[Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Daniel AJ Sokolov]

Hello,

I hope this is not offtopic: Starlink wants to build a ground station on 
Fiji to supply Tonga with internet.

The distance between Tonga and Fiji is about 750 km minimum. That's 
quite the distance.

What does Starlink have to do to make this work?

Cheers
Daniel

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Nathan Owens]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 657 bytes --]

The current coverage radius of a gateway/ground station with a 25 degree
minimum elevation is ~940km, so nothing in theory.

On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 10:50 AM Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@sokolov.eu.org>
wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I hope this is not offtopic: Starlink wants to build a ground station on
> Fiji to supply Tonga with internet.
>
> The distance between Tonga and Fiji is about 750 km minimum. That's
> quite the distance.
>
> What does Starlink have to do to make this work?
>
> Cheers
> Daniel
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1162 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Christian von der Ropp]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1632 bytes --]

But in practice the satellites won't be sitting and waiting at the edge 
of this 940km radius. They are moving in and out the radius and the 
question is if satellite density is high enough so that once the serving 
satellite loses its gateway link there's another satellite in the 940km 
radius which also covers Tonga. And then this new satellite cannot be 
within certain elevation angles (~60-80° at 0° azimuth) where the 
geostationary arc crosses Fijian skies and the gateway antennas have to 
seize emission. My gut feeling is that availability in Tonga would be 
<90% simply because it's too far out at the edge of a Fijian gateway's 
range where there will be frequent service interruptions.


Am 07.02.2022 um 19:51 schrieb Nathan Owens:
> The current coverage radius of a gateway/ground station with a 25 
> degree minimum elevation is ~940km, so nothing in theory.
>
> On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 10:50 AM Daniel AJ Sokolov 
> <daniel@sokolov.eu.org> wrote:
>
>     Hello,
>
>     I hope this is not offtopic: Starlink wants to build a ground
>     station on
>     Fiji to supply Tonga with internet.
>
>     The distance between Tonga and Fiji is about 750 km minimum. That's
>     quite the distance.
>
>     What does Starlink have to do to make this work?
>
>     Cheers
>     Daniel
>     _______________________________________________
>     Starlink mailing list
>     Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>     https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3446 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Nathan Owens]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1993 bytes --]

You can simulate it on starlink.sx, maybe Mike will chime in with what he
found in doing that.

On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 11:05 AM Christian von der Ropp <cvdr@vdr.net> wrote:

> But in practice the satellites won't be sitting and waiting at the edge of
> this 940km radius. They are moving in and out the radius and the question
> is if satellite density is high enough so that once the serving satellite
> loses its gateway link there's another satellite in the 940km radius which
> also covers Tonga. And then this new satellite cannot be within certain
> elevation angles (~60-80° at 0° azimuth) where the geostationary arc
> crosses Fijian skies and the gateway antennas have to seize emission. My
> gut feeling is that availability in Tonga would be <90% simply because it's
> too far out at the edge of a Fijian gateway's range where there will be
> frequent service interruptions.
>
>
> Am 07.02.2022 um 19:51 schrieb Nathan Owens:
>
> The current coverage radius of a gateway/ground station with a 25 degree
> minimum elevation is ~940km, so nothing in theory.
>
> On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 10:50 AM Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@sokolov.eu.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I hope this is not offtopic: Starlink wants to build a ground station on
>> Fiji to supply Tonga with internet.
>>
>> The distance between Tonga and Fiji is about 750 km minimum. That's
>> quite the distance.
>>
>> What does Starlink have to do to make this work?
>>
>> Cheers
>> Daniel
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing listStarlink@lists.bufferbloat.nethttps://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3693 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Ulrich Speidel]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 5260 bytes --]

I've been watching (and commenting on) this ever since one of our MPs 
tweeted Elon Musk with a plea for help for Tonga (and as the PhD 
supervisor of Tonga's first PhD student in Computer Science and someone 
who has had Pacific connectivity at the core of his work, I've got a 
fairly good understanding of what "Tonga offline" means in practice). 
That said...

- Practical range from gateway ground station to user ground station is 
more like 300-400 km. Fiji-Tongatapu is twice that distance.
- Countless images of gateways (and fencing around it) suggest that 
satellite elevation from gateways needs to be a bit more than 25deg.
- Satellite density in the tropics is lowest for Starlink's currently 
operational 53 degree inclination network.
- It's my understanding that dishys don't actually track using their 
motors, which they use only to position themselves initially in the 
direction of the highest satellite density (=wherever your closest 53rd 
parallel is, basically). That's a strategy that doesn't really work in 
the tropics because you can't see the sky above the 53rd parallel. So 
here, your dishys would need to know to point west-north-west.

While it's encouraging to see Starlink send folk to Fiji to scout things 
out (there are plenty of Fijian outlying islands where Starlink service 
would be welcome, too, at least by the locals, not necessarily by the 
regulators), I don't hold my breath on them making serious inroads when 
it comes to alleviating the current connectivity crisis.

The cable ship (CS SubCom Reliance) tasked with repair of the cable is 
on site and, judging by its AIS track, has located the end of the cable 
coming from Tongatapu. It appears to have shifted a significant distance 
south (around 1-2 km), possibly as a result of a turbidite flow 
(underwater landslide) from a seamount in the area that was triggered by 
the eruption at Hunga further north (my going theory anyway - there's a 
seamount right where it needs to be for that sort of damage and there's 
no other event that explains the timing of the cable outage). Either 
way, if the area is suitable for re-laying the cable, Tonga should be 
back online within the next week. Otherwise add a week or two.

On 8/02/2022 8:06 am, Nathan Owens wrote:
> You can simulate it on starlink.sx 
> <http://starlink.sx>, 
> maybe Mike will chime in with what he found in doing that.
>
> On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 11:05 AM Christian von der Ropp <cvdr@vdr.net> 
> wrote:
>
>     But in practice the satellites won't be sitting and waiting at the
>     edge of this 940km radius. They are moving in and out the radius
>     and the question is if satellite density is high enough so that
>     once the serving satellite loses its gateway link there's another
>     satellite in the 940km radius which also covers Tonga. And then
>     this new satellite cannot be within certain elevation angles
>     (~60-80° at 0° azimuth) where the geostationary arc crosses Fijian
>     skies and the gateway antennas have to seize emission. My gut
>     feeling is that availability in Tonga would be <90% simply because
>     it's too far out at the edge of a Fijian gateway's range where
>     there will be frequent service interruptions.
>
>
>     Am 07.02.2022 um 19:51 schrieb Nathan Owens:
>>     The current coverage radius of a gateway/ground station with a 25
>>     degree minimum elevation is ~940km, so nothing in theory.
>>
>>     On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 10:50 AM Daniel AJ Sokolov
>>     <daniel@sokolov.eu.org> wrote:
>>
>>         Hello,
>>
>>         I hope this is not offtopic: Starlink wants to build a ground
>>         station on
>>         Fiji to supply Tonga with internet.
>>
>>         The distance between Tonga and Fiji is about 750 km minimum.
>>         That's
>>         quite the distance.
>>
>>         What does Starlink have to do to make this work?
>>
>>         Cheers
>>         Daniel
>>         _______________________________________________
>>         Starlink mailing list
>>         Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>         https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>         <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>>
>>
>>     _______________________________________________
>>     Starlink mailing list
>>     Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>     https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink  <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>
>     _______________________________________________
>     Starlink mailing list
>     Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>     https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>     <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
-- 
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
Ph: (+64-9)-373-7599 ext. 85282

The University of Auckland
ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz  
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
****************************************************************



[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 8601 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Ulrich Speidel]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 5890 bytes --]

https://matangitonga.to/2022/02/08/tonga-cable-broken

On 8/02/2022 9:38 am, Ulrich Speidel wrote:
>
> I've been watching (and commenting on) this ever since one of our MPs 
> tweeted Elon Musk with a plea for help for Tonga (and as the PhD 
> supervisor of Tonga's first PhD student in Computer Science and 
> someone who has had Pacific connectivity at the core of his work, I've 
> got a fairly good understanding of what "Tonga offline" means in 
> practice). That said...
>
> - Practical range from gateway ground station to user ground station 
> is more like 300-400 km. Fiji-Tongatapu is twice that distance.
> - Countless images of gateways (and fencing around it) suggest that 
> satellite elevation from gateways needs to be a bit more than 25deg.
> - Satellite density in the tropics is lowest for Starlink's currently 
> operational 53 degree inclination network.
> - It's my understanding that dishys don't actually track using their 
> motors, which they use only to position themselves initially in the 
> direction of the highest satellite density (=wherever your closest 
> 53rd parallel is, basically). That's a strategy that doesn't really 
> work in the tropics because you can't see the sky above the 53rd 
> parallel. So here, your dishys would need to know to point 
> west-north-west.
>
> While it's encouraging to see Starlink send folk to Fiji to scout 
> things out (there are plenty of Fijian outlying islands where Starlink 
> service would be welcome, too, at least by the locals, not necessarily 
> by the regulators), I don't hold my breath on them making serious 
> inroads when it comes to alleviating the current connectivity crisis.
>
> The cable ship (CS SubCom Reliance) tasked with repair of the cable is 
> on site and, judging by its AIS track, has located the end of the 
> cable coming from Tongatapu. It appears to have shifted a significant 
> distance south (around 1-2 km), possibly as a result of a turbidite 
> flow (underwater landslide) from a seamount in the area that was 
> triggered by the eruption at Hunga further north (my going theory 
> anyway - there's a seamount right where it needs to be for that sort 
> of damage and there's no other event that explains the timing of the 
> cable outage). Either way, if the area is suitable for re-laying the 
> cable, Tonga should be back online within the next week. Otherwise add 
> a week or two.
>
> On 8/02/2022 8:06 am, Nathan Owens wrote:
>> You can simulate it on starlink.sx 
>> <http://starlink.sx>, 
>> maybe Mike will chime in with what he found in doing that.
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 11:05 AM Christian von der Ropp <cvdr@vdr.net> 
>> wrote:
>>
>>     But in practice the satellites won't be sitting and waiting at
>>     the edge of this 940km radius. They are moving in and out the
>>     radius and the question is if satellite density is high enough so
>>     that once the serving satellite loses its gateway link there's
>>     another satellite in the 940km radius which also covers Tonga.
>>     And then this new satellite cannot be within certain elevation
>>     angles (~60-80° at 0° azimuth) where the geostationary arc
>>     crosses Fijian skies and the gateway antennas have to seize
>>     emission. My gut feeling is that availability in Tonga would be
>>     <90% simply because it's too far out at the edge of a Fijian
>>     gateway's range where there will be frequent service interruptions.
>>
>>
>>     Am 07.02.2022 um 19:51 schrieb Nathan Owens:
>>>     The current coverage radius of a gateway/ground station with a
>>>     25 degree minimum elevation is ~940km, so nothing in theory.
>>>
>>>     On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 10:50 AM Daniel AJ Sokolov
>>>     <daniel@sokolov.eu.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>         Hello,
>>>
>>>         I hope this is not offtopic: Starlink wants to build a
>>>         ground station on
>>>         Fiji to supply Tonga with internet.
>>>
>>>         The distance between Tonga and Fiji is about 750 km minimum.
>>>         That's
>>>         quite the distance.
>>>
>>>         What does Starlink have to do to make this work?
>>>
>>>         Cheers
>>>         Daniel
>>>         _______________________________________________
>>>         Starlink mailing list
>>>         Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>         https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>>         <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>>>
>>>
>>>     _______________________________________________
>>>     Starlink mailing list
>>>     Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>     https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink  <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>>
>>     _______________________________________________
>>     Starlink mailing list
>>     Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>     https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>     <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>
> -- 
> ****************************************************************
> Dr. Ulrich Speidel
>
> School of Computer Science
>
> Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
> Ph: (+64-9)-373-7599 ext. 85282
>
> The University of Auckland
> ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz  
> http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
> ****************************************************************
>
>
>
-- 
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
Ph: (+64-9)-373-7599 ext. 85282

The University of Auckland
ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz  
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
****************************************************************



[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 9966 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Ulrich Speidel]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 6907 bytes --]

Update just in from Tonga Cable is that the Reliance cable ship will lay 
at least 55 km of fresh cable. They've spent the last 36 hours or so 
doing three traverses of the cable route around 30 nautical miles west 
of where the cable was broken at the Tongatapu side.

This older post gives a bit of an idea of how the Reliance works:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ThingsCutInHalfPorn/comments/4yttq7/reliance_undersea_cable_laying_repair_ship_te/

On 8/02/2022 9:44 am, Ulrich Speidel wrote:
>
> https://matangitonga.to/2022/02/08/tonga-cable-broken
>
> On 8/02/2022 9:38 am, Ulrich Speidel wrote:
>>
>> I've been watching (and commenting on) this ever since one of  our 
>> MPs tweeted Elon Musk with a plea for help for Tonga (and as the PhD 
>> supervisor of Tonga's first PhD student in Computer Science and 
>> someone who has had Pacific connectivity at the core of his work, 
>> I've got a fairly good understanding of what "Tonga offline" means in 
>> practice). That said...
>>
>> - Practical range from gateway ground station to user ground station 
>> is more like 300-400 km. Fiji-Tongatapu is twice that distance.
>> - Countless images of gateways (and fencing around it) suggest that 
>> satellite elevation from gateways needs to be a bit more than 25deg.
>> - Satellite density in the tropics is lowest for Starlink's currently 
>> operational 53 degree inclination network.
>> - It's my understanding that dishys don't actually track using their 
>> motors, which they use only to position themselves initially in the 
>> direction of the highest satellite density (=wherever your closest 
>> 53rd parallel is, basically). That's a strategy that doesn't really 
>> work in the tropics because you can't see the sky above the 53rd 
>> parallel. So here, your dishys would need to know to point 
>> west-north-west.
>>
>> While it's encouraging to see Starlink send folk to Fiji to scout 
>> things out (there are plenty of Fijian outlying islands where 
>> Starlink service would be welcome, too, at least by the locals, not 
>> necessarily by the regulators), I don't hold my breath on them making 
>> serious inroads when it comes to alleviating the current connectivity 
>> crisis.
>>
>> The cable ship (CS SubCom Reliance) tasked with repair of the cable 
>> is on site and, judging by its AIS track, has located the end of the 
>> cable coming from Tongatapu. It appears to have shifted a significant 
>> distance south (around 1-2 km), possibly as a result of a turbidite 
>> flow (underwater landslide) from a seamount in the area that was 
>> triggered by the eruption at Hunga further north (my going theory 
>> anyway - there's a seamount right where it needs to be for that sort 
>> of damage and there's no other event that explains the timing of the 
>> cable outage). Either way, if the area is suitable for re-laying the 
>> cable, Tonga should be back online within the next week. Otherwise 
>> add a week or two.
>>
>> On 8/02/2022 8:06 am, Nathan Owens wrote:
>>> You can simulate it on starlink.sx 
>>> <http://starlink.sx>, 
>>> maybe Mike will chime in with what he found in doing that.
>>>
>>> On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 11:05 AM Christian von der Ropp 
>>> <cvdr@vdr.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>     But in practice the satellites won't be sitting and waiting at
>>>     the edge of this 940km radius. They are moving in and out the
>>>     radius and the question is if satellite density is high enough
>>>     so that once the serving satellite loses its gateway link
>>>     there's another satellite in the 940km radius which also covers
>>>     Tonga. And then this new satellite cannot be within certain
>>>     elevation angles (~60-80° at 0° azimuth) where the geostationary
>>>     arc crosses Fijian skies and the gateway antennas have to seize
>>>     emission. My gut feeling is that availability in Tonga would be
>>>     <90% simply because it's too far out at the edge of a Fijian
>>>     gateway's range where there will be frequent service interruptions.
>>>
>>>
>>>     Am 07.02.2022 um 19:51 schrieb Nathan Owens:
>>>>     The current coverage radius of a gateway/ground station with a
>>>>     25 degree minimum elevation is ~940km, so nothing in theory.
>>>>
>>>>     On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 10:50 AM Daniel AJ Sokolov
>>>>     <daniel@sokolov.eu.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>         Hello,
>>>>
>>>>         I hope this is not offtopic: Starlink wants to build a
>>>>         ground station on
>>>>         Fiji to supply Tonga with internet.
>>>>
>>>>         The distance between Tonga and Fiji is about 750 km
>>>>         minimum. That's
>>>>         quite the distance.
>>>>
>>>>         What does Starlink have to do to make this work?
>>>>
>>>>         Cheers
>>>>         Daniel
>>>>         _______________________________________________
>>>>         Starlink mailing list
>>>>         Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>         https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>>>         <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>     _______________________________________________
>>>>     Starlink mailing list
>>>>     Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>     https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink  <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>>>
>>>     _______________________________________________
>>>     Starlink mailing list
>>>     Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>     https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>>     <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Starlink mailing list
>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>>
>> -- 
>> ****************************************************************
>> Dr. Ulrich Speidel
>>
>> School of Computer Science
>>
>> Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
>> Ph: (+64-9)-373-7599 ext. 85282
>>
>> The University of Auckland
>> ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz  
>> http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
>> ****************************************************************
>>
>>
>>
> -- 
> ****************************************************************
> Dr. Ulrich Speidel
>
> School of Computer Science
>
> Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
> Ph: (+64-9)-373-7599 ext. 85282
>
> The University of Auckland
> ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz  
> http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
> ****************************************************************
>
>
>
-- 
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
Ph: (+64-9)-373-7599 ext. 85282

The University of Auckland
ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz  
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
****************************************************************



[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 11805 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Ben Greear]

90 or even much smaller percentage is a lot better than zero.

I wonder if they can point the dish towards the horizon to pick up the sat where
it can best see the functional downlink.  I realize the dish auto-points itself
now, but surely engineers that can design that can also design an 'off' switch
for that and let their on-the-ground folks do some hacking....

Thanks,
Ben

On 2/7/22 11:05 AM, Christian von der Ropp wrote:
> But in practice the satellites won't be sitting and waiting at the edge of this 940km radius. They are moving in and out the radius and the question is if 
> satellite density is high enough so that once the serving satellite loses its gateway link there's another satellite in the 940km radius which also covers 
> Tonga. And then this new satellite cannot be within certain elevation angles (~60-80° at 0° azimuth) where the geostationary arc crosses Fijian skies and the 
> gateway antennas have to seize emission. My gut feeling is that availability in Tonga would be <90% simply because it's too far out at the edge of a Fijian 
> gateway's range where there will be frequent service interruptions.
> 
> 
> Am 07.02.2022 um 19:51 schrieb Nathan Owens:
>> The current coverage radius of a gateway/ground station with a 25 degree minimum elevation is ~940km, so nothing in theory.
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 10:50 AM Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@sokolov.eu.org> wrote:
>>
>>     Hello,
>>
>>     I hope this is not offtopic: Starlink wants to build a ground station on
>>     Fiji to supply Tonga with internet.
>>
>>     The distance between Tonga and Fiji is about 750 km minimum. That's
>>     quite the distance.
>>
>>     What does Starlink have to do to make this work?
>>
>>     Cheers
>>     Daniel
>>     _______________________________________________
>>     Starlink mailing list
>>     Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>     https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> 


-- 
Ben Greear <greearb@candelatech.com>
Candela Technologies Inc  http://www.candelatech.com

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[David Lang]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2983 bytes --]

the dish aimes at where it sees the most satellites, not necessarily 53. I took 
my dish to a campground where there were trees to the north and it ended up 
pointing straight up (Los Angeles area) performance was fine.

when you power it on, the dish tilts and swivels to point straight up (no idea 
what the angle logic is), and after a few min of watching the sky will re-aim 
itself if/as needed.

David Lang

On Mon, 7 Feb 2022, Ben Greear wrote:

> Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2022 13:18:49 -0800
> From: Ben Greear <greearb@candelatech.com>
> To: starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?
> 
> 90 or even much smaller percentage is a lot better than zero.
>
> I wonder if they can point the dish towards the horizon to pick up the sat 
> where
> it can best see the functional downlink.  I realize the dish auto-points 
> itself
> now, but surely engineers that can design that can also design an 'off' 
> switch
> for that and let their on-the-ground folks do some hacking....
>
> Thanks,
> Ben
>
> On 2/7/22 11:05 AM, Christian von der Ropp wrote:
>> But in practice the satellites won't be sitting and waiting at the edge of 
> this 940km radius. They are moving in and out the radius and the question is 
> if 
>> satellite density is high enough so that once the serving satellite loses 
> its gateway link there's another satellite in the 940km radius which also 
> covers 
>> Tonga. And then this new satellite cannot be within certain elevation 
> angles (~60-80° at 0° azimuth) where the geostationary arc crosses Fijian 
> skies and the 
>> gateway antennas have to seize emission. My gut feeling is that 
> availability in Tonga would be <90% simply because it's too far out at the 
> edge of a Fijian 
>> gateway's range where there will be frequent service interruptions.
>> 
>> 
>> Am 07.02.2022 um 19:51 schrieb Nathan Owens:
>>> The current coverage radius of a gateway/ground station with a 25 degree 
> minimum elevation is ~940km, so nothing in theory.
>>>
>>> On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 10:50 AM Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@sokolov.eu.org> 
> wrote:
>>>
>>>     Hello,
>>>
>>>     I hope this is not offtopic: Starlink wants to build a ground station 
> on
>>>     Fiji to supply Tonga with internet.
>>>
>>>     The distance between Tonga and Fiji is about 750 km minimum. That's
>>>     quite the distance.
>>>
>>>     What does Starlink have to do to make this work?
>>>
>>>     Cheers
>>>     Daniel
>>>     _______________________________________________
>>>     Starlink mailing list
>>>     Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>     https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Starlink mailing list
>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>> 
>
>
>

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Mike Puchol]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4253 bytes --]

Placing a gateway at the Fiji teleport results in satellites that cover Tonga being serviced. However, satellite density, but most importantly, GSO protection, take out a significant portion of the coverage from the satellites.

