Their coverage of the poles and oceans is growing outside of the 'bent pipe' model, so I think that's proof that they are working. I am in southern california and commonly go out a gateway in vancouver BC, I think that's more than a simple bent-pipe hop away. David Lang On Mon, 20 Mar 2023, Dave Taht via Starlink wrote: > Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2023 04:32:19 -0700 > From: Dave Taht via Starlink > Reply-To: Dave Taht > To: Christian von der Ropp > Cc: starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net > Subject: Re: [Starlink] mems optical switching > > We haven't heard much about the starlink ISL links lately. Any sign > they are working anywhere yet? > > On Sun, Mar 19, 2023 at 7:33 AM Christian von der Ropp via Starlink > wrote: >> >> All-optical switching could greatly reduce complexity and power >> consumption on the satellites at the cost of flexibility. Up to 44 >> satellites in an orbital plane would use individual wavelengths which >> would be passed on transparently down the daisy chain and only >> satellites in range of gateways would convert the optical signals back >> into electrical ones, and send them down to earth while they pass a >> gateway. This would result in relatively short duty cycles, hence less >> power draw per orbit and less heat dissipation issues. >> >> Actually I've been suspecting that the SDA targets all-optical switching >> for the Transport Layer constellation as I don't seen any other >> immediate reason for the requirement of their OISL standard to require >> wavelength switching within the ITU channel grid for LCTs (see p. 18 of >> the OISL 3.0: >> https://www.sda.mil/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/SDA-OCT-Standard-v3.0.pdf) >> >> As a matter of fact tuneable wavelenghts were already required in the >> draft version of the OISL standard published in April 2020: >> https://twitter.com/Megaconstellati/status/1310336728595562499 >> >> -Christian >> >> Am 19.03.2023 um 16:16 schrieb Brandon Butterworth via Starlink: >> > On Sat Mar 18, 2023 at 03:19:49PM -0700, Dave Taht via Starlink wrote: >> >> Today, this about google's mems switching tech hit, >> > They've been talking about it since last year, seems to have got >> > a hype bump recently. >> > >> > Who expected circuit switching to make a comeback? >> > >> >> I keep wondering where else it could be applied. >> > They've been used for a long time, eg almost 20 years ago - >> > https://archive.nanog.org/meetings/nanog32/presentations/zwart.pdf >> > >> > There is a goal of optical packet switching, until then you're >> > limited to where there are limited flows of long enough duration >> > to make the change from packet to circuit switching viable. So mostly >> > automated testing. >> > >> > I've dabbled with the idea in an archive use case where very few of >> > a large set of storage nodes need to connect to a moderate number >> > of servers. For some cases we could have zero switches. The goal was >> > a mostly dark infrastructure and many 1000s of storage nodes, >> > removing the switches saves a lot of power. >> > >> > Commercial optical switches are expensive so I was looking at >> > making an optical strowger as I wanted a high fan out not >> > large n^2. >> > >> > In the mobile world they are looking at doing flexible bandwidth >> > per node with coherent optics over gpon fibre plant, allocating >> > variable amounts of spectrum to each, which could be adapted to a >> > similar circuit model. It'd be no use to google as they want the >> > full bandwidth between each node but as dwdm coherent optic costs >> > come down you could imagine doing the same with a full channel >> > between each pair, so like a conventional WSS but cheaper. If it >> > wasn't for the optics cost I suspect they'd have done that reducing >> > switching time to a channel change. >> > >> > brandon >> > _______________________________________________ >> > 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 > > > > -- > Come Heckle Mar 6-9 at: https://www.understandinglatency.com/ > Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC > _______________________________________________ > Starlink mailing list > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink