operate much closer to the ground than geosynchronous; they'll have a
much better idea where the client is than just which hemisphere.

~~~
jupp0r
Radio wave propagation is a little more complicated than what the animations
depict. It would probably be easy to pretend to be somewhere else by pointing
a more directional antenna at the horizon.

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Tuna-Fish
All Starlink communication is already extremely directional. The spot size of
the beam coming from the satellite is ~1.5km on the ground, and the receiver
is also directional with similar accuracy. The entire principle of Starlink is
based on extreme SDMA.

If you try to communicate with a satellite on the horizon, you will not hear
it, and it will not listen to you.

~~~
mrtksn
I checked it out, it says each satellite covers area with 550km diameter on
the land. That's about a few countries at a time and possibly deep penetration
into the larger ones.

They will have to turn off the sattelites over Austria to prevent connections
in Turkey.

~~~
ctdonath
1.5km vs 550km is not necessarily mutually exclusive when using phased array
antenna: the _beam_ may be 1.5km wide, but it may be _steered_ across a 550km
area. Ergo sat could service both Austria and Turkey, without blurring - it
knows which country it's "pointing" at during any millisecond, so could
service each without legal conflicts.

~~~
mrtksn
Can you provide a source for the 1.5km beam claim?

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Tuna-Fish
I was actually wrong. The spot size is 1.5 degrees, or ~10km.

The source is the original Starlink FCC filing: [https://cdn3.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8174403/S...](https://cdn3.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8174403/SpaceX_Application_-.0.pdf)

But the point remains: The Starlink satellites do not just radiate
omnidirectionally. Nor could they; the system is intended to eventually serve
a meaningful fraction of the entire population on earth. This is not possible
on non-steered RF. The only reason their plan has any sense is that every
transmitter and receiver is directional, allowing efficient SDMA, where the
same frequency can be used by multiple people simultaneously to communicate
withe the same satellite, because the satellite can discriminate between their
signals by the direction from which they were received.

Because of this, in order for Starlink to be able to communicate with you, it
has to have a pretty good idea of where you are.

~~~
mrtksn
Can you quote the information? I couldn't find this in the document. I am
sceptical that they can have that narrow beams and track the users(as the
sattelite passes over them) from non-geostationary low earth orbit satellites.
I would like to investigate this.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
From A2: overall description:

> Advanced phased array beam-forming and digital processing technologies
> within the satellite payload give the system the ability to make highly
> efficient use of Ku- and Ka-band spectrum resources and the flexibility to
> share that spectrum with other licensed users. User terminals operating with
> the SpaceX System will use similar phased array technologies to allow for
> highly directive, steered antenna beams that track the system’s low-Earth
> orbit satellites. Gateway earth stations also apply advanced phased array
> technologies to generate high-gain steered beams to communicate with
> multiple NGSO satellites from a single gateway site.

Details of the downlink beams is found at A3:

> All Ku-band downlink spot beams on each SpaceX satellite are independently
> steerable over the full field of view of the Earth.

Just read the entire A3.1 for more details.

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ctdonath
Tangential followup:

Recently there was a flap about a satellite having to move out of a Starlink
sat's way because the latter wouldn't.

On the Starlink website they call out the automated collision avoidance
system. Seems the Starlink sat would have moved away automatically if there
was a risk.

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Vordax
Not that big of a deal, they move satellites if there is more than a 1 in
10,000 chance of a collision, in this case it appears a bug was the problem:
[https://www.cnet.com/news/esa-spacex-starlink-satellite-
near...](https://www.cnet.com/news/esa-spacex-starlink-satellite-nearly-
collides-with-european-aeolus-satellite/)

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dmix
Musk should post the traceroute

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sunstone
So that would be pretty expensive on a per character basis. At least so far.

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LinuxBender
Has a pentest been performed on this network? How does one enter into an early
beta of it?

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nickik
They just launched the first couple satillites. Its all internal testing on
non-finished hardware as of right now. Far away from an beta.

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maxander
Which means the root password is probably still “admin” :)

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JulianMorrison
Login "elon", password "musk"

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knbknb
Will Starlink, when operational, put price pressure on satellite phone and
internet service providers such as Inmarsat?

Or will prices for internet coverage in remote areas just as expensive as
before?

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tpmx
I'd think it could definitely be substantially cheaper than Inmarsat. In a
totally crushing way. So much more bandwidth capacity and lower latency.

Note: SpaceX is building out the Starlink coverage in a gradual way - they
won't have satellites around the poles early on. Until the have truly global
coverage Inmarsat will obviously stilll have an edge.

It will be interesting to see how the pricing plays out for the high latency
satellite broadband offerings compared to the low latency Starlink offering.

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segmondy
If they pull this off, what would this mean for the future?

Someone in a third world country can have the same speed as someone in a
developed country.

Why should I keep my cell phone?

Will comcast go out of business?

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cududa
Well probably because the receiver is going to be the size of a few bricks, so
you’ll want to hold onto your phone for a while.

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ty7yt
imagine Elons greatest gift to mankind was a internet that could not be abused
or spied on, and you only needed a satellite dish to access it. even if it was
too slow to play games on.

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lostmsu
I wish the tweet would have a speed test screenshot of some sort.

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Yuval_Halevi
That's a new whole level of VPN

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gondo
What proof is there that he did it use Starlink for real? Considering he
turned his twitter account into a joke [1] after SEC investigation [2].

[1]
[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1176530527290941441](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1176530527290941441)

[2] [https://www.sec.gov/news/press-
release/2018-219](https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-219)

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donkeyd
> What proof is there that he did it use Starlink for real?

None, but I can't imagine him joking about something that seems very important
to him.

> Considering he turned his twitter account into a joke [1] after SEC
> investigation [2].

I challenge you to scroll down his timeline until before the SEC
investigation. He was spreading memes way before that ever happened. Also, the
SEC investigation was regarding Tesla and him running a public company. SpaceX
is not a public company and he doesn't really have a history of tweeting
nonsense about SpaceX projects.

