SpaceX Internet Satellite Network: Starlink

[mongo]

That would be a lot of ground stations to deploy, and fast, would it not ?

With a 30 degree minimum elevation angle, a ground relay can connect satellites up to 2*550km*cos(30) or 950 km apart (inverse of sattelite). So user term-sat-ground-sat-ground max distance is 4 hops of 550km*cos(30) or 1900km . Australia is roughly 4000x3000. 35 (7x5) relays 500 km apart would cover the whole thing.

 

[dhanson865]

If it is not lasers, then perhaps they are able to use other/existing ground stations. How else to explain the rapid shift in coverage ?

I'm patient enough to just wait 24 hours to find out.

But I'd point out that new satellites get into position and start sending/receiving daily (or almost every day, with some days having more than one).

I wouldn't call it a rapid shift in actual coverage. Just them turning on a new region. More an administrative shift than a literal coverage shift.

 

[petit_bateau]

With a 30 degree minimum elevation angle, a ground relay can connect satellites up to 2*550km*cos(30) or 950 km apart (inverse of sattelite). So user term-sat-ground-sat-ground max distance is 4 hops of 550km*cos(30) or 1900km . Australia is roughly 4000x3000. 35 (7x5) relays 500 km apart would cover the whole thing.

Thank you for the sum. I admit to being lazy and en route to bed. That's a lot of base stations to build out if that is how they are enabling these regions.. I guess as @dhanson865 says if we are patient we'll find out soon enough if it is that, as opposed to merely switching on coverage in the normal way.

 

[mongo]

Thank you for the sum. I admit to being lazy and en route to bed. That's a lot of base stations to build out if that is how they are enabling these regions.. I guess as @dhanson865 says if we are patient we'll find out soon enough if it is that, as opposed to merely switching on coverage in the normal way.

That was a lazy, worst case number. Halfish of Australia already had coverage, so maybe 10-20 relays would be sufficient (if laser links are really not in play)

Store and forward would also work, but ping would be bad.

 

[dhanson865]

I looked through his posts and see he works in IT in Australia but don't see a follow up post yet.

reddit post

 

[dhanson865]

I looked through his posts and see he works in IT in Australia but don't see a follow up post yet.

reddit post

His reply

Sorry - I’m not sure what the delay is on the info getting published on the ACMA website. Over my pay grade and posting any thing on a public forum that’s yet to be made available to public could cost me my job..
It’s nothing super crazy - legal paperwork and updating policies to be honest- just keep a eye on the ACMA newsletter this month

 

[Cosmacelf]

His reply

So sounds like it was just regulatory approval that was holding things up. Which is actually what 99% of Starlink coverage and bandwidth issues come down to. East coast of the US has bandwidth constraints due to GEO sat frequency squatting. People wonder why country X doesn’t have Starlink, it’s because of regulatory delays. The only real areas that can’t be well serviced by Starlink now are two bands in the northern and southern hemispheres, and satellites are coming that will fix that soon.

 

[MP3Mike]

East coast of the US has bandwidth constraints due to GEO sat frequency squatting.

Interesting, I hadn't heard that before. @wk057 that might explain the performance you have seen and why SpaceX hasn't resolved it yet.

 

[wk057]

Not sure if this is correct or not, since I can get occasional fantastic service off-peak, and before the large rollout I was getting consistently decent service 24/7.

Really feels like its just oversold. If it were a spectrum issue I'd have expected it to be consistently bad from the beginning.

 

[MP3Mike]

Not sure if this is correct or not, since I can get occasional fantastic service off-peak, and before the large rollout I was getting consistently decent service 24/7.

Really feels like its just oversold. If it were a spectrum issue I'd have expected it to be consistently bad from the beginning.

Doesn't reduced spectrum = reduced peak bandwidth? If the spectrum they are able to use is saturated it wouldn't matter how much ground station capacity they add, it wouldn't increase peak capabilities.

 

[mongo]

Doesn't reduced spectrum = reduced peak bandwidth? If the spectrum they are able to use is saturated it wouldn't matter how much ground station capacity they add, it wouldn't increase peak capabilities.

Right, but the available bandwidth used to be good.
Now it's dropping to unusable for him sometimes. That points to overallocation of available bandwith.
If GEO reduces the bamdwidth and thus number of subscribers possible, SpaceX should take that into account.
Or their allocation algorithm has issues...

 

[wk057]

Yeah, that's what I mean. Even if the GEO stuff were an issue before, they could have taken this into account and not oversold the affected areas. Instead, I get single digit megabits at times in the evening, sometimes less.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Interesting, I hadn't heard that before. @wk057 that might explain the performance you have seen and why SpaceX hasn't resolved it yet.

This is where I got that info from: https://mikepuchol.com/modeling-starlink-capacity-843b2387f501

I highly recommend reading the whole article - it is very technical. Quite a ways down, it shows the restricted Eastern US and says about it:

Notice how a large portion of the South and Midwest shows as “Expanding in 2023”, and how it matches the result of our latest simulation run? The primary reason for this is not satellite density — you can run the simulation any time of the day and get the same result — but the fact that many gateways in that region operate at 50% capacity, due to spectrum priority usage by a prior licensee.

 

[wk057]

Definitely weird, because I feel like that should have been a known thing and mitigated before they even designed the hardware. But who knows.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Definitely weird, because I feel like that should have been a known thing and mitigated before they even designed the hardware. But who knows.

Not sure what you’re talking about? Frequency limitations? Note that the rest of the world doesn’t have capacity issues.

 

[mongo]

Newly freed citizens of Kherson calling loved ones via Starlink:

View attachment 874285
(picture by Lynsey Addario for The New York Times)

 

[Cosmacelf]

That poor dish is getting all sorts of human obstructions! SpaceX satellite handoff code working overtime…

 

[winfield100]

a slitely off topic question
I used to use around 200-300 meg a month, got a roommate and now use 1.5 - 1.7 terabytes/month
how is Starlink with those figures?
(If I had Starlink and a powerwall for my PV array, I would not have lost both power and internet for 11+ days from hurricane Ian and either I move inland and north or that happens again unless)
(yeah, i could look it up but real world users have actual experience and youse guys are kinda "offline memory")

 

[DrGriz]

a slitely off topic question
I used to use around 200-300 meg a month, got a roommate and now use 1.5 - 1.7 terabytes/month
how is Starlink with those figures?
(If I had Starlink and a powerwall for my PV array, I would not have lost both power and internet for 11+ days from hurricane Ian and either I move inland and north or that happens again unless)
(yeah, i could look it up but real world users have actual experience and youse guys are kinda "offline memory")

You might get throttled if you exceed 1 TB.

Starlink US residential customers are getting a limit on their high-speed internet

Users may find themselves on the 'Basic Access' service if their usage exceed 1TB of data in a month.

www.zdnet.com

 

[dhanson865]

User that just setup his dish to test at 63.75N.

www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/yzstpq/starlink_finally_available_in_northern_canada/