Black out coming; Elon Musk says Starlink active in all continents even Antarctica
(www.ndtv.com)
❄️ INCLUDING ANTARCTICA ❄️
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (89)
sorted by:
I like Starlink, but I take issue with this statement..
This is what we in the trade call 'bollocks'. Information travels at the speed of light in a vacuum, the same as it does in a fibre optic cable.
Where it benefits is from a reduced number of devices between the endpoints which take a couple of milliseconds each to process and route the traffic - that doesn't actually mean the traffic travels faster, there's just fewer devices to slow it down as it moves across the network.
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.
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.