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    <p>Perhaps worth remembering that they don't have to engineer the
      final system right now. Consider that:</p>
    <p>- Building ground station gateways costs money, but as the number
      of subscribers grows, so does the income stream that allows for
      ground station construction.<br>
      - Gateway ground stations, if generally kept close to users, at
      least where there are lots of users, don't have the problem that
      there's no land to put them on as there aren't normally lots of
      users in the middle of the sea.<br>
      - Where there are more than 10k users, someone will generally put
      a fibre optic cable there or at least think hard about how they
      can get that done. We've seen this widely in the Pacific, where
      such islands now generally have fibre (with some notable
      exceptions). Once you have fibre, there's no reason why you can't
      have a LEO ground station there. So you can generally always build
      more <br>
      - Constellations that are short of capacity can be added to
      incrementally. Remember Starlink is at a very early stage of what
      they're planning.<br>
      - Satellite capacity depends on a lot of things, from on-board
      processing capacity to the bandwidth of the uplinks and downlinks
      and the received signal levels on those. Current Starlink gateway
      antennas are tiny by satellite infrastructure standards, but that
      doesn't preclude bigger antennas and more gateways for the future,
      which allows more satellites to be provided with direct gateway
      links.</p>
    <p>In some ways, this evolution mirrors that of mobile networks. In
      the early stage of mobile network evolution, the providers aimed
      at getting coverage with the least number of base stations from
      the highest hills and buildings available. These never had the
      potential to provide the capacity that today's networks have, so
      as the networks evolved, they moved down from the lofty heights to
      the bottom of the valleys, cashing in on improved frequency re-use
      potential (you could re-use the same frequency a valley over, you
      see, because the ridge between yours and theirs meant that signals
      wouldn't interfere). It also meant less path loss to the end users
      (so more battery life for them). Not to mention fewer lawsuits
      from people who were worried about large towers irradiating their
      kids. The cost of those lawsuits, by the way, was seen simply as
      something to factor in when making engineering decisions.<br>
    </p>
    <div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 22/02/2022 8:20 pm, Dick Roy wrote:<br>
    </div>
    <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:F8570DF0E7654A889BA42CFE89D6CCE8@SRA6">
      
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          <p class="MsoNormal"><b><font size="2" face="Tahoma"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;
                  font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:bold">From:</span></font></b><font size="2" face="Tahoma"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Tahoma"> Starlink
                [<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="mailto:starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net">mailto:starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net</a>] <b><span style="font-weight:
                    bold">On Behalf Of </span></b>Mike Puchol<br>
                <b><span style="font-weight:bold">Sent:</span></b>
                Monday, February 21, 2022
                9:35 PM<br>
                <b><span style="font-weight:bold">To:</span></b> Daniel
                AJ Sokolov; David Lang<br>
                <b><span style="font-weight:bold">Cc:</span></b>
                <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net">starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net</a><br>
                <b><span style="font-weight:bold">Subject:</span></b>
                Re: [Starlink] Starlink
                Roaming</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
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        <p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:
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            <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">Actually, laser links
                  would make gateway connectivity *worse*. If we take
                  the scenario attached, one
                  gateway is suddenly having to serve traffic from all
                  UTs that were not
                  previously under coverage. <br>
                  <br>
                  A satellite under full load can saturate two gateway
                  links by itself. If you
                  load, say, 20 satellites in an orbital plane, onto a
                  single gateway, over ISL,
                  you effectively have 5% of each satellite’s capacity
                  available (given an
                  equal distribution of demand, of course there will be
                  satellites with no UTs to
                  cover etc.).<font color="navy"><span style="color:navy"><o:p></o:p></span></font></span></font></p>
            <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><b><i><font size="2" face="Arial" color="navy"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy;
                      font-weight:bold;font-style:italic">[RR] I think
                      to do this analysis correctly;
                      one needs to consider the larger system and the
                      time-varying loads on the
                      components thereof. What you say is true; just a
                      bit over-simplified to be maximally
                      useful. Routing through complex congested networks
                      is well-studied problem and hnts
                      at possible solutions can probably be found there</span></font></i></b><b><i><font size="2" face="Wingdings" color="navy"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
Wingdings;color:navy;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic">J</span></font></i></b><b><i><font size="2" face="Arial" color="navy"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;
                      color:navy;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic">)<o:p></o:p></span></font></i></b></p>
            <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><br>
                  <br>
                  Eventually they will go for optical gateways, it’s the
                  only way to get
                  enough capacity to the constellation, specially the
                  30k satellite version.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
            <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><b><i><font size="2" face="Arial" color="navy"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy;
                      font-weight:bold;font-style:italic">[RR] What do
                      you mean by “”optical
                      gateway”? An optical link from the satellite to
                      the ground station? That
                      would be real expensive at least power-wise and
                      unreliable.</span></font></i></b><font size="2" face="Arial" color="navy"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;
                  color:navy"><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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          <p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:
                12.0pt"><br>
                Best,<br>
                <br>
                Mike<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
        </div>
        <div name="messageReplySection">
          <p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:
                12.0pt">On Feb 22, 2022, 05:17 +0300, David Lang
                <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:david@lang.hm"><david@lang.hm></a>, wrote:<br>
                <br>
                <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
          <p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:
                12.0pt">On Mon, 21 Feb 2022, Daniel AJ Sokolov wrote:<br>
                <br>
                <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
          <p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:
                12.0pt">On 2022-02-21 at 13:52, David Lang wrote:<br>
                <br>
                <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
          <p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:
                12.0pt"><br>
                They told me that I could try it, and it may work, may
                be degraded a<br>
                bit, or may not work at all. They do plan to add roaming
                capabilities in<br>
                the future (my guess is that the laser satellites will
                enable a lot more<br>
                flexibility)<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
          <p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:
                12.0pt"><br>
                Isn't that a very optimistic assessment? :-)<br>
                <br>
                Laser links are great for remote locations with very few
                users, but how<br>
                could they relieve overbooking of Starlink in areas with
                too many users?<br>
                <br>
                The laser links can reduce the required density of
                ground stations, but<br>
                they don't add capacity to the network. Any ground
                station not built<br>
                thanks to laser links adds load to other ground stations
                - and, maybe<br>
                more importantly, adds load to the satellite that does
                eventually<br>
                connect to a ground station.<br>
                <br>
                Can laser links really help on a large scale, or are
                they just a small<br>
                help here and there?<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
          <p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:
                12.0pt"><br>
                My thinking is that the laser links will make it
                possible to route the traffic<br>
                from wherever I am to the appropriate ground station
                that I'm registered with
                as<br>
                opposed to the current bent-pipe approach where, if I
                move to far from my<br>
                registered location, I need to talk to a different
                ground station.<br>
                <br>
                Currently there are two limits in any area for coverage:<br>
                <br>
                1. satellite bandwidth<br>
                2. ground station bandwidth<br>
                <br>
                laser links will significantly reduce the effect of the
                second one.<br>
                <br>
                We know that they can do mobile dishes (they are testing
                it currently on Elon's<br>
                gulfstream, FAR more mobile that I will ever be :-) )<br>
                <br>
                David Lang<br>
                _______________________________________________<br>
                Starlink mailing list<br>
                <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net">Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net</a><br>
                <a href="https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink" moz-do-not-send="true">https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink</a><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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      <pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">_______________________________________________
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</pre>
    </blockquote>
    <pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">-- 
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)

The University of Auckland
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz">u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz</a> 
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/">http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/</a>
****************************************************************



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