Re: [Starlink] It’s the Latency, FCC

David Lang
2024-04-30T15:04:14Z

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Alexandre Petrescu wrote:

> h++ps://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/17/aws-stops-selling-snowmobile-truck-for-cloud-migrations.html
>> so this is more than just a concept...
>
> Thank you for the example.  It is good to know.  From the URL, it seems
> as if they did with that truck something that magnetic backup tapes did
> before.  Last time I checked, magnetic backup tapes still had higher
> capacity than hard disk drives at a same dimension, but I dont know now.
>
> In a similar vein, there is also a demo of IP-over-avian-carriers RFC
> (pigeons).  It is just half fun, and useful in some sense.
>
> This aspect of using object things (trucks, planes, pigeons) to transmit
> data, rather than electromagnetic waves, is also very relevant in a
> satcom discussion.  They talk about these ballons, cubesats, disksats,
> sails, and more.  They too might offer higher bandwidths but with huge
> latencies.  They might be useful for some application, too.

I think the original version was 'never underestimate the bandwidth of a station
wagon filled with tapes driving down the freeway' :-)

tape may have a higher density, but once you include the fact that tape is more
fragile when transported, and the time it takes to read/write the data on each
end, the value of RAID arrays of spinning rust compared to tape is very
attractive.

David Lang