Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army?

[David Lang <david@lang.hm>]

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and it's worth remembering that it's not just being used for military C&C, it's 
being used for (almost) all Internet access through the country, normal telcom, 
Hospitals, community access, etc.

That will add up to a lot (and the 7TB of use was also back in May)

David Lang

On Sun, 16 Oct 2022, Vint Cerf via Starlink wrote:

> if you need real-time for video and control, that can add up ...
>
> v
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 2:01 PM Dave Taht via Starlink <
> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 10:57 AM Nathan Owens via Starlink
>> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> Elon posted a graph, it showed a peak of 7000GB per unit time, the only
>> one that makes sense to me is per hour, which is 15Gbps peak -- not a huge
>> amount.
>>
>> You really don't need much data for C&C traffic. You do need a fairly
>> reliable uplink, but the observed jitter on an otherwise idle link was
>> in the few ms range.
>>
>> GPSD has a udp output mode, too.
>>
>> (btw, to my knowledge, starlink has not enabled any network interfaces
>> to the outside to their internal on-dish gps chip, which
>>  when I was whinging about it, would provide perfect time to
>> downstream clients, either natively or via ntp)
>>
>> It's one very short message, per second.
>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 10:50 AM Steve Stroh via Starlink <
>> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I’m speculating, but given that Starlink is THE communications
>> infrastructure for much of Ukraine, then the scaling of the ground stations
>> to provide that level of service must be a significant expense. To provide
>> that much bandwidth would require deploying a lot of ground stations, each
>> with expensive hardware, power infrastructure (including backup), fiber
>> backhaul, skilled labor, and no small amount of fiber bandwidth that SpaceX
>> has to pay SOMEONE to provide.
>>>>
>>>> Not to mention that anything SpaceX deploys to support Ukraine is a
>> resource that it could have used for speeding up revenue generation in
>> lucrative markets like the US.
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 12:41 David Lang via Starlink <
>> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> If spacex is providing the high-end/business grade service to all
>> terminals
>>>>> that they normally charge $4500/month for, reimbursement should be
>> based on
>>>>> that.
>>>>>
>>>>> Base it on the normal service pricing, not on cost-plus (if it were
>> based on
>>>>> cost-plus it would be an utter windfall for SpaceX as they are still
>> in the
>>>>> stage of building the service, and so there is a much higher spend
>> rate to
>>>>> expand the service at this point than the ongoing maintinance of it)
>>>>>
>>>>> while the satellites do support that area, they also support the rest
>> of the
>>>>> service, and if they weren't supporting Ukraine, there wouldn't be any
>> fewer
>>>>> satellites launched.
>>>>>
>>>>> I've seen too many games played with 'fully loaded costs' (sometimes
>> backfiring
>>>>> on the people tinkering with the numbers), and so it's something I
>> watch out
>>>>> for.
>>>>>
>>>>> lies, damn lies, and statistics, 'fully loaded costs' tend to be heavy
>> on
>>>>> statistics ;-)
>>>>>
>>>>> David Lang
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, tom@evslin.com wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Putting aside the timing of Elon's complaint about cost right after
>> the spat over his Ukrainian "peace plan", It is certainly reasonable for
>> Starlink to get paid like other weapon suppliers who didn't give out free
>> samples to prove their usefulness, Given that they should be reimbursed
>> based on loaded cost plus profit like anyone else. I'm sure the other
>> suppliers allocate their overhead costs when pricing weapon systems. They'd
>> be out of business otherwise. The satellites are part of Starlink's fixed
>> overhead so a portion of their costs should be allocated to service
>> provided in Ukraine.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> All that being said, it would be terrible if Ukraine got less than
>> the best support that can be provided.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>>> From: Starlink <starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net> On Behalf
>> Of David Lang via Starlink
>>>>>> Sent: Friday, October 14, 2022 1:28 PM
>>>>>> To: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>
>>>>>> Cc: Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
>>>>>> Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the
>> Ukrainian army?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Having now read more info on this, less significant than the $80m
>> total figure is the $20m/month figure he quoted. With 15k dishes as the
>> figure that they sent (separate from whatever has been purchased on the
>> commercial side), that works out to 1.3k/dish/month, which is very high.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> now, not being able to deploy reliable ground stations inside
>> Ukraine could be driving up costs, plus the ongoing battle against jamming.
>> But in his tweet he also cites satellite costs, which should not be
>> allocated as "Ukraine related"
>>>>>> costs (and I don't think the cyberdefense and jamming defense work
>> should be
>>>>>> either)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> David Lang
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Kurtis Heimerl via Starlink wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> This thread (https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456)
>>>>>>> strongly argues that Starlink is largely paid for their service, at
>>>>>>> least on the consumer side. I imagine there are significant
>>>>>>> operational expenses in dealing with the various actors involved but
>>>>>>> not on the basic model.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 9:06 AM Juliusz Chroboczek via Starlink
>>>>>>> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> In essence, once you give something away for free, not even
>> setting
>>>>>>>>> the expectation that it’s a “freemium” model, it’s very hard to
>> get
>>>>>>>>> out of it. If you then claim your costs are way higher than what
>>>>>>>>> analysis work out, eyebrows raise way above the hairline.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Uh.  Hmm.
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>>>> --
>>>> Steve Stroh N8GNJ (he / him / his)
>>>> Editor
>>>> Zero Retries Newsletter - https://zeroretries.substack.com
>>>>
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>>
>> --
>> This song goes out to all the folk that thought Stadia would work:
>>
>> https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dtaht_the-mushroom-song-activity-6981366665607352320-FXtz
>> Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC
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