Re: [Starlink] apnic piece on starlink

Re: [Starlink] apnic piece on starlink

[David Fernández]

60+ only? Maybe it is this what you are remembering: 437 pages
https://storage.googleapis.com/x-prod.appspot.com/files/The%20Loon%20Library.pdf

Do you remember Solar Impulse 2 travel around the world? It had to
stop and land every five days or so. This is the evolution: Skydweller
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9865021/US-Navy-developing-pilotlesss-solar-powered-plane-fly-90-days-straight.html

The total footprint of a satellite coverage consists of multiple spot
beams with typical diameters ranging from 200-1000 km in GEO
deployments, 100-500 km in LEO deployments and 4 – 200 Km for HAPS
deployment.

Regards,

David

> Date: Sat, 8 Apr 2023 12:38:38 -0700
> From: Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com>
> To: Hesham ElBakoury <helbakoury@gmail.com>
> Cc: Michael Richardson <mcr@sandelman.ca>,  Dave Taht via Starlink
> 	<starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>, George Michaelson <ggm@apnic.net>
> Subject: Re: [Starlink] apnic piece on starlink
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAA93jw6se4qzxm+9tHb1BX+82qUkERqze7wk507w2A1GRdeDwQ@mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>
> On Sat, Apr 8, 2023 at 12:07 PM Hesham ElBakoury via Starlink
> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Google Spinoff Aalyira salvaged Project Loon technology for US military.
>>
>> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/google-spinoff-aalyria-salvages-project-loon-technology-for-the-us-military/amp
>>
>> Hesham
>
> I did not know that. Loon did one of the greatest post-mortems of any
> project I had ever read, 60+ pages long, and I cannot find it now.
>
>
> (I love having you all on this list!)
>>
>> On Sat, Apr 8, 2023, 11:37 AM Michael Richardson via Starlink
>> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> David Lang via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>     > Google shuttered project Loon (balloons to do this rather than
>>> UAVs) in
>>>     > the last year or two
>>>
>>> I heard that too, but also that some external entity then put up some
>>> money
>>> and partnered to start it up again.
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________

Re: [Starlink] apnic piece on starlink

[Dave Taht]

On Mon, Apr 10, 2023 at 9:07 AM David Fernández via Starlink
<starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
> 60+ only? Maybe it is this what you are remembering: 437 pages
> https://storage.googleapis.com/x-prod.appspot.com/files/The%20Loon%20Library.pdf

Yes! I wish every project reserved funding towards writing up failure
so eloquently. I had tried, in Nicaragua, in 206-2008
to get IPv6 deployed (tunneling ipv4 over it), and had meant to write
up that set of problems. I was planning to publish the "WISP6"
postmortem in the the 2010 timeframe but got sucked into just working
on bloat.

I had been going instinctively on that enormous list of problems
since, and mostly licked them (or so I thought), in cerowrt by 2014,
not realizing that the wisp market had evolved in an entirely
different direction.





> Do you remember Solar Impulse 2 travel around the world? It had to
> stop and land every five days or so. This is the evolution: Skydweller
> https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9865021/US-Navy-developing-pilotlesss-solar-powered-plane-fly-90-days-straight.html
>
> The total footprint of a satellite coverage consists of multiple spot
> beams with typical diameters ranging from 200-1000 km in GEO
> deployments, 100-500 km in LEO deployments and 4 – 200 Km for HAPS
> deployment.
>
> Regards,
>
> David
>
> > Date: Sat, 8 Apr 2023 12:38:38 -0700
> > From: Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com>
> > To: Hesham ElBakoury <helbakoury@gmail.com>
> > Cc: Michael Richardson <mcr@sandelman.ca>,  Dave Taht via Starlink
> >       <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>, George Michaelson <ggm@apnic.net>
> > Subject: Re: [Starlink] apnic piece on starlink
> > Message-ID:
> >       <CAA93jw6se4qzxm+9tHb1BX+82qUkERqze7wk507w2A1GRdeDwQ@mail.gmail.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
> >
> > On Sat, Apr 8, 2023 at 12:07 PM Hesham ElBakoury via Starlink
> > <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> Google Spinoff Aalyira salvaged Project Loon technology for US military.
> >>
> >> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/google-spinoff-aalyria-salvages-project-loon-technology-for-the-us-military/amp
> >>
> >> Hesham
> >
> > I did not know that. Loon did one of the greatest post-mortems of any
> > project I had ever read, 60+ pages long, and I cannot find it now.
> >
> >
> > (I love having you all on this list!)
> >>
> >> On Sat, Apr 8, 2023, 11:37 AM Michael Richardson via Starlink
> >> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> David Lang via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> >>>     > Google shuttered project Loon (balloons to do this rather than
> >>> UAVs) in
> >>>     > the last year or two
> >>>
> >>> I heard that too, but also that some external entity then put up some
> >>> money
> >>> and partnered to start it up again.
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink



