[Starlink] I still dream of an tiny on-orbit repair and inspection robot

[Starlink] I still dream of an tiny on-orbit repair and inspection robot

[Dave Taht]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 782 bytes --]

https://www.npr.org/2024/06/19/nx-s1-5010440/nasa-has-delayed-the-undocking-of-boeings-starliner-capsule-until-next-week

Not just for this, but for starship, to inspect the tiles, nestled perhaps
in the engine dome during launch. It could fly out and magneticaly attach?

Something like that might have helped columbia, also.

Having to fire the thrusters and measure the effect on the ISS to see if
they are working strikes me as more difficult than direct observation.

There does seem to still be a dragon capsule attached to the ISS... that
could possibly be used for recovery if starliner's problems are more severe
than being indicaated.
-- 
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7203400057172180992/
Donations Drive.
Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1340 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] I still dream of an tiny on-orbit repair and inspection robot

[Kenneth Porter]

It could be used to fix the stuck door on this space telescope:

https://www.space.com/xrism-jammed-gate-door-jaxa

[Starlink] Jamaican Starlink Outages and a hint of shared infrastructure

[Inemesit Affia]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 575 bytes --]

I don't live in Jamaica but I just saw a user complain his service goes out
at the same time his local provider does.

The provider is Flow Jamaica and they seem to get service via C&W Caribbean
according to another poster.

Service going out together likely means there's shared infrastructure. And
buying Starlink as backup and having it fail hard without rerouting several
times in a row is below expectations.

There's another provider in Jamaica. Digicel that seems to have separate
infrastructure but that might not be value for money to have alternative
connectivity.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 753 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Jamaican Starlink Outages and a hint of shared infrastructure

[J Pan]

can you give the reference to the complaint so we can dive into it a
bit? once the user packet reaches the satellite, it needs to get to
the ground (sooner than later according to starlink's current
practice), which may run into the same fiber to tunnel the packet from
the landing ground station to the user's home pop. once at the pop,
most starlink pop's now have at least two neighbor pop's, so
theoretically, starlink has the capability to route packets to a
different landing ground station through inter-sat links and another
pop, if it can arrange so properly
--
J Pan, UVic CSc, ECS566, 250-472-5796 (NO VM), Pan@UVic.CA, Web.UVic.CA/~pan

On Mon, Jun 24, 2024 at 3:40 AM Inemesit Affia via Starlink
<starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
> I don't live in Jamaica but I just saw a user complain his service goes out at the same time his local provider does.
>
> The provider is Flow Jamaica and they seem to get service via C&W Caribbean according to another poster.
>
> Service going out together likely means there's shared infrastructure. And buying Starlink as backup and having it fail hard without rerouting several times in a row is below expectations.
>
> There's another provider in Jamaica. Digicel that seems to have separate infrastructure but that might not be value for money to have alternative connectivity.
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

Re: [Starlink] Jamaican Starlink Outages and a hint of shared infrastructure

[Ulrich Speidel]

This is actually a wider problem and it's not just a Starlink one. In 
grad school, we teach students what a wonderful thing this Internet is, 
and how it abounds with algorithms that find the shortest path and make 
life wonderful. In practice, most people who "buy Internet" don't look 
much past where their immediate physical connection terminates and what 
might be lurking upstream. I had dinner with the CEO of a REN a few 
years ago who complained bitterly that some university managers didn't 
understand that if they made them an offer to build a connection for 
them, it meant that they could get a dedicated fibre pair all the way to 
the other side of the world if they needed it. And of course their 
offering was a bit dearer than that of the local retail ISP who was also 
offering "X Gb/s" - but of course only going as far as their own 
infrastructure. From where the university traffic would have been 
travelling cattle class.

This can also lead to weird effects globally. For example, much of the 
traffic between Japan and New Zealand *could* in principle trundle down 
to Guam and from there to Sydney and then to Auckland. Which would be 
kind of shortest path. And occasionally it does. But just as often, you 
see it crossing the Pacific to the US West Coast (or from Guam to 
Hawaii) and from there back to New Zealand. Why? Good question. Was it 
because US backhaul carriers were cheaper for a while with the US dollar 
being soft and the Australian / NZ currencies surging in comparison? 
Were there government incentives for carriers to let traffic run through 
US territory for intelligence access (if so, the NSA would have to fear 
a strong dollar I guess)?

