747
SpaceX says states should dump fiber plans, give all grant money to Starlink (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
306 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 5 points 1 year ago (12 children)

On fiber, while I don't play that game, I've never seen a ping longer than 10-13msecs.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 12 child comments
    •
  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    The point is, unless you’re playing some hyper competitive game where a 30ms difference in reaction time is noticeable (this is less than 1 frame in a fighting game, for example) Starlink works perfectly well. Lower numbers are better, but for games you only need to compare that number to human reaction times (150-200ms) to see that both are small values less than the reaction time of any person.

    Previous satellite Internet using satellites in geosynchronous orbit had 1500ms latency, for comparison.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 11 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    where a 30ms difference in reaction time is noticeable (this is less than 1 frame in a fighting game, for example)

    You have some pretty bad understanding of how netcode works if you think a 30ms ping in an online multi-player game means your game or input is delayed by 30ms. It's a lot more complicated than that, and especially in games with bad netcode you will absolutely notice a difference between 10ms or 30ms ping

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago

    Oh, please explain the complexity to me like I’m a system administrator with only 25 years of experience. I didn’t realize that computers could connect to each other over a network until 3 days ago, imagine my surprise.

    You could start with the fact that many online game servers (ex: Valorant, Apex, Overwatch) artificially increase everyone’s latency at the server, except for the people with higher network latency in order to compensate for lag through a technique called lag compensation. So having 10 ms ping and 50 ms ping just means the server introduces a 40ms delay on the player with 10ms ping so both players experience the same latency.

    Or maybe you could explain how game state updates happen with a set frequency and the gap between the state updates can also be adjusted by the server for each client so that state updates are sent to higher latency users earlier in the update window. I mean this technique is essentially lag compensation as well, but it applies to how the client updates are sent instead of being applied to incoming packets.

    Or, you could avoid all this and simply declare me incorrect by pointing at a game that doesn’t use lag compensation or otherwise move the goal posts so that you don’t actually have to explain the complexity that you were hinting at.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (8 children)

    Previous satellite Internet using satellites in geosynchronous orbit had 1500ms latency, for comparison.

    Yes, and are far more stable, not hyped, and are already at pretty much peak congestion. Starlink will get progressively worse, the more people use it. Right now, it's over provisioned.

    The point is, unless you’re playing some hyper competitive game where a 30ms difference in reaction time is noticeable (

    Ever try a voice call with 30ms of latency?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    Yes, and are far more stable, not hyped, and are already at pretty much peak congestion. Starlink will get progressively worse, the more people use it. Right now, it’s over provisioned.

    They were not more stable. Any occlusion, including thick clouds, would degrade the signal to being unusable. I used Hughsnet for years, then swapped to cellular (100ms+ latency) and finally to Starlink. Starlink is a pretty solid 100Mb/s, with low jitter, packet loss and latency.

    Ever try a voice call with 30ms of latency?

    Yeah, I use voice chat every day, it's not noticeable.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (2 children)

    They were not more stable. Any occlusion, including thick clouds, would degrade the signal to being unusable

    You have the same issue with Starlink...

    Yeah, I use voice chat every day, it’s not noticeable.

    The people on the call do...

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    You have the same issue with Starlink…

    No, because the Starlink satellites are 350 miles above the Earth while geosynchronous satellites are 13,000 miles above the earth. Because of the Inverse-Square Law they can transmit a signal that is orders of magnitude stronger.

    In addition, geosync satellites are locked at a single fixed position and received by a single dish antenna so any obstruction along the line will disrupt the signal.

    Starlink’s recievers use a 1200 element x-band phased array so it can lock on to multiple sources and track them as they move across the sky. Each satellite link is its own channel. Losing contact with one satellite simply causes the data to be routed to one of the 4-5 other locked satellites.

    The people on the call do…

    30ms of latency is less than 1/3rd of the latency of most Bluetooth headsets that people use every day to talk on their phones. It is not noticeable at all.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    Ever try a voice call with 30ms of latency?

    Lol what? You're not gonna notice a 30ms delay in a voice call...

    @ubergeek@lemmy.today downvote with no reply even though you were painfully wrong. Sad.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Yeh, 30ms is still inside the haas delay.
    If you are a professional listener (sound engineer, musician, dancer) then you can probably perceive it (in a similar way that eyes theoretically only need 25fps, but 60/120/144 is noticeably better).

    In 30ms, sound can travel 10 meters.
    So, if you've ever had a conversation with someone across a classroom, you've had a conversation with 30ms latency.

    For data, 30ms is 8100 km for electricity over copper, or 6000km for light over fibre.

    Meaning 30ms over fibre (considering no transmission delays) would be roughly the direct distance between US and UK.

    So yeh, 30ms is nothing

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent