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Ground stations in Turkey, Lithuania, and Poland are reachable from Kyiv. <a href="https://circleid.com/posts/20220301-spacex-starlink-service-in-ukraine-is-an-important-government-asset" id="LPNoLPOWALinkPreview">https://circleid.com/posts/20220301-spacex-starlink-service-in-ukraine-is-an-important-government-asset</a>.
The one in Turkey is often out of range.</div>
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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size:11pt" color="#000000"><b>From:</b> Starlink <starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net> on behalf of David Lang <david@lang.hm><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Saturday, March 5, 2022 5:02 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> David P. Reed <dpreed@deepplum.com><br>
<b>Cc:</b> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [Starlink] Starlink deplyment in Ukraine</font>
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<div class="PlainText">On Sat, 5 Mar 2022, David P. Reed wrote:<br>
<br>
> THis is a good discussion, and I hope for more.<br>
> <br>
> 1. I'm really curious how well Starlink's bent-pipe architecture actually <br>
> works in a context like Ukraine where fiber and copper infrastructure are <br>
> vulnerable and less redundant than in a place like the UK. I'm not so worried <br>
> about the dishy's working or being targeted. They can be moved and disguised. <br>
> What is not being discussed here (or anywhere) is where the ground stations <br>
> that the traffic must *all* traverse are, and the fact that they are Single <br>
> Points of Failure, and must be nailed down in places which are close enough to <br>
> the dishy they serve, and also fiber-backhauled into the Internet. This is a <br>
> serious technical issue that interests me, mostly because Starlink doesn't <br>
> publish its technical specs.<br>
> <br>
> So these ground stations for Ukrainian coverage are where? Ukraine is a BIG <br>
> area. It certainly won't be covered by one ground station. And it certainly <br>
> can't be just an 18-wheeler with a huge antenna on top, because it needs to be <br>
> connected to a point-of-presence with lots of capacity - the sum of all the <br>
> dishy's peak loads.<br>
> <br>
> I'm suspecting that some ground station is actually in Ukraine itself, but <br>
> putting it in Kyiv just makes it a tempting target (like a power station or <br>
> water utility), and it is much more vulnerable and visible to Russian troops <br>
> in the area.<br>
> <br>
> Now Poland and Moldova are potential sites that might cover part of Ukraine, <br>
> but certainly not that far into the country.<br>
<br>
I actually doubt that the ground stations are in Ukraine, that would require <br>
much more significant setup (think about the engineers flown out to installa <br>
ground station to support Tonga) and would be extremely vulnerable to <br>
disruption.<br>
<br>
Remember, service was turned on and dishys delivered in < 48 hours.<br>
<br>
disrupting the ground stations in adjacent countries is a rather significant <br>
escalation.<br>
<br>
We don't know the full reach of a ground station, but I suspect that some of the <br>
limitations that people have been talking about are as much software/regulations <br>
as RF/hardware, and I would not be surprised if such restritions are being <br>
relaxed a bit there.<br>
<br>
> 2. I hope that Starlink isn't just doing this to get Musk in the news, but <br>
> actually wants to facilitate ongoing connectivity to the Internet, independent <br>
> of "sides". (as others here have noted, communications control is a very <br>
> imprecise instrument when it is a tool of aggression - "virtue signalling" by <br>
> a billionaire who has been knowmid 1990's trying to bring Internet <br>
> connectivity to poor people in Jamaica and poro people in the West Bank each <br>
> partly caused the deaths of a few people we thought we were only helping. But <br>
> that's a long story in each context).<br>
> <br>
> More seriously, if Musk is not covering much of Ukraine at all, and just <br>
> shipping dishy's there, that's good, but I hope he doesn't try to take credit <br>
> for more than Starlink actually can do. I mean it would also be nice if <br>
> Mikrotik shipped in meshable WiFi, but that's of limited utility, even if the <br>
> most clever hackers tried to create an outdoor mesh of them. The coverage <br>
> would be very limited, and you still need a non-WiFi path to the Internet to <br>
> communicate over wide areas.<br>
<br>
So far he has not said anything about the use of them, although some people in <br>
Ukraine had said they have them and are prepared to use them when the wired <br>
Internet is disrupted. I would not expect to hear that much about people using <br>
them in remote areas yet. We'll probably hear more about that weeks to months <br>
later.<br>
<br>
David Lang</div>
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