> They are using waves back to regional DCs now, but will be moving to > dark fiber over the next year or two If that means "radio" waves, then this goes a long way to explaining why there's already limited capacity even near the US-Canada border. Waves in this case generally refers to 10G/100G leased optical circuit capacity. On Thu, Nov 4, 2021 at 5:35 PM Ulrich Speidel wrote: > Thanks for that Darrell - that's really interesting! A few comments on > that front: > > On 5/11/2021 4:26 am, Darrell Budic wrote: > > I was at NANOG in Minneapolis, and got a chance to ask a couple > > question of a Starlink Network Engineer who’s attending. I was already > > talking to him about Starlink’s network efforts (see below) but it was > > nice to meet in person. Don’t quote me on any of this, but here’s a > > few tidbits this list may appreciate: > > > > - Starlink is expanding their own network operations, and is > > connecting to more IXPs. They were already on SIX in Seattle, have > > connected to DECIX NY, and are in the process of connecting to ChIX in > > Chicago. As I run ChIX, I had a good excuse to talk to them about > > other things. :) IXPs and their own networks are in the works for > > Europe and other areas as well. > Makes sense. > > - They have been obtaining more v4 addresses, but I don’t know if they > > have enough to not do CGNAT. I don't think they do yet, but it seems > > like it may be a long term target. > > - v6 is deliberately not fully functional, but they know some of use > > are using it and it will eventually be fully activated. May be waiting > > on the regional connectivity, so will be intersting to see if changes > > for some areas and not others as they roll it out. > > So I guess we need to distinguish between: > > - IPv4 addresses for any CGNAT they might run > - IPv4 addresses as static addresses for (some of?) their customers > - IPv6 addresses as customer addresses > - IPv6 addresses to support geographic routing as discussed in earlier > posts (subnet maps to cell / satellite) > > There are quite a number of feasible configurations in this. E.g., they > could be running a CGNAT setup with a v4 pool on the Internet side, use > v6 to tunnel route from there to the satellite the end customer connects > to, and then map that customer back to a (private) IPv4 address in a NAT > on the satellite. One aspect that hasn't really been mentioned much here > is that of PDU size on the link between end customer and satellite. > Keeping Dishy and its successors small and cheap creates an incentive to > operate at marginal SNR, and this favours smaller PDUs over larger ones > as the probability of PDU checksum errors increases with PDU size. But > having lots of small PDUs means having lots of headers, and as IPv4 > addresses are leaner than IPv6 ones, this saves bandwidth here. Probably > not a biggie though. > > - New ground stations with more capacity are coming (and will be > > upgrades). > Any word on where? At the moment, most of the world can see Starlink > satellites, but most Starlink satellites can't see a ground station. > > They are using waves back to regional DCs now, but will be moving to > > dark fiber over the next year or two > If that means "radio" waves, then this goes a long way to explaining why > there's already limited capacity even near the US-Canada border. > > - the new satellites have more than 2 lasers, and there is enough > > capacity on them to do routing. no details on how or what protocols, alas > Any word on when we can expect to see routing in action? > > - new birds also have 2-3x more ku bandwidth than first gen > Hm. Sounds cool, but with 3 billion or so underserved on the planet & > typical annual growth rates, that's still just a drop in the bucket. > > - new dishes are in the works, v4 coming with lower power use, more > > capacity, not round any more > Trayee? Squary? Just joking ;-) > > - larger dishes coming for commercial apps > That's good news, as this will allow Starlink to be used in places where > direct-to-site crashes into regulatory hurdles. If we can get the big > CDN providers to come up with small (virtual?) appliances that can be > put at the remote end of such links by local ISPs, then that'll also > help to preserve space segment capacity. > > -- > **************************************************************** > 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 >