They would need to lower minimum elevation (now 25° everywhere) to improve the situation. With things as-is, Tonga would be covered by 1-2 satellites which should be enough for emergency service restoration.

You can play around with this on my tracker at https://starink.sx, I will be adding the temporary gateway in a few minutes.

Please not that the date line causes some weird issues with the map and the algorithms, which I’m still trying to fix. You can thank whoever thought moving from -180° to +180° across a line was a good idea.

Best,

Mike
On Feb 7, 2022, 22:24 +0100, David Lang <david@lang.hm>, wrote:
> the dish aimes at where it sees the most satellites, not necessarily 53. I took
> my dish to a campground where there were trees to the north and it ended up
> pointing straight up (Los Angeles area) performance was fine.
>
> when you power it on, the dish tilts and swivels to point straight up (no idea
> what the angle logic is), and after a few min of watching the sky will re-aim
> itself if/as needed.
>
> David Lang
>
> On Mon, 7 Feb 2022, Ben Greear wrote:
>
> > Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2022 13:18:49 -0800
> > From: Ben Greear <greearb@candelatech.com>
> > To: starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?
> >
> > 90 or even much smaller percentage is a lot better than zero.
> >
> > I wonder if they can point the dish towards the horizon to pick up the sat
> > where
> > it can best see the functional downlink. I realize the dish auto-points
> > itself
> > now, but surely engineers that can design that can also design an 'off'
> > switch
> > for that and let their on-the-ground folks do some hacking....
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Ben
> >
> > On 2/7/22 11:05 AM, Christian von der Ropp wrote:
> > > But in practice the satellites won't be sitting and waiting at the edge of
> > this 940km radius. They are moving in and out the radius and the question is
> > if
> > > satellite density is high enough so that once the serving satellite loses
> > its gateway link there's another satellite in the 940km radius which also
> > covers
> > > Tonga. And then this new satellite cannot be within certain elevation
> > angles (~60-80° at 0° azimuth) where the geostationary arc crosses Fijian
> > skies and the
> > > gateway antennas have to seize emission. My gut feeling is that
> > availability in Tonga would be <90% simply because it's too far out at the
> > edge of a Fijian
> > > gateway's range where there will be frequent service interruptions.
> > >
> > >
> > > Am 07.02.2022 um 19:51 schrieb Nathan Owens:
> > > > The current coverage radius of a gateway/ground station with a 25 degree
> > minimum elevation is ~940km, so nothing in theory.
> > > >
> > > > On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 10:50 AM Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@sokolov.eu.org>
> > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Hello,
> > > >
> > > > I hope this is not offtopic: Starlink wants to build a ground station
> > on
> > > > Fiji to supply Tonga with internet.
> > > >
> > > > The distance between Tonga and Fiji is about 750 km minimum. That's
> > > > quite the distance.
> > > >
> > > > What does Starlink have to do to make this work?
> > > >
> > > > Cheers
> > > > Daniel
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Starlink mailing list
> > > > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > > > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Starlink mailing list
> > > > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > > > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Starlink mailing list
> > > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 5336 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Ulrich Speidel]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 6709 bytes --]

Nice tracker, Mike!

That said: It's not just a matter of geometry though. Presuming that a 
dishy aims itself at whichever portion of the sky it seems most 
satellites (with gateway service), there's another aspect to the 
elevation angle. The lower your elevation, the longer the path that the 
signal has to take through the atmosphere, and the higher the degree of 
service disruption as a result of rain fade, or in Tonga's case, 
potential ash cloud fading. In Fiji's case, Starlink also has to find a 
site with low elevation take-off to Tonga AND fibre connectivity. Plus 
they have to get past the regulator in a country that's know to regulate 
heavily and that currently experiences a lot of Covid-related disruption 
with people in badly connected home office.

Note that Tonga has had emergency service for a while now: Intelsat, SES 
and Kacific are all at present providing service (Kacific at 1 Gbps 
even). That's plenty for emergency use.

The big sticky point is that mobile Internet isn't working, people have 
to go to Tonga Telecom offices for access or wifi. That's an issue 
because 4 out of 5 households in Tonga rely on remittances from family 
overseas, which are usually sent via Western Union. Moneygram etc., 
whose apps are out of action right now.

And yes, the date line is fun. Pacific countries are known for having 
shifted it back and forth for spurious reasons, which is why it's badly 
bent, and these days I'm still  grateful if people have maps online that 
don't end at the date line ;-)

On 8/02/2022 10:36 am, Mike Puchol wrote:
> Placing a gateway at the Fiji teleport results in satellites that 
> cover Tonga being serviced. However, satellite density, but most 
> importantly, GSO protection, take out a significant portion of the 
> coverage from the satellites.
>
> They would need to lower minimum elevation (now 25° everywhere) to 
> improve the situation. With things as-is, Tonga would be covered by 
> 1-2 satellites which should be enough for emergency service restoration.
>
> You can play around with this on my tracker at https://starink.sx 
> <https://starink.sx>, 
> I will be adding the temporary gateway in a few minutes.
>
> Please not that the date line causes some weird issues with the map 
> and the algorithms, which I’m still trying to fix. You can thank 
> whoever thought moving from -180° to +180° across a line was a good idea.
>
> Best,
>
> Mike
> On Feb 7, 2022, 22:24 +0100, David Lang <david@lang.hm>, wrote:
>> the dish aimes at where it sees the most satellites, not necessarily 
>> 53. I took
>> my dish to a campground where there were trees to the north and it 
>> ended up
>> pointing straight up (Los Angeles area) performance was fine.
>>
>> when you power it on, the dish tilts and swivels to point straight up 
>> (no idea
>> what the angle logic is), and after a few min of watching the sky 
>> will re-aim
>> itself if/as needed.
>>
>> David Lang
>>
>> On Mon, 7 Feb 2022, Ben Greear wrote:
>>
>>> Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2022 13:18:49 -0800
>>> From: Ben Greear <greearb@candelatech.com>
>>> To: starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?
>>>
>>> 90 or even much smaller percentage is a lot better than zero.
>>>
>>> I wonder if they can point the dish towards the horizon to pick up 
>>> the sat
>>> where
>>> it can best see the functional downlink. I realize the dish auto-points
>>> itself
>>> now, but surely engineers that can design that can also design an 'off'
>>> switch
>>> for that and let their on-the-ground folks do some hacking....
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Ben
>>>
>>> On 2/7/22 11:05 AM, Christian von der Ropp wrote:
>>>> But in practice the satellites won't be sitting and waiting at the 
>>>> edge of
>>> this 940km radius. They are moving in and out the radius and the 
>>> question is
>>> if
>>>> satellite density is high enough so that once the serving satellite 
>>>> loses
>>> its gateway link there's another satellite in the 940km radius which 
>>> also
>>> covers
>>>> Tonga. And then this new satellite cannot be within certain elevation
>>> angles (~60-80° at 0° azimuth) where the geostationary arc crosses 
>>> Fijian
>>> skies and the
>>>> gateway antennas have to seize emission. My gut feeling is that
>>> availability in Tonga would be <90% simply because it's too far out 
>>> at the
>>> edge of a Fijian
>>>> gateway's range where there will be frequent service interruptions.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Am 07.02.2022 um 19:51 schrieb Nathan Owens:
>>>>> The current coverage radius of a gateway/ground station with a 25 
>>>>> degree
>>> minimum elevation is ~940km, so nothing in theory.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 10:50 AM Daniel AJ Sokolov 
>>>>> <daniel@sokolov.eu.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>
>>>>> I hope this is not offtopic: Starlink wants to build a ground station
>>> on
>>>>> Fiji to supply Tonga with internet.
>>>>>
>>>>> The distance between Tonga and Fiji is about 750 km minimum. That's
>>>>> quite the distance.
>>>>>
>>>>> What does Starlink have to do to make this work?
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers
>>>>> Daniel
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
>>>>> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
>>>>> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
>>>> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
>> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
-- 
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
Ph: (+64-9)-373-7599 ext. 85282

The University of Auckland
ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz  
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
****************************************************************



[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 11163 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Mike Puchol]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 8128 bytes --]

You are right in your comments, however - Dishy does not currently shift in azimuth, only in elevation in the North/South axis, in essence, to focus its boresight towards the area of the sky where it will see most viable satellites. If you play around with Tonga (Fiji emergency gateway is live on the site, plus a couple of fixes that returned negative azimuths!), you will see that North/South tilt has no real effect, but if you shift azimuth towards Fiji (from Tonga) your candidate satellites increase. You can also see the effect of 15º minimum elevation, which suddenly make satellites on NZ gateways available to a Tonga terminal too.

As far as placing a gateway in Fiji, it already has a teleport facility, which will have power and fibre (unless that one has been taken out too?). Check https://goo.gl/maps/6BYXf4R17yys7zNe9

In terms of plain service, it’s true the GSO operators have stepped in, and for actual emergencies, it’s sufficient. Starlink can start supplementing that with more fibre-like backhaul which would enable those additional services you mention.

Best,

Mike
On Feb 7, 2022, 23:23 +0100, Ulrich Speidel <ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz>, wrote:
> Nice tracker, Mike!
> That said: It's not just a matter of geometry though. Presuming that a dishy aims itself at whichever portion of the sky it seems most satellites (with gateway service), there's another aspect to the elevation angle. The lower your elevation, the longer the path that the signal has to take through the atmosphere, and the higher the degree of service disruption as a result of rain fade, or in Tonga's case, potential ash cloud fading. In Fiji's case, Starlink also has to find a site with low elevation take-off to Tonga AND fibre connectivity. Plus they have to get past the regulator in a country that's know to regulate heavily and that currently experiences a lot of Covid-related disruption with people in badly connected home office.
> Note that Tonga has had emergency service for a while now: Intelsat, SES and Kacific are all at present providing service (Kacific at 1 Gbps even). That's plenty for emergency use.
> The big sticky point is that mobile Internet isn't working, people have to go to Tonga Telecom offices for access or wifi. That's an issue because 4 out of 5 households in Tonga rely on remittances from family overseas, which are usually sent via Western Union. Moneygram etc., whose apps are out of action right now.
> And yes, the date line is fun. Pacific countries are known for having shifted it back and forth for spurious reasons, which is why it's badly bent, and these days I'm still grateful if people have maps online that don't end at the date line ;-)
> On 8/02/2022 10:36 am, Mike Puchol wrote:
> > Placing a gateway at the Fiji teleport results in satellites that cover Tonga being serviced. However, satellite density, but most importantly, GSO protection, take out a significant portion of the coverage from the satellites.
> >
> > They would need to lower minimum elevation (now 25° everywhere) to improve the situation. With things as-is, Tonga would be covered by 1-2 satellites which should be enough for emergency service restoration.
> >
> > You can play around with this on my tracker at https://starink.sx, I will be adding the temporary gateway in a few minutes.
> >
> > Please not that the date line causes some weird issues with the map and the algorithms, which I’m still trying to fix. You can thank whoever thought moving from -180° to +180° across a line was a good idea.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Mike
> > On Feb 7, 2022, 22:24 +0100, David Lang <david@lang.hm>, wrote:
> > > the dish aimes at where it sees the most satellites, not necessarily 53. I took
> > > my dish to a campground where there were trees to the north and it ended up
> > > pointing straight up (Los Angeles area) performance was fine.
> > >
> > > when you power it on, the dish tilts and swivels to point straight up (no idea
> > > what the angle logic is), and after a few min of watching the sky will re-aim
> > > itself if/as needed.
> > >
> > > David Lang
> > >
> > > On Mon, 7 Feb 2022, Ben Greear wrote:
> > >
> > > > Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2022 13:18:49 -0800
> > > > From: Ben Greear <greearb@candelatech.com>
> > > > To: starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > > > Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?
> > > >
> > > > 90 or even much smaller percentage is a lot better than zero.
> > > >
> > > > I wonder if they can point the dish towards the horizon to pick up the sat
> > > > where
> > > > it can best see the functional downlink. I realize the dish auto-points
> > > > itself
> > > > now, but surely engineers that can design that can also design an 'off'
> > > > switch
> > > > for that and let their on-the-ground folks do some hacking....
> > > >
> > > > Thanks,
> > > > Ben
> > > >
> > > > On 2/7/22 11:05 AM, Christian von der Ropp wrote:
> > > > > But in practice the satellites won't be sitting and waiting at the edge of
> > > > this 940km radius. They are moving in and out the radius and the question is
> > > > if
> > > > > satellite density is high enough so that once the serving satellite loses
> > > > its gateway link there's another satellite in the 940km radius which also
> > > > covers
> > > > > Tonga. And then this new satellite cannot be within certain elevation
> > > > angles (~60-80° at 0° azimuth) where the geostationary arc crosses Fijian
> > > > skies and the
> > > > > gateway antennas have to seize emission. My gut feeling is that
> > > > availability in Tonga would be <90% simply because it's too far out at the
> > > > edge of a Fijian
> > > > > gateway's range where there will be frequent service interruptions.
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Am 07.02.2022 um 19:51 schrieb Nathan Owens:
> > > > > > The current coverage radius of a gateway/ground station with a 25 degree
> > > > minimum elevation is ~940km, so nothing in theory.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 10:50 AM Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@sokolov.eu.org>
> > > > wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Hello,
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I hope this is not offtopic: Starlink wants to build a ground station
> > > > on
> > > > > > Fiji to supply Tonga with internet.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > The distance between Tonga and Fiji is about 750 km minimum. That's
> > > > > > quite the distance.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > What does Starlink have to do to make this work?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Cheers
> > > > > > Daniel
> > > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > > Starlink mailing list
> > > > > > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > > > > > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > > Starlink mailing list
> > > > > > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > > > > > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > Starlink mailing list
> > > > > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > > > > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Starlink mailing list
> > > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Starlink mailing list
> > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> >
> --
> ****************************************************************
> Dr. Ulrich Speidel
>
> School of Computer Science
>
> Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
> Ph: (+64-9)-373-7599 ext. 85282
>
> The University of Auckland
> ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz
> http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
> ****************************************************************
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 10944 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Ulrich Speidel]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 11396 bytes --]

Always interesting to hear how dishy actually behaves - which may depend 
a bit on where you are. In the conventional service areas, there are 
generally multiple gateways, so there's probably no benefit in probing 
east or west, you'll just need to find north or south and the right 
elevation. But that wouldn't be the case where all satellites with 
gateway connectivity are relatively far to the west of you.

FAIK FINTEL's Suva facility hasn't been affected (only outlying islands 
in Fiji have been hit by tsunami with damage resulting, and it's been 
largely minor).

However, the FINTEL teleport you see on Google maps isn't Starlink 
capable, and it's not a given that it would be available as a site 
either, although there seems to be land around it that could be used I 
suppose.

Starlink teleports look a bit like an egg carton from the air, with 
typically 6 to 9 radome "eggs" in them, and these would have to be 
installed there first. This is the closest known one to Tonga at present:

https://goo.gl/maps/5Risyqk9tC2QDJwB8

(Yes, as irony would have it, on the back paddock of an egg farm ;-))

As I said in a previous post: As attractive as the geometry with a lower 
elevation might look, it carries with it the price of serious link 
deterioration, especially in an area like this where rain fade is 
common. Satellite link budgets tend to be designed with small fade 
margins because every extra dB adds to cost in a significant way, and by 
having both a longer path and more of it running the gauntlet through 
the atmosphere, unusual setups like this one are usually a bit hard to 
do in practice.

Moreover, news just in minutes ago from Tonga Cable:

> Reliance still out there during this bad weather (as they’re behind 
> schedule) trying to recover the part of the cable from Suva….
>
>
The Tongan end of the cable has been found and secured. Cable is 
presumed to be broken in multiple places, though, so they'll probably 
have to lay a stretch of new cable. I'd expect them to find the Suva end 
within the next day or so, weather permitting, and then it'll be mostly 
a matter of whether they can put the cable back where it was. If not, it 
could take a little longer, but I'm optimistic that connectivity will be 
restored within the week.


On 8/02/2022 11:29 am, Mike Puchol wrote:
> You are right in your comments, however - Dishy does not currently 
> shift in azimuth, only in elevation in the North/South axis, in 
> essence, to focus its boresight towards the area of the sky where it 
> will see most viable satellites. If you play around with Tonga (Fiji 
> emergency gateway is live on the site, plus a couple of fixes that 
> returned negative azimuths!), you will see that North/South tilt has 
> no real effect, but if you shift azimuth towards Fiji (from Tonga) 
> your candidate satellites increase. You can also see the effect of 
> 15º minimum elevation, which suddenly make satellites on NZ gateways 
> available to a Tonga terminal too.
>
> As far as placing a gateway in Fiji, it already has a teleport 
> facility, which will have power and fibre (unless that one has been 
> taken out too?). Check https://goo.gl/maps/6BYXf4R17yys7zNe9 
> <https://goo.gl/maps/6BYXf4R17yys7zNe9>
>
> In terms of plain service, it’s true the GSO operators have stepped 
> in, and for actual emergencies, it’s sufficient. Starlink can start 
> supplementing that with more fibre-like backhaul which would enable 
> those additional services you mention.
>
> Best,
>
> Mike
> On Feb 7, 2022, 23:23 +0100, Ulrich Speidel 
> <ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz>, wrote:
>>
>> Nice tracker, Mike!
>>
>> That said: It's not just a matter of geometry though. Presuming that 
>> a dishy aims itself at whichever portion of the sky it seems most 
>> satellites (with gateway service), there's another aspect to the 
>> elevation angle. The lower your elevation, the longer the path that 
>> the signal has to take through the atmosphere, and the higher the 
>> degree of service disruption as a result of rain fade, or in Tonga's 
>> case, potential ash cloud fading. In Fiji's case, Starlink also has 
>> to find a site with low elevation take-off to Tonga AND fibre 
>> connectivity. Plus they have to get past the regulator in a country 
>> that's know to regulate heavily and that currently experiences a lot 
>> of Covid-related disruption with people in badly connected home office.
>>
>> Note that Tonga has had emergency service for a while now: Intelsat, 
>> SES and Kacific are all at present providing service (Kacific at 1 
>> Gbps even). That's plenty for emergency use.
>>
>> The big sticky point is that mobile Internet isn't working, people 
>> have to go to Tonga Telecom offices for access or wifi. That's an 
>> issue because 4 out of 5 households in Tonga rely on remittances from 
>> family overseas, which are usually sent via Western Union. Moneygram 
>> etc., whose apps are out of action right now.
>>
>> And yes, the date line is fun. Pacific countries are known for having 
>> shifted it back and forth for spurious reasons, which is why it's 
>> badly bent, and these days I'm still grateful if people have maps 
>> online that don't end at the date line ;-)
>>
>> On 8/02/2022 10:36 am, Mike Puchol wrote:
>>> Placing a gateway at the Fiji teleport results in satellites that 
>>> cover Tonga being serviced. However, satellite density, but most 
>>> importantly, GSO protection, take out a significant portion of the 
>>> coverage from the satellites.
>>>
>>> They would need to lower minimum elevation (now 25° everywhere) to 
>>> improve the situation. With things as-is, Tonga would be covered by 
>>> 1-2 satellites which should be enough for emergency service restoration.
>>>
>>> You can play around with this on my tracker at https://starink.sx 
>>> <https://starink.sx>, 
>>> I will be adding the temporary gateway in a few minutes.
>>>
>>> Please not that the date line causes some weird issues with the map 
>>> and the algorithms, which I’m still trying to fix. You can thank 
>>> whoever thought moving from -180° to +180° across a line was a good 
>>> idea.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Mike
>>> On Feb 7, 2022, 22:24 +0100, David Lang <david@lang.hm>, wrote:
>>>> the dish aimes at where it sees the most satellites, not 
>>>> necessarily 53. I took
>>>> my dish to a campground where there were trees to the north and it 
>>>> ended up
>>>> pointing straight up (Los Angeles area) performance was fine.
>>>>
>>>> when you power it on, the dish tilts and swivels to point straight 
>>>> up (no idea
>>>> what the angle logic is), and after a few min of watching the sky 
>>>> will re-aim
>>>> itself if/as needed.
>>>>
>>>> David Lang
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, 7 Feb 2022, Ben Greear wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2022 13:18:49 -0800
>>>>> From: Ben Greear <greearb@candelatech.com>
>>>>> To: starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>> Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?
>>>>>
>>>>> 90 or even much smaller percentage is a lot better than zero.
>>>>>
>>>>> I wonder if they can point the dish towards the horizon to pick up 
>>>>> the sat
>>>>> where
>>>>> it can best see the functional downlink. I realize the dish 
>>>>> auto-points
>>>>> itself
>>>>> now, but surely engineers that can design that can also design an 
>>>>> 'off'
>>>>> switch
>>>>> for that and let their on-the-ground folks do some hacking....
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>> Ben
>>>>>
>>>>> On 2/7/22 11:05 AM, Christian von der Ropp wrote:
>>>>>> But in practice the satellites won't be sitting and waiting at 
>>>>>> the edge of
>>>>> this 940km radius. They are moving in and out the radius and the 
>>>>> question is
>>>>> if
>>>>>> satellite density is high enough so that once the serving 
>>>>>> satellite loses
>>>>> its gateway link there's another satellite in the 940km radius 
>>>>> which also
>>>>> covers
>>>>>> Tonga. And then this new satellite cannot be within certain elevation
>>>>> angles (~60-80° at 0° azimuth) where the geostationary arc crosses 
>>>>> Fijian
>>>>> skies and the
>>>>>> gateway antennas have to seize emission. My gut feeling is that
>>>>> availability in Tonga would be <90% simply because it's too far 
>>>>> out at the
>>>>> edge of a Fijian
>>>>>> gateway's range where there will be frequent service interruptions.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Am 07.02.2022 um 19:51 schrieb Nathan Owens:
>>>>>>> The current coverage radius of a gateway/ground station with a 
>>>>>>> 25 degree
>>>>> minimum elevation is ~940km, so nothing in theory.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Mon, Feb 7, 2022 at 10:50 AM Daniel AJ Sokolov 
>>>>>>> <daniel@sokolov.eu.org>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I hope this is not offtopic: Starlink wants to build a ground 
>>>>>>> station
>>>>> on
>>>>>>> Fiji to supply Tonga with internet.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The distance between Tonga and Fiji is about 750 km minimum. That's
>>>>>>> quite the distance.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> What does Starlink have to do to make this work?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Cheers
>>>>>>> Daniel
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
>>>>>>> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
>>>>>>> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
>>>>>> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
>>>> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Starlink mailing list
>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>>
>> --
>> ****************************************************************
>> Dr. Ulrich Speidel
>>
>> School of Computer Science
>>
>> Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
>> Ph: (+64-9)-373-7599 ext. 85282
>>
>> The University of Auckland
>> ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz   
>> http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
>> ****************************************************************
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
>> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>

-- 
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
Ph: (+64-9)-373-7599 ext. 85282

The University of Auckland
ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz  
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
****************************************************************



[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 19210 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[David Lang]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 615 bytes --]

On Tue, 8 Feb 2022, Ulrich Speidel wrote:

> FAIK FINTEL's Suva facility hasn't been affected (only outlying islands in 
> Fiji have been hit by tsunami with damage resulting, and it's been largely 
> minor).
>
> However, the FINTEL teleport you see on Google maps isn't Starlink capable, 
> and it's not a given that it would be available as a site either, although 
> there seems to be land around it that could be used I suppose.

this discussion started from reports that starlink engineers are on site in fiji 
working to install a starlink ground station to support Tonga and run it for 6 
months.

David Lang

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/plain, Size: 149 bytes --]

_______________________________________________
Starlink mailing list
Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Ulrich Speidel]

Indeed, and I know that FINTEL is involved, too. I'll believe it when I 
see it working reliably ;-) At this point, the main action seems to have 
been to apply for a license to operate with Fiji's regulator.

Another question is whether any dishys have arrived in Tonga at this 
point, and how they'll get to where they're needed most (Ha'apai and 
Vava'u, normally connected to Tongatapu via the domestic cable, which is 
also down just north of Tongatapu). I'm mindful here that Tonga is still 
under strict Covid protocol. Deliveries are contactless and any goods 
landed there are left airside / dockside for 3 days to "cool down" 
before anyone local touches them (even that didn't help, though, some 
dock workers still got infected off the Australian Navy ship that got an 
outbreak on board).

Intriguingly, the domestic cable got cut around 75 minutes before the 
international one, so probably scored a direct hit from Hunga, although 
the breakage point is closer to Tongatapu. The international outage 
looks more like a secondary event.

I'm actually quite pleased to see Starlink in Fiji, if only so they 
start thinking about how they'll supply Pacific Islands, which to date 
they simply don't.

On 8/02/2022 12:47 pm, David Lang wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Feb 2022, Ulrich Speidel wrote:
>
>> FAIK FINTEL's Suva facility hasn't been affected (only outlying 
>> islands in Fiji have been hit by tsunami with damage resulting, and 
>> it's been largely minor).
>>
>> However, the FINTEL teleport you see on Google maps isn't Starlink 
>> capable, and it's not a given that it would be available as a site 
>> either, although there seems to be land around it that could be used 
>> I suppose.
>
> this discussion started from reports that starlink engineers are on 
> site in fiji working to install a starlink ground station to support 
> Tonga and run it for 6 months.
>
> David Lang
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
-- 
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
Ph: (+64-9)-373-7599 ext. 85282

The University of Auckland
ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
****************************************************************

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[David Lang]

On Tue, 8 Feb 2022, Ulrich Speidel wrote:

> I'm actually quite pleased to see Starlink in Fiji, if only so they start 
> thinking about how they'll supply Pacific Islands, which to date they simply 
> don't.

Long term the answer is the laser-enabled satellites will not need ground 
stations nearby, so they will cover all these sorts of really remote areas.

They just don't have enough of them up yet to start providing coverage, so they 
have to rush the setup of a new ground station for now.

David Lang

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Inemesit Affia]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1004 bytes --]

StarLink may be providing layer 2 connectivity rather than IP. A ground
station can act as a receiver in this case in Tonga and provide
connectivity directly to the Tonga Telco network. Using ground station type
antenna may help with performance.

On Tue, Feb 8, 2022, 02:20 David Lang <david@lang.hm> wrote:

> On Tue, 8 Feb 2022, Ulrich Speidel wrote:
>
> > I'm actually quite pleased to see Starlink in Fiji, if only so they
> start
> > thinking about how they'll supply Pacific Islands, which to date they
> simply
> > don't.
>
> Long term the answer is the laser-enabled satellites will not need ground
> stations nearby, so they will cover all these sorts of really remote areas.
>
> They just don't have enough of them up yet to start providing coverage, so
> they
> have to rush the setup of a new ground station for now.
>
> David Lang
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1528 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Daniel AJ Sokolov]

On 2022-02-07 at 21:46, Inemesit Affia wrote:
> StarLink may be providing layer 2 connectivity rather than IP. A ground
> station can act as a receiver in this case in Tonga and provide
> connectivity directly to the Tonga Telco network. Using ground station type
> antenna may help with performance.

That would only help the main island of Tonga, but none of the other 
islands - until the domestic cable is fixed. But by the time the 
domestic cable is fixed, the international cable will have been fixed 
for some time already.

In any case, I understand the Starlink-for_Tonga idea started with a 
Twitter exchange with Mr. Musk on the topic of shipping Starlink user 
terminals to Tonga.

Cheers
Daniel

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Ulrich Speidel]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4736 bytes --]

Layer 2 service requires layer 1 to work, and given the likely link 
budget here with the distances, that is unlikely to be the case for a 
significant percentage of the time :-(

As Daniel says, the debate started with a tweet from NZ opposition MP 
Dr. Shane Reti who decided to give it a shot: 
https://twitter.com/DrShaneRetiMP/status/1484337150011523072

Shane is a GP and he and I have had a bit of an conversation since last 
week, so he understands the issues a bit better now. I'm grateful to him 
for raising the issue though, even if it's not going to help in this 
case, I hope that the Pacific is on Elon's agenda from now on. It's been 
in the media here for a few days and they've even interviewed and quoted 
me (albeit not accurately, as you'll spot quickly):

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/tonga-volcanic-eruption-and-tsunami-national-mp-shane-reti-appeals-to-spacex-ceo-elon-musk-to-help-with-telecommunications/6U5SGVYO3F57E4UWWYHACQHKUI/

Update on the Tonga case:

1) Fijian end of the cable has now been recovered, but as I suspected, a 
significant section of the cable has been wiped out (about 20 km):

https://matangitonga.to/2022/02/08/more-breaks-tonga-cable-suspected-fiji-end

Repair date has now been pushed out to the 20th. Still a tight time 
frame for Elon Musk...

2) I've been discussing the possibility of a submarine landslide off a 
local seamount with the volcanologist that here looks after the area, 
we've both been a bit puzzled at the timing as the outage time of the 
international cable didn't square up with any of the known tsunami or 
eruptive bursts at Hunga. We have now found a 4.7 magnitude quake 10 km 
below said seamount 14 minutes before the international cable outage, 
and are looking at the possibility that this event might have triggered 
such a landslide. Extent of damage area and landslide theory fit like a 
glove. Timing also looks feasible.

3) The Reliance cable ship is still in the vicinity of the site, but 
NORTH of the original cable route, indicating that they may be doing 
some sort of sea floor surveillance. I guess it will now depend on 
whether they have enough cable on board to fix the issue, they'll 
certainly require more than you'd need for simple anchor damage. This 
could necessitate a detour to a service depot with cable stock (e.g., 
Apia (Samoa)).

There might be lower hanging fruit to pick than Starlink, such as SES 
O3b mPower connectivity. Part of the logistical issues include that 
bringing in anything into Tonga at the moment means leaving it on the 
wharf or airside for 3 days, to allow any Covid contamination to die 
down, as Tonga was Covid-free until last week. Even though, some dock 
workers managed to pick up Omicron, probably off the HMAS Adelaide as 
she berthed with a serious outbreak on board. Three cases initially have 
now grown to 13, so it's questionable as to whether they'll get on top 
of it. Tongans have one of the highest rates of obesity, diabetes and 
cardiovascular disease in the world, and the medical system isn't 
particularly robust even during normal times.

They're not the only place in the Pacific to have these sorts of 
problems, so seeing Starlink show any interest at all is a good thing. 
They might want to start with providing service to all of Fiji.

On 8/02/2022 7:25 pm, Daniel AJ Sokolov wrote:
> On 2022-02-07 at 21:46, Inemesit Affia wrote:
> > StarLink may be providing layer 2 connectivity rather than IP. A ground
> > station can act as a receiver in this case in Tonga and provide
> > connectivity directly to the Tonga Telco network. Using ground 
> station type
> > antenna may help with performance.
>
> That would only help the main island of Tonga, but none of the other
> islands - until the domestic cable is fixed. But by the time the
> domestic cable is fixed, the international cable will have been fixed
> for some time already.
>
> In any case, I understand the Starlink-for_Tonga idea started with a
> Twitter exchange with Mr. Musk on the topic of shipping Starlink user
> terminals to Tonga.
>
> Cheers
> Daniel
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>

-- 
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
Ph: (+64-9)-373-7599 ext. 85282

The University of Auckland
ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz  
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
****************************************************************



[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 6410 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Daniel AJ Sokolov]

On 2022-02-08 at 00:30, Ulrich Speidel wrote:
> They're not the only place in the Pacific to have these sorts of 
> problems, so seeing Starlink show any interest at all is a good thing. 
> They might want to start with providing service to all of Fiji.

Maybe, but my feeling is the local authorities don't want them in their 
market?

What are the chances that the 6 month emergency license Fidschi has 
granted to help Tonga will be turned into a normal license that allows 
Fidschi residents to use Starlink?

Cheers
Daniel

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Ulrich Speidel]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3784 bytes --]

Fiji's unwritten government policy for a long term has been that the 
Internet exists as an income source for the government.

When I was at the University of the South Pacific (USP) in Suva on a 
short secondment in 2001, you could pick a fresh bunch of tropical 
flowers for each short e-mail from overseas that arrived. This was just 
a couple of kilometres from the landing station of the very much 
operational Southern Cross cable, which had taken over as the main 
redundant US-NZ-Australia connection, with bandwidth to boot. I was told 
that USP, as a transnational organisation, had requested permission to 
connect, and was refused. They had access to a transponder on a Japanese 
satellite at the time to beam analog video of classes to their 
"satellite" campuses around the Pacific, and they weren't allowed to use 
that for Internet either.

It's not changed all that much since. I'm told that there's a wall in 
the cable landing station, and every bit that crosses the wall has a tax 
slapped onto it.

Other countries have similar sensitivities, sometimes because they want 
to protect a monopoly telco, sometimes because local society doesn't 
want real Internet (many places are very much church-driven, and I 
suspect some pastors fear that they might lose the narrative, or people 
have heard about all the horrible things on the Internet and just don't 
want it in their village). Sometimes it's because their current 
satellite provider has them in a stranglehold - they love long-term 
contracts for little service at exorbitant fees, and some small footnote 
in the contract says that this special price is only available to them 
if the island nation shall not buy from anyone else during that period. 
Typical satellite contracts in the Pacific run for 5 years minimum. Yes 
that sounds as crook as it is.

Note that there are in principle two issues with a LEO provider 
accessing a country: Providing service there and running gateways there. 
To prevent Starlink from offering service once they're able to route 
between satellite, you'd have to ban dishys, and if you want to know how 
well that works, ask the Iranians for their experience when they wanted 
to ban satellite TV. Running a gateway is another matter, of course.

There's always hope that the Fijian government will eventually 
understand that the Internet will make it richer if it doesn't try to 
take a cut, and that more of it is better for them. But they'd like a 
bit more Internet on the outlying islands as is, and maybe Elon can sell 
the idea to them?

On 8/02/2022 8:49 pm, Daniel AJ Sokolov wrote:
> On 2022-02-08 at 00:30, Ulrich Speidel wrote:
> > They're not the only place in the Pacific to have these sorts of
> > problems, so seeing Starlink show any interest at all is a good thing.
> > They might want to start with providing service to all of Fiji.
>
> Maybe, but my feeling is the local authorities don't want them in their
> market?
>
> What are the chances that the 6 month emergency license Fidschi has
> granted to help Tonga will be turned into a normal license that allows
> Fidschi residents to use Starlink?
>
> Cheers
> Daniel
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>

-- 
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
Ph: (+64-9)-373-7599 ext. 85282

The University of Auckland
ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz  
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
****************************************************************



[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 4903 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Mike Puchol]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4794 bytes --]

Thank you for the great detail on the situation!

On link budgets, we are talking about a delta in slant range at minimum elevation of 15° of ~900 km, compared to 25°. SpaceX already stated that they would operate gateways above 60° latitude at elevations as low as 5°, so they have plenty spare in terms of gateway to satellite. The biggest rain fade impact would be on the service links, as the UT cannot increase power that much, no matter how much the satellite increases its side. Still, the biggest impact on Fiji and Tonga is the GSO protection, which takes out 36° of usable sky, all the way from East to West.

As for banning Dishy, the difference with satellite TV is that you can detect the uplink at 14-14.5 GHz and home in on “violators”, you can’t just hide it under some tarp ;-)

Best,

Mike
On Feb 8, 2022, 09:22 +0100, Ulrich Speidel <ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz>, wrote:
> Fiji's unwritten government policy for a long term has been that the Internet exists as an income source for the government.
> When I was at the University of the South Pacific (USP) in Suva on a short secondment in 2001, you could pick a fresh bunch of tropical flowers for each short e-mail from overseas that arrived. This was just a couple of kilometres from the landing station of the very much operational Southern Cross cable, which had taken over as the main redundant US-NZ-Australia connection, with bandwidth to boot. I was told that USP, as a transnational organisation, had requested permission to connect, and was refused. They had access to a transponder on a Japanese satellite at the time to beam analog video of classes to their "satellite" campuses around the Pacific, and they weren't allowed to use that for Internet either.
> It's not changed all that much since. I'm told that there's a wall in the cable landing station, and every bit that crosses the wall has a tax slapped onto it.
> Other countries have similar sensitivities, sometimes because they want to protect a monopoly telco, sometimes because local society doesn't want real Internet (many places are very much church-driven, and I suspect some pastors fear that they might lose the narrative, or people have heard about all the horrible things on the Internet and just don't want it in their village). Sometimes it's because their current satellite provider has them in a stranglehold - they love long-term contracts for little service at exorbitant fees, and some small footnote in the contract says that this special price is only available to them if the island nation shall not buy from anyone else during that period. Typical satellite contracts in the Pacific run for 5 years minimum. Yes that sounds as crook as it is.
> Note that there are in principle two issues with a LEO provider accessing a country: Providing service there and running gateways there. To prevent Starlink from offering service once they're able to route between satellite, you'd have to ban dishys, and if you want to know how well that works, ask the Iranians for their experience when they wanted to ban satellite TV. Running a gateway is another matter, of course.
> There's always hope that the Fijian government will eventually understand that the Internet will make it richer if it doesn't try to take a cut, and that more of it is better for them. But they'd like a bit more Internet on the outlying islands as is, and maybe Elon can sell the idea to them?
> On 8/02/2022 8:49 pm, Daniel AJ Sokolov wrote:
> > On 2022-02-08 at 00:30, Ulrich Speidel wrote:
> > > They're not the only place in the Pacific to have these sorts of
> > > problems, so seeing Starlink show any interest at all is a good thing.
> > > They might want to start with providing service to all of Fiji.
> >
> > Maybe, but my feeling is the local authorities don't want them in their
> > market?
> >
> > What are the chances that the 6 month emergency license Fidschi has
> > granted to help Tonga will be turned into a normal license that allows
> > Fidschi residents to use Starlink?
> >
> > Cheers
> > Daniel
> > _______________________________________________
> > Starlink mailing list
> > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> --
> ****************************************************************
> Dr. Ulrich Speidel
>
> School of Computer Science
>
> Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
> Ph: (+64-9)-373-7599 ext. 85282
>
> The University of Auckland
> ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz
> http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
> ****************************************************************
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 5874 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Daniel AJ Sokolov]

On 2022-02-08 at 01:47, Mike Puchol wrote:
> the biggest impact on Fiji and Tonga is the GSO protection, which
> takes out 36° of usable sky, all the way from East to West.

Ho Mike,

would you please be so kind to explain that a bit more?

Thank you
Daniel

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Mike Puchol]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1692 bytes --]

The GSO satellite operators, due to the fact that they have been there for eons, plus they cannot move the satellites around, are at a disadvantage with NGSO operators such as Starlink, when it comes to using the same shared spectrum. The Ku band downlink spectrum Starlink uses is the same as your satellite TV, thus, if your Dishy was inline with a Starlink satellite and the line towards the GSO arc, the satellite would kill all satellite TV in your area.

The ITU in its article 22 specifies how NGSO operators must protect GSO operators, by not generating interference above certain power levels to or from the GSO arc. For Dishy, this means it cannot transmit anywhere between the GSO arc elevation and +18° (up), -18° (down).

In Barcelona, the GSO arc due South sits at around 43° in elevation, thus, my Dishy cannot transmit between 25° and 61° in elevation due South. However, the protection band begins around an azimuth of 120°, up to around 240°.

In the Equator, the GSO protection band starts due East, and goes all the way across the sky due West. It also takes out 37° of visible sky at zenith.

Hope this helps!

Best,

Mike
On Feb 8, 2022, 09:49 +0100, Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@sokolov.eu.org>, wrote:
> On 2022-02-08 at 01:47, Mike Puchol wrote:
> > the biggest impact on Fiji and Tonga is the GSO protection, which
> > takes out 36° of usable sky, all the way from East to West.
>
> Ho Mike,
>
> would you please be so kind to explain that a bit more?
>
> Thank you
> Daniel
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2275 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Daniel AJ Sokolov]

On 2022-02-08 at 01:58, Mike Puchol wrote:
> In the Equator, the GSO protection band starts due East, and goes all
> the way across the sky due West. It also takes out 37° of visible sky
> at zenith.

Thank you.

If it goes all the way from East to West, how can one run any Starlink 
there?

Does the protection area go from East to West via North, but Starlink 
could use East to West via South? Or the other way round?

Or is the protection band only at certain angles off the ground?

I think I get the 37° at Zenit - Zenit +18 and -18.

Thank you!
Daniel

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Mike Puchol]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1302 bytes --]

If you take zenith at the example, start looking due South. Raise your sights up until you hit 25° elevation - you can start transmitting then. Keep going up in elevation, once you reach 72°, you need to stop transmitting. Keep going up until you reach 90° (zenith), then keep going due North, now dropping elevation. When you get to 72° towards North, you can start transmitting again, until you drop to 25°.

If you click on a satellite on my tracker you will see the region blocked by GSO, based on the satellite’s latitude (beware of weird date line effects, try it over Africa).

Best,

Mike
On Feb 8, 2022, 10:05 +0100, Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@sokolov.eu.org>, wrote:
> On 2022-02-08 at 01:58, Mike Puchol wrote:
> > In the Equator, the GSO protection band starts due East, and goes all
> > the way across the sky due West. It also takes out 37° of visible sky
> > at zenith.
>
> Thank you.
>
> If it goes all the way from East to West, how can one run any Starlink
> there?
>
> Does the protection area go from East to West via North, but Starlink
> could use East to West via South? Or the other way round?
>
> Or is the protection band only at certain angles off the ground?
>
> I think I get the 37° at Zenit - Zenit +18 and -18.
>
> Thank you!
> Daniel

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1864 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Sebastian Moeller]

Nice, well-written  article in German about this topic, https://www.heise.de/news/Starlink-fuer-Tongas-Internet-Zu-wenig-zu-spaet-6355794.html which feels based on information also discussed in this thread ;)

Regards
	Sebastian

> On Feb 8, 2022, at 10:05, Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@sokolov.eu.org> wrote:
> 
> On 2022-02-08 at 01:58, Mike Puchol wrote:
>> In the Equator, the GSO protection band starts due East, and goes all
>> the way across the sky due West. It also takes out 37° of visible sky
>> at zenith.
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> If it goes all the way from East to West, how can one run any Starlink there?
> 
> Does the protection area go from East to West via North, but Starlink could use East to West via South? Or the other way round?
> 
> Or is the protection band only at certain angles off the ground?
> 
> I think I get the 37° at Zenit - Zenit +18 and -18.
> 
> Thank you!
> Daniel
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Ulrich Speidel]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3018 bytes --]

That's an interesting aspect that I hadn't considered! A quick 
back-of-the-envelope reveals that the GSO arc is at least 15 times 
beyond a Starlink LEO satellite, and with Friis propagation, that's 
about 23 dB in terms of difference in path loss, and thus not as much 
separation as you'd want. Under ITU regs you're competing with noise, 
not signal ;-)

Either way, I know it's a contested topic even at the regulatory level.

Tonga is at around 20 deg south so could be using anything from north 
just over zenith to further south, but as I've pointed out, there are 
other issues here also.

