Starlink $1 pre-trial minimum bandwidth speeds revealed: 35Mbps DOWN and 5Mbps UP

[Kisai]

15 minutes ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

It is the acceptable found empirically, like it or not.

Depends on how the engine works and compensates for latency (tons of details on the topic in this thesis). There's a great image on this paper showing how punctuation (kills-deaths) behaves under different latency periods. It is pretty cool since they included curves showing the effects of different bullet sizes. I can't really share it since it isn't publicly available.

EDIT: This one also seems pretty good. https://digitalcommons.wpi.edu/iqp-all/2376/

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Just sayin, there is a reason why every mmo forum tells players to turn nagle off.

[DrMacintosh]

Yeah, we really don't need a giant network of space junk flying in low orbit. SpaceX is a garbage disposal service. 

[dalekphalm]

1 minute ago, DrMacintosh said:

Yeah, we really don't need a giant network of space junk flying in low orbit. SpaceX is a garbage disposal service. 

Can you elaborate what you mean here?

 

For one, Starlink satellites are anything but space junk. For two, their "disposal" plan for obsolete satellites is to enter a "disposal orbit", which will cause the satellite to enter the atmosphere after about a year, and eventually burn up in orbit and any remains (of which there won't be much) will deorbit.

 

There is some merit to being concerned about Space Junk, and managing how much stays in orbit. There are multiple organizations working on Space Junk cleanup measures (most are still years away from practicality).

 

But Starlink isn't contributing to that.

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, CircleTech said:

 

This is still great for heavily underserved rural areas in the US. I sincerely hope this competition encourages ISPs to remove data caps and improve speeds, as we know they absolutely have capacity to do.

No profit increase if they did.  As they can make more money charging for Unlimited or overages. In the end it’s all about greed. 

[harryk]

Here's a post I made earlier this year analyzing the latency potential of Starlink. 

 

tdlr; Starlink will always be slower than a direct route ground based network, but not by much.

 

On 5/4/2020 at 6:20 PM, harryk said:

I don't know if I'd call it impossible, lofty maybe.

 

SpaceX's plan is to essentially cover the Earth with satellites so there is always one almost directly overhead, so I will assume there is always a satellite at the minimum distance i.e. at the orbital altitude. Then the satellites intercommunicate the signal to where it's going and beam it directly down.

 

So in this overly simplified scenario, the distance traveled = orbit height + arc between satellites + orbit height

 

The absolute minimum latency between the two locations is the distance divided by the speed of light.

 

Plotting this shows that the satellite route will always be slower than the land route (no surprise there) but at Starlink's planned orbit the additional minimum latency is only a handful of milliseconds. 

 

Here is the same plot but with GEO added. You can see why existing satellite internet, which mostly uses GEO, sucks so much.

 

Realistically there will be additional latency as the signal is processed within each satellite and then relayed on, but the same exists on the ground. Assuming that one could use the same networking protocol and technology in space or on the ground, the only difference will be the distance the signal has to travel. Granted that's a bold assumption and I am not knowledgable of the intricacies of implementing a world wide data network.

 

[dalekphalm]

2 minutes ago, CircleTech said:

Yes but the potential of losing revenue from customers moving to other services will force them to become more consumer friendly, or they will just go bankrupt.

I don't think any major ISP would go bankrupt over rural services - in fact they might even prefer it.

 

Consider that the whole reason why traditional ISP's won't heavily invest in rural areas (or even operate there at all) is because it's expensive to run the infrastructure, and there are (according to their claims) too few residents per km² to pay for the investment. They make the vast majority of their money from densely packed cities and urban centres.

 

If this causes a domino effect where Starlink (and any future competitors) starts to eat into urban customers - that's where you'll see Comcast and the like react.

[Unixsystem]

12 minutes ago, harryk said:

Here's a post I made earlier this year analyzing the latency potential of Starlink. 

 

tdlr; Starlink will always be slower than a direct route ground based network, but not by much.

 

Keep in mind that the current satellites don't have the intra-constellation laser links that they are planning to start launching later this year (IIRC). At that point the signal can bounce from satellite to satellite, completely bypassing any ground infrastructure until its right next to the target. 

 

It's going to depend a lot on the total number of sats as well as the number of ground stations, and it'll never be as fast as an ideal ground based wired connection, but moving the signal almost entirely into orbit has the potential to completely bypass congestion points. It won't improve the minimum latency much, but it should bring the maximum down and potentially lower than the maximum latency on certain wired connections. 

[poochyena]

over 10 times faster than my parent's current internet

[DrMacintosh]

17 minutes ago, BlueScope819 said:

They are in such a low orbit that when their useful lifespan expires they will burn up in the atmosphere without any problems. It's not like the geostationary junk belt.

Oh, well ok then. 

[illegalwater]

I unironically would consider using this as long as it was consistent. My ISP has been trash the last few months and my internet is cutting out literally every five minutes, sometimes even multiple times in a minute, it's getting pretty frustrating.

[dalekphalm]

2 minutes ago, illegalwater said:

I unironically would consider using this as long as it was consistent. My ISP has been trash the last few months and my internet is cutting out literally every five minutes, sometimes even multiple times in a minute, it's getting pretty frustrating.

Well you should definitely keep your eye on it then - the cost of service is supposed to be quite low.

[Izineth]

2 hours ago, Kisai said:

That's actually pretty terrible latency, gaming on that would be awful. I get 4ms on DSL to local and the same 32ms to Frontier LA.

The download/upload speed might be passible for watching youtube in 4K but that's about it.

UMMMM... I get that kind of latency on my cable internet I don't know what you're talking about.  I've NEVER seen latency below about 35 - 40 ms even to a server that is like 20 miles from me.  Gaming on that kind of latency would be perfectly fine...

[Guest]

I won’t be getting fibre or VDSL any time in the next century (they literally stopped laying down fibre 2km down the road), this would be really awesome, and so much cheaper.

[FakeNSA]

47 minutes ago, Unixsystem said:

Keep in mind that the current satellites don't have the intra-constellation laser links that they are planning to start launching later this year (IIRC). At that point the signal can bounce from satellite to satellite, completely bypassing any ground infrastructure until its right next to the target. 

 

It's going to depend a lot on the total number of sats as well as the number of ground stations, and it'll never be as fast as an ideal ground based wired connection, but moving the signal almost entirely into orbit has the potential to completely bypass congestion points. It won't improve the minimum latency much, but it should bring the maximum down and potentially lower than the maximum latency on certain wired connections. 

Fun fact Unix: Due to physics, starlink could be faster. Why?

 

Because the speed of light differs depending on the medium. The speed of light is in glass is .667 (repeating, but it doesn't matter) that of the speed of light in a vacuum.

As a result, with direct laser links (coming in starlink's 2.0 satellite revision), starlink could be at least a few seconds faster over continent-spanning distances.

Maybe update the OP with this @Results45, if you're interested?

I am also available to DM with a bunch of hearsay about it from /r/starlink, and some Elon tweets as well.

Source for speed of light claim.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

3 hours ago, rcmaehl said:

Download speeds good but not great; BUT Upload speeds are probably faster than 90% of the US

In my area in centeral Illinois, you get Down/4=UP. I have 100 down, 25 up, for example. Though i am lucky/unlucky enough to have fiber. Minimal latency, but multipul users areterible.

[dalekphalm]

1 minute ago, TheTechWizardThatNeedsHelp said:

In my area in centeral Illinois, you get Down/4=UP. I have 100 down, 25 up, for example. Though i am lucky/unlucky enough to have fiber. Minimal latency, but multipul users areterible.

For DOCSIS 3.x/Cable based FTTN, you get a fraction of that. I was on a Gigabit plan, and the upload was 50 Mbps. I eventually dropped down to 150 Mbps (my current) and I get 10 or 15 Mbps (I forget which).

[Dabombinable]

That's faster than my Mum's VDSL...so not bad at all.

[rcmaehl]

18 minutes ago, TheTechWizardThatNeedsHelp said:

In my area in centeral Illinois, you get Down/4=UP. I have 100 down, 25 up, for example. Though i am lucky/unlucky enough to have fiber. Minimal latency, but multipul users areterible.

