Re: [Starlink] Jamaican Starlink Outages and a hint of shared infrastructure

[David Lang <david@lang.hm>]

Ulrich Speidel wrote:

> This can also lead to weird effects globally. For example, much of the 
> traffic between Japan and New Zealand *could* in principle trundle down 
> to Guam and from there to Sydney and then to Auckland. Which would be 
> kind of shortest path. And occasionally it does. But just as often, you 
> see it crossing the Pacific to the US West Coast (or from Guam to 
> Hawaii) and from there back to New Zealand. Why? Good question. Was it 
> because US backhaul carriers were cheaper for a while with the US dollar 
> being soft and the Australian / NZ currencies surging in comparison? 
> Were there government incentives for carriers to let traffic run through 
> US territory for intelligence access (if so, the NSA would have to fear

It's important to realize that BGP doesn't know how long any link is. it defines 
'closest' by the number of hops.

so Japan -> LA -> Auckland is 'shorter' than Japan -> Guam -> Sydnes -> Auckland 
even though it's much longer, probably through more congested links, and higher 
latency.

David Lang