drmoose comments on Elon Musk Is Charging Starlink Customers Gigantic Bogus Fees Because Its Network Is Being Crushed by “High Demand”

So what are you trying to say? You signal goes up a few kilometers, then you're in near vacuum in space where signal travels with proper light speed and results in faster transcontinental ping.

There are no clouds and atmosphere in space. That is what makes it space.

EDIT: Actually radio signals already travel near speed of light in the atmosphere. Only light in fiber optics is about 66% of speed of light.

EDIT2: Oh wow, a Chinese research initiative just achieved a breakthrough with hollow core fiber optics which does transmit close to the speed of light. This could render that advantage of sattelite internet moot! Upgrading cables is going to be a massive infrastructure project though.

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[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 1 point 3 months ago (5 children)

and what's in those few kilometers? not atmosphere? Sure the signal travels a bit faster between satellites themselves but this is not relevant in modern networking. Almost everything is cached on edge in your regional server these days so only "the last mile" is what matters for latency. Even if you ignore all this the math would still favor cable every time - 66% reliable speed of light will always beat "potential 100% speed of light sometimes for some part of the distance"

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[–] AlteredEgo@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (4 children)

Ping

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[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 1 point 3 months ago (3 children)

I can imagine some use cases for faster ping between two low orbit satellites could be important but my imagination begins and ends at rocket guidance. I don't see that ever being useful for 99.9% of networking. The signal has to go down to earth receiver at some point and atmosphere and dish overhead will always lose to a cable.

It's a boring answer - but cable will remain undefeated until some magic breakthrough in physics comes along. It's simply just that good.

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[–] AlteredEgo@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

Well with the new hollow optic fiber you would be right.

Average ping time between Europe and US is 100-150ms, which is high for e.g. gaming. Satellite constellations could cut that down by 33%. Which was a huge promised benefit of starlink, even just for HFT stock trading which is like cheating and mining gold.

But yeah with hollow optic fiber being able to do the same, much of the value of Starlink should be wiped out! SpaceX stock should take a massive nosedive lol!

Afaik you're wrong about overhead with atmosphere and dish.

The only value internet constellations now provide is universal coverage. But that could be achieved cheaper with a higher orbit of 2000 km instead of 500km. Coverage goes up to 12% instead of 3.6% so you need like 9 times (square) less satellites? I think? And the ping would be worse but still acceptable like 200ms between EU and US if you live somewhere off grid or on the ocean.

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[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 1 point 3 months ago* (1 child)

Satellite constellations could cut that down by 33%

Ok this is pure marketing bullshit. Source? The physics simply doesn't check out.

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[–] AlteredEgo@lemmy.ml 1 point 3 months ago

The speed of light in fiber optic cable is ~66% of what the speed of light in vacuum is (or radio signals in atmosphere). Signal first has to go up but then travels faster than in fiber optics cable and arrives faster. Hence faster ping.

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