[Starlink] Starlink deplyment in Ukraine

[David P. Reed]

Very interesting info about where current ground stations are, but of course Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv are close to some adjacent countries that already have Starlink ground stations (didn't know they were up and running in Turkey).
 
Regarding ground-level repeating, the radio horizon is very short except in VHF where you can in principle bounce off the ionosphere. Don't join the Flat Earth Society, the earth isn't very flat at all.
(yes, some small bands actually bend around the earth in the Troposhere, but bitrates feasible in that bandwidth is very poor. Maybe voice grade)
 
Microwave multihop links require LOS and except from mountaintop to mountaintop, it's hard to maintain them cheaply - Wall St uses microwaves between NYC and Chicago, because the latency is much lower number of microseconds than direct fiber would be (little known fact about the difference between speed of light in glass vs. air).
 
These technologies are "off the shelf" for fixed wireless deployment, but if I were trying to maintain or build a quick replacement for existing cables using wireless, I suspect it would largely be too little, too late.
 
I'm sure that we can deploy special networking technology to fuel a Molotov Cocktail brigade in both Ukraine and Russia, for the greater glory of Nationalist Pride.
 
But honestly, technology doesn't solve social and political problems - at best it escalates them.
 
Naah, this is mostly Musk's time to promote Starlink, because it can be somewhat useful as is, in the public imagination, if not so much in reality. (We'll see) However, any person seriously interested in preserving Internet connectivity in Uktraine would be focusing on other kinds of engineering - less showy, more practical. Already he is acting like he rules the world in his other public commentary insulting Russia and promoting his rockets against Putin's rockets. He's really an asshole like Trump, and a loose cannon who thinks everything he thinks is right, and that he need not consult with anyone else about coordination and strategy.
 
And sadly, I'm afraid that because Musk wants to hog the limelight, and other Billionaires might decide to copy him, we'll end up with Megacorp level private warriors viewing their role as saving the world for the billionaire class. I hope that's not true. We already had that with Eric Prince and Blackwater deciding they should become high tech warriors to preserve theif view of the proper World Order.
 
Personally, I've worked pretty much my whole life to create an open, *inclusive* and neutral platform called the Internet among all humans on the earth. It will be sad, indeed to see it militarized, even by guerillas, no matter what their politics.
 
On Sunday, March 6, 2022 12:58am, "Larry Press" <lpress at csudh.edu> said:



Ground stations in Turkey, Lithuania, and Poland are reachable from Kyiv. [ https://circleid.com/posts/20220301-spacex-starlink-service-in-ukraine-is-an-important-government-asset ]( https://circleid.com/posts/20220301-spacex-starlink-service-in-ukraine-is-an-important-government-asset ). The one in Turkey is often out of range.

From: Starlink <starlink-bounces at lists.bufferbloat.net> on behalf of David Lang <david at lang.hm>
Sent: Saturday, March 5, 2022 5:02 PM
To: David P. Reed <dpreed at deepplum.com>
Cc: starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net <starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net>
Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink deplyment in Ukraine
 

On Sat, 5 Mar 2022, David P. Reed wrote:

 > THis is a good discussion, and I hope for more.
 > 
 > 1. I'm really curious how well Starlink's bent-pipe architecture actually 
 > works in a context like Ukraine where fiber and copper infrastructure are 
 > vulnerable and less redundant than in a place like the UK. I'm not so worried 
 > about the dishy's working or being targeted. They can be moved and disguised. 
 > What is not being discussed here (or anywhere) is where the ground stations 
 > that the traffic must *all* traverse are, and the fact that they are Single 
 > Points of Failure, and must be nailed down in places which are close enough to 
 > the dishy they serve, and also fiber-backhauled into the Internet. This is a 
 > serious technical issue that interests me, mostly because Starlink doesn't 
 > publish its technical specs.
 > 
 > So these ground stations for Ukrainian coverage are where? Ukraine is a BIG 
 > area. It certainly won't be covered by one ground station. And it certainly 
 > can't be just an 18-wheeler with a huge antenna on top, because it needs to be 
 > connected to a point-of-presence with lots of capacity - the sum of all the 
 > dishy's peak loads.
 > 
 > I'm suspecting that some ground station is actually in Ukraine itself, but 
 > putting it in Kyiv just makes it a tempting target (like a power station or 
 > water utility), and it is much more vulnerable and visible to Russian troops 
 > in the area.
 > 
 > Now Poland and Moldova are potential sites that might cover part of Ukraine, 
 > but certainly not that far into the country.

 I actually doubt that the ground stations are in Ukraine, that would require 
 much more significant setup (think about the engineers flown out to installa 
 ground station to support Tonga) and would be extremely vulnerable to 
 disruption.

 Remember, service was turned on and dishys delivered in < 48 hours.

 disrupting the ground stations in adjacent countries is a rather significant 
 escalation.

 We don't know the full reach of a ground station, but I suspect that some of the 
 limitations that people have been talking about are as much software/regulations 
 as RF/hardware, and I would not be surprised if such restritions are being 
 relaxed a bit there.

 > 2. I hope that Starlink isn't just doing this to get Musk in the news, but 
 > actually wants to facilitate ongoing connectivity to the Internet, independent 
 > of "sides". (as others here have noted, communications control is a very 
 > imprecise instrument when it is a tool of aggression - "virtue signalling" by 
 > a billionaire who has been knowmid 1990's trying to bring Internet 
 > connectivity to poor people in Jamaica and poro people in the West Bank each 
 > partly caused the deaths of a few people we thought we were only helping. But 
 > that's a long story in each context).
 > 
 > More seriously, if Musk is not covering much of Ukraine at all, and just 
 > shipping dishy's there, that's good, but I hope he doesn't try to take credit 
 > for more than Starlink actually can do. I mean it would also be nice if 
 > Mikrotik shipped in meshable WiFi, but that's of limited utility, even if the 
 > most clever hackers tried to create an outdoor mesh of them. The coverage 
 > would be very limited, and you still need a non-WiFi path to the Internet to 
 > communicate over wide areas.

 So far he has not said anything about the use of them, although some people in 
 Ukraine had said they have them and are prepared to use them when the wired 
 Internet is disrupted. I would not expect to hear that much about people using 
 them in remote areas yet. We'll probably hear more about that weeks to months 
 later.

 David Lang
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