We have 940MBps down, 35up here

[Roswell]

For those arguing about latency, we have no idea where severs are located or where the ground receivers are. You can’t say “that latency sucks” without said information. Those response times are absolutely meaningless without context.

[Unixsystem]

38 minutes ago, FakeNSA said:

Fun fact Unix: Due to physics, starlink could be faster. Why?

 

Because the speed of light differs depending on the medium. The speed of light is in glass is .667 (repeating, but it doesn't matter) that of the speed of light in a vacuum.

As a result, with direct laser links (coming in starlink's 2.0 satellite revision), starlink could be at least a few seconds faster over continent-spanning distances.

Maybe update the OP with this @Results45, if you're interested?

I am also available to DM with a bunch of hearsay about it from /r/starlink, and some Elon tweets as well.

Source for speed of light claim.

It's absolutely a possibility, however I'd imagine that most ground based connections aren't going to need to cover nearly as much distance as even a Starlink connection. Speed of light differences could wind up making up some of that difference, however I'd imagine that there is an order of magnitude more latency gains to be made by (potentially) removing network congestion and routing bottlenecks. 

 

If they can get Starlink ground stations set up on or near all the major backbones and big data centers, they could conceivably bypass effectively all of the current infrastructure and keep the data totally within their network. How much faster that would be, I have no idea, but I'd have to imagine that any system built from the ground up is going to be more efficient than the weird bootatrapped network we use now. Anyone who has a better perspective on how the backbone level services actually work, feel free to correct me. 

[Donut417]

2 hours ago, CircleTech said:

Yes but the potential of losing revenue from customers moving to other services will force them to become more consumer friendly, or they will just go bankrupt.

Ummm NO. Because Comcast, AT&T, Cox and possibly Charter in the future all have caps. As much as some Cellular companies make 5G seem like its going to be unicorns and Roses, AT&T and Verizon will find a way to screw that up. T Mobile is a bit more friendlier but Im sure they will have some cap in place where they will start throttling you. Also here the more screwed up thing. Places with little to no competition have caps. For example my area has caps with Comcast, but if your live in the North East US, No caps. Also bulk agreements tend to not have caps either. 

 

But the fact is, they dont have to change. Because most people only have 1 or 2 choices. To be clear I dont think Starlink can even compete with wired broadband providers. People who live in the city are not going to go with them for the most part. Rural people will because they have little to no good choices. 

[Bombastinator]

4 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Just saw this on the OLF Podcast. Solid speeds, which will increase as they continue to add to the network (currently there's what... a few hundred satellites? They plan on launching thousands of them).

 

No this isn't really a replacement to a good ground connection (FTTH or FTTN), but for rural customers that can't get any wired broadband, this could be excellent for them.

Makes me curious what percentage of rural America is physically limited to dial up or slower completely ignoring DSL?  DSL limitation is common even in many more urban areas .  I remember a number of around 20% of the face of the US geographically.  I don’t remember how old the number is or how they were measuring it though. 

[Donut417]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

Makes me curious what percentage of rural America is physically limited to dial up or slower completely ignoring DSL?  DSL limitation is common even in many more urban areas .  I remember a number of around 20% of the face of the US geographically.  I don’t remember how old the number is or how they were measuring it though. 

I know my boss has to use LTE or Satellite in his new house. Said he called every provider in the area, all stop about a half mile from his house.  I guess he's getting Hughsnet installed for his girl so she can work from home. He uses the LTE hotspot for gaming and takes his Xbox over to his buddies house when there is a Call of Duty update. 

[Camoxide]

3 hours ago, Kisai said:

That is some pretty ridiculous minimum. 4 seconds per page of web browsing? 100ms has been possible for a decade, if anything websites have been getting worse by doing all this responsive html and framework cruft.

 

No, really, if you are playing an action game, 40ms is murder when your opponent has 4ms.

It doesnt really matter as the server wont have a tick rate to take advantage of ping that low. 

COD only has a tick rate of 12hz meaning everyone basically has 100ms ping playing it. 

 

Granted there are custom CS GO servers with 128hz tick-rate which can advantage of ping that low but they're not the norm.  

[Arika]

I can't wait to get rid of my 7mbps down and 0.7mbps up and tell telstra to shove it