On 8/02/2022 9:58 pm, Mike Puchol wrote:
> The GSO satellite operators, due to the fact that they have been there 
> for eons, plus they cannot move the satellites around, are at a 
> disadvantage with NGSO operators such as Starlink, when it comes to 
> using the same shared spectrum. The Ku band downlink spectrum Starlink 
> uses is the same as your satellite TV, thus, if your Dishy was inline 
> with a Starlink satellite and the line towards the GSO arc, the 
> satellite would kill all satellite TV in your area.
>
> The ITU in its article 22 specifies how NGSO operators must protect 
> GSO operators, by not generating interference above certain power 
> levels to or from the GSO arc. For Dishy, this means it cannot 
> transmit anywhere between the GSO arc elevation and +18° (up), -18° 
> (down).
>
> In Barcelona, the GSO arc due South sits at around 43° in elevation, 
> thus, my Dishy cannot transmit between 25° and 61° in elevation due 
> South. However, the protection band begins around an azimuth of 120°, 
> up to around 240°.
>
> In the Equator, the GSO protection band starts due East, and goes all 
> the way across the sky due West. It also takes out 37° of visible sky 
> at zenith.
>
> Hope this helps!
>
> Best,
>
> Mike
> On Feb 8, 2022, 09:49 +0100, Daniel AJ Sokolov 
> <daniel@sokolov.eu.org>, wrote:
>> On 2022-02-08 at 01:47, Mike Puchol wrote:
>>> the biggest impact on Fiji and Tonga is the GSO protection, which
>>> takes out 36° of usable sky, all the way from East to West.
>>
>> Ho Mike,
>>
>> would you please be so kind to explain that a bit more?
>>
>> Thank you
>> Daniel
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
>> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
-- 
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
Ph: (+64-9)-373-7599 ext. 85282

The University of Auckland
ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz  
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
****************************************************************



[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 4974 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Christian von der Ropp]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4067 bytes --]

And to make things even more complicated Starlink also have to avoid 
emissions within a certain angle towards O3b's satellites in MEO 
(relatively easy as they are close to the geostationary arc) and to all 
its LEO competitors with higher ITU priority which would be OneWeb, 
Telesat Lightspeed, KLEO Connect and before all these a potential 
European LEO constellation should it use Thales' ITU filings (MCSAT-2 
LEO-x) - see 
https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-R/space/workshops/danang-2015/Documents/Presentations/Yvon%20Henri%20-%20NGSO%20Issues.pdf

The more satellites these LEO competitors deploy, the more in-line 
events will occur during which Starlink will have to seize emissions - a 
so far underestimated issue that could severely impair coverage and 
service availability.

Am 08.02.2022 um 11:11 schrieb Ulrich Speidel:
>
> That's an interesting aspect that I hadn't considered! A quick 
> back-of-the-envelope reveals that the GSO arc is at least 15 times 
> beyond a Starlink LEO satellite, and with Friis propagation, that's 
> about 23 dB in terms of difference in path loss, and thus not as much 
> separation as you'd want. Under ITU regs you're competing with noise, 
> not signal ;-)
>
> Either way, I know it's a contested topic even at the regulatory level.
>
> Tonga is at around 20 deg south so could be using anything from north 
> just over zenith to further south, but as I've pointed out, there are 
> other issues here also.
>
> On 8/02/2022 9:58 pm, Mike Puchol wrote:
>> The GSO satellite operators, due to the fact that they have been 
>> there for eons, plus they cannot move the satellites around, are at a 
>> disadvantage with NGSO operators such as Starlink, when it comes to 
>> using the same shared spectrum. The Ku band downlink spectrum 
>> Starlink uses is the same as your satellite TV, thus, if your Dishy 
>> was inline with a Starlink satellite and the line towards the GSO 
>> arc, the satellite would kill all satellite TV in your area.
>>
>> The ITU in its article 22 specifies how NGSO operators must protect 
>> GSO operators, by not generating interference above certain power 
>> levels to or from the GSO arc. For Dishy, this means it cannot 
>> transmit anywhere between the GSO arc elevation and +18° (up), -18° 
>> (down).
>>
>> In Barcelona, the GSO arc due South sits at around 43° in elevation, 
>> thus, my Dishy cannot transmit between 25° and 61° in elevation due 
>> South. However, the protection band begins around an azimuth of 120°, 
>> up to around 240°.
>>
>> In the Equator, the GSO protection band starts due East, and goes all 
>> the way across the sky due West. It also takes out 37° of visible sky 
>> at zenith.
>>
>> Hope this helps!
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Mike
>> On Feb 8, 2022, 09:49 +0100, Daniel AJ Sokolov 
>> <daniel@sokolov.eu.org>, wrote:
>>> On 2022-02-08 at 01:47, Mike Puchol wrote:
>>>> the biggest impact on Fiji and Tonga is the GSO protection, which
>>>> takes out 36° of usable sky, all the way from East to West.
>>>
>>> Ho Mike,
>>>
>>> would you please be so kind to explain that a bit more?
>>>
>>> Thank you
>>> Daniel
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Starlink mailing list
>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>
> -- 
> ****************************************************************
> Dr. Ulrich Speidel
>
> School of Computer Science
>
> Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
> Ph: (+64-9)-373-7599 ext. 85282
>
> The University of Auckland
> ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz  
> http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
> ****************************************************************
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink


-- 
M +49.179.3695000
T +49.7071.538720
F +49.7071.538722

Ecvdr@vdr.net  
Wwww.vdr.net

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 7567 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Mike Puchol]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4997 bytes --]

Hi Christian,

The concern with O3b will be once they launch the inclined orbit mPOWER satellites, which will cause inline events outside the GSO arc. Of the other constellations, OneWeb is a concern on Ka band already, but they only operate above 50º North, where Starlink doesn’t really operate that much yet, Telesat has launched only one test satellite.

It will come for sure, and there will be a requirement for an RF conjunction event management system. IMHO it’s going to be messy before it gets better.

Best,

Mike
On Feb 8, 2022, 14:50 +0100, Christian von der Ropp <cvdr@vdr.net>, wrote:
> And to make things even more complicated Starlink also have to avoid emissions within a certain angle towards O3b's satellites in MEO (relatively easy as they are close to the geostationary arc) and to all its LEO competitors with higher ITU priority which would be OneWeb, Telesat Lightspeed, KLEO Connect and before all these a potential European LEO constellation should it use Thales' ITU filings (MCSAT-2 LEO-x) - see https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-R/space/workshops/danang-2015/Documents/Presentations/Yvon%20Henri%20-%20NGSO%20Issues.pdf
>
> The more satellites these LEO competitors deploy, the more in-line events will occur during which Starlink will have to seize emissions - a so far underestimated issue that could severely impair coverage and service availability.
>
> Am 08.02.2022 um 11:11 schrieb Ulrich Speidel:
> > That's an interesting aspect that I hadn't considered! A quick back-of-the-envelope reveals that the GSO arc is at least 15 times beyond a Starlink LEO satellite, and with Friis propagation, that's about 23 dB in terms of difference in path loss, and thus not as much separation as you'd want. Under ITU regs you're competing with noise, not signal ;-)
> > Either way, I know it's a contested topic even at the regulatory level.
> > Tonga is at around 20 deg south so could be using anything from north just over zenith to further south, but as I've pointed out, there are other issues here also.
> > On 8/02/2022 9:58 pm, Mike Puchol wrote:
> > > The GSO satellite operators, due to the fact that they have been there for eons, plus they cannot move the satellites around, are at a disadvantage with NGSO operators such as Starlink, when it comes to using the same shared spectrum. The Ku band downlink spectrum Starlink uses is the same as your satellite TV, thus, if your Dishy was inline with a Starlink satellite and the line towards the GSO arc, the satellite would kill all satellite TV in your area.
> > >
> > > The ITU in its article 22 specifies how NGSO operators must protect GSO operators, by not generating interference above certain power levels to or from the GSO arc. For Dishy, this means it cannot transmit anywhere between the GSO arc elevation and +18° (up), -18° (down).
> > >
> > > In Barcelona, the GSO arc due South sits at around 43° in elevation, thus, my Dishy cannot transmit between 25° and 61° in elevation due South. However, the protection band begins around an azimuth of 120°, up to around 240°.
> > >
> > > In the Equator, the GSO protection band starts due East, and goes all the way across the sky due West. It also takes out 37° of visible sky at zenith.
> > >
> > > Hope this helps!
> > >
> > > Best,
> > >
> > > Mike
> > > On Feb 8, 2022, 09:49 +0100, Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@sokolov.eu.org>, wrote:
> > > > On 2022-02-08 at 01:47, Mike Puchol wrote:
> > > > > the biggest impact on Fiji and Tonga is the GSO protection, which
> > > > > takes out 36° of usable sky, all the way from East to West.
> > > >
> > > > Ho Mike,
> > > >
> > > > would you please be so kind to explain that a bit more?
> > > >
> > > > Thank you
> > > > Daniel
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Starlink mailing list
> > > > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > > > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Starlink mailing list
> > > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> > >
> > --
> > ****************************************************************
> > Dr. Ulrich Speidel
> >
> > School of Computer Science
> >
> > Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
> > Ph: (+64-9)-373-7599 ext. 85282
> >
> > The University of Auckland
> > ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz
> > http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
> > ****************************************************************
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Starlink mailing list
> > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
> --
> M +49.179.3695000
> T +49.7071.538720
> F +49.7071.538722
>
> E cvdr@vdr.net
> W www.vdr.net
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 7832 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Dave Taht]

i grew up on an obscure british TV show:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbirds_(TV_series)

And only today learned there was a remake.

What I don't quite understand is why a full-fledged ground station is
needed to get dropped.  (in a day after they have laser links)

A simple dishy can do 300mbit down and over 20Mbit up. using a 32k
codec that's quite a few voice calls, or cleared transactions.

The difference between zero and some connectivity is quite a lot.

On Tue, Feb 8, 2022 at 7:28 AM Mike Puchol <mike@starlink.sx> wrote:
>
> Hi Christian,
>
> The concern with O3b will be once they launch the inclined orbit mPOWER satellites, which will cause inline events outside the GSO arc. Of the other constellations, OneWeb is a concern on Ka band already, but they only operate above 50º North, where Starlink doesn’t really operate that much yet, Telesat has launched only one test satellite.
>
> It will come for sure, and there will be a requirement for an RF conjunction event management system. IMHO it’s going to be messy before it gets better.
>
> Best,
>
> Mike
> On Feb 8, 2022, 14:50 +0100, Christian von der Ropp <cvdr@vdr.net>, wrote:
>
> And to make things even more complicated Starlink also have to avoid emissions within a certain angle towards O3b's satellites in MEO (relatively easy as they are close to the geostationary arc) and to all its LEO competitors with higher ITU priority which would be OneWeb, Telesat Lightspeed, KLEO Connect and before all these a potential European LEO constellation should it use Thales' ITU filings (MCSAT-2 LEO-x) - see https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-R/space/workshops/danang-2015/Documents/Presentations/Yvon%20Henri%20-%20NGSO%20Issues.pdf
>
> The more satellites these LEO competitors deploy, the more in-line events will occur during which Starlink will have to seize emissions - a so far underestimated issue that could severely impair coverage and service availability.
>
> Am 08.02.2022 um 11:11 schrieb Ulrich Speidel:
>
> That's an interesting aspect that I hadn't considered! A quick back-of-the-envelope reveals that the GSO arc is at least 15 times beyond a Starlink LEO satellite, and with Friis propagation, that's about 23 dB in terms of difference in path loss, and thus not as much separation as you'd want. Under ITU regs you're competing with noise, not signal ;-)
>
> Either way, I know it's a contested topic even at the regulatory level.
>
> Tonga is at around 20 deg south so could be using anything from north just over zenith to further south, but as I've pointed out, there are other issues here also.
>
> On 8/02/2022 9:58 pm, Mike Puchol wrote:
>
> The GSO satellite operators, due to the fact that they have been there for eons, plus they cannot move the satellites around, are at a disadvantage with NGSO operators such as Starlink, when it comes to using the same shared spectrum. The Ku band downlink spectrum Starlink uses is the same as your satellite TV, thus, if your Dishy was inline with a Starlink satellite and the line towards the GSO arc, the satellite would kill all satellite TV in your area.
>
> The ITU in its article 22 specifies how NGSO operators must protect GSO operators, by not generating interference above certain power levels to or from the GSO arc. For Dishy, this means it cannot transmit anywhere between the GSO arc elevation and +18° (up), -18° (down).
>
> In Barcelona, the GSO arc due South sits at around 43° in elevation, thus, my Dishy cannot transmit between 25° and 61° in elevation due South. However, the protection band begins around an azimuth of 120°, up to around 240°.
>
> In the Equator, the GSO protection band starts due East, and goes all the way across the sky due West. It also takes out 37° of visible sky at zenith.
>
> Hope this helps!
>
> Best,
>
> Mike
> On Feb 8, 2022, 09:49 +0100, Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@sokolov.eu.org>, wrote:
>
> On 2022-02-08 at 01:47, Mike Puchol wrote:
>
> the biggest impact on Fiji and Tonga is the GSO protection, which
> takes out 36° of usable sky, all the way from East to West.
>
>
> Ho Mike,
>
> would you please be so kind to explain that a bit more?
>
> Thank you
> Daniel
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
> --
> ****************************************************************
> Dr. Ulrich Speidel
>
> School of Computer Science
>
> Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
> Ph: (+64-9)-373-7599 ext. 85282
>
> The University of Auckland
> ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz
> http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
> ****************************************************************
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
>
> --
> M +49.179.3695000
> T +49.7071.538720
> F +49.7071.538722
>
> E cvdr@vdr.net
> W www.vdr.net
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink



-- 
I tried to build a better future, a few times:
https://wayforward.archive.org/?site=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.icei.org

Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Gary E. Miller]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 675 bytes --]

Yo Dave!

On Tue, 8 Feb 2022 08:25:49 -0800
Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> wrote:

> What I don't quite understand is why a full-fledged ground station is
> needed to get dropped.  (in a day after they have laser links)

Never wase a good emergency.  Eventually they will want a ground station
there, and doing it now skips a lot of paperwork.

RGDS
GARY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary E. Miller Rellim 109 NW Wilmington Ave., Suite E, Bend, OR 97703
	gem@rellim.com  Tel:+1 541 382 8588

	    Veritas liberabit vos. -- Quid est veritas?
    "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it." - Lord Kelvin

[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 851 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[David Lang]

On Tue, 8 Feb 2022, Dave Taht wrote:

> What I don't quite understand is why a full-fledged ground station is
> needed to get dropped.  (in a day after they have laser links)
>
> A simple dishy can do 300mbit down and over 20Mbit up. using a 32k
> codec that's quite a few voice calls, or cleared transactions.
>
> The difference between zero and some connectivity is quite a lot.

They don't have enough laser equipped satellites to provide coverage yet (Elon 
commented that providing coverage is quite hard because of the lack of enough 
laser satellites right now). They don't currently do dishy-to-dishy 
communications.

So, long term you are right, a new ground station there wouldn't be needed (and 
adds additional load to the Fiji underwater links, not desirable in the long 
term), but in the short term, it's what's needed to provide service in the area.

David Lang

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Ulrich Speidel]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3079 bytes --]

Fiji's connected to the Southern Cross cable, one of the main transit 
routes between Australia and the US, running from Sydney to Oahu/Hawaii. 
Plenty of capacity for a bit of island Starlink there.

It is in fact time that the world started thinking a bit about better 
connectivity in the Pacific islands. People like David Lassner from 
UHawaii have argued this for a really long time.

It's not just because of the locals. The Pacific is where your weather 
is made and where a lot of your fish comes from. It's where things 
happen at a big scale that are interesting to watch, from stars to 
volcanic eruptions, climate and so much more. Geopolitics play out here, 
often out of view.

But it's also because of the locals. It's a fascinating cultural space, 
too. Did you know that Tongans are part of the Polynesian family, and 
Polynesians can communicate with each other in their languages from NZ 
in the southwest to Hawaii in the north and Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in 
the western Pacific? Hawaii is a ten hour flight from New Zealand, but 
they knew how to navigate back and forth between these specks of land in 
a vast ocean for many centuries. Yet many Western countries don't as 
much as mention this in their school curricula, giving instead wide 
space to the vastly more compact Mediterranean or the not-quite-as-big 
Atlantic.

Nowadays, the Pacific is the scene of one of the world's trickiest and 
most cruel digital divides. Anyone chipping away at this is welcome.

On 9/02/2022 8:12 am, David Lang wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Feb 2022, Dave Taht wrote:
>
> > What I don't quite understand is why a full-fledged ground station is
> > needed to get dropped. (in a day after they have laser links)
> >
> > A simple dishy can do 300mbit down and over 20Mbit up. using a 32k
> > codec that's quite a few voice calls, or cleared transactions.
> >
> > The difference between zero and some connectivity is quite a lot.
>
> They don't have enough laser equipped satellites to provide coverage 
> yet (Elon
> commented that providing coverage is quite hard because of the lack of 
> enough
> laser satellites right now). They don't currently do dishy-to-dishy
> communications.
>
> So, long term you are right, a new ground station there wouldn't be 
> needed (and
> adds additional load to the Fiji underwater links, not desirable in 
> the long
> term), but in the short term, it's what's needed to provide service in 
> the area.
>
> David Lang
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>

-- 
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
Ph: (+64-9)-373-7599 ext. 85282

The University of Auckland
ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz  
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
****************************************************************



[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 4168 bytes --]

[Starlink] Sunburp kills 40 starlink satellites

[Doc Searls]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 8024 bytes --]

At https://www.spacex.com/updates/ (I see no direct link to this news)::::

FEBRUARY 8, 2022

GEOMAGNETIC STORM AND RECENTLY DEPLOYED STARLINK SATELLITES

On Thursday, February 3 at 1:13 p.m. EST, Falcon 9 launched 49 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Falcon 9’s second stage deployed the satellites into their intended orbit, with a perigee of approximately 210 kilometers above Earth, and each satellite achieved controlled flight.

SpaceX deploys its satellites into these lower orbits so that in the very rare case any satellite does not pass initial system checkouts it will quickly be deorbited by atmospheric drag. While the low deployment altitude requires more capable satellites at a considerable cost to us, it’s the right thing to do to maintain a sustainable space environment.

Unfortunately, the satellites deployed on Thursday were significantly impacted by a geomagnetic storm on Friday. These storms cause the atmosphere to warm and atmospheric density at our low deployment altitudes to increase. In fact, onboard GPS suggests the escalation speed and severity of the storm caused atmospheric drag to increase up to 50 percent higher than during previous launches. The Starlink team commanded the satellites into a safe-mode where they would fly edge-on (like a sheet of paper) to minimize drag—to effectively “take cover from the storm”—and continued to work closely with the Space Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron and LeoLabs to provide updates on the satellites based on ground radars.

Preliminary analysis show the increased drag at the low altitudes prevented the satellites from leaving safe-mode to begin orbit raising maneuvers, and up to 40 of the satellites will reenter or already have reentered the Earth’s atmosphere. The deorbiting satellites pose zero collision risk with other satellites and by design demise upon atmospheric reentry—meaning no orbital debris is created and no satellite parts hit the ground. This unique situation demonstrates the great lengths the Starlink team has gone to ensure the system is on the leading edge of on-orbit debris mitigation.

Ouch.

Doc

On Feb 8, 2022, at 8:25 AM, Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com<mailto:dave.taht@gmail.com>> wrote:

i grew up on an obscure british TV show:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbirds_(TV_series)

And only today learned there was a remake.

What I don't quite understand is why a full-fledged ground station is
needed to get dropped.  (in a day after they have laser links)

A simple dishy can do 300mbit down and over 20Mbit up. using a 32k
codec that's quite a few voice calls, or cleared transactions.

The difference between zero and some connectivity is quite a lot.

On Tue, Feb 8, 2022 at 7:28 AM Mike Puchol <mike@starlink.sx> wrote:

Hi Christian,

The concern with O3b will be once they launch the inclined orbit mPOWER satellites, which will cause inline events outside the GSO arc. Of the other constellations, OneWeb is a concern on Ka band already, but they only operate above 50º North, where Starlink doesn’t really operate that much yet, Telesat has launched only one test satellite.

It will come for sure, and there will be a requirement for an RF conjunction event management system. IMHO it’s going to be messy before it gets better.

Best,

Mike
On Feb 8, 2022, 14:50 +0100, Christian von der Ropp <cvdr@vdr.net>, wrote:

And to make things even more complicated Starlink also have to avoid emissions within a certain angle towards O3b's satellites in MEO (relatively easy as they are close to the geostationary arc) and to all its LEO competitors with higher ITU priority which would be OneWeb, Telesat Lightspeed, KLEO Connect and before all these a potential European LEO constellation should it use Thales' ITU filings (MCSAT-2 LEO-x) - see https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-R/space/workshops/danang-2015/Documents/Presentations/Yvon%20Henri%20-%20NGSO%20Issues.pdf

The more satellites these LEO competitors deploy, the more in-line events will occur during which Starlink will have to seize emissions - a so far underestimated issue that could severely impair coverage and service availability.

Am 08.02.2022 um 11:11 schrieb Ulrich Speidel:

That's an interesting aspect that I hadn't considered! A quick back-of-the-envelope reveals that the GSO arc is at least 15 times beyond a Starlink LEO satellite, and with Friis propagation, that's about 23 dB in terms of difference in path loss, and thus not as much separation as you'd want. Under ITU regs you're competing with noise, not signal ;-)

Either way, I know it's a contested topic even at the regulatory level.

Tonga is at around 20 deg south so could be using anything from north just over zenith to further south, but as I've pointed out, there are other issues here also.

On 8/02/2022 9:58 pm, Mike Puchol wrote:

The GSO satellite operators, due to the fact that they have been there for eons, plus they cannot move the satellites around, are at a disadvantage with NGSO operators such as Starlink, when it comes to using the same shared spectrum. The Ku band downlink spectrum Starlink uses is the same as your satellite TV, thus, if your Dishy was inline with a Starlink satellite and the line towards the GSO arc, the satellite would kill all satellite TV in your area.

The ITU in its article 22 specifies how NGSO operators must protect GSO operators, by not generating interference above certain power levels to or from the GSO arc. For Dishy, this means it cannot transmit anywhere between the GSO arc elevation and +18° (up), -18° (down).

In Barcelona, the GSO arc due South sits at around 43° in elevation, thus, my Dishy cannot transmit between 25° and 61° in elevation due South. However, the protection band begins around an azimuth of 120°, up to around 240°.

In the Equator, the GSO protection band starts due East, and goes all the way across the sky due West. It also takes out 37° of visible sky at zenith.

Hope this helps!

Best,

Mike
On Feb 8, 2022, 09:49 +0100, Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@sokolov.eu.org>, wrote:

On 2022-02-08 at 01:47, Mike Puchol wrote:

the biggest impact on Fiji and Tonga is the GSO protection, which
takes out 36° of usable sky, all the way from East to West.


Ho Mike,

would you please be so kind to explain that a bit more?

Thank you
Daniel
_______________________________________________
Starlink mailing list
Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink


_______________________________________________
Starlink mailing list
Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

--
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
Ph: (+64-9)-373-7599 ext. 85282

The University of Auckland
ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
****************************************************************




_______________________________________________
Starlink mailing list
Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink


--
M +49.179.3695000
T +49.7071.538720
F +49.7071.538722

E cvdr@vdr.net
W www.vdr.net

_______________________________________________
Starlink mailing list
Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

_______________________________________________
Starlink mailing list
Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink



--
I tried to build a better future, a few times:
https://wayforward.archive.org/?site=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.icei.org

Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC
_______________________________________________
Starlink mailing list
Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink


[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 11089 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Sunburp kills 40 starlink satellites

[Michael Richardson]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 930 bytes --]


Doc Searls <doc@searls.com> wrote:
    > Unfortunately, the satellites deployed on Thursday were significantly
    > impacted by a geomagnetic storm on Friday. These storms cause the
    > atmosphere to warm and atmospheric density at our low deployment
    > altitudes to increase. In fact, onboard GPS suggests the escalation
    > speed and severity of the storm caused atmospheric drag to increase up
    > to 50 percent higher than during previous launches. The Starlink team
    > commanded the satellites into a safe-mode where they would fly edge-on
    > (like a sheet of paper) to minimize drag—to effectively “take cover
    > from the storm”—and continued to work closely with the Space Force’s
    > 18th Space Control Squadron and LeoLabs to provide updates on the
    > satellites based on ground radars.

I wonder if the GPS data will be interesting/helpful to geomagnetic
scientists.


[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 398 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Ulrich Speidel]

On 8/02/2022 9:47 pm, Mike Puchol wrote:
> As for banning Dishy, the difference with satellite TV is that you can 
> detect the uplink at 14-14.5 GHz and home in on “violators”, you can’t 
> just hide it under some tarp ;-)

Indeed, in a big country, you could do this, but in the Pacific, very 
few island states would have the resources or skills to enforce this. 
They'd probably try and stop dishys at the border but once inside, it 
very much depends on who the offender is and what local support they can 
wield as to what action might be contemplated.

I spent a week in Niue a few years ago on holiday. Niue's a rock with 
about 2000 people on it and a much larger diaspora in NZ, around 600 km 
east of Tonga. Internet there was pioneered by an enterprising local who 
got the right to market the .nu domain and in exchange provided free 
WiFi island-wide. As it so happened he was on our flight up, and I 
bumped into him the next morning when he gloomily told me that the 
Niuean government had revoked his license and had declared itself the 
only ISP on the island, with its only customers being a small number of 
businesses (mostly government owned/related) along the main drag, so he 
had to shut down the next morning. They didn't want any competitors, though.

This drastic action led to almost every other business on the island 
losing electronic payment capability (they use the NZ dollar there) and 
the few we dropped into were a bit peeved, to put it mildly. By 10 am, 
they had mounted a delegation to the NZ High Commission (NZ had been 
bankrolling the government and its Internet activities). By 8 pm that 
night, the existing outfit was back on air.

-- 

****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
Ph: (+64-9)-373-7599 ext. 85282

The University of Auckland
ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
****************************************************************

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Daniel AJ Sokolov]

On 2022-02-07 at 15:29, Mike Puchol wrote:
> As far as placing a gateway in Fiji, it already has a teleport
> facility, which will have power and fibre (unless that one has been
> taken out too?). Checkhttps://goo.gl/maps/6BYXf4R17yys7zNe9

Hey Mike, you put a "SUVA (Emergency)" ground station on starlink.sx.

Is that for simulation, or has Starlink actually installed a ground 
station in Fidschi by now? Would you have positive confirmation?

Thank you
Daniel

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Mike Puchol]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1111 bytes --]

Hi Daniel,

I added it after there was a confirmation on Twitter that SpaceX people were on the ground to set one up, and also, as two /27 blocks (IPv4) have been assigned to Fiji’s capital, under the Sydney POP, and they can be pinged.

Wether it’s at the teleport or not, unsure, but for simulation, an error of even a few km doesn’t really matter.

Best,

Mike
On Feb 18, 2022, 06:04 +0100, Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@falco.ca>, wrote:
> On 2022-02-07 at 15:29, Mike Puchol wrote:
> > As far as placing a gateway in Fiji, it already has a teleport
> > facility, which will have power and fibre (unless that one has been
> > taken out too?). Checkhttps://goo.gl/maps/6BYXf4R17yys7zNe9
>
> Hey Mike, you put a "SUVA (Emergency)" ground station on starlink.sx.
>
> Is that for simulation, or has Starlink actually installed a ground
> station in Fidschi by now? Would you have positive confirmation?
>
> Thank you
> Daniel
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1701 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Ulrich Speidel]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 7504 bytes --]

I've heard nothing further about teleport establishment in Fiji, but 
that doesn't mean that nothing has happened.

Meanwhile, cable repair has progressed a good bit. The damage was far 
greater than originally envisaged. On the international cable, faults 
(complete cable ruptures and fibre damage) stretched over more than 80 
km. The cable ran entirely SOUTH of the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai 
volcano (about 60 km away and shielded by a number of submarine mounts 
for at least parts of the damaged section). Yet the Reliance cable ship 
traced one disconnected cable piece end to about 5 km NORTH of its 
nominal route, found various sections had disappeared completely, and 
recovered sections of up to 9 km at a time from the seabed.

A bog standard cable break requires two holding drives (or drags), HD 
for short, to pick up each of the cable endpoints from the seafloor. It 
also requires either an ROV dive to check if the cable has completely 
separated at the fault position, or a cut if the cable is still held 
together by the steel. That cut can be done either by ROV as well, or if 
visibility doesn't permit ROV use, by a cutting drive (CD). Any HD or CD 
requires the cable ship to tow a seafloor grapnel / cutter device 
transversally across the cable, so they're easy to spot on position 
traces. The Reliance did no fewer than seven HD's in its eastern 
operations area near Tongatapu, where it worked first. Visibility there 
was good (so ROV could be used), but damage substantial.

The ship then proceeded to the western end of the fault zone where 
reflectometer measurements from the Suva end had found a fault. Because 
of bad visibility, they did a CD followed by 2 HD's there, then noticed 
that there was fibre damage along the cable to Suva, so reeled that in 
and cut the damaged bit out.

They then proceeded to put a "mini-system" together. Let me explain: 
Enroute to Tonga, the Reliance stopped at Subcom's depot in Apia (Samoa) 
to load whatever cable they had in store there. This included spares not 
only for the Fiji-Tonga cable but also for various other cable systems 
in the wider region. Reliance left Apia with about 80 km of cable in 
total. The amount of cable that will need to be re-laid along the 
damaged international section is 90 km (you need to allow for a bit of 
cable lengthening due to slack being inserted when cable ends are being 
brought up from 2000 m (6000 ft) or so below). This means that the 
Reliance is re-using some of the cable recovered from the damaged 
section, and the whole "mini-system" will be one long stitch job. The 
damaged section also included a repeater worth US$230k, which they were 
trying to recover and which was still missing as of this morning - I've 
yet to hear from my contact as to whether they were successful on the 
last recovery attempt today (they've left the area after three drives 
and are heading West right now. The rest of the mini-system was going to 
be laid after the repeater recovery attempt (the overall success doesn't 
depend on the repeater being found, but the final repair bill does). I 
thus expect the cable repair to be completed in the next few days.

The domestic cable is another story altogether, unfortunately. This has 
a blind stretch of 77 km at present, as measured by optical 
reflectometer from Tongatapu and Ha'apai (there was meant to be a 
measurement from Vava'u yesterday but I haven't heard yet what this 
revealed, the cable from Tongatapu has two fibre pairs, one of which 
heads to each destination from a branching unit west of Ha'apai. That 
said, once the international cable has been fixed, the Reliance won't 
have enough cable left to complete the domestic job, even if some cable 
bits could be recovered there. The next available stock of suitable 
cable is in Europe, around 35-40 days one-way shipping away. They intend 
to bridge this time gap via satellite (and I'm sure would welcome a 
Starlink delegation with a teleport to connect to the international 
cable, too, especially now that the Australian Navy gave them Omicron 
along with their aid deliveries).

I've been in close contact with our volcanology / geophysics community 
here in NZ, who know the area well. The story of damage to the 
international cable is now shaping up to be a pretty complex one. What 
we know thus far is that it was neither the volcano's initial blast nor 
the subsequent tsunami that killed the cable - the outage began only 
well after the tsunami had hit. In all probability, it's been a 
combination of submarine landslides and turbidite waves from a variety 
of sources that hit hours and possibly many days after the eruption. 
Finding that a cable piece has moved 5 km TOWARDS the volcano points at 
an event south of the cable route, and the mix of seafloor visibilities 
encountered by the Reliance points at there having multiple events from 
multiple sources. There have been plenty of quakes upwards of M4 and 
even an M6.2 in the wider area that could have triggered slopes, 
especially with an extra layer of ash on them. Turbidite waves can 
travel up to 1000 km, aren't anywhere near as fast as a tsunami, and 
have long been known to have damaged cables in the past (see B.C. Heezen 
and M. Ewing, Turbidity currents and submarine slumps, and the 1929 
Grand Banks Earthquake, American Journal of Science, v. 250, pp 849-873, 
December 1952. This quake killed 12 submarine cables over more than 18 
hours).

Meanwhile, there's still limited satellite service in and out of Tonga, 
but I can confirm that e-mails (even with attachments) make it in and 
out OK.

On 18/02/2022 8:27 pm, Mike Puchol wrote:
> Hi Daniel,
>
> I added it after there was a confirmation on Twitter that SpaceX 
> people were on the ground to set one up, and also, as two /27 blocks 
> (IPv4) have been assigned to Fiji’s capital, under the Sydney POP, and 
> they can be pinged.
>
> Wether it’s at the teleport or not, unsure, but for simulation, an 
> error of even a few km doesn’t really matter.
>
> Best,
>
> Mike
> On Feb 18, 2022, 06:04 +0100, Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@falco.ca>, wrote:
>> On 2022-02-07 at 15:29, Mike Puchol wrote:
>>> As far as placing a gateway in Fiji, it already has a teleport
>>> facility, which will have power and fibre (unless that one has been
>>> taken out too?). Checkhttps://goo.gl/maps/6BYXf4R17yys7zNe9 
>>> <Checkhttps://goo.gl/maps/6BYXf4R17yys7zNe9>
>>
>> Hey Mike, you put a "SUVA (Emergency)" ground station on starlink.sx.
>>
>> Is that for simulation, or has Starlink actually installed a ground
>> station in Fidschi by now? Would you have positive confirmation?
>>
>> Thank you
>> Daniel
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
>> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
-- 
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)

The University of Auckland
u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz  
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
****************************************************************



[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 9913 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Mike Puchol]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 7900 bytes --]

Apologies for resurrecting an old thread, but I had totally missed this post:

http://www.fintel.com.fj/pages.cfm/company/news/spacex-starlink-gateway--fintel.html

It seems the gateway was setup in Fintel’s existing earth station, four antennas only, however, and the cables in surface ducts.

Best,

Mike
On Feb 25, 2022, 20:12 +0300, Ulrich Speidel <u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz>, wrote:
> I've heard nothing further about teleport establishment in Fiji, but that doesn't mean that nothing has happened.
> Meanwhile, cable repair has progressed a good bit. The damage was far greater than originally envisaged. On the international cable, faults (complete cable ruptures and fibre damage) stretched over more than 80 km. The cable ran entirely SOUTH of the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai volcano (about 60 km away and shielded by a number of submarine mounts for at least parts of the damaged section). Yet the Reliance cable ship traced one disconnected cable piece end to about 5 km NORTH of its nominal route, found various sections had disappeared completely, and recovered sections of up to 9 km at a time from the seabed.
> A bog standard cable break requires two holding drives (or drags), HD for short, to pick up each of the cable endpoints from the seafloor. It also requires either an ROV dive to check if the cable has completely separated at the fault position, or a cut if the cable is still held together by the steel. That cut can be done either by ROV as well, or if visibility doesn't permit ROV use, by a cutting drive (CD). Any HD or CD requires the cable ship to tow a seafloor grapnel / cutter device transversally across the cable, so they're easy to spot on position traces. The Reliance did no fewer than seven HD's in its eastern operations area near Tongatapu, where it worked first. Visibility there was good (so ROV could be used), but damage substantial.
> The ship then proceeded to the western end of the fault zone where reflectometer measurements from the Suva end had found a fault. Because of bad visibility, they did a CD followed by 2 HD's there, then noticed that there was fibre damage along the cable to Suva, so reeled that in and cut the damaged bit out.
> They then proceeded to put a "mini-system" together. Let me explain: Enroute to Tonga, the Reliance stopped at Subcom's depot in Apia (Samoa) to load whatever cable they had in store there. This included spares not only for the Fiji-Tonga cable but also for various other cable systems in the wider region. Reliance left Apia with about 80 km of cable in total. The amount of cable that will need to be re-laid along the damaged international section is 90 km (you need to allow for a bit of cable lengthening due to slack being inserted when cable ends are being brought up from 2000 m (6000 ft) or so below). This means that the Reliance is re-using some of the cable recovered from the damaged section, and the whole "mini-system" will be one long stitch job. The damaged section also included a repeater worth US$230k, which they were trying to recover and which was still missing as of this morning - I've yet to hear from my contact as to whether they were successful on the last recovery attempt today (they've left the area after three drives and are heading West right now. The rest of the mini-system was going to be laid after the repeater recovery attempt (the overall success doesn't depend on the repeater being found, but the final repair bill does). I thus expect the cable repair to be completed in the next few days.
> The domestic cable is another story altogether, unfortunately. This has a blind stretch of 77 km at present, as measured by optical reflectometer from Tongatapu and Ha'apai (there was meant to be a measurement from Vava'u yesterday but I haven't heard yet what this revealed, the cable from Tongatapu has two fibre pairs, one of which heads to each destination from a branching unit west of Ha'apai. That said, once the international cable has been fixed, the Reliance won't have enough cable left to complete the domestic job, even if some cable bits could be recovered there. The next available stock of suitable cable is in Europe, around 35-40 days one-way shipping away. They intend to bridge this time gap via satellite (and I'm sure would welcome a Starlink delegation with a teleport to connect to the international cable, too, especially now that the Australian Navy gave them Omicron along with their aid deliveries).
> I've been in close contact with our volcanology / geophysics community here in NZ, who know the area well. The story of damage to the international cable is now shaping up to be a pretty complex one. What we know thus far is that it was neither the volcano's initial blast nor the subsequent tsunami that killed the cable - the outage began only well after the tsunami had hit. In all probability, it's been a combination of submarine landslides and turbidite waves from a variety of sources that hit hours and possibly many days after the eruption. Finding that a cable piece has moved 5 km TOWARDS the volcano points at an event south of the cable route, and the mix of seafloor visibilities encountered by the Reliance points at there having multiple events from multiple sources. There have been plenty of quakes upwards of M4 and even an M6.2 in the wider area that could have triggered slopes, especially with an extra layer of ash on them. Turbidite waves can travel up to 1000 km, aren't anywhere near as fast as a tsunami, and have long been known to have damaged cables in the past (see B.C. Heezen and M. Ewing, Turbidity currents and submarine slumps, and the 1929 Grand Banks Earthquake, American Journal of Science, v. 250, pp 849-873, December 1952. This quake killed 12 submarine cables over more than 18 hours).
> Meanwhile, there's still limited satellite service in and out of Tonga, but I can confirm that e-mails (even with attachments) make it in and out OK.
> On 18/02/2022 8:27 pm, Mike Puchol wrote:
> > Hi Daniel,
> >
> > I added it after there was a confirmation on Twitter that SpaceX people were on the ground to set one up, and also, as two /27 blocks (IPv4) have been assigned to Fiji’s capital, under the Sydney POP, and they can be pinged.
> >
> > Wether it’s at the teleport or not, unsure, but for simulation, an error of even a few km doesn’t really matter.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Mike
> > On Feb 18, 2022, 06:04 +0100, Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@falco.ca>, wrote:
> > > On 2022-02-07 at 15:29, Mike Puchol wrote:
> > > > As far as placing a gateway in Fiji, it already has a teleport
> > > > facility, which will have power and fibre (unless that one has been
> > > > taken out too?). Checkhttps://goo.gl/maps/6BYXf4R17yys7zNe9
> > >
> > > Hey Mike, you put a "SUVA (Emergency)" ground station on starlink.sx.
> > >
> > > Is that for simulation, or has Starlink actually installed a ground
> > > station in Fidschi by now? Would you have positive confirmation?
> > >
> > > Thank you
> > > Daniel
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Starlink mailing list
> > > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Starlink mailing list
> > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> >
> --
> ****************************************************************
> Dr. Ulrich Speidel
>
> School of Computer Science
>
> Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
>
> The University of Auckland
> u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz
> http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
> ****************************************************************
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 9865 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Dave Taht]

On Tue, Apr 19, 2022 at 4:57 AM Mike Puchol <mike@starlink.sx> wrote:
>
> Apologies for resurrecting an old thread, but I had totally missed this post:
>
> http://www.fintel.com.fj/pages.cfm/company/news/spacex-starlink-gateway--fintel.html
>
> It seems the gateway was setup in Fintel’s existing earth station, four antennas only, however, and the cables in surface ducts.

No apologies needed, in fact, does anyone know how well tonga is recovering?

> Best,
>
> Mike
> On Feb 25, 2022, 20:12 +0300, Ulrich Speidel <u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz>, wrote:
>
> I've heard nothing further about teleport establishment in Fiji, but that doesn't mean that nothing has happened.
>
> Meanwhile, cable repair has progressed a good bit. The damage was far greater than originally envisaged. On the international cable, faults (complete cable ruptures and fibre damage) stretched over more than 80 km. The cable ran entirely SOUTH of the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai volcano (about 60 km away and shielded by a number of submarine mounts for at least parts of the damaged section). Yet the Reliance cable ship traced one disconnected cable piece end to about 5 km NORTH of its nominal route, found various sections had disappeared completely, and recovered sections of up to 9 km at a time from the seabed.
>
> A bog standard cable break requires two holding drives (or drags), HD for short, to pick up each of the cable endpoints from the seafloor. It also requires either an ROV dive to check if the cable has completely separated at the fault position, or a cut if the cable is still held together by the steel. That cut can be done either by ROV as well, or if visibility doesn't permit ROV use, by a cutting drive (CD). Any HD or CD requires the cable ship to tow a seafloor grapnel / cutter device transversally across the cable, so they're easy to spot on position traces. The Reliance did no fewer than seven HD's in its eastern operations area near Tongatapu, where it worked first. Visibility there was good (so ROV could be used), but damage substantial.
>
> The ship then proceeded to the western end of the fault zone where reflectometer measurements from the Suva end had found a fault. Because of bad visibility, they did a CD followed by 2 HD's there, then noticed that there was fibre damage along the cable to Suva, so reeled that in and cut the damaged bit out.
>
> They then proceeded to put a "mini-system" together. Let me explain: Enroute to Tonga, the Reliance stopped at Subcom's depot in Apia (Samoa) to load whatever cable they had in store there. This included spares not only for the Fiji-Tonga cable but also for various other cable systems in the wider region. Reliance left Apia with about 80 km of cable in total. The amount of cable that will need to be re-laid along the damaged international section is 90 km (you need to allow for a bit of cable lengthening due to slack being inserted when cable ends are being brought up from 2000 m (6000 ft) or so below). This means that the Reliance is re-using some of the cable recovered from the damaged section, and the whole "mini-system" will be one long stitch job. The damaged section also included a repeater worth US$230k, which they were trying to recover and which was still missing as of this morning - I've yet to hear from my contact as to whether they were successful on the last recovery attempt today (they've left the area after three drives and are heading West right now. The rest of the mini-system was going to be laid after the repeater recovery attempt (the overall success doesn't depend on the repeater being found, but the final repair bill does). I thus expect the cable repair to be completed in the next few days.
>
> The domestic cable is another story altogether, unfortunately. This has a blind stretch of 77 km at present, as measured by optical reflectometer from Tongatapu and Ha'apai (there was meant to be a measurement from Vava'u yesterday but I haven't heard yet what this revealed, the cable from Tongatapu has two fibre pairs, one of which heads to each destination from a branching unit west of Ha'apai. That said, once the international cable has been fixed, the Reliance won't have enough cable left to complete the domestic job, even if some cable bits could be recovered there. The next available stock of suitable cable is in Europe, around 35-40 days one-way shipping away. They intend to bridge this time gap via satellite (and I'm sure would welcome a Starlink delegation with a teleport to connect to the international cable, too, especially now that the Australian Navy gave them Omicron along with their aid deliveries).
>
> I've been in close contact with our volcanology / geophysics community here in NZ, who know the area well. The story of damage to the international cable is now shaping up to be a pretty complex one. What we know thus far is that it was neither the volcano's initial blast nor the subsequent tsunami that killed the cable - the outage began only well after the tsunami had hit. In all probability, it's been a combination of submarine landslides and turbidite waves from a variety of sources that hit hours and possibly many days after the eruption. Finding that a cable piece has moved 5 km TOWARDS the volcano points at an event south of the cable route, and the mix of seafloor visibilities encountered by the Reliance points at there having multiple events from multiple sources. There have been plenty of quakes upwards of M4 and even an M6.2 in the wider area that could have triggered slopes, especially with an extra layer of ash on them. Turbidite waves can travel up to 1000 km, aren't anywhere near as fast as a tsunami, and have long been known to have damaged cables in the past (see B.C. Heezen and M. Ewing, Turbidity currents and submarine slumps, and the 1929 Grand Banks Earthquake, American Journal of Science, v. 250, pp 849-873, December 1952. This quake killed 12 submarine cables over more than 18 hours).
>
> Meanwhile, there's still limited satellite service in and out of Tonga, but I can confirm that e-mails (even with attachments) make it in and out OK.
>
> On 18/02/2022 8:27 pm, Mike Puchol wrote:
>
> Hi Daniel,
>
> I added it after there was a confirmation on Twitter that SpaceX people were on the ground to set one up, and also, as two /27 blocks (IPv4) have been assigned to Fiji’s capital, under the Sydney POP, and they can be pinged.
>
> Wether it’s at the teleport or not, unsure, but for simulation, an error of even a few km doesn’t really matter.
>
> Best,
>
> Mike
> On Feb 18, 2022, 06:04 +0100, Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@falco.ca>, wrote:
>
> On 2022-02-07 at 15:29, Mike Puchol wrote:
>
> As far as placing a gateway in Fiji, it already has a teleport
> facility, which will have power and fibre (unless that one has been
> taken out too?). Checkhttps://goo.gl/maps/6BYXf4R17yys7zNe9
>
>
> Hey Mike, you put a "SUVA (Emergency)" ground station on starlink.sx.
>
> Is that for simulation, or has Starlink actually installed a ground
> station in Fidschi by now? Would you have positive confirmation?
>
> Thank you
> Daniel
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
> --
> ****************************************************************
> Dr. Ulrich Speidel
>
> School of Computer Science
>
> Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
>
> The University of Auckland
> u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz
> http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
> ****************************************************************
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink



-- 
I tried to build a better future, a few times:
https://wayforward.archive.org/?site=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.icei.org

Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Ulrich Speidel]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 14180 bytes --]

I can probably comment on this.

The international cable went back into service on the 22nd of February, 
one day before the official commencement of service to Tonga by 
Starlink. Now I should probably add here that you can't order Starlink 
in Tonga - they sent 50-odd terminals care of the Tongan government, and 
that's it. Since these were no longer needed in Tongatapu, they were 
meant to go to various of the other islands. The "Reliance" wasn't able 
to recover much of the domestic cable and for lack of spares wasn't able 
to fix this one. It subsequently left the cable grounds, unable to dock 
in Tonga due to Covid restrictions. New cable is on order in France but 
probably about another 8 months away, minimum.

The biggest other islands, Vava'u and Ha'apai (more precisely, Lifuka - 
pronounced Li-Foo-Kah) already had other satellite links in service, and 
quite a bit of the GEO capacity directed at Tongatapu was shifted to 
them post Tongatapu's reconnection. So I'd expect most of the terminals 
to end up on some of the smaller islands - quite who gets to use them 
there I'm not privy to.

I understand that the government technician trying one of the Dishys in 
Tongatapu got 300 Mb/s down out of it, probably not surprising given 
that there wouldn't have been any competing traffic. Alas, I understand 
that service is a bit discontinuous, which is to be expected. I've tried 
to ask them as to how frequent and long the gaps are, but haven't had a 
response.

Tonga is still in Covid border closure mode, which means that few people 
are able to travel back and forth. One person that has been able to 
travel there is Shane Cronin, our volcanologist whom I was talking to, 
and he has been out of quarantine and is doing some interesting work up 
there - he even made the front page of the BBC World Service the other 
week: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61071293

First reports we've had from him suggest that there was still quite a 
bit of action after the international cable was knocked out. He's quite 
familiar with Hunga and was able to pinpoint which earlier eruptions 
various of the bits that were left had come from. He's been trying to 
get a record of vessels in the area at the time to get ash reports from 
BigOceanData and they promised to help. Alas, this coincided with a 
sudden surge in demand for superyacht tracking, which presumably has 
kept them busy, so we've not seen this data set yet. What we do know is 
that tsunami run-up on Tongatapu's West Coast was about 15 metres - far 
bigger than the waves whose videos still made it across the cable. Shane 
has also been able to look at some of the tsunami deposits and this is 
likely to yield some further insights.

Meanwhile, Emily Lane from NIWA has done some modelling around the 
pyroclastic density currents (turbidity currents of volcanic origin) 
that could have come off Hunga. The amount of material displacement 
involved in these simulations is in the several cubic kilometres! These 
show those flows actually reaching both cable grounds, the domestic one 
first. The domestic cable was essentially at the bottom of a trench 
straight downhill from Hunga and never stood a chance - not only do the 
simulations show the flow going across the trench eastbound, but then 
reflecting off the opposite side back into the trench before flowing out 
of the trench like water in a gutter. No wonder they couldn't find 
anything! The international cable grounds would have been reached later, 
first on the western side where they found the murky water weeks later, 
and then also on the eastern side, where the cable was pushed north. 
That said, according to the simulations, the first flow reaching the 
eastern side would have gotten there well before the outage, and doesn't 
quite explain the 5 km displacement. That said, the simulation was only 
run until international cable outage time, and there's some question as 
to the validity of these results generally as nobody knows whether the 
bathymetry in the area was still anywhere near what it used to be. NIWA 
and others are sending ships up to get clarity as to how the seafloor 
topography has changed in the area. Hunga used to have a huge caldera, 
and at this point, nobody knows whether it's still there, has subsided, 
or got blasted away. Lots of interesting science happening there at the 
moment.

On 20/04/2022 12:06 am, Dave Taht wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 19, 2022 at 4:57 AM Mike Puchol <mike@starlink.sx> wrote:
> >
> > Apologies for resurrecting an old thread, but I had totally missed 
> this post:
> >
> > 
> http://www.fintel.com.fj/pages.cfm/company/news/spacex-starlink-gateway--fintel.html 
> <http://www.fintel.com.fj/pages.cfm/company/news/spacex-starlink-gateway--fintel.html>
> >
> > It seems the gateway was setup in Fintel’s existing earth station, 
> four antennas only, however, and the cables in surface ducts.
>
> No apologies needed, in fact, does anyone know how well tonga is 
> recovering?
>
> > Best,
> >
> > Mike
> > On Feb 25, 2022, 20:12 +0300, Ulrich Speidel 
> <u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz>, wrote:
> >
> > I've heard nothing further about teleport establishment in Fiji, but 
> that doesn't mean that nothing has happened.
> >
> > Meanwhile, cable repair has progressed a good bit. The damage was 
> far greater than originally envisaged. On the international cable, 
> faults (complete cable ruptures and fibre damage) stretched over more 
> than 80 km. The cable ran entirely SOUTH of the Hunga Tonga Hunga 
> Ha'apai volcano (about 60 km away and shielded by a number of 
> submarine mounts for at least parts of the damaged section). Yet the 
> Reliance cable ship traced one disconnected cable piece end to about 5 
> km NORTH of its nominal route, found various sections had disappeared 
> completely, and recovered sections of up to 9 km at a time from the 
> seabed.
> >
> > A bog standard cable break requires two holding drives (or drags), 
> HD for short, to pick up each of the cable endpoints from the 
> seafloor. It also requires either an ROV dive to check if the cable 
> has completely separated at the fault position, or a cut if the cable 
> is still held together by the steel. That cut can be done either by 
> ROV as well, or if visibility doesn't permit ROV use, by a cutting 
> drive (CD). Any HD or CD requires the cable ship to tow a seafloor 
> grapnel / cutter device transversally across the cable, so they're 
> easy to spot on position traces. The Reliance did no fewer than seven 
> HD's in its eastern operations area near Tongatapu, where it worked 
> first. Visibility there was good (so ROV could be used), but damage 
> substantial.
> >
> > The ship then proceeded to the western end of the fault zone where 
> reflectometer measurements from the Suva end had found a fault. 
> Because of bad visibility, they did a CD followed by 2 HD's there, 
> then noticed that there was fibre damage along the cable to Suva, so 
> reeled that in and cut the damaged bit out.
> >
> > They then proceeded to put a "mini-system" together. Let me explain: 
> Enroute to Tonga, the Reliance stopped at Subcom's depot in Apia 
> (Samoa) to load whatever cable they had in store there. This included 
> spares not only for the Fiji-Tonga cable but also for various other 
> cable systems in the wider region. Reliance left Apia with about 80 km 
> of cable in total. The amount of cable that will need to be re-laid 
> along the damaged international section is 90 km (you need to allow 
> for a bit of cable lengthening due to slack being inserted when cable 
> ends are being brought up from 2000 m (6000 ft) or so below). This 
> means that the Reliance is re-using some of the cable recovered from 
> the damaged section, and the whole "mini-system" will be one long 
> stitch job. The damaged section also included a repeater worth 
> US$230k, which they were trying to recover and which was still missing 
> as of this morning - I've yet to hear from my contact as to whether 
> they were successful on the last recovery attempt today (they've left 
> the area after three drives and are heading West right now. The rest 
> of the mini-system was going to be laid after the repeater recovery 
> attempt (the overall success doesn't depend on the repeater being 
> found, but the final repair bill does). I thus expect the cable repair 
> to be completed in the next few days.
> >
> > The domestic cable is another story altogether, unfortunately. This 
> has a blind stretch of 77 km at present, as measured by optical 
> reflectometer from Tongatapu and Ha'apai (there was meant to be a 
> measurement from Vava'u yesterday but I haven't heard yet what this 
> revealed, the cable from Tongatapu has two fibre pairs, one of which 
> heads to each destination from a branching unit west of Ha'apai. That 
> said, once the international cable has been fixed, the Reliance won't 
> have enough cable left to complete the domestic job, even if some 
> cable bits could be recovered there. The next available stock of 
> suitable cable is in Europe, around 35-40 days one-way shipping away. 
> They intend to bridge this time gap via satellite (and I'm sure would 
> welcome a Starlink delegation with a teleport to connect to the 
> international cable, too, especially now that the Australian Navy gave 
> them Omicron along with their aid deliveries).
> >
> > I've been in close contact with our volcanology / geophysics 
> community here in NZ, who know the area well. The story of damage to 
> the international cable is now shaping up to be a pretty complex one. 
> What we know thus far is that it was neither the volcano's initial 
> blast nor the subsequent tsunami that killed the cable - the outage 
> began only well after the tsunami had hit. In all probability, it's 
> been a combination of submarine landslides and turbidite waves from a 
> variety of sources that hit hours and possibly many days after the 
> eruption. Finding that a cable piece has moved 5 km TOWARDS the 
> volcano points at an event south of the cable route, and the mix of 
> seafloor visibilities encountered by the Reliance points at there 
> having multiple events from multiple sources. There have been plenty 
> of quakes upwards of M4 and even an M6.2 in the wider area that could 
> have triggered slopes, especially with an extra layer of ash on them. 
> Turbidite waves can travel up to 1000 km, aren't anywhere near as fast 
> as a tsunami, and have long been known to have damaged cables in the 
> past (see B.C. Heezen and M. Ewing, Turbidity currents and submarine 
> slumps, and the 1929 Grand Banks Earthquake, American Journal of 
> Science, v. 250, pp 849-873, December 1952. This quake killed 12 
> submarine cables over more than 18 hours).
> >
> > Meanwhile, there's still limited satellite service in and out of 
> Tonga, but I can confirm that e-mails (even with attachments) make it 
> in and out OK.
> >
> > On 18/02/2022 8:27 pm, Mike Puchol wrote:
> >
> > Hi Daniel,
> >
> > I added it after there was a confirmation on Twitter that SpaceX 
> people were on the ground to set one up, and also, as two /27 blocks 
> (IPv4) have been assigned to Fiji’s capital, under the Sydney POP, and 
> they can be pinged.
> >
> > Wether it’s at the teleport or not, unsure, but for simulation, an 
> error of even a few km doesn’t really matter.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Mike
> > On Feb 18, 2022, 06:04 +0100, Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@falco.ca>, 
> wrote:
> >
> > On 2022-02-07 at 15:29, Mike Puchol wrote:
> >
> > As far as placing a gateway in Fiji, it already has a teleport
> > facility, which will have power and fibre (unless that one has been
> > taken out too?). Checkhttps://goo.gl/maps/6BYXf4R17yys7zNe9 
> <Checkhttps://goo.gl/maps/6BYXf4R17yys7zNe9>
> >
> >
> > Hey Mike, you put a "SUVA (Emergency)" ground station on starlink.sx.
> >
> > Is that for simulation, or has Starlink actually installed a ground
> > station in Fidschi by now? Would you have positive confirmation?
> >
> > Thank you
> > Daniel
> > _______________________________________________
> > Starlink mailing list
> > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Starlink mailing list
> > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
> >
> > --
> > ****************************************************************
> > Dr. Ulrich Speidel
> >
> > School of Computer Science
> >
> > Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
> >
> > The University of Auckland
> > u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz
> > http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/ 
> <http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich>
> > ****************************************************************
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Starlink mailing list
> > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Starlink mailing list
> > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>
>
>
> -- 
> I tried to build a better future, a few times:
> https://wayforward.archive.org/?site=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.icei.org 
> <https://wayforward.archive.org/?site=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.icei.org>
>
> Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC

-- 
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)

The University of Auckland
u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz  
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
****************************************************************



[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 17543 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Ulrich Speidel]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 15587 bytes --]

FWIW, a few weeks ago I had a fit of creative rage after someone asked 
whether it would even make sense for Tonga to rebuild the cables. It's 
resulted in an APNIC blog, which has just been published, and which 
argues that we've been approaching cable projects in the Pacific from 
the wrong end as dead-end streets to islands, rather than aiming for a 
resilient cable mesh that results in redundancy for everyone, including 
the bigger economies around the place:

https://blog.apnic.net/2022/04/20/rethinking-submarine-fibre-cable-projects-south-pacific/ 
<https://blog.apnic.net/2022/04/20/rethinking-submarine-fibre-cable-projects-south-pacific>

On 20/04/2022 12:43 am, Ulrich Speidel wrote:
>
> I can probably comment on this.
>
> The international cable went back into service on the 22nd of 
> February, one day before the official commencement of service to Tonga 
> by Starlink. Now I should probably add here that you can't order 
> Starlink in Tonga - they sent 50-odd terminals care of the Tongan 
> government, and that's it. Since these were no longer needed in 
> Tongatapu, they were meant to go to various of the other islands. The 
> "Reliance" wasn't able to recover much of the domestic cable and for 
> lack of spares wasn't able to fix this one. It subsequently left the 
> cable grounds, unable to dock in Tonga due to Covid restrictions. New 
> cable is on order in France but probably about another 8 months away, 
> minimum.
>
> The biggest other islands, Vava'u and Ha'apai (more precisely, Lifuka 
> - pronounced Li-Foo-Kah) already had other satellite links in service, 
> and quite a bit of the GEO capacity directed at Tongatapu was shifted 
> to them post Tongatapu's reconnection. So I'd expect most of the 
> terminals to end up on some of the smaller islands - quite who gets to 
> use them there I'm not privy to.
>
> I understand that the government technician trying one of the Dishys 
> in Tongatapu got 300 Mb/s down out of it, probably not surprising 
> given that there wouldn't have been any competing traffic. Alas, I 
> understand that service is a bit discontinuous, which is to be 
> expected. I've tried to ask them as to how frequent and long the gaps 
> are, but haven't had a response.
>
> Tonga is still in Covid border closure mode, which means that few 
> people are able to travel back and forth. One person that has been 
> able to travel there is Shane Cronin, our volcanologist whom I was 
> talking to, and he has been out of quarantine and is doing some 
> interesting work up there - he even made the front page of the BBC 
> World Service the other week: 
> https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61071293
>
> First reports we've had from him suggest that there was still quite a 
> bit of action after the international cable was knocked out. He's 
> quite familiar with Hunga and was able to pinpoint which earlier 
> eruptions various of the bits that were left had come from. He's been 
> trying to get a record of vessels in the area at the time to get ash 
> reports from BigOceanData and they promised to help. Alas, this 
> coincided with a sudden surge in demand for superyacht tracking, which 
> presumably has kept them busy, so we've not seen this data set yet. 
> What we do know is that tsunami run-up on Tongatapu's West Coast was 
> about 15 metres - far bigger than the waves whose videos still made it 
> across the cable. Shane has also been able to look at some of the 
> tsunami deposits and this is likely to yield some further insights.
>
> Meanwhile, Emily Lane from NIWA has done some modelling around the 
> pyroclastic density currents (turbidity currents of volcanic origin) 
> that could have come off Hunga. The amount of material displacement 
> involved in these simulations is in the several cubic kilometres! 
> These show those flows actually reaching both cable grounds, the 
> domestic one first. The domestic cable was essentially at the bottom 
> of a trench straight downhill from Hunga and never stood a chance - 
> not only do the simulations show the flow going across the trench 
> eastbound, but then reflecting off the opposite side back into the 
> trench before flowing out of the trench like water in a gutter. No 
> wonder they couldn't find anything! The international cable grounds 
> would have been reached later, first on the western side where they 
> found the murky water weeks later, and then also on the eastern side, 
> where the cable was pushed north. That said, according to the 
> simulations, the first flow reaching the eastern side would have 
> gotten there well before the outage, and doesn't quite explain the 5 
> km displacement. That said, the simulation was only run until 
> international cable outage time, and there's some question as to the 
> validity of these results generally as nobody knows whether the 
> bathymetry in the area was still anywhere near what it used to be. 
> NIWA and others are sending ships up to get clarity as to how the 
> seafloor topography has changed in the area. Hunga used to have a huge 
> caldera, and at this point, nobody knows whether it's still there, has 
> subsided, or got blasted away. Lots of interesting science happening 
> there at the moment.
>
> On 20/04/2022 12:06 am, Dave Taht wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Apr 19, 2022 at 4:57 AM Mike Puchol <mike@starlink.sx> wrote:
>> >
>> > Apologies for resurrecting an old thread, but I had totally missed 
>> this post:
>> >
>> > 
>> http://www.fintel.com.fj/pages.cfm/company/news/spacex-starlink-gateway--fintel.html 
>> <http://www.fintel.com.fj/pages.cfm/company/news/spacex-starlink-gateway--fintel.html>
>> >
>> > It seems the gateway was setup in Fintel’s existing earth station, 
>> four antennas only, however, and the cables in surface ducts.
>>
>> No apologies needed, in fact, does anyone know how well tonga is 
>> recovering?
>>
>> > Best,
>> >
>> > Mike
>> > On Feb 25, 2022, 20:12 +0300, Ulrich Speidel 
>> <u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz>, wrote:
>> >
>> > I've heard nothing further about teleport establishment in Fiji, 
>> but that doesn't mean that nothing has happened.
>> >
>> > Meanwhile, cable repair has progressed a good bit. The damage was 
>> far greater than originally envisaged. On the international cable, 
>> faults (complete cable ruptures and fibre damage) stretched over more 
>> than 80 km. The cable ran entirely SOUTH of the Hunga Tonga Hunga 
>> Ha'apai volcano (about 60 km away and shielded by a number of 
>> submarine mounts for at least parts of the damaged section). Yet the 
>> Reliance cable ship traced one disconnected cable piece end to about 
>> 5 km NORTH of its nominal route, found various sections had 
>> disappeared completely, and recovered sections of up to 9 km at a 
>> time from the seabed.
>> >
>> > A bog standard cable break requires two holding drives (or drags), 
>> HD for short, to pick up each of the cable endpoints from the 
>> seafloor. It also requires either an ROV dive to check if the cable 
>> has completely separated at the fault position, or a cut if the cable 
>> is still held together by the steel. That cut can be done either by 
>> ROV as well, or if visibility doesn't permit ROV use, by a cutting 
>> drive (CD). Any HD or CD requires the cable ship to tow a seafloor 
>> grapnel / cutter device transversally across the cable, so they're 
>> easy to spot on position traces. The Reliance did no fewer than seven 
>> HD's in its eastern operations area near Tongatapu, where it worked 
>> first. Visibility there was good (so ROV could be used), but damage 
>> substantial.
>> >
>> > The ship then proceeded to the western end of the fault zone where 
>> reflectometer measurements from the Suva end had found a fault. 
>> Because of bad visibility, they did a CD followed by 2 HD's there, 
>> then noticed that there was fibre damage along the cable to Suva, so 
>> reeled that in and cut the damaged bit out.
>> >
>> > They then proceeded to put a "mini-system" together. Let me 
>> explain: Enroute to Tonga, the Reliance stopped at Subcom's depot in 
>> Apia (Samoa) to load whatever cable they had in store there. This 
>> included spares not only for the Fiji-Tonga cable but also for 
>> various other cable systems in the wider region. Reliance left Apia 
>> with about 80 km of cable in total. The amount of cable that will 
>> need to be re-laid along the damaged international section is 90 km 
>> (you need to allow for a bit of cable lengthening due to slack being 
>> inserted when cable ends are being brought up from 2000 m (6000 ft) 
>> or so below). This means that the Reliance is re-using some of the 
>> cable recovered from the damaged section, and the whole "mini-system" 
>> will be one long stitch job. The damaged section also included a 
>> repeater worth US$230k, which they were trying to recover and which 
>> was still missing as of this morning - I've yet to hear from my 
>> contact as to whether they were successful on the last recovery 
>> attempt today (they've left the area after three drives and are 
>> heading West right now. The rest of the mini-system was going to be 
>> laid after the repeater recovery attempt (the overall success doesn't 
>> depend on the repeater being found, but the final repair bill does). 
>> I thus expect the cable repair to be completed in the next few days.
>> >
>> > The domestic cable is another story altogether, unfortunately. This 
>> has a blind stretch of 77 km at present, as measured by optical 
>> reflectometer from Tongatapu and Ha'apai (there was meant to be a 
>> measurement from Vava'u yesterday but I haven't heard yet what this 
>> revealed, the cable from Tongatapu has two fibre pairs, one of which 
>> heads to each destination from a branching unit west of Ha'apai. That 
>> said, once the international cable has been fixed, the Reliance won't 
>> have enough cable left to complete the domestic job, even if some 
>> cable bits could be recovered there. The next available stock of 
>> suitable cable is in Europe, around 35-40 days one-way shipping away. 
>> They intend to bridge this time gap via satellite (and I'm sure would 
>> welcome a Starlink delegation with a teleport to connect to the 
>> international cable, too, especially now that the Australian Navy 
>> gave them Omicron along with their aid deliveries).
>> >
>> > I've been in close contact with our volcanology / geophysics 
>> community here in NZ, who know the area well. The story of damage to 
>> the international cable is now shaping up to be a pretty complex one. 
>> What we know thus far is that it was neither the volcano's initial 
>> blast nor the subsequent tsunami that killed the cable - the outage 
>> began only well after the tsunami had hit. In all probability, it's 
>> been a combination of submarine landslides and turbidite waves from a 
>> variety of sources that hit hours and possibly many days after the 
>> eruption. Finding that a cable piece has moved 5 km TOWARDS the 
>> volcano points at an event south of the cable route, and the mix of 
>> seafloor visibilities encountered by the Reliance points at there 
>> having multiple events from multiple sources. There have been plenty 
>> of quakes upwards of M4 and even an M6.2 in the wider area that could 
>> have triggered slopes, especially with an extra layer of ash on them. 
>> Turbidite waves can travel up to 1000 km, aren't anywhere near as 
>> fast as a tsunami, and have long been known to have damaged cables in 
>> the past (see B.C. Heezen and M. Ewing, Turbidity currents and 
>> submarine slumps, and the 1929 Grand Banks Earthquake, American 
>> Journal of Science, v. 250, pp 849-873, December 1952. This quake 
>> killed 12 submarine cables over more than 18 hours).
>> >
>> > Meanwhile, there's still limited satellite service in and out of 
>> Tonga, but I can confirm that e-mails (even with attachments) make it 
>> in and out OK.
>> >
>> > On 18/02/2022 8:27 pm, Mike Puchol wrote:
>> >
>> > Hi Daniel,
>> >
>> > I added it after there was a confirmation on Twitter that SpaceX 
>> people were on the ground to set one up, and also, as two /27 blocks 
>> (IPv4) have been assigned to Fiji’s capital, under the Sydney POP, 
>> and they can be pinged.
>> >
>> > Wether it’s at the teleport or not, unsure, but for simulation, an 
>> error of even a few km doesn’t really matter.
>> >
>> > Best,
>> >
>> > Mike
>> > On Feb 18, 2022, 06:04 +0100, Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@falco.ca>, 
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > On 2022-02-07 at 15:29, Mike Puchol wrote:
>> >
>> > As far as placing a gateway in Fiji, it already has a teleport
>> > facility, which will have power and fibre (unless that one has been
>> > taken out too?). Checkhttps://goo.gl/maps/6BYXf4R17yys7zNe9 
>> <Checkhttps://goo.gl/maps/6BYXf4R17yys7zNe9>
>> >
>> >
>> > Hey Mike, you put a "SUVA (Emergency)" ground station on starlink.sx.
>> >
>> > Is that for simulation, or has Starlink actually installed a ground
>> > station in Fidschi by now? Would you have positive confirmation?
>> >
>> > Thank you
>> > Daniel
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Starlink mailing list
>> > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
>> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Starlink mailing list
>> > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
>> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>> >
>> > --
>> > ****************************************************************
>> > Dr. Ulrich Speidel
>> >
>> > School of Computer Science
>> >
>> > Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
>> >
>> > The University of Auckland
>> > u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz
>> > http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/ 
>> <http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich>
>> > ****************************************************************
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Starlink mailing list
>> > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
>> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Starlink mailing list
>> > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
>> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> I tried to build a better future, a few times:
>> https://wayforward.archive.org/?site=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.icei.org 
>> <https://wayforward.archive.org/?site=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.icei.org>
>>
>> Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC
> -- 
> ****************************************************************
> Dr. Ulrich Speidel
>
> School of Computer Science
>
> Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
>
> The University of Auckland
> u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz  
> http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
> ****************************************************************
>
>
>
-- 
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)