With Starlink, keeping traffic out of space might seem a bit weird given 
their 100 Gb/s lasers, but yes it does mean downlinking to 
infrastructure that may path-share with with the infrastructure you're 
seeking to back up. But lasering your traffic around means adding 
latency - the path may zig-zag badly or may even overshoot the target. 
Plus the latency won't be stable. So keeping traffic out of space isn't 
such a bad idea after all perhaps. Then again, Jamaica's fibre 
connectivity is by and large not great circle path either...

On 25/06/2024 2:42 am, J Pan via Starlink wrote:
> can you give the reference to the complaint so we can dive into it a
> bit? once the user packet reaches the satellite, it needs to get to
> the ground (sooner than later according to starlink's current
> practice), which may run into the same fiber to tunnel the packet from
> the landing ground station to the user's home pop. once at the pop,
> most starlink pop's now have at least two neighbor pop's, so
> theoretically, starlink has the capability to route packets to a
> different landing ground station through inter-sat links and another
> pop, if it can arrange so properly
> --
> J Pan, UVic CSc, ECS566, 250-472-5796 (NO VM), Pan@UVic.CA, Web.UVic.CA/~pan
>
> On Mon, Jun 24, 2024 at 3:40 AM Inemesit Affia via Starlink
> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>> I don't live in Jamaica but I just saw a user complain his service goes out at the same time his local provider does.
>>
>> The provider is Flow Jamaica and they seem to get service via C&W Caribbean according to another poster.
>>
>> Service going out together likely means there's shared infrastructure. And buying Starlink as backup and having it fail hard without rerouting several times in a row is below expectations.
>>
>> There's another provider in Jamaica. Digicel that seems to have separate infrastructure but that might not be value for money to have alternative connectivity.
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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/
****************************************************************

Re: [Starlink] Jamaican Starlink Outages and a hint of shared infrastructure

[David Lang]

Ulrich Speidel wrote:

> This can also lead to weird effects globally. For example, much of the 
> traffic between Japan and New Zealand *could* in principle trundle down 
> to Guam and from there to Sydney and then to Auckland. Which would be 
> kind of shortest path. And occasionally it does. But just as often, you 
> see it crossing the Pacific to the US West Coast (or from Guam to 
> Hawaii) and from there back to New Zealand. Why? Good question. Was it 
> because US backhaul carriers were cheaper for a while with the US dollar 
> being soft and the Australian / NZ currencies surging in comparison? 
> Were there government incentives for carriers to let traffic run through 
> US territory for intelligence access (if so, the NSA would have to fear

It's important to realize that BGP doesn't know how long any link is. it defines 
'closest' by the number of hops.

so Japan -> LA -> Auckland is 'shorter' than Japan -> Guam -> Sydnes -> Auckland 
even though it's much longer, probably through more congested links, and higher 
latency.

David Lang

Re: [Starlink] Jamaican Starlink Outages and a hint of shared infrastructure

[Ulrich Speidel]

On 25/06/2024 3:42 pm, David Lang wrote:
> Ulrich Speidel wrote:
>
>> This can also lead to weird effects globally. For example, much of 
>> the traffic between Japan and New Zealand *could* in principle 
>> trundle down to Guam and from there to Sydney and then to Auckland. 
>> Which would be kind of shortest path. And occasionally it does. But 
>> just as often, you see it crossing the Pacific to the US West Coast 
>> (or from Guam to Hawaii) and from there back to New Zealand. Why? 
>> Good question. Was it because US backhaul carriers were cheaper for a 
>> while with the US dollar being soft and the Australian / NZ 
>> currencies surging in comparison? Were there government incentives 
>> for carriers to let traffic run through US territory for intelligence 
>> access (if so, the NSA would have to fear
>
> It's important to realize that BGP doesn't know how long any link is. 
> it defines 'closest' by the number of hops.
>
> so Japan -> LA -> Auckland is 'shorter' than Japan -> Guam -> Sydnes 
> -> Auckland even though it's much longer, probably through more 
> congested links, and higher latency.

Indeed, but that's assuming that (a) there are hops (just because two 
cables land on the same island, it doesn't mean that they are connected 
there) and (b) that pure BGP hop count metric isn't overruled by the 
sending ISPs or someone along the way, as it often is. E.g., Hawaii to 
NZ is just one cable "hop", but traffic from the University of Hawaii to 
Auckland also used to go via the US West Coast for a long time 
(someone's fixed it now) as they didn't peer with Southern Cross.

-- 

****************************************************************
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] Jamaican Starlink Outages and a hint of shared infrastructure

[Sebastian Moeller]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1720 bytes --]

My understanding is routing mostly follows the path of least cost... and is more complex then BGP makes it look, if two ASs have multiple handover points one still needs to pick one for each flow... and even for a simple route between two AS the forward and reverse path might use different hand-over points... think hot-potato routing.


On 25 June 2024 05:42:47 CEST, David Lang via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>Ulrich Speidel wrote:
>
>> This can also lead to weird effects globally. For example, much of the traffic between Japan and New Zealand *could* in principle trundle down to Guam and from there to Sydney and then to Auckland. Which would be kind of shortest path. And occasionally it does. But just as often, you see it crossing the Pacific to the US West Coast (or from Guam to Hawaii) and from there back to New Zealand. Why? Good question. Was it because US backhaul carriers were cheaper for a while with the US dollar being soft and the Australian / NZ currencies surging in comparison? Were there government incentives for carriers to let traffic run through US territory for intelligence access (if so, the NSA would have to fear
>
>It's important to realize that BGP doesn't know how long any link is. it defines 'closest' by the number of hops.
>
>so Japan -> LA -> Auckland is 'shorter' than Japan -> Guam -> Sydnes -> Auckland even though it's much longer, probably through more congested links, and higher latency.
>
>David Lang
>_______________________________________________
>Starlink mailing list
>Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2306 bytes --]

Re: [Starlink] Jamaican Starlink Outages and a hint of shared infrastructure

[Gert Doering]

Hi,

On Tue, Jun 25, 2024 at 07:37:40AM +0200, Sebastian Moeller via Starlink wrote:
> My understanding is routing mostly follows the path of least cost... and is more complex then BGP makes it look, if two ASs have multiple handover points one still needs to pick one for each flow... and even for a simple route between two AS the forward and reverse path might use different hand-over points... think hot-potato routing.

This is true, but BGP offers sufficient knobs to help in situations
where the "naive" algorithms would fail to find the actual best path
(for some definition of "best" - bandwidth, latency, monetary cost, ...).

It gets more problematic when money or politics get in the way of 
"build good networks" - like, two major transit ISPs refusing to peer
with each other, because both assert the other one should buy from
them...  and customers of both suffer.

Gert Doering
        -- NetMaster
-- 
have you enabled IPv6 on something today...?

SpaceNet AG                      Vorstand: Sebastian v. Bomhard, Ingo Lalla,
                                           Karin Schuler, Sebastian Cler
Joseph-Dollinger-Bogen 14        Aufsichtsratsvors.: A. Grundner-Culemann
D-80807 Muenchen                 HRB: 136055 (AG Muenchen)
Tel: +49 (0)89/32356-444         USt-IdNr.: DE813185279

Re: [Starlink] Jamaican Starlink Outages and a hint of shared infrastructure

[Sebastian Moeller]

Hi Gert,


> On 25. Jun 2024, at 08:54, Gert Doering <gert@space.net> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On Tue, Jun 25, 2024 at 07:37:40AM +0200, Sebastian Moeller via Starlink wrote:
>> My understanding is routing mostly follows the path of least cost... and is more complex then BGP makes it look, if two ASs have multiple handover points one still needs to pick one for each flow... and even for a simple route between two AS the forward and reverse path might use different hand-over points... think hot-potato routing.
> 
> This is true, but BGP offers sufficient knobs to help in situations
> where the "naive" algorithms would fail to find the actual best path
> (for some definition of "best" - bandwidth, latency, monetary cost, ...).
> 
> It gets more problematic when money or politics get in the way of 
> "build good networks" - like, two major transit ISPs refusing to peer
> with each other, because both assert the other one should buy from
> them...  and customers of both suffer.

Indeed, however these customers are part of the problem in a sense, as if customers would simply drop these two like a hot potato for exactly that reason, I am sure these two might be willing to come together over a cake perhaps ( h++ps://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt8eb3cdfc1fce5194/blt87f5367a512efb22/664b33f657aac63927f84866/Hurricane-Cake.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale )?




Sorry for fudging the URL, but my mail service helpfully marks outgoing posts with (too many?) URLs as spam and the list server will reject my posts...

> 
> Gert Doering
>        -- NetMaster
> -- 
> have you enabled IPv6 on something today...?
> 
> SpaceNet AG                      Vorstand: Sebastian v. Bomhard, Ingo Lalla,
>                                           Karin Schuler, Sebastian Cler
> Joseph-Dollinger-Bogen 14        Aufsichtsratsvors.: A. Grundner-Culemann
> D-80807 Muenchen                 HRB: 136055 (AG Muenchen)
> Tel: +49 (0)89/32356-444         USt-IdNr.: DE813185279

Re: [Starlink] Jamaican Starlink Outages and a hint of shared infrastructure

[J Pan]

yes, internet nowadays in the hands of isp's does not (only) route
packets but money ;-)
--
J Pan, UVic CSc, ECS566, 250-472-5796 (NO VM), Pan@UVic.CA, Web.UVic.CA/~pan
On Mon, Jun 24, 2024 at 3:19 PM Ulrich Speidel via Starlink
<starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
> This is actually a wider problem and it's not just a Starlink one. In
> grad school, we teach students what a wonderful thing this Internet is,
> and how it abounds with algorithms that find the shortest path and make
> life wonderful. In practice, most people who "buy Internet" don't look
> much past where their immediate physical connection terminates and what
> might be lurking upstream. I had dinner with the CEO of a REN a few
> years ago who complained bitterly that some university managers didn't
> understand that if they made them an offer to build a connection for
> them, it meant that they could get a dedicated fibre pair all the way to
> the other side of the world if they needed it. And of course their
> offering was a bit dearer than that of the local retail ISP who was also
> offering "X Gb/s" - but of course only going as far as their own
> infrastructure. From where the university traffic would have been
> travelling cattle class.
>
> This can also lead to weird effects globally. For example, much of the
> traffic between Japan and New Zealand *could* in principle trundle down
> to Guam and from there to Sydney and then to Auckland. Which would be
> kind of shortest path. And occasionally it does. But just as often, you
> see it crossing the Pacific to the US West Coast (or from Guam to
> Hawaii) and from there back to New Zealand. Why? Good question. Was it
> because US backhaul carriers were cheaper for a while with the US dollar
> being soft and the Australian / NZ currencies surging in comparison?
> Were there government incentives for carriers to let traffic run through
> US territory for intelligence access (if so, the NSA would have to fear
> a strong dollar I guess)?
>
> With Starlink, keeping traffic out of space might seem a bit weird given
> their 100 Gb/s lasers, but yes it does mean downlinking to
> infrastructure that may path-share with with the infrastructure you're
> seeking to back up. But lasering your traffic around means adding
> latency - the path may zig-zag badly or may even overshoot the target.
> Plus the latency won't be stable. So keeping traffic out of space isn't
> such a bad idea after all perhaps. Then again, Jamaica's fibre
> connectivity is by and large not great circle path either...
>
> On 25/06/2024 2:42 am, J Pan via Starlink wrote:
> > can you give the reference to the complaint so we can dive into it a
> > bit? once the user packet reaches the satellite, it needs to get to
> > the ground (sooner than later according to starlink's current
> > practice), which may run into the same fiber to tunnel the packet from
> > the landing ground station to the user's home pop. once at the pop,
> > most starlink pop's now have at least two neighbor pop's, so
> > theoretically, starlink has the capability to route packets to a
> > different landing ground station through inter-sat links and another
> > pop, if it can arrange so properly
> > --
> > J Pan, UVic CSc, ECS566, 250-472-5796 (NO VM), Pan@UVic.CA, Web.UVic.CA/~pan
> >
> > On Mon, Jun 24, 2024 at 3:40 AM Inemesit Affia via Starlink
> > <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> >> I don't live in Jamaica but I just saw a user complain his service goes out at the same time his local provider does.
> >>
> >> The provider is Flow Jamaica and they seem to get service via C&W Caribbean according to another poster.
> >>
> >> Service going out together likely means there's shared infrastructure. And buying Starlink as backup and having it fail hard without rerouting several times in a row is below expectations.
> >>
> >> There's another provider in Jamaica. Digicel that seems to have separate infrastructure but that might not be value for money to have alternative connectivity.
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> 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