-- 
AMA March 31: https://www.broadband.io/c/broadband-grant-events/dave-taht
Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC

Re: [Starlink] apnic piece on starlink

[Larry Press]

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Some Aalyria speculation:

https://circleid.com/posts/20220927-aalyria-a-space-internet-startup-with-nearly-a-decades-worth-of-intellectual-property-from-alphabet


https://circleid.com/posts/20221028-is-defense-innovation-units-hybrid-space-architecture-arpanet-of-space-and-will-it-run-on-aalyria-spacetime

________________________________
From: Starlink <starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net> on behalf of Hesham ElBakoury via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
Sent: Saturday, April 8, 2023 12:07 PM
To: Michael Richardson <mcr@sandelman.ca>
Cc: Dave Taht via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>; George Michaelson <ggm@apnic.net>
Subject: Re: [Starlink] apnic piece on starlink


Google Spinoff Aalyira salvaged Project Loon technology for US military.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/google-spinoff-aalyria-salvages-project-loon-technology-for-the-us-military/amp<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/google-spinoff-aalyria-salvages-project-loon-technology-for-the-us-military/amp__;!!P7nkOOY!rVo85S30MyBpyyRYIWPm-ZMmvG_iunvAYjKM21kYyMNa2nL-sOiuYRaKI9iVE8k8Ja-5EgIrovMcN6_VAIRayl7lig$>

Hesham

On Sat, Apr 8, 2023, 11:37 AM Michael Richardson via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net<mailto:starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>> wrote:
David Lang via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net<mailto:starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>> wrote:
    > Google shuttered project Loon (balloons to do this rather than UAVs) in
    > the last year or two

I heard that too, but also that some external entity then put up some money
and partnered to start it up again.

_______________________________________________
Starlink mailing list
Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net<mailto:Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink__;!!P7nkOOY!rVo85S30MyBpyyRYIWPm-ZMmvG_iunvAYjKM21kYyMNa2nL-sOiuYRaKI9iVE8k8Ja-5EgIrovMcN6_VAIS8tM8QEw$>

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Re: [Starlink] apnic piece on starlink

[Hesham ElBakoury]

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You can refer to Loon library:
https://x.company/projects/loon/the-loon-collection/

Loon CEO has a good Medium article with useful references:

https://blog.x.company/loon-draft-c3fcebc11f3f

Hesham

On Sat, Apr 8, 2023, 12:38 PM Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 8, 2023 at 12:07 PM Hesham ElBakoury via Starlink
> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Google Spinoff Aalyira salvaged Project Loon technology for US military.
> >
> >
> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/google-spinoff-aalyria-salvages-project-loon-technology-for-the-us-military/amp
> >
> > Hesham
>
> I did not know that. Loon did one of the greatest post-mortems of any
> project I had ever read, 60+ pages long, and I cannot find it now.
>
>
> (I love having you all on this list!)
> >
> > On Sat, Apr 8, 2023, 11:37 AM Michael Richardson via Starlink <
> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> David Lang via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> >>     > Google shuttered project Loon (balloons to do this rather than
> UAVs) in
> >>     > the last year or two
> >>
> >> I heard that too, but also that some external entity then put up some
> money
> >> and partnered to start it up again.
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> 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
>
>
>
> --
> AMA March 31: https://www.broadband.io/c/broadband-grant-events/dave-taht
> Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC
>

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Re: [Starlink] apnic piece on starlink

[Dave Taht]

On Sat, Apr 8, 2023 at 12:07 PM Hesham ElBakoury via Starlink
<starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
>
> Google Spinoff Aalyira salvaged Project Loon technology for US military.
>
> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/google-spinoff-aalyria-salvages-project-loon-technology-for-the-us-military/amp
>
> Hesham

I did not know that. Loon did one of the greatest post-mortems of any
project I had ever read, 60+ pages long, and I cannot find it now.


