[Starlink] Starlink tidbits from NANOG

[Dave Taht]

I have an ipv4/23 lying around since the 90s. I don't want to sell it,
but my co-owner and I would really like a dishy and a static IPv4/IPv6
address... and service for life... and whatever else we could
negotiate. :)

On Thu, Nov 4, 2021 at 8:26 AM Darrell Budic <budic at onholyground.com> wrote:
>
> I was at NANOG in Minneapolis, and got a chance to ask a couple question of a Starlink Network Engineer who’s attending. I was already talking to him about Starlink’s network efforts (see below) but it was nice to meet in person. Don’t quote me on any of this, but here’s a few tidbits this list may appreciate:
>
> - Starlink is expanding their own network operations, and is connecting to more IXPs. They were already on SIX in Seattle, have connected to DECIX NY, and are in the process of connecting to ChIX in Chicago. As I run ChIX, I had a good excuse to talk to them about other things. :) IXPs and their own networks are in the works for Europe and other areas as well.

It was my dream they would realize the huge number of small isps that
would like to peer with starlink and leverage those. I'd like to
restore
the original, routable internet back out to the edges where it
belongs. But that's me. The whole "Terminal" language bothers me, when
there's
so much more that could be created locally along the edge if only
stuff could move there. Email back to the edge, videoconfernening
services across villiages....

> - They have been obtaining more v4 addresses, but I don’t know if they have enough to not do CGNAT. I don't think they do yet, but it seems like it may be a long term target.

I keep hoping for IETF action politically on opening up 0/8 and 240/4.
There are of course a vast swath of military/8 assignments... I've
lost track did the post office ever sell any off? There's space left
in 44/8 too if they are willing to talk to ardc but that would have to
go to an open bid.

> - v6 is deliberately not fully functional, but they know some of use are using it and it will eventually be fully activated. May be waiting on the regional connectivity, so will be intersting to see if changes for some areas and not others as they roll it out.

Deliberate... well, if you ship 10 year old openwrt software to users
(we'd made a big push for ipv6 there before ipv6 launch day in 2013),
and
don't keep up...  I guess you could call that deliberate. I'm pretty
happy with openwrt 20.2.1. IMHO: ipv6 really requires a modern kernel
and tools, not less than 4 years old, to deploy well. Maybe there's a
worthwhile SDR stack, I don't know...

Lately it seems like ipv6 things have been moving backwards with flow
offloads in certain chipsets being very limited or very buggy with
ipv6. Offloads in general have been cropping up as an increasing
problem - lot's of enthusiasm for putting in RED into nvidia's cards
apparently.

> - They hate Google's outsourced NOC as much as the rest of us

Do say more. :) I'm told google at least have a very nice set of tools
for looking at the characteristics of interchange traffic.

> - New ground stations with more capacity are coming (and will be upgrades).

Would so love universities to get in on some of those. I remember the IMP.

> They are using waves back to regional DCs now, but will be moving to dark fiber over the next year or two

"waves"?

> - the new satellites have more than 2 lasers, and there is enough capacity on them to do routing. no details on how or what protocols, alas

Still on a custom mac, though, I suppose. Thx for all the teasers,
this is the most info I've seen in months. Way better than hitting
reload on reddit. :P

> - new birds also have 2-3x more ku bandwidth than first gen

up and down?

My take on the up problem was that it was regulatory. ?

(and they really need ack-filtering)

> - new dishes are in the works, v4 coming with lower power use, more capacity, not round any more
> - larger dishes coming for commercial apps

> - as we know, they aren’t doing any AQM yet, but it sounds like it may be in the works and we may see it in new code in 4-6 months. Not my guys department, so no more details.

fq is a better start.

Just someone telling me under pain of death, "dave, you can't talk for
X months, but we're going to do cake/fq-codel/pie/something" would be
comforting. There's a whole internet elsewhere left to fix, starlink
getting it right and a little publicity around it would do wonders...
and certainly wifi is highest on my list. As it is, I got annoyed
enough last week to try and get the autorate sensing code to work well
on starlink. There's a prototype now that seems to be working well on
lte, see here: https://forum.openwrt.org/t/cakes-autorate-ingress-testing-needed/108848/186

Testers wanted.

 Fixing fixed wireless has been a pain point far, far, far greater
than the disappointment I felt at starlink so totally missing the
bufferbloat problem initially. It will take a decade to sort out 5g,
4-6 months more for starlink oh! yes! yes! yes!

More news on that as it happens.

> - it’s encrypted up and down. I didn’t know that yet, but I may have just missed it.

I did. But it's really hard to trust that black box and the world has
otherwise shifted to e2e encryption.

>
>   -Darrell
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-- 
I tried to build a better future, a few times:
https://wayforward.archive.org/?site=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.icei.org

Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC