The plan for nationwide fiber internet might be upended for Starlink
Technology
71
Beiträge
42
Kommentatoren
1.3k
Aufrufe
-
Hard to calculate exactly.
Latency is lower through the atmosphere than in glass (I thought that air was worse, but turns out it's not. Makes sense. Glass is solid after all)
So it could be even closer than that. But there's also the problem of the SL base station having to do the last bit of the route through fiber to the destination again. Do it also depends on where the base station is located in regards to the destination
Starlink can be more direct as well. The further fiber goes the less direct it is. By the time we're talking between continents that builds up a lot.
-
Why would they fall out of orbit?
They deorbit every 5 years and burn up in the atmosphere they don't make it to land (although i think i remember a a part of a very early version did and changes were made because it did, but that might have been something else)
There have been a couple launches where some solar radiation caused damage or a problem with the stage 2 and they all came down and burned up before they made their planned orbit. On occasion, there may be a faulty satellite that doesn't reach its proper orbit after launch and instead comes down instead.
Short of an error during launches, it's all planned.
-
I've heard starlink is faster than fiber by a few nanoseconds and big finance really wants that for their high-speed trading
most of its signals move though space, compared to the glass in fiber so it sorta makes sense
Its not, light is the fastest AND isnt as interuptuble and lag induced as satalite. A wired connection will ALWAYS have lesslatency to a sat link.
-
Its not, light is the fastest AND isnt as interuptuble and lag induced as satalite. A wired connection will ALWAYS have lesslatency to a sat link.
The problem with fiber is it isn't direct, and the satellites do use lasers (light!) to travel longer distances. The longer the distance the bigger edge satellite internet gets.
-
I've heard starlink is faster than fiber by a few nanoseconds and big finance really wants that for their high-speed trading
most of its signals move though space, compared to the glass in fiber so it sorta makes sense
It depends on the distance, but yes. Those laser interlinks are fast.
-
I've heard starlink is faster than fiber by a few nanoseconds and big finance really wants that for their high-speed trading
most of its signals move though space, compared to the glass in fiber so it sorta makes sense
Line of site is a thing......
-
This post did not contain any content.
I miss dial up. Like local providers with 2 or 3 numbers to try.
-
Its not, light is the fastest AND isnt as interuptuble and lag induced as satalite. A wired connection will ALWAYS have lesslatency to a sat link.
light in a vacuum is fastest
light in glass is slower than that
actually think about this before you reply
-
It was basically up to the states this time around, they could allocate BEAD funds more or less as they wanted and absolutely build fiber out to the vast majority of residences (look at North Dakota, it's evidently possible) through models like municipal fiber.
Ultimately it's a political issue more than anything else, Americans just can't get anything done anymore, politicians would rather enrich themselves and voters only care about the culture war.
I wish there was more municipal fiber. It's absolutely insane that the big ISPs fight it and often win.
-
there's nothing better than optic fiber because nothing can be faster than light
Edit: as comment below says optic fiber isn't actually faster, but still better because it has lower packet loss, is cheaper and not owned by elon musk
That's...not really a cogent argument.
Satellites connect to ground using radio/microwave (or even laser), all of which are electromagnetic radiation and travel at the speed of light (in vacuum).
Light in a fiber travels much more slowly than in vacuum --- light in fiber travels at around 67% the speed of light in vacuum (depends on the fiber). In contrast, signals through cat7 twisted pair (Ethernet) can be north of 75%, and coaxial cable can be north of 80% (even higher for air dielectric). Note that these are all carrying electromagnetic waves, they're just a) not in free space and b) generally not optical frequency, so we don't call them light, but they are still governed by the same equations and limitations.
If you want to get signals from point A to point B fastest (lowest latency), you don't use fiber, you probably use microwaves: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/private-microwave-networks-financial-hft/
Finally, the reason fiber is so good is complicated, but has to do with the fact that "physics bandwidth" tends to care about fractional bandwidth ("delta frequency divided by frequency"), whereas "information bandwidth" cares about absolute bandwidth ("delta frequency"), all else being equal (looking at you, SNR). Fiber uses optical frequencies, which can be hundreds of THz --- so a tiny fractional bandwidth is a huge absolute bandwidth.
-
That's...not really a cogent argument.
Satellites connect to ground using radio/microwave (or even laser), all of which are electromagnetic radiation and travel at the speed of light (in vacuum).
Light in a fiber travels much more slowly than in vacuum --- light in fiber travels at around 67% the speed of light in vacuum (depends on the fiber). In contrast, signals through cat7 twisted pair (Ethernet) can be north of 75%, and coaxial cable can be north of 80% (even higher for air dielectric). Note that these are all carrying electromagnetic waves, they're just a) not in free space and b) generally not optical frequency, so we don't call them light, but they are still governed by the same equations and limitations.
If you want to get signals from point A to point B fastest (lowest latency), you don't use fiber, you probably use microwaves: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/private-microwave-networks-financial-hft/
Finally, the reason fiber is so good is complicated, but has to do with the fact that "physics bandwidth" tends to care about fractional bandwidth ("delta frequency divided by frequency"), whereas "information bandwidth" cares about absolute bandwidth ("delta frequency"), all else being equal (looking at you, SNR). Fiber uses optical frequencies, which can be hundreds of THz --- so a tiny fractional bandwidth is a huge absolute bandwidth.
Light in a fiber travels much more slowly than in vacuum — light in fiber travels at around 67% the speed of light in vacuum
I'm a complete laymen when it comes to this, but this sounds like it would pertain to latency rather than bandwidth. I expect that fiber would have a much higher data capacity than satellite.
-
This post did not contain any content.
Better get to work laying cable.
-
Light in a fiber travels much more slowly than in vacuum — light in fiber travels at around 67% the speed of light in vacuum
I'm a complete laymen when it comes to this, but this sounds like it would pertain to latency rather than bandwidth. I expect that fiber would have a much higher data capacity than satellite.
Yep, you're right --- I was just responding to parent's comment about fiber being best because nothing is faster than light
-
there's nothing better than optic fiber because nothing can be faster than light
Edit: as comment below says optic fiber isn't actually faster, but still better because it has lower packet loss, is cheaper and not owned by elon musk
This has got a scary amount of up votes, especially considering that this is the 'technology' community.
Radiowaves are also 'light' and infact as many others have mentioned so eloquently, light travelling through air is faster than light travelling through glass. The reasons why fiber is better are - better stability because of lower packet loss and interference, better efficiency because of lower attenuation and losses due to diffusion, reflection, and other processes when traveling in a fiber optic cable, and more bandwidth because we can use more favourable frequencies in optic cables (@qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website explains it perfectly in another reply to the parent comment)
-
Do you mean works or falls out of the sky routinely to litter the earth? We build lots as far as smaller