(I love having you all on this list!)
>
> On Sat, Apr 8, 2023, 11:37 AM Michael Richardson via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>
>> David Lang via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>     > Google shuttered project Loon (balloons to do this rather than UAVs) in
>>     > the last year or two
>>
>> I heard that too, but also that some external entity then put up some money
>> and partnered to start it up again.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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



-- 
AMA March 31: https://www.broadband.io/c/broadband-grant-events/dave-taht
Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC

Re: [Starlink] apnic piece on starlink

[Hesham ElBakoury]

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Google Spinoff Aalyira salvaged Project Loon technology for US military.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/google-spinoff-aalyria-salvages-project-loon-technology-for-the-us-military/amp

Hesham

On Sat, Apr 8, 2023, 11:37 AM Michael Richardson via Starlink <
starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:

> David Lang via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>     > Google shuttered project Loon (balloons to do this rather than UAVs)
> in
>     > the last year or two
>
> I heard that too, but also that some external entity then put up some money
> and partnered to start it up again.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>

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Re: [Starlink] apnic piece on starlink

[Hesham ElBakoury]

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Frank Uyeda who led Google Loon project presented the paper "SDN in the
stratosphere: loon's aerospace mesh network" in Sigcomm 2022. "The paper
validates TS-SDN as a compelling architecture for orchestrating networks of
moving platforms and steerable beams, and provides insights for those
building similar networks in the future"

You can access this paper here:
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544216.3544231

Hesham

On Sat, Apr 8, 2023, 11:37 AM Michael Richardson via Starlink <
starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:

> David Lang via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>     > Google shuttered project Loon (balloons to do this rather than UAVs)
> in
>     > the last year or two
>
> I heard that too, but also that some external entity then put up some money
> and partnered to start it up again.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>

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Re: [Starlink] apnic piece on starlink

[Michael Richardson]

David Lang via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
    > Google shuttered project Loon (balloons to do this rather than UAVs) in
    > the last year or two

I heard that too, but also that some external entity then put up some money
and partnered to start it up again.  

Re: [Starlink] apnic piece on starlink

[David Lang]

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On Sat, 8 Apr 2023, Ulrich Speidel wrote:

> On 8/04/2023 12:10 am, David Lang wrote:
>> I will note that in the Starlink plans, there are plans
>> to put a layer of satellites at a sigificantly lower altitude.
> I should add to this that this would seem like a good strategy, except of 
> course that this comes with its own set of challenges. Earth observation 
> satellites in particular are abundant in lower orbits - if you have a camera 
> on board, you want to be as close to your subject as you can. So there isn't 
> quite as much space down there as there is further up.
>
> Residual atmospheric drag at lower altitudes is also higher, which means you 
> either need to take more fuel to compensate (=heavier satellite & fewer sats 
> per launch) or you need to replace the satellites more often.
>
> You also need more satellites for global coverage in a shell like this.
>
> Also, as you mostly look at satellites sideways when you're a ground station, 
> the path length and therefore the path loss isn't necessarily all that much 
> lower - going from 550 km to 275 km gives you an extra 6 dB of gain if the 
> satellite is straight overhead, but that advantage shrinks as you move away 
> from zenith.

the published plan is a shell at ~340km (7500 satellites) in addition to the one 
at ~550km (and a possible 'long haul' shell at ~750km with <1k satellites)

>> By launching 10x as many satellites, and each one being able to handle 10x 
>> the data, they _may_ get to 100x, but that is really going to be pushing it. 
>> (note that this is for ~10x the number of satellites lauched by everyone 
>> other than SpaceX since Sputnik)
>
> Having seen figures of ~45k sats bandied around for some proposed 
> mega-constellations, the 10x number of satellites might just work out.

regulatory approval required, but starlink is aiming for ~42k satellites, they 
are only approved for somewhere around 10-12k so far and I believe they are 
nearing 4k in orbit.

> Whether we'll get to 10x the capacity per satellite is another question 
> altogether given spectral constraints.

yes, to get to this sort of capacity, you need to have multiple satellites 
covering each cell at a given time, which per the research published not that 
long ago was not yet the case.

> With ISLs, one could in principle free 
> up part of the gateway traffic spectrum by putting gateways in areas that are 
> devoid of other users, but quite how practical that is given that remote 
> areas are where LEOs will be needed most is a good question.

supporting terminal-to-terminal traffic also opens interesting possibilities 
(although less than we would like due to the server-centric nature of current 
Internet usage)

> One option that could push things a little further in conjunction with LEOs 
> would be HAPS  - high altitude platform systems, essentially solar-powered 
> UAVs that act as stratospheric cell towers with tours of duty measured in 
> weeks or months. These could use lasers as backhaul to LEO networks, yet 
> project comparatively narrow phased array beams to users on the ground. A 
> HAPS flying at 30 km overhead has a path loss that's around 25 dB below that 
> of a LEO sat at 550 km, and a clear optical path to the satellites above. 
> Technology isn't quite there yet - essentially, we're at the point where 
> solar cells have become performant enough in conjunction with batteries that 
> have become light enough to allow sustainable cyclic recharging of a UAV's 
> flight systems. But there are still issues to be addressed around the excess 
> power required to operate a cell site in the sky and or course all the 
> regulatory and safety aspects associated with operating things that don't 
> burn up when they come down.

Google shuttered project Loon (balloons to do this rather than UAVs) in the last 
year or two

>> If you can get fiber, it's always going to be better than a wireless option, 
>> DSL is threatened by Starlink in many suburbs, cablemodems depend so much on 
>> the ISP it's hard to say
>
> This is an interesting comment. Completely agree on the fibre aspect.
>
> DSL I think is threatened more by fibre than Starlink in most places (except 
> the US perhaps), which has basically displaced most DSL connections where it 
> became available. We were on DSL here till 2017, and as fibre was on the 
> horizon for a while, the company that runs the cable network here on behalf 
> of the telcos stopped investing in new DSLAM modules, instead preferring to 
> switch customers with problematic ones to modules that had become available 
> as a result of customers migrating to fibre. We found ourselves with a weird 
> problem literally overnight one day - intermittent disconnects lasting a 
> minute or two. These persisted through a change of DSL router, and logging 
> these for a few days showed a clear diurnal peak time pattern - so it was 
> obvious we were dealing with DSLAM-side crosstalk issues here. I asked to be 
> switched to a different DSLAM. This was an odyssee of support calls given 
> that you cannot call the lines folk directly - you must call your retail ISP, 
> who pays someone in India a few rupees to tell you to reboot your router to 
> make the problem go away. By the time I'd educated their 3rd tier support 
> about what crosstalk was, I'd literally spent many many hours on the phone to 
> India. Eventually, they switched me over to a new DSLAM and the problem went 
> away for a few months, just to return as they kept rewiring more legacy 
> customers.

when I switched from cablemodem to 129k SDSL in 2002, my usable bandwidth 
significantly improved.

> For those who still have DSL now, VDSL plans start at less than half of what 
> Starlink charges, with potentially comparable data rates, so not everyone 
> will want to switch.

I live in the greater LA area, in the middle of a town of >125k The best DSL I 
can get takes two phone lines to give me 8m down 1m up (in theory I should get 
10/2 but the line quality doesn't support it), and this costs me significantly 
more than starlink does.

> Where I see uptake of Starlink in urban areas here is by (a) geeks and (b) 
> folk who want a (secondary) connection that is independent of local telcos 
> that run inane call centres in India.

As more people work from home, just having a secondary connection becomes more 
important.

> Cable TV and cable modems are of course pretty much unheard of here - are 
> there any cable modems / ISPs that do more than a few dozen Mb/s down?

yes, cable modems can push 1G. I have one at 600/30 (but as a business line with 
static IP addresses, it costs me about triple the starlink connection)

David Lang

Re: [Starlink] apnic piece on starlink

[Ulrich Speidel]

On 8/04/2023 12:10 am, David Lang wrote:
> I will note that in the Starlink plans, there are plans
> to put a layer of satellites at a sigificantly lower altitude.
I should add to this that this would seem like a good strategy, except 
of course that this comes with its own set of challenges. Earth 
observation satellites in particular are abundant in lower orbits - if 
you have a camera on board, you want to be as close to your subject as 
you can. So there isn't quite as much space down there as there is 
further up.

Residual atmospheric drag at lower altitudes is also higher, which means 
you either need to take more fuel to compensate (=heavier satellite & 
fewer sats per launch) or you need to replace the satellites more often.

You also need more satellites for global coverage in a shell like this.

Also, as you mostly look at satellites sideways when you're a ground 
station, the path length and therefore the path loss isn't necessarily 
all that much lower - going from 550 km to 275 km gives you an extra 6 
dB of gain if the satellite is straight overhead, but that advantage 
shrinks as you move away from zenith.
>
> By launching 10x as many satellites, and each one being able to handle 
> 10x the
> data, they _may_ get to 100x, but that is really going to be pushing 
> it. (note
> that this is for ~10x the number of satellites lauched by everyone 
> other than
> SpaceX since Sputnik)

Having seen figures of ~45k sats bandied around for some proposed 
mega-constellations, the 10x number of satellites might just work out. 
Whether we'll get to 10x the capacity per satellite is another question 
altogether given spectral constraints. With ISLs, one could in principle 
free up part of the gateway traffic spectrum by putting gateways in 
areas that are devoid of other users, but quite how practical that is 
given that remote areas are where LEOs will be needed most is a good 
question.

One option that could push things a little further in conjunction with 
LEOs would be HAPS  - high altitude platform systems, essentially 
solar-powered UAVs that act as stratospheric cell towers with tours of 
duty measured in weeks or months. These could use lasers as backhaul to 
LEO networks, yet project comparatively narrow phased array beams to 
users on the ground. A HAPS flying at 30 km overhead has a path loss 
that's around 25 dB below that of a LEO sat at 550 km, and a clear 
optical path to the satellites above. Technology isn't quite there yet - 
essentially, we're at the point where solar cells have become performant 
enough in conjunction with batteries that have become light enough to 
allow sustainable cyclic recharging of a UAV's flight systems. But there 
are still issues to be addressed around the excess power required to 
operate a cell site in the sky and or course all the regulatory and 
safety aspects associated with operating things that don't burn up when 
they come down.

>
> If you can get fiber, it's always going to be better than a wireless 
> option, DSL
> is threatened by Starlink in many suburbs, cablemodems depend so much 
> on the ISP
> it's hard to say

This is an interesting comment. Completely agree on the fibre aspect.

DSL I think is threatened more by fibre than Starlink in most places 
(except the US perhaps), which has basically displaced most DSL 
connections where it became available. We were on DSL here till 2017, 
and as fibre was on the horizon for a while, the company that runs the 
cable network here on behalf of the telcos stopped investing in new 
DSLAM modules, instead preferring to switch customers with problematic 
ones to modules that had become available as a result of customers 
migrating to fibre. We found ourselves with a weird problem literally 
overnight one day - intermittent disconnects lasting a minute or two. 
These persisted through a change of DSL router, and logging these for a 
few days showed a clear diurnal peak time pattern - so it was obvious we 
were dealing with DSLAM-side crosstalk issues here. I asked to be 
switched to a different DSLAM. This was an odyssee of support calls 
given that you cannot call the lines folk directly - you must call your 
retail ISP, who pays someone in India a few rupees to tell you to reboot 
your router to make the problem go away. By the time I'd educated their 
3rd tier support about what crosstalk was, I'd literally spent many many 
hours on the phone to India. Eventually, they switched me over to a new 
DSLAM and the problem went away for a few months, just to return as they 
kept rewiring more legacy customers.

For those who still have DSL now, VDSL plans start at less than half of 
what Starlink charges, with potentially comparable data rates, so not 
everyone will want to switch.

Where I see uptake of Starlink in urban areas here is by (a) geeks and 
(b) folk who want a (secondary) connection that is independent of local 
telcos that run inane call centres in India. The lines company that did 
/ does most of the fibre install here was a bit overwhelmed at the time, 
so brought crews in from all over the place, as far afield as Zimbabwe. 
Installation standards for fibre required them to bury 30 cm (12") deep 
and dig under garden walls and hedges, however the crews got paid per 
install, and a lot of the time, the standards were interpreted rather 
liberally. Our crew arrived anticipating a two hour install and left 
after eight hour and more "no-you're-not-going-to-do-it-like-that's" 
than I care to count. A colleague of mine observed them laying through 
his garden my just brushing the leaves aside. Around Auckland suburbia, 
there are countless examples of fibre conduit running over posh volcanic 
rock garden walls, through hedges, or along the top of rickety fences.

Cable TV and cable modems are of course pretty much unheard of here - 
are there any cable modems / ISPs that do more than a few dozen Mb/s down?

>
> 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)

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

Re: [Starlink] apnic piece on starlink

[David Lang]

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On Fri, 7 Apr 2023, Ulrich Speidel via Starlink wrote:

> Remember how cellphone networks evolve: You start with a few towers in high 
> spots using high power to get wide area coverage while you have few users. At 
> this point (which corresponds largely to where Starlink is at now), spectrum 
> isn't much of an issue (and even that is only partially true for Starlink - 
> see Mike's excellent article on this: 
> https://mikepuchol.com/modeling-starlink-capacity-843b2387f501). As your user 
> base grows, you move off the hills into the valleys and lower your power so 
> your cells become smaller and shielded from each others, because now, 
> frequency re-use is the name of the game. You use beamforming off phased 
> arrays in order to further separate users.
>
> So what we are seeing now is Starlink as the new kid on the block turning up 
> with what are in analogy effectively cell towers high in the sky. Their 
> current user base is maybe at 1/1000th (ballpark) of potential demand before 
> growth. Population growth on this planet alone adds a lot more potential 
> users a day than Starlink does. So what options does Starlink have to scale? 
> Unlike a terrestrial network operator, Starlink can't really come down all 
> that far from their "space hills" without burning their satellites up in the 
> atmosphere more quickly. "Space hills" also consist of vacuum only, which 
> unlike earthly hills can't separate base stations by blocking signal. The 
> distance from/to space also requires vastly larger phased array antennas for 
> the same spot beam coverage area contour on the ground. It also places limits 
> on transmit EIRP both ways. Larger antennas and solar arrays constrain the 
> number of satellites that can be launched at a time, making constellation 
> building and replacement harder.

All of this is correct, I will note that in the Starlink plans, there are plans 
to put a layer of satellites at a sigificantly lower altitude.

By launching 10x as many satellites, and each one being able to handle 10x the 
data, they _may_ get to 100x, but that is really going to be pushing it. (note 
that this is for ~10x the number of satellites lauched by everyone other than 
SpaceX since Sputnik)

If you can get fiber, it's always going to be better than a wireless option, DSL 
is threatened by Starlink in many suburbs, cablemodems depend so much on the ISP 
it's hard to say

David Lang

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Re: [Starlink] apnic piece on starlink

[Ulrich Speidel]

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Not so fast! :-)

It's one thing to extend LEO coverage to new regions, especially rural 
and remote ones, but quite another to do so economically and at scale. 
For an urban user on fibre, Starlink's performance is anything but a 
game changer: lower data rates, more latency (even without jitter - and 
there's plenty thereof on Starlink, especially as Dishy switches between 
differently loaded satellites) and significantly higher cost. Plus: If 
you're on fibre, the equipment at the end of it determines how fast it 
can go, and we're now seeing 2Gb/s and 4Gb/s services to consumers being 
offered in a lot of areas under the "hyperfibre" tag. It's foreseeable 
that as demand grows with IoT, high definition video etc., this will 
scale up further as we go. There's really no serious hurdle to stop it.

With anything that needs to use the radio spectrum, the limited capacity 
thereof is the main hurdle. Sure, you can put more satellites in orbit, 
but without narrower beams this will not allow more frequency re-use. 
You can give them larger phased arrays to have narrower beams, but these 
won't give you the order of magnitude of improvement you need in order 
to serve the unconnected. You can give the satellites more solar power 
and hence more lasers, on-board processing capacity and downlink power, 
but that works against frequency re-usability to a good extent.

