SpaceX Internet Satellite Network: Starlink

[bxr140]

Your forgetting we are talking about Rural America here.

This is the heart of "DIY" in the US (and Canada). Maybe they won't do it themselves, but the high school student three ranches over will do it for them in a heart beat.

I can appreciate that it makes for a better feel-good story to imagine a romanticized version of [all of] Rural America as the protagonist, bootstrapping a can-do solution on a hearty breakfast at the crack of dawn for the selfless betterment of the neighbors because no-way-will-we-ever-let-someone-from-the-coast-do-it.

Indeed, while it is certainly plausible and in fact certain that some very small fraction of starlink customers will DIY a pseudo-WISP off one feed, reality is (again) on the side of the vast majority of people who want zero to do with their infrastructure. Seriously, there are still technicians that go to people's houses to install and set up wireless routers. You know, the thing that requires 1 AC cable, 1 RG cable, and 1 questionably sentient human to click "ok" through the automated setup.

Like it or not, people the country over generally just want two things from their internet service: 1) for it to work without them having to complain about it and 2) for someone to complain at when it doesn't. Personally I'm lucky enough to be on the right side of the end of the line for Xfinity so I at least get the former most of the time. (I don't get the latter, but if you also have Xfinity neither do you. )

If the cost per terminal (CPE and service) is too high, a way around that will be found. The overall bandwidth used will not change that much, and SpaceX will still have more customers.

That's not how "more customers" work. SpaceX only cares about paying customers and in fact would much rather a bunch of folks pay for direct service rather than the same number of folks buy into a single co-op paying for service (and that's not considering the aforementioned legal issues with reselling an end user product).

 

[ecarfan]

people the country over generally just want two things from their internet service: 1) for it to work without them having to complain about it and 2) for someone to complain at when it doesn't.

This is clearly true. The majority of Americans don’t even understand that their home wifi is not “the internet”.

A tiny fraction of all customers, rural or urban, are capable of setting up internet access to multiple homes. The number is so small that it will have no impact on Starlink’s business model.

 

[hmcgregoraz]

I can appreciate that it makes for a better feel-good story to imagine a romanticized version of [all of] Rural America as the protagonist, bootstrapping a can-do solution on a hearty breakfast at the crack of dawn for the selfless betterment of the neighbors because no-way-will-we-ever-let-someone-from-the-coast-do-it.

Indeed, while it is certainly plausible and in fact certain that some very small fraction of starlink customers will DIY a pseudo-WISP off one feed, reality is (again) on the side of the vast majority of people who want zero to do with their infrastructure. Seriously, there are still technicians that go to people's houses to install and set up wireless routers. You know, the thing that requires 1 AC cable, 1 RG cable, and 1 questionably sentient human to click "ok" through the automated setup.

Like it or not, people the country over generally just want two things from their internet service: 1) for it to work without them having to complain about it and 2) for someone to complain at when it doesn't. Personally I'm lucky enough to be on the right side of the end of the line for Xfinity so I at least get the former most of the time. (I don't get the latter, but if you also have Xfinity neither do you. )



That's not how "more customers" work. SpaceX only cares about paying customers and in fact would much rather a bunch of folks pay for direct service rather than the same number of folks buy into a single co-op paying for service (and that's not considering the aforementioned legal issues with reselling an end user product).

It is more customers for SpaceX, if potential customers A, B, C, D, and E would not have purchased anything from SpaceX, but together they do, that is still one customer vs zero customers.

I am not saying this is going to be the majority of the users, but I also suspect it is being unrealistically discounted.

We will have to see what options exist, and what happens based on that.

Years and years ago, one of my uncles in rural Alberta had yet to be able to get the $ to bring electricity onto his property. This is a house that still today has a two hole outhouse, and it's own well. When I first visited the well had a hand pump, as they had no power for an electric pump. The fridge, freezer, stove, etc were all propane (and most still are).

What he did for about 10 years was run heavy gauge extension cords from a "near by" neighbor, about 2500 feet. It had a hell of a voltage drop, and could only really handle about 5-6 amps, but was enough to run a small tube tv and the well.

Eventually he put in "real" electricity, which cost him over $10K CDN ~25 years ago, and was able to do a lot more with it. I was actually there to help him walk thru the trees taking down the extension cord that had been nailed up to trees for most of the 2500 feet.

Was what he did legal, either by contract or by code, of course not, was it used for at least 5-10 years, yes.

I am not saying that the majority of SpaceX customers will be co-ops, or groups of neighbors, but I also suspect it will not be an insignificant number. I may be slightly warped in my thinking, as I have done 7+ mile wireless shots for friends, and that was in a major city.

-Harry

 

[Cosmacelf]

It is more customers for SpaceX, if potential customers A, B, C, D, and E would not have purchased anything from SpaceX, but together they do, that is still one customer vs zero customers.

I am not saying this is going to be the majority of the users, but I also suspect it is being unrealistically discounted.

We will have to see what options exist, and what happens based on that.

Years and years ago, one of my uncles in rural Alberta had yet to be able to get the $ to bring electricity onto his property. This is a house that still today has a two hole outhouse, and it's own well. When I first visited the well had a hand pump, as they had no power for an electric pump. The fridge, freezer, stove, etc were all propane (and most still are).

What he did for about 10 years was run heavy gauge extension cords from a "near by" neighbor, about 2500 feet. It had a hell of a voltage drop, and could only really handle about 5-6 amps, but was enough to run a small tube tv and the well.

Eventually he put in "real" electricity, which cost him over $10K CDN ~25 years ago, and was able to do a lot more with it. I was actually there to help him walk thru the trees taking down the extension cord that had been nailed up to trees for most of the 2500 feet.

Was what he did legal, either by contract or by code, of course not, was it used for at least 5-10 years, yes.

I am not saying that the majority of SpaceX customers will be co-ops, or groups of neighbors, but I also suspect it will not be an insignificant number. I may be slightly warped in my thinking, as I have done 7+ mile wireless shots for friends, and that was in a major city.

-Harry

Look, I’m currently sharing my gigabit Internet with my neighbor until he gets organized and installs his. Nonetheless, I continue to think that if people do share their connection, it’ll be an insignificant number. Also since Starlink looks to be only 100 Mbps, AND possible data caps, that’s going to limit the number of people wanting to share their connection even more.

 

[Cosmacelf]

So, back to the FCC rural broadband auction. The FCC remains "skeptical" that Starlink can pull off sub 100ms latencies. I am thinking that this all depends on how you measure latency.

The FCC seems to be hanging its skeptical hat on processing delays, switching and routing. This is almost laughable. Your $49 Costco router has sub millisecond routing delays. How could SpaceX bollix up packet transmission so badly to add 70 ms of processing delay? I don't see it myself.

However there are two ways that you could in practice see 100 ms latencies: bit error rates, and congestion. If the 550 km wireless journey to/from space causes too many bit flips, this could in turn cause a lot of retransmits at whatever protocol layer is paying attention to incorrect packets. I don't think we know what link layer SpaceX is using, but my guess is that one reason they are now talking 100 Mbps instead of 1 Gbps is overhead due to error correcting codes and possibly a more robust link layer protocol. So I am hoping that SpaceX has bit errors well covered through the use of fast error correcting codes such that it won't impact latency too much.

Congestion is the other bugaboo, and is a real factor for satellite Internet. A congested link will indeed result in high latencies due to packet queuing.

So the FCC isn't crazy to be suspicious of Starlink's claim of low latencies. But the way the FCC is dealing with this issue is flawed. They have a static RFP mentality, and want to apriori figure out which networks will deliver good service and which ones won't. But as any ISP can tell you, a "gigabit" coax cable network can have massive congestion and thus high real world latencies. Heck, even a fiber network can have high latencies if the uplink to the Internet is congested.

The right way out of this conundrum is to have a service level agreement that the winning ISPs must adhere to to get final funding. The FCC should do real world testing after these networks are built and see if they perform as well as their paper specs say they will. Instead, the FCC is just assuming that a coax or fiber based network will work just fine, nevermind that there are ways to cost cut any network to make it perform poorly.

 

[petersk]

I'll take that bet.

The cliff's notes from the proposed rules is that they all but demand propulsion on most satellites. Pretty much the only things that would get away without propulsion will be cubesats below ISS.