The University of Auckland
u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz  
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
****************************************************************



[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 20064 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Jeremy Austin]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 15627 bytes --]

Bravo.

On Tue, Apr 19, 2022 at 5:06 PM Ulrich Speidel <u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz>
wrote:

> FWIW, a few weeks ago I had a fit of creative rage after someone asked
> whether it would even make sense for Tonga to rebuild the cables. It's
> resulted in an APNIC blog, which has just been published, and which argues
> that we've been approaching cable projects in the Pacific from the wrong
> end as dead-end streets to islands, rather than aiming for a resilient
> cable mesh that results in redundancy for everyone, including the bigger
> economies around the place:
>
>
> https://blog.apnic.net/2022/04/20/rethinking-submarine-fibre-cable-projects-south-pacific/
> On 20/04/2022 12:43 am, Ulrich Speidel wrote:
>
> I can probably comment on this.
>
> The international cable went back into service on the 22nd of February,
> one day before the official commencement of service to Tonga by Starlink.
> Now I should probably add here that you can't order Starlink in Tonga -
> they sent 50-odd terminals care of the Tongan government, and that's it.
> Since these were no longer needed in Tongatapu, they were meant to go to
> various of the other islands. The "Reliance" wasn't able to recover much of
> the domestic cable and for lack of spares wasn't able to fix this one. It
> subsequently left the cable grounds, unable to dock in Tonga due to Covid
> restrictions. New cable is on order in France but probably about another 8
> months away, minimum.
>
> The biggest other islands, Vava'u and Ha'apai (more precisely, Lifuka -
> pronounced Li-Foo-Kah) already had other satellite links in service, and
> quite a bit of the GEO capacity directed at Tongatapu was shifted to them
> post Tongatapu's reconnection. So I'd expect most of the terminals to end
> up on some of the smaller islands - quite who gets to use them there I'm
> not privy to.
>
> I understand that the government technician trying one of the Dishys in
> Tongatapu got 300 Mb/s down out of it, probably not surprising given that
> there wouldn't have been any competing traffic. Alas, I understand that
> service is a bit discontinuous, which is to be expected. I've tried to ask
> them as to how frequent and long the gaps are, but haven't had a response.
>
> Tonga is still in Covid border closure mode, which means that few people
> are able to travel back and forth. One person that has been able to travel
> there is Shane Cronin, our volcanologist whom I was talking to, and he has
> been out of quarantine and is doing some interesting work up there - he
> even made the front page of the BBC World Service the other week:
> https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61071293
>
> First reports we've had from him suggest that there was still quite a bit
> of action after the international cable was knocked out. He's quite
> familiar with Hunga and was able to pinpoint which earlier eruptions
> various of the bits that were left had come from. He's been trying to get a
> record of vessels in the area at the time to get ash reports from
> BigOceanData and they promised to help. Alas, this coincided with a sudden
> surge in demand for superyacht tracking, which presumably has kept them
> busy, so we've not seen this data set yet. What we do know is that tsunami
> run-up on Tongatapu's West Coast was about 15 metres - far bigger than the
> waves whose videos still made it across the cable. Shane has also been able
> to look at some of the tsunami deposits and this is likely to yield some
> further insights.
>
> Meanwhile, Emily Lane from NIWA has done some modelling around the
> pyroclastic density currents (turbidity currents of volcanic origin) that
> could have come off Hunga. The amount of material displacement involved in
> these simulations is in the several cubic kilometres! These show those
> flows actually reaching both cable grounds, the domestic one first. The
> domestic cable was essentially at the bottom of a trench straight downhill
> from Hunga and never stood a chance - not only do the simulations show the
> flow going across the trench eastbound, but then reflecting off the
> opposite side back into the trench before flowing out of the trench like
> water in a gutter. No wonder they couldn't find anything! The international
> cable grounds would have been reached later, first on the western side
> where they found the murky water weeks later, and then also on the eastern
> side, where the cable was pushed north. That said, according to the
> simulations, the first flow reaching the eastern side would have gotten
> there well before the outage, and doesn't quite explain the 5 km
> displacement. That said, the simulation was only run until international
> cable outage time, and there's some question as to the validity of these
> results generally as nobody knows whether the bathymetry in the area was
> still anywhere near what it used to be. NIWA and others are sending ships
> up to get clarity as to how the seafloor topography has changed in the
> area. Hunga used to have a huge caldera, and at this point, nobody knows
> whether it's still there, has subsided, or got blasted away. Lots of
> interesting science happening there at the moment.
>
> On 20/04/2022 12:06 am, Dave Taht wrote:
>
> On Tue, Apr 19, 2022 at 4:57 AM Mike Puchol <mike@starlink.sx>
> <mike@starlink.sx> wrote:
> >
> > Apologies for resurrecting an old thread, but I had totally missed this
> post:
> >
> >
> http://www.fintel.com.fj/pages.cfm/company/news/spacex-starlink-gateway--fintel.html
> >
> > It seems the gateway was setup in Fintel’s existing earth station, four
> antennas only, however, and the cables in surface ducts.
>
> No apologies needed, in fact, does anyone know how well tonga is
> recovering?
>
> > Best,
> >
> > Mike
> > On Feb 25, 2022, 20:12 +0300, Ulrich Speidel <u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz>
> <u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz>, wrote:
> >
> > I've heard nothing further about teleport establishment in Fiji, but
> that doesn't mean that nothing has happened.
> >
> > Meanwhile, cable repair has progressed a good bit. The damage was far
> greater than originally envisaged. On the international cable, faults
> (complete cable ruptures and fibre damage) stretched over more than 80 km.
> The cable ran entirely SOUTH of the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai volcano
> (about 60 km away and shielded by a number of submarine mounts for at least
> parts of the damaged section). Yet the Reliance cable ship traced one
> disconnected cable piece end to about 5 km NORTH of its nominal route,
> found various sections had disappeared completely, and recovered sections
> of up to 9 km at a time from the seabed.
> >
> > A bog standard cable break requires two holding drives (or drags), HD
> for short, to pick up each of the cable endpoints from the seafloor. It
> also requires either an ROV dive to check if the cable has completely
> separated at the fault position, or a cut if the cable is still held
> together by the steel. That cut can be done either by ROV as well, or if
> visibility doesn't permit ROV use, by a cutting drive (CD). Any HD or CD
> requires the cable ship to tow a seafloor grapnel / cutter device
> transversally across the cable, so they're easy to spot on position traces.
> The Reliance did no fewer than seven HD's in its eastern operations area
> near Tongatapu, where it worked first. Visibility there was good (so ROV
> could be used), but damage substantial.
> >
> > The ship then proceeded to the western end of the fault zone where
> reflectometer measurements from the Suva end had found a fault. Because of
> bad visibility, they did a CD followed by 2 HD's there, then noticed that
> there was fibre damage along the cable to Suva, so reeled that in and cut
> the damaged bit out.
> >
> > They then proceeded to put a "mini-system" together. Let me explain:
> Enroute to Tonga, the Reliance stopped at Subcom's depot in Apia (Samoa) to
> load whatever cable they had in store there. This included spares not only
> for the Fiji-Tonga cable but also for various other cable systems in the
> wider region. Reliance left Apia with about 80 km of cable in total. The
> amount of cable that will need to be re-laid along the damaged
> international section is 90 km (you need to allow for a bit of cable
> lengthening due to slack being inserted when cable ends are being brought
> up from 2000 m (6000 ft) or so below). This means that the Reliance is
> re-using some of the cable recovered from the damaged section, and the
> whole "mini-system" will be one long stitch job. The damaged section also
> included a repeater worth US$230k, which they were trying to recover and
> which was still missing as of this morning - I've yet to hear from my
> contact as to whether they were successful on the last recovery attempt
> today (they've left the area after three drives and are heading West right
> now. The rest of the mini-system was going to be laid after the repeater
> recovery attempt (the overall success doesn't depend on the repeater being
> found, but the final repair bill does). I thus expect the cable repair to
> be completed in the next few days.
> >
> > The domestic cable is another story altogether, unfortunately. This has
> a blind stretch of 77 km at present, as measured by optical reflectometer
> from Tongatapu and Ha'apai (there was meant to be a measurement from Vava'u
> yesterday but I haven't heard yet what this revealed, the cable from
> Tongatapu has two fibre pairs, one of which heads to each destination from
> a branching unit west of Ha'apai. That said, once the international cable
> has been fixed, the Reliance won't have enough cable left to complete the
> domestic job, even if some cable bits could be recovered there. The next
> available stock of suitable cable is in Europe, around 35-40 days one-way
> shipping away. They intend to bridge this time gap via satellite (and I'm
> sure would welcome a Starlink delegation with a teleport to connect to the
> international cable, too, especially now that the Australian Navy gave them
> Omicron along with their aid deliveries).
> >
> > I've been in close contact with our volcanology / geophysics community
> here in NZ, who know the area well. The story of damage to the
> international cable is now shaping up to be a pretty complex one. What we
> know thus far is that it was neither the volcano's initial blast nor the
> subsequent tsunami that killed the cable - the outage began only well after
> the tsunami had hit. In all probability, it's been a combination of
> submarine landslides and turbidite waves from a variety of sources that hit
> hours and possibly many days after the eruption. Finding that a cable piece
> has moved 5 km TOWARDS the volcano points at an event south of the cable
> route, and the mix of seafloor visibilities encountered by the Reliance
> points at there having multiple events from multiple sources. There have
> been plenty of quakes upwards of M4 and even an M6.2 in the wider area that
> could have triggered slopes, especially with an extra layer of ash on them.
> Turbidite waves can travel up to 1000 km, aren't anywhere near as fast as a
> tsunami, and have long been known to have damaged cables in the past (see
> B.C. Heezen and M. Ewing, Turbidity currents and submarine slumps, and the
> 1929 Grand Banks Earthquake, American Journal of Science, v. 250, pp
> 849-873, December 1952. This quake killed 12 submarine cables over more
> than 18 hours).
> >
> > Meanwhile, there's still limited satellite service in and out of Tonga,
> but I can confirm that e-mails (even with attachments) make it in and out
> OK.
> >
> > On 18/02/2022 8:27 pm, Mike Puchol wrote:
> >
> > Hi Daniel,
> >
> > I added it after there was a confirmation on Twitter that SpaceX people
> were on the ground to set one up, and also, as two /27 blocks (IPv4) have
> been assigned to Fiji’s capital, under the Sydney POP, and they can be
> pinged.
> >
> > Wether it’s at the teleport or not, unsure, but for simulation, an error
> of even a few km doesn’t really matter.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Mike
> > On Feb 18, 2022, 06:04 +0100, Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@falco.ca>
> <daniel@falco.ca>, wrote:
> >
> > On 2022-02-07 at 15:29, Mike Puchol wrote:
> >
> > As far as placing a gateway in Fiji, it already has a teleport
> > facility, which will have power and fibre (unless that one has been
> > taken out too?). Checkhttps://goo.gl/maps/6BYXf4R17yys7zNe9
> >
> >
> > Hey Mike, you put a "SUVA (Emergency)" ground station on starlink.sx.
> >
> > Is that for simulation, or has Starlink actually installed a ground
> > station in Fidschi by now? Would you have positive confirmation?
> >
> > Thank you
> > Daniel
> > _______________________________________________
> > Starlink mailing list
> > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Starlink mailing list
> > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> >
> > --
> > ****************************************************************
> > Dr. Ulrich Speidel
> >
> > School of Computer Science
> >
> > Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
> >
> > The University of Auckland
> > u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz
> > http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
> > ****************************************************************
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Starlink mailing list
> > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Starlink mailing list
> > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
>
>
> --
> I tried to build a better future, a few times:
> https://wayforward.archive.org/?site=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.icei.org
>
> Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC
>
> --
> ****************************************************************
> Dr. Ulrich Speidel
>
> School of Computer Science
>
> Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
>
> The University of Aucklandu.speidel@auckland.ac.nz http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
> ****************************************************************
>
>
>
>
> --
> ****************************************************************
> Dr. Ulrich Speidel
>
> School of Computer Science
>
> Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
>
> The University of Aucklandu.speidel@auckland.ac.nz http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
> ****************************************************************
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
-- 
[image: Company logo]
*Jeremy Austin*
Sr. Product Manager
*Preseem | Aterlo Networks*
Book a call: https://app.hubspot.com/meetings/jeremy548
1-833-773-7336 ext 718 <18337737336718> *|* 1-907-803-5422 <19078035422>
jeremy@aterlo.com
www.preseem.com
 [image: facebook icon] <https://www.facebook.com/preseem> [image: twitter
icon] <https://twitter.com/preseem> [image: linkedin icon]
<https://www.linkedin.com/company/4287641/> [image: youtube icon]
<https://www.youtube.com/c/Preseem>
[image: Service of the Year Award]
<https://preseem.com/2021/10/news-preseem-wins-wispa-service-of-the-year-award-2021/>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 23387 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Ulrich Speidel]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 7506 bytes --]

I've heard nothing further about teleport establishment in Fiji, but 
that doesn't mean that nothing has happened.

Meanwhile, cable repair has progressed a good bit. The damage was far 
greater than originally envisaged. On the international cable, faults 
(complete cable ruptures and fibre damage) stretched over more than 80 
km. The cable ran entirely SOUTH of the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai 
volcano (about 60 km away and shielded by a number of submarine mounts 
for at least parts of the damaged section). Yet the Reliance cable ship 
traced one disconnected cable piece end to about 5 km NORTH of its 
nominal route, found various sections had disappeared completely, and 
recovered sections of up to 9 km at a time from the seabed.

A bog standard cable break requires two holding drives (or drags), HD 
for short, to pick up each of the cable endpoints from the seafloor. It 
also requires either an ROV dive to check if the cable has completely 
separated at the fault position, or a cut if the cable is still held 
together by the steel. That cut can be done either by ROV as well, or if 
visibility doesn't permit ROV use, by a cutting drive (CD). Any HD or CD 
requires the cable ship to tow a seafloor grapnel / cutter device 
transversally across the cable, so they're easy to spot on position 
traces. The Reliance did no fewer than seven HD's in its eastern 
operations area near Tongatapu, where it worked first. Visibility there 
was good (so ROV could be used), but damage substantial.

The ship then proceeded to the western end of the fault zone where 
reflectometer measurements from the Suva end had found a fault. Because 
of bad visibility, they did a CD followed by 2 HD's there, then noticed 
that there was fibre damage along the cable to Suva, so reeled that in 
and cut the damaged bit out.

They then proceeded to put a "mini-system" together. Let me explain: 
Enroute to Tonga, the Reliance stopped at Subcom's depot in Apia (Samoa) 
to load whatever cable they had in store there. This included spares not 
only for the Fiji-Tonga cable but also for various other cable systems 
in the wider region. Reliance left Apia with about 80 km of cable in 
total. The amount of cable that will need to be re-laid along the 
damaged international section is 90 km (you need to allow for a bit of 
cable lengthening due to slack being inserted when cable ends are being 
brought up from 2000 m (6000 ft) or so below). This means that the 
Reliance is re-using some of the cable recovered from the damaged 
section, and the whole "mini-system" will be one long stitch job. The 
damaged section also included a repeater worth US$230k, which they were 
trying to recover and which was still missing as of this morning - I've 
yet to hear from my contact as to whether they were successful on the 
last recovery attempt today (they've left the area after three drives 
and are heading West right now. The rest of the mini-system was going to 
be laid after the repeater recovery attempt (the overall success doesn't 
depend on the repeater being found, but the final repair bill does). I 
thus expect the cable repair to be completed in the next few days.

The domestic cable is another story altogether, unfortunately. This has 
a blind stretch of 77 km at present, as measured by optical 
reflectometer from Tongatapu and Ha'apai (there was meant to be a 
measurement from Vava'u yesterday but I haven't heard yet what this 
revealed, the cable from Tongatapu has two fibre pairs, one of which 
heads to each destination from a branching unit west of Ha'apai. That 
said, once the international cable has been fixed, the Reliance won't 
have enough cable left to complete the domestic job, even if some cable 
bits could be recovered there. The next available stock of suitable 
cable is in Europe, around 35-40 days one-way shipping away. They intend 
to bridge this time gap via satellite (and I'm sure would welcome a 
Starlink delegation with a teleport to connect to the international 
cable, too, especially now that the Australian Navy gave them Omicron 
along with their aid deliveries).

I've been in close contact with our volcanology / geophysics community 
here in NZ, who know the area well. The story of damage to the 
international cable is now shaping up to be a pretty complex one. What 
we know thus far is that it was neither the volcano's initial blast nor 
the subsequent tsunami that killed the cable - the outage began only 
well after the tsunami had hit. In all probability, it's been a 
combination of submarine landslides and turbidite waves from a variety 
of sources that hit hours and possibly many days after the eruption. 
Finding that a cable piece has moved 5 km TOWARDS the volcano points at 
an event south of the cable route, and the mix of seafloor visibilities 
encountered by the Reliance points at there having multiple events from 
multiple sources. There have been plenty of quakes upwards of M4 and 
even an M6.2 in the wider area that could have triggered slopes, 
especially with an extra layer of ash on them. Turbidite waves can 
travel up to 1000 km, aren't anywhere near as fast as a tsunami, and 
have long been known to have damaged cables in the past (see B.C. Heezen 
and M. Ewing, Turbidity currents and submarine slumps, and the 1929 
Grand Banks Earthquake, American Journal of Science, v. 250, pp 849-873, 
December 1952. This quake killed 12 submarine cables over more than 18 
hours).

Meanwhile, there's still limited satellite service in and out of Tonga, 
but I can confirm that e-mails (even with attachments) make it in and 
out OK.


On 18/02/2022 8:27 pm, Mike Puchol wrote:
> Hi Daniel,
>
> I added it after there was a confirmation on Twitter that SpaceX 
> people were on the ground to set one up, and also, as two /27 blocks 
> (IPv4) have been assigned to Fiji’s capital, under the Sydney POP, and 
> they can be pinged.
>
> Wether it’s at the teleport or not, unsure, but for simulation, an 
> error of even a few km doesn’t really matter.
>
> Best,
>
> Mike
> On Feb 18, 2022, 06:04 +0100, Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@falco.ca>, wrote:
>> On 2022-02-07 at 15:29, Mike Puchol wrote:
>>> As far as placing a gateway in Fiji, it already has a teleport
>>> facility, which will have power and fibre (unless that one has been
>>> taken out too?). Checkhttps://goo.gl/maps/6BYXf4R17yys7zNe9 
>>> <Checkhttps://goo.gl/maps/6BYXf4R17yys7zNe9>
>>
>> Hey Mike, you put a "SUVA (Emergency)" ground station on starlink.sx.
>>
>> Is that for simulation, or has Starlink actually installed a ground
>> station in Fidschi by now? Would you have positive confirmation?
>>
>> Thank you
>> Daniel
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
>> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
-- 
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)

The University of Auckland
u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz  
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
****************************************************************



[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 9927 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Rich Brown]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 8887 bytes --]

This is such a cool summary of the current process...

Once I was wasting time in the Dartmouth engineering library (when I was supposed to be doing work). I found an older book about the laying of the first trans-Atlantic cable. They had terrible problems (their first effort failed), for example...

- It was a single strand insulated by gutta-percha (rubber-ish stuff I think). They tested for continuity by hourly (?) tests from a team on shore sending current one way for a minute, then the other way. They used a galvanometer to detect... Talk about low bits/second.
- When the cable broke, they used the same "back up and drag a grappling hook" technique to snag the cable and bring it up
- It weighed a ton - literally. If I remember correctly, each length from the sea floor to the surface weighed 6,000 pounds, so they had to hoist 12,000 pounds of cable to begin to find the broken end

Everything's the same... But a lot better :-)

Rich

> On Feb 18, 2022, at 5:27 AM, Ulrich Speidel <ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
> 
> I've heard nothing further about teleport establishment in Fiji, but that doesn't mean that nothing has happened.
> 
> Meanwhile, cable repair has progressed a good bit. The damage was far greater than originally envisaged. On the international cable, faults (complete cable ruptures and fibre damage) stretched over more than 80 km. The cable ran entirely SOUTH of the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai volcano (about 60 km away and shielded by a number of submarine mounts for at least parts of the damaged section). Yet the Reliance cable ship traced one disconnected cable piece end to about 5 km NORTH of its nominal route, found various sections had disappeared completely, and recovered sections of up to 9 km at a time from the seabed.
> 
> A bog standard cable break requires two holding drives (or drags), HD for short, to pick up each of the cable endpoints from the seafloor. It also requires either an ROV dive to check if the cable has completely separated at the fault position, or a cut if the cable is still held together by the steel. That cut can be done either by ROV as well, or if visibility doesn't permit ROV use, by a cutting drive (CD). Any HD or CD requires the cable ship to tow a seafloor grapnel / cutter device transversally across the cable, so they're easy to spot on position traces. The Reliance did no fewer than seven HD's in its eastern operations area near Tongatapu, where it worked first. Visibility there was good (so ROV could be used), but damage substantial. 
> 
> The ship then proceeded to the western end of the fault zone where reflectometer measurements from the Suva end had found a fault. Because of bad visibility, they did a CD followed by 2 HD's there, then noticed that there was fibre damage along the cable to Suva, so reeled that in and cut the damaged bit out.
> 
> They then proceeded to put a "mini-system" together. Let me explain: Enroute to Tonga, the Reliance stopped at Subcom's depot in Apia (Samoa) to load whatever cable they had in store there. This included spares not only for the Fiji-Tonga cable but also for various other cable systems in the wider region. Reliance left Apia with about 80 km of cable in total. The amount of cable that will need to be re-laid along the damaged international section is 90 km (you need to allow for a bit of cable lengthening due to slack being inserted when cable ends are being brought up from 2000 m (6000 ft) or so below). This means that the Reliance is re-using some of the cable recovered from the damaged section, and the whole "mini-system" will be one long stitch job. The damaged section also included a repeater worth US$230k, which they were trying to recover and which was still missing as of this morning - I've yet to hear from my contact as to whether they were successful on the last recovery attempt today (they've left the area after three drives and are heading West right now. The rest of the mini-system was going to be laid after the repeater recovery attempt (the overall success doesn't depend on the repeater being found, but the final repair bill does). I thus expect the cable repair to be completed in the next few days.
> 
> The domestic cable is another story altogether, unfortunately. This has a blind stretch of 77 km at present, as measured by optical reflectometer from Tongatapu and Ha'apai (there was meant to be a measurement from Vava'u yesterday but I haven't heard yet what this revealed, the cable from Tongatapu has two fibre pairs, one of which heads to each destination from a branching unit west of Ha'apai. That said, once the international cable has been fixed, the Reliance won't have enough cable left to complete the domestic job, even if some cable bits could be recovered there. The next available stock of suitable cable is in Europe, around 35-40 days one-way shipping away. They intend to bridge this time gap via satellite (and I'm sure would welcome a Starlink delegation with a teleport to connect to the international cable, too, especially now that the Australian Navy gave them Omicron along with their aid deliveries).
> 
> I've been in close contact with our volcanology / geophysics community here in NZ, who know the area well. The story of damage to the international cable is now shaping up to be a pretty complex one. What we know thus far is that it was neither the volcano's initial blast nor the subsequent tsunami that killed the cable - the outage began only well after the tsunami had hit. In all probability, it's been a combination of submarine landslides and turbidite waves from a variety of sources that hit hours and possibly many days after the eruption. Finding that a cable piece has moved 5 km TOWARDS the volcano points at an event south of the cable route, and the mix of seafloor visibilities encountered by the Reliance points at there having multiple events from multiple sources. There have been plenty of quakes upwards of M4 and even an M6.2 in the wider area that could have triggered slopes, especially with an extra layer of ash on them. Turbidite waves can travel up to 1000 km, aren't anywhere near as fast as a tsunami, and have long been known to have damaged cables in the past (see B.C. Heezen and M. Ewing, Turbidity currents and submarine slumps, and the 1929 Grand Banks Earthquake, American Journal of Science, v. 250, pp 849-873, December 1952. This quake killed 12 submarine cables over more than 18 hours).
> 
> Meanwhile, there's still limited satellite service in and out of Tonga, but I can confirm that e-mails (even with attachments) make it in and out OK.
> 
> 
> 
> On 18/02/2022 8:27 pm, Mike Puchol wrote:
>> Hi Daniel,
>> 
>> I added it after there was a confirmation on Twitter that SpaceX people were on the ground to set one up, and also, as two /27 blocks (IPv4) have been assigned to Fiji’s capital, under the Sydney POP, and they can be pinged.
>> 
>> Wether it’s at the teleport or not, unsure, but for simulation, an error of even a few km doesn’t really matter.
>> 
>> Best,
>> 
>> Mike
>> On Feb 18, 2022, 06:04 +0100, Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@falco.ca> <mailto:daniel@falco.ca>, wrote:
>>> On 2022-02-07 at 15:29, Mike Puchol wrote:
>>>> As far as placing a gateway in Fiji, it already has a teleport
>>>> facility, which will have power and fibre (unless that one has been
>>>> taken out too?). Checkhttps://goo.gl/maps/6BYXf4R17yys7zNe9 <checkhttps://goo.gl/maps/6BYXf4R17yys7zNe9>
>>> 
>>> Hey Mike, you put a "SUVA (Emergency)" ground station on starlink.sx.
>>> 
>>> Is that for simulation, or has Starlink actually installed a ground
>>> station in Fidschi by now? Would you have positive confirmation?
>>> 
>>> Thank you
>>> Daniel
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Starlink mailing list
>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net <mailto:Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net <mailto:Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>> 
> -- 
> ****************************************************************
> Dr. Ulrich Speidel
> 
> School of Computer Science
> 
> Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
> 
> The University of Auckland
> u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz <mailto:u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz> 
> http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/ <http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/>
> ****************************************************************
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink


[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 12236 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Nathan Owens]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 9215 bytes --]

Awesome explanation, thanks for sharing!

It looks like 50 Starlink terminals have arrived in Tonga:
https://matangitonga.to/2022/02/18/elon-musk-donates-50-satellite-terminals-tonga

On Fri, Feb 18, 2022 at 4:48 AM Rich Brown <richb.hanover@gmail.com> wrote:

> This is such a cool summary of the current process...
>
> Once I was wasting time in the Dartmouth engineering library (when I was
> supposed to be doing work). I found an older book about the laying of the
> first trans-Atlantic cable. They had terrible problems (their first effort
> failed), for example...
>
> - It was a single strand insulated by gutta-percha (rubber-ish stuff I
> think). They tested for continuity by hourly (?) tests from a team on shore
> sending current one way for a minute, then the other way. They used a
> galvanometer to detect... Talk about low bits/second.
> - When the cable broke, they used the same "back up and drag a grappling
> hook" technique to snag the cable and bring it up
> - It weighed a ton - literally. If I remember correctly, each length from
> the sea floor to the surface weighed 6,000 pounds, so they had to hoist
> 12,000 pounds of cable to begin to find the broken end
>
> Everything's the same... But a lot better :-)
>
> Rich
>
> On Feb 18, 2022, at 5:27 AM, Ulrich Speidel <ulrich@cs.auckland.ac.nz>
> wrote:
>
> I've heard nothing further about teleport establishment in Fiji, but that
> doesn't mean that nothing has happened.
>
> Meanwhile, cable repair has progressed a good bit. The damage was far
> greater than originally envisaged. On the international cable, faults
> (complete cable ruptures and fibre damage) stretched over more than 80 km.
> The cable ran entirely SOUTH of the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai volcano
> (about 60 km away and shielded by a number of submarine mounts for at least
> parts of the damaged section). Yet the Reliance cable ship traced one
> disconnected cable piece end to about 5 km NORTH of its nominal route,
> found various sections had disappeared completely, and recovered sections
> of up to 9 km at a time from the seabed.
>
> A bog standard cable break requires two holding drives (or drags), HD for
> short, to pick up each of the cable endpoints from the seafloor. It also
> requires either an ROV dive to check if the cable has completely separated
> at the fault position, or a cut if the cable is still held together by the
> steel. That cut can be done either by ROV as well, or if visibility doesn't
> permit ROV use, by a cutting drive (CD). Any HD or CD requires the cable
> ship to tow a seafloor grapnel / cutter device transversally across the
> cable, so they're easy to spot on position traces. The Reliance did no
> fewer than seven HD's in its eastern operations area near Tongatapu, where
> it worked first. Visibility there was good (so ROV could be used), but
> damage substantial.
>
> The ship then proceeded to the western end of the fault zone where
> reflectometer measurements from the Suva end had found a fault. Because of
> bad visibility, they did a CD followed by 2 HD's there, then noticed that
> there was fibre damage along the cable to Suva, so reeled that in and cut
> the damaged bit out.
>
> They then proceeded to put a "mini-system" together. Let me explain:
> Enroute to Tonga, the Reliance stopped at Subcom's depot in Apia (Samoa) to
> load whatever cable they had in store there. This included spares not only
> for the Fiji-Tonga cable but also for various other cable systems in the
> wider region. Reliance left Apia with about 80 km of cable in total. The
> amount of cable that will need to be re-laid along the damaged
> international section is 90 km (you need to allow for a bit of cable
> lengthening due to slack being inserted when cable ends are being brought
> up from 2000 m (6000 ft) or so below). This means that the Reliance is
> re-using some of the cable recovered from the damaged section, and the
> whole "mini-system" will be one long stitch job. The damaged section also
> included a repeater worth US$230k, which they were trying to recover and
> which was still missing as of this morning - I've yet to hear from my
> contact as to whether they were successful on the last recovery attempt
> today (they've left the area after three drives and are heading West right
> now. The rest of the mini-system was going to be laid after the repeater
> recovery attempt (the overall success doesn't depend on the repeater being
> found, but the final repair bill does). I thus expect the cable repair to
> be completed in the next few days.
>
> The domestic cable is another story altogether, unfortunately. This has a
> blind stretch of 77 km at present, as measured by optical reflectometer
> from Tongatapu and Ha'apai (there was meant to be a measurement from Vava'u
> yesterday but I haven't heard yet what this revealed, the cable from
> Tongatapu has two fibre pairs, one of which heads to each destination from
> a branching unit west of Ha'apai. That said, once the international cable
> has been fixed, the Reliance won't have enough cable left to complete the
> domestic job, even if some cable bits could be recovered there. The next
> available stock of suitable cable is in Europe, around 35-40 days one-way
> shipping away. They intend to bridge this time gap via satellite (and I'm
> sure would welcome a Starlink delegation with a teleport to connect to the
> international cable, too, especially now that the Australian Navy gave them
> Omicron along with their aid deliveries).
>
> I've been in close contact with our volcanology / geophysics community
> here in NZ, who know the area well. The story of damage to the
> international cable is now shaping up to be a pretty complex one. What we
> know thus far is that it was neither the volcano's initial blast nor the
> subsequent tsunami that killed the cable - the outage began only well after
> the tsunami had hit. In all probability, it's been a combination of
> submarine landslides and turbidite waves from a variety of sources that hit
> hours and possibly many days after the eruption. Finding that a cable piece
> has moved 5 km TOWARDS the volcano points at an event south of the cable
> route, and the mix of seafloor visibilities encountered by the Reliance
> points at there having multiple events from multiple sources. There have
> been plenty of quakes upwards of M4 and even an M6.2 in the wider area that
> could have triggered slopes, especially with an extra layer of ash on them.
> Turbidite waves can travel up to 1000 km, aren't anywhere near as fast as a
> tsunami, and have long been known to have damaged cables in the past (see
> B.C. Heezen and M. Ewing, Turbidity currents and submarine slumps, and the
> 1929 Grand Banks Earthquake, American Journal of Science, v. 250, pp
> 849-873, December 1952. This quake killed 12 submarine cables over more
> than 18 hours).
>
> Meanwhile, there's still limited satellite service in and out of Tonga,
> but I can confirm that e-mails (even with attachments) make it in and out
> OK.
>
>
> On 18/02/2022 8:27 pm, Mike Puchol wrote:
>
> Hi Daniel,
>
> I added it after there was a confirmation on Twitter that SpaceX people
> were on the ground to set one up, and also, as two /27 blocks (IPv4) have
> been assigned to Fiji’s capital, under the Sydney POP, and they can be
> pinged.
>
> Wether it’s at the teleport or not, unsure, but for simulation, an error
> of even a few km doesn’t really matter.
>
> Best,
>
> Mike
> On Feb 18, 2022, 06:04 +0100, Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@falco.ca>
> <daniel@falco.ca>, wrote:
>
> On 2022-02-07 at 15:29, Mike Puchol wrote:
>
> As far as placing a gateway in Fiji, it already has a teleport
> facility, which will have power and fibre (unless that one has been
> taken out too?). Checkhttps://goo.gl/maps/6BYXf4R17yys7zNe9
>
>
> Hey Mike, you put a "SUVA (Emergency)" ground station on starlink.sx.
>
> Is that for simulation, or has Starlink actually installed a ground
> station in Fidschi by now? Would you have positive confirmation?
>
> Thank you
> Daniel
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing listStarlink@lists.bufferbloat.nethttps://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
> --
> ****************************************************************
> Dr. Ulrich Speidel
>
> School of Computer Science
>
> Room 303S.594 (City Campus)
>
> The University of Aucklandu.speidel@auckland.ac.nz http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
> ****************************************************************
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 12137 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Starlink for Tonga?

[Ulrich Speidel]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 7506 bytes --]

I've heard nothing further about teleport establishment in Fiji, but 
that doesn't mean that nothing has happened.

Meanwhile, cable repair has progressed a good bit. The damage was far 
greater than originally envisaged. On the international cable, faults 
(complete cable ruptures and fibre damage) stretched over more than 80 
km. The cable ran entirely SOUTH of the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha'apai 
volcano (about 60 km away and shielded by a number of submarine mounts 
for at least parts of the damaged section). Yet the Reliance cable ship 
traced one disconnected cable piece end to about 5 km NORTH of its 
nominal route, found various sections had disappeared completely, and 
recovered sections of up to 9 km at a time from the seabed.

A bog standard cable break requires two holding drives (or drags), HD 
for short, to pick up each of the cable endpoints from the seafloor. It 
also requires either an ROV dive to check if the cable has completely 
separated at the fault position, or a cut if the cable is still held 
together by the steel. That cut can be done either by ROV as well, or if 
visibility doesn't permit ROV use, by a cutting drive (CD). Any HD or CD 
requires the cable ship to tow a seafloor grapnel / cutter device 
transversally across the cable, so they're easy to spot on position 
traces. The Reliance did no fewer than seven HD's in its eastern 
operations area near Tongatapu, where it worked first. Visibility there 
was good (so ROV could be used), but damage substantial.

The ship then proceeded to the western end of the fault zone where 
reflectometer measurements from the Suva end had found a fault. Because 
of bad visibility, they did a CD followed by 2 HD's there, then noticed 
that there was fibre damage along the cable to Suva, so reeled that in 
and cut the damaged bit out.

They then proceeded to put a "mini-system" together. Let me explain: 
Enroute to Tonga, the Reliance stopped at Subcom's depot in Apia (Samoa) 
to load whatever cable they had in store there. This included spares not 
only for the Fiji-Tonga cable but also for various other cable systems 
in the wider region. Reliance left Apia with about 80 km of cable in 
total. The amount of cable that will need to be re-laid along the 
damaged international section is 90 km (you need to allow for a bit of 
cable lengthening due to slack being inserted when cable ends are being 
brought up from 2000 m (6000 ft) or so below). This means that the 
Reliance is re-using some of the cable recovered from the damaged 
section, and the whole "mini-system" will be one long stitch job. The 
damaged section also included a repeater worth US$230k, which they were 
trying to recover and which was still missing as of this morning - I've 
yet to hear from my contact as to whether they were successful on the 
last recovery attempt today (they've left the area after three drives 
and are heading West right now. The rest of the mini-system was going to 
be laid after the repeater recovery attempt (the overall success doesn't 
depend on the repeater being found, but the final repair bill does). I 
thus expect the cable repair to be completed in the next few days.

The domestic cable is another story altogether, unfortunately. This has 
a blind stretch of 77 km at present, as measured by optical 
reflectometer from Tongatapu and Ha'apai (there was meant to be a 
measurement from Vava'u yesterday but I haven't heard yet what this 
revealed, the cable from Tongatapu has two fibre pairs, one of which 
heads to each destination from a branching unit west of Ha'apai. That 
said, once the international cable has been fixed, the Reliance won't 
have enough cable left to complete the domestic job, even if some cable 
bits could be recovered there. The next available stock of suitable 
cable is in Europe, around 35-40 days one-way shipping away. They intend 
to bridge this time gap via satellite (and I'm sure would welcome a 
Starlink delegation with a teleport to connect to the international 
cable, too, especially now that the Australian Navy gave them Omicron 
along with their aid deliveries).

I've been in close contact with our volcanology / geophysics community 
here in NZ, who know the area well. The story of damage to the 
international cable is now shaping up to be a pretty complex one. What 
we know thus far is that it was neither the volcano's initial blast nor 
the subsequent tsunami that killed the cable - the outage began only 
well after the tsunami had hit. In all probability, it's been a 
combination of submarine landslides and turbidite waves from a variety 
of sources that hit hours and possibly many days after the eruption. 
Finding that a cable piece has moved 5 km TOWARDS the volcano points at 
an event south of the cable route, and the mix of seafloor visibilities 
encountered by the Reliance points at there having multiple events from 
multiple sources. There have been plenty of quakes upwards of M4 and 
even an M6.2 in the wider area that could have triggered slopes, 
especially with an extra layer of ash on them. Turbidite waves can 
travel up to 1000 km, aren't anywhere near as fast as a tsunami, and 
have long been known to have damaged cables in the past (see B.C. Heezen 
and M. Ewing, Turbidity currents and submarine slumps, and the 1929 
Grand Banks Earthquake, American Journal of Science, v. 250, pp 849-873, 
December 1952. This quake killed 12 submarine cables over more than 18 
hours).

Meanwhile, there's still limited satellite service in and out of Tonga, 
but I can confirm that e-mails (even with attachments) make it in and 
out OK.


On 18/02/2022 8:27 pm, Mike Puchol wrote:
> Hi Daniel,
>
> I added it after there was a confirmation on Twitter that SpaceX 
> people were on the ground to set one up, and also, as two /27 blocks 
> (IPv4) have been assigned to Fiji’s capital, under the Sydney POP, and 
> they can be pinged.
>
> Wether it’s at the teleport or not, unsure, but for simulation, an 
> error of even a few km doesn’t really matter.
>
> Best,
>
> Mike
> On Feb 18, 2022, 06:04 +0100, Daniel AJ Sokolov <daniel@falco.ca>, wrote:
>> On 2022-02-07 at 15:29, Mike Puchol wrote:
>>> As far as placing a gateway in Fiji, it already has a teleport
>>> facility, which will have power and fibre (unless that one has been
>>> taken out too?). Checkhttps://goo.gl/maps/6BYXf4R17yys7zNe9 
>>> <Checkhttps://goo.gl/maps/6BYXf4R17yys7zNe9>
>>
>> Hey Mike, you put a "SUVA (Emergency)" ground station on starlink.sx.
>>
>> Is that for simulation, or has Starlink actually installed a ground
>> station in Fidschi by now? Would you have positive confirmation?
>>
>> Thank you
>> Daniel
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
>> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
-- 
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)

The University of Auckland
u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz  
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
****************************************************************



[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 9927 bytes --]