Black out coming; Elon Musk says Starlink active in all continents even Antarctica
(www.ndtv.com)
❄️ INCLUDING ANTARCTICA ❄️
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There is also the delay of traveling up to the sat and back down. Bell System in the '80s used to use satellites for long distance calls but quit because of the lag.
Latency is a problem with geostationary satellites because they orbit 22,000mi away from earth, for a 44,000 mi round trip. Starlink uses low earth orbit, only 500 miles up, so the trips are much shorter.
I live in the Ozarks with no good alternatives for internet. I have Starlink and my latency is hovering at 25-90 ms. Up and down speeds are enough to enjoy this site and stream Rumble no problems.
Name checks out.
I gamed on Starlink. It was actually a really good experience. ... That is, until spring came, and one giant tree blossomed and blocked a small portion of the path, and when I gamed, it was partially obstructed view. I removed the tree, ran into other issues with Starlink (ended up being a ethernet cable adapter) and I already switched back to cable. (also, I cut that pesky tree down). Now, I don't know whether to go back to starlink or stick with cable.
Starlink - more expensive, surprisingly better than the local cable and fiber optic
Cable - cheaper, "faster", supporting Breezeline, Canadian company (with ties to comcast possibly)
Tree in way of internet, cuts tree down
kek, that made me laugh
Additionally, your "satellite dish" sends and receives signal from another satellite, so there is a duality of losses found. Plus the round trip function as you mentioned. (is 22,000 miles right? That seems a bit high IMO. No sauce from my end, just intuition.)
Indeed. Satellite systems were usually a solution of last resort, but I will admit I don't really know how Starlink is actually put together to remove the lag.
edit: I know they are in low earth orbit, so that reduces the distance dramatically from geo-stationary satellites, just not sure of the details and how much difference it actually makes.
The Starlink satellites are at a height of 340 miles. Round trip of 680 miles. In addition the satellites communicate with one another using lasers.
Compare 680 miles with 44,000 miles and you have your difference in latency. Even at the speed of light you have half a second (500 ms) of latency at 44K miles versus 40 milliseconds for Starlink. This is still not nearly as good a terrestrial internet, fiber/DSL, but significantly better than traditional satellite.
Round trip can be a bit longer depending on the inclination angle. However, I have Starlink and the only drawback is inclement weather and some gaps in the orbit field. Do fully recommend as it is a great option for remote use.
Yes, I am on the waiting list for my area. It will be great to have in the mountains where I live.
It's high time we start using muons and forget the satellites.