The flip side is that pretty much any satellite that has any real value--and certainly any satellite in a large constellation--is going to have propulsion on it anyway. So the new rules really manifest as a) more delta V for the existing prop system (= a bigger tank) and b) potentially more robust bus electronics (because they to last through deorbit).

How much?

 

[bxr140]

How much?

Lol, put your wallet away. Your money is no good here.

Quick breakdown:
1. Propulsion is imperative for orbit raising. Starlinks have to launch into a lower orbit. For one, direct inject is not a practical solution for maximum payload mass, and for two, any RAAN phasing explicitly requires precession, which explicitly requires a parking orbit that's a different altitude than the final orbit.
2. Propulsion is imperative for orbit phasing. All satellites get deployed into the same exact orbit and then have to space themselves evenly around the 360 degrees of the orbit.
3. Propulsion is imperative for collision avoidance with the other satellites in that orbital shell (the gazillion satellites in the other planes, not the satellites in the same plane) and any crossing orbits, and the need for COLA maneuvers [more or less] increases as quantity of satellites goes up.
4. Propulsion is basically imperative for deorbiting. Unless your operational orbit is super low--basically lower than everyone else--you need to come down through other orbital shells in such a way that collision avoidance maneuvers are likely, if not inevitable. The alternative is to expect/demand that the other satellites perform COLA around the deorbiting satellite, and one could imagine how that kind of precedent can quickly devolve.
5. Finally, there's no need for clever appendages that add drag for deorbiting, because there's a big ass solar array already strapped to the satellite that will do just fine. That's standard deorbiting practice for basically anything that's ever been purposely deorbited into the atmosphere.

Where "wings" could theoretically provide potential value in space is in a VLEO situation where there's enough atmosphere to potentially provide some lift--basically enabling a controlled 'skipping off the atmosphere' type of deal. Even then nothing comes for free, so you still end up needing propulsion to offset the drag just like an aircraft does.

 

[bkp_duke]

With that info alone, I believe you can figure out the IPv4 addresses that would be end user terminals. You should be able to do pings and then traceroutes to them. I'm thinking you might be able to tell you've hit an end user via a Starlink satellite by carefully looking at increasing ping times on the traceroute. It wouldn't be definitive proof that you are bouncing a ping off Starlink, but it would be an educated guess. Maybe others that know more about ISPs and the like would do a better job at sleuthing...

I mean, on an unloaded circuit (which Starlink would be during this alpha test period), you might even be able to see ping times go down then back up as the satellite transits above, increasing physical trip length.

Or, SpaceX will put in a filtering firewall and ruin our fun

Network Tools: DNS,IP,Email


I haven't checked, but if they have anything but a novice network administrator they have disabled ICMP, at least until they go-live.


EDIT - just checked and nothing pings except the gateway (not surprising) and a traceroute doesn't go anywhere after the datacenter in Seattle (also not surprising). They either haven't deployed anything on that range, or they have appropriately locked it down from basic snooping.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Scant new information in this article, but it confirms that SpaceX is beta testing its service.

SpaceX Starlink user terminals tested by board members as beta nears

Also, everyone here, please sign up at SpaceX to get notified of service availability. We need a wide geographic range to capture first service notice.

Starlink

 

[1965Falcon]

a) no freaking way. Most ruralites don't have bags of money to throw around. Sliding laterally in monthly cost of $100 while upping speed, in exchange for sucky latency, *might* play. $300, definitely not.

I think rural means different things for different people. I live in a rural area, it's mostly "Mc'Mansions" on 5 to 10 acre plots. Our internet options are pretty much limited to 3 mb/s DSL or Hughes net, etc.... the biggest complaint I hear now that everyone is working from home is internet speed. It's probably the one barrier that makes it difficult for me to work from home. Starlink is going to make that possible. We have a rural area facebook forum and everyone is talking about when Starlink will be available. I think the demand is going to be huge and people will pay whatever for service because their jobs will depend on it.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Scant new information in this article, but it confirms that SpaceX is beta testing its service.

SpaceX Starlink user terminals tested by board members as beta nears

Also, everyone here, please sign up at SpaceX to get notified of service availability. We need a wide geographic range to capture first service notice.

Starlink

I subscribed for notifications, but I'm interested for a friend rather than for myself.

There is a bond on the ballot here for rural Internet subsidy. Got to get it in soon, otherwise people will point to cellular or LEO constellations and tell people to pony up themselves for the cost of low density living.

 

[ecarfan]

please sign up at SpaceX to get notified of service availability.

I looked at spacex.com and don’t see where to “sign up”. Link please?

I live in an urban area but that’s not where I want to use Starlink. I want to use it when camping in the Western US with my RV.

 

[mongo]

I looked at spacex.com and don’t see where to “sign up”. Link please?

Starlink

 

[Cosmacelf]

Gawd, the same "Let's ignore the obvious market winner" game that Tesla had to endure is happening now with SpaceX/Starlink.

Until very recently, most articles about EVs were debating whether Porsche, or GM, or VW would dominate, with Tesla barely mentioned.

Behold now, the same stupid thing with Starlink: Report: LEO Satellite Broadband Faces Considerable Risk, Amazon Has an Edge - Telecompetitor

This is an article describing a report. It first gives a bunch of BS reasons why LEO satellite is problematic, and then says that Amazon(!) has the "best chance of success".

Barf.

But it does bring up an interesting question. How will Starlink market itself? SpaceX does very little traditional advertising, relying instead on business development and PR. Will Starlink be the first Musk company to actually spend money on advertising, or will Elon yet again dodge that bullet?

 

[kaffine]

I don't see Starlink being advertised. I think the beta test will be long enough to generate enough word of mouth that they will have a backlog of customers waiting for them to have the equipment and bandwidth ready to expand. There are already lots of people in remote areas looking for better internet service once a few of them get a Starlink setup assuming it lives up to expectations they will tell others.

The military is already aware of Starlink once they start using it on Navy ships word will get out to the rest of the maritime community. Although now the cruise ship and airline industries are likely to be struggling for a few years, not sure if that will help or not. Some may not want to spend the money others might see it as a way to set themselves apart and get more customers.

They will have to monitor the bandwidth to make sure they don't oversubscribe too much and degrade service.

 

[bxr140]

This is an article describing a report. It first gives a bunch of BS reasons why LEO satellite is problematic, and then says that Amazon(!) has the "best chance of success".

I don't know who CoBank is and they're certainly downplaying SpaceX and playing up Amazon (including in the actual report which was the source of the article...and if you're asking me a bit of a yawner summary of no-new-news information), but:

a) The article identifies 1) funding, and 2) debris, and 3) terrestrial competition as risks to LEO constellations. All of those are very legit, and in fact are the three major risks/issues with all LEO constellations, including Starlink.

b) The article states that Amazon has 'certain advantages' [ostensibly, over everyone else], specifically 1) basically unlimited funding, 2) their network of data centers, and 3) bundling opportunities. All of those are very real and, while its fair to debate how much of an advantage each one might actually provide, all 3 are specifically advantages over SpaceX.

 

[Cosmacelf]

I don't know who CoBank is and they're certainly downplaying SpaceX and playing up Amazon (including in the actual report which was the source of the article...and if you're asking me a bit of a yawner summary of no-new-news information), but:

a) The article identifies 1) funding, and 2) debris, and 3) terrestrial competition as risks to LEO constellations. All of those are very legit, and in fact are the three major risks/issues with all LEO constellations, including Starlink.

b) The article states that Amazon has 'certain advantages' [ostensibly, over everyone else], specifically 1) basically unlimited funding, 2) their network of data centers, and 3) bundling opportunities. All of those are very real and, while its fair to debate how much of an advantage each one might actually provide, all 3 are specifically advantages over SpaceX.

Amazon does not have unlimited funding. Indeed, their spending might even be more constrained than SpaceX since SpaceX is private and doesn’t have to answer to shareholders every quarter. And SpaceX has not had any difficulty raising money. I would argue the funding issue is a canard and not real when it comes to SpaceX.

Amazon has a few huge data centers. That isn’t what you need for LEO. You need to build or lease dozens or hundreds of geographically dispersed ground stations (no need for a data center, a rack in a co-lo facility is all you need). Both SpaceX and Amazon are starting from scratch here.

Specific SpaceX advantages which outweigh all the supposed disadvantages over Amazon include a huge lead and expertise in manufacturing. Amazon has little. SpaceX has access to space at a fraction of what Amazon’s costs will be. SpaceX has a multi year lead over Amazon. Has Amazon even built a single satellite? Designed it? Who knows, here’s what Wikipedia says about their project: “In December 2019, information became public that Amazon is asking the FCC to waive requirements that SpaceX and OneWeb had to follow in order to get their large satellite internet constellations licensed.[75] The FCC has not yet ruled on the request.”. Yeah, that sounds like a company who has their act together.

 

[bxr140]

Amazon does not have unlimited funding. Indeed, their spending might even be more constrained than SpaceX since SpaceX is private and doesn’t have to answer to shareholders every quarter. And SpaceX has not had any difficulty raising money. I would argue the funding issue is a canard and not real when it comes to SpaceX.

Bit of a stretch. SpaceX is struggling for cash (one of the reasons they nixed ISLs) and Kuiper is a proverbial blip on an Amazon quarterly report's IRAD line.

Just to ward off any misinterpretation the above is NOT saying SpaceX is going to run out of money and crash and burn.

Amazon has a few huge data centers. That isn’t what you need for LEO. You need to build or lease dozens or hundreds of geographically dispersed ground stations (no need for a data center, a rack in a co-lo facility is all you need). Both SpaceX and Amazon are starting from scratch here.

There's more to it than that. You only need hundreds of stations if you don't have interlinks, and a proper ground station is way more than a rack in a hut. Amazon being able to strap tracking antennas on top of their ~dozens of global data centers is going to be huge when it comes to controlling data, and having a gazliion facilities to fill in any gaps (Amazon's North American data centers are basically on the coasts, for instance) is a bonus.

Specific SpaceX advantages which outweigh all the supposed disadvantages over Amazon include a huge lead and expertise in manufacturing. Amazon has little.

Amazon has plenty of experience setting up massive facilities, efficiently moving product, and outsourced manufacturing for various consumer electronics and other *sugar* people don't need, and space vehicle design and manufacturing. That's not to draw equivalency to SpaceX, but rather to bring this back to an objective assessment.

SpaceX has access to space at a fraction of what Amazon’s costs will be.

As long as you're talking about Starship (not Falcon), and assuming the numbers are close to as intimated.[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]

 

[Cosmacelf]

Bit of a stretch. SpaceX is struggling for cash (one of the reasons they nixed ISLs) and Kuiper is a proverbial blip on an Amazon quarterly report's IRAD line.

Just to ward off any misinterpretation the above is NOT saying SpaceX is going to run out of money and crash and burn.



There's more to it than that. You only need hundreds of stations if you don't have interlinks, and a proper ground station is way more than a rack in a hut. Amazon being able to strap tracking antennas on top of their ~dozens of global data centers is going to be huge when it comes to controlling data, and having a gazliion facilities to fill in any gaps (Amazon's North American data centers are basically on the coasts, for instance) is a bonus.



Amazon has plenty of experience setting up massive facilities, efficiently moving product, and outsourced manufacturing for various consumer electronics and other *sugar* people don't need, and space vehicle design and manufacturing. That's not to draw equivalency to SpaceX, but rather to bring this back to an objective assessment.



As long as you're talking about Starship (not Falcon), and assuming the numbers are close to as intimated.

[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]

You know that SpaceX nixed ISLs because of cost reasons? It wasn’t schedule?

Amazon’s estimated 2Q profit will be $4B. Manufacturing and sending satellites (and apparently conforming to FCC requirements) will take a big enough chunk out of that every quarter to be noticed. Meanwhile SpaceX has raised money twice this year and has no shortage of investors.

And I am not talking Starship. SpaceX’s cost to space is far less than anyone else now. Did I miss the part where Amazon has developed orbital class rockets? Amazon will pay retail to send up satellites (and probably will pay SpaceX unless they want to overpay), whereas SpaceX pays its costs which keep dropping.

And no, I’m not forgetting Blue Origin. Amazon does not own Blue Origin and will have to pay Bezos $$ if it wants to use his still unproven rockets.

Since you seem to know a lot about this, what’s Amazon’s satellite architecture? It’s size? It’s capabilities?

 

[Ocelot]

I want to use starlink to get satellite radio in my 2016 model x. But wait, unless I install an antennae and dock, like I did in 2003 in my 1995 Ford Taurus, I cant. The irony.