Remember how cellphone networks evolve: You start with a few towers in 
high spots using high power to get wide area coverage while you have few 
users. At this point (which corresponds largely to where Starlink is at 
now), spectrum isn't much of an issue (and even that is only partially 
true for Starlink - see Mike's excellent article on this: 
https://mikepuchol.com/modeling-starlink-capacity-843b2387f501). As your 
user base grows, you move off the hills into the valleys and lower your 
power so your cells become smaller and shielded from each others, 
because now, frequency re-use is the name of the game. You use 
beamforming off phased arrays in order to further separate users.

So what we are seeing now is Starlink as the new kid on the block 
turning up with what are in analogy effectively cell towers high in the 
sky. Their current user base is maybe at 1/1000th (ballpark) of 
potential demand before growth. Population growth on this planet alone 
adds a lot more potential users a day than Starlink does. So what 
options does Starlink have to scale? Unlike a terrestrial network 
operator, Starlink can't really come down all that far from their "space 
hills" without burning their satellites up in the atmosphere more 
quickly. "Space hills" also consist of vacuum only, which unlike earthly 
hills can't separate base stations by blocking signal. The distance 
from/to space also requires vastly larger phased array antennas for the 
same spot beam coverage area contour on the ground. It also places 
limits on transmit EIRP both ways. Larger antennas and solar arrays 
constrain the number of satellites that can be launched at a time, 
making constellation building and replacement harder.

It's a joy to see people in some remote places finally getting Internet 
connectivity via Starlink that somewhat resembles what most of the rest 
of us get. But even now, we see Starlink quite obviously dealing with 
capacity issues: See my recent post on the "strange" differential 
hardware pricing in NZ (you pay over 250% extra for Dishy now if you 
live in a big city here), or their exorbitant pricing for maritime 
service at over 10x the rate for a fixed location connection. Or the 
(not so) strange lack of availability in the eastern US, along with many 
spots scattered around the planet in medium-density rural areas. Is this 
what a network looks like that will be able to grow service capacity by 
a factor of a 1000 or more in the next decade?

The good news: Growth by a factor of 5 or 10 might get most smaller 
Pacific islands covered, which is dear to my heart, but affordability 
will still leave us with a digital divide there. But it's not going to 
get Internet to the two billion un- and underconnected in Asia, and 
their peers elsewhere.

One of the three big telcos here (One NZ, until recently known as 
Vodafone) announced last week that they were partnering with Starlink to 
increase mobile coverage from some time next year, from the existing 98% 
to 100% of the country. I promptly got called for media comment again, 
and of course what people read into the announcement was that we'd all 
be able to throw out our existing wired Internet connections and Dishys 
and could use our mobile phones instead. So I tried hard to point out 
the fine print - that it's going to be text and fairly low quality voice 
only, and perhaps some low bandwidth data services such as e-mail or 
messenger apps. That it won't work indoors or from inside vehicles. That 
it was only for the 2% of locations that got no signal at all so far. 
That it wasn't going to bring Netflix to the wap-waps. But that it was 
going to be great for trampers (hikers in local lingo) who needed to let 
their pick-up service know if things changed.

The question I got back was whether it was going to put community-based 
wireless ISPs out of business? Um, no.

6/04/2023 8:09 am, Dave Taht via Starlink wrote:

> I stumbled across this because he cited me, but it is very thoughtful
> and interesting, otherwise.
>
> https://blog.apnic.net/2023/03/31/everything-everywhere-all-the-time/ 
> <https://blog.apnic.net/2023/03/31/everything-everywhere-all-the-time>
>
> I really do think we are on the verge of being able to cover the rest
> of the world with internet, through LEO technologies.
>
> -- 
> AMA March 31: 
> https://www.broadband.io/c/broadband-grant-events/dave-taht 
> <https://www.broadband.io/c/broadband-grant-events/dave-taht>
> Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC
> _______________________________________________
> 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/
****************************************************************



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[Starlink] apnic piece on starlink

[Dave Taht]

I stumbled across this because he cited me, but it is very thoughtful
and interesting, otherwise.

https://blog.apnic.net/2023/03/31/everything-everywhere-all-the-time/

I really do think we are on the verge of being able to cover the rest
of the world with internet, through LEO technologies.

-- 
AMA March 31: https://www.broadband.io/c/broadband-grant-events/dave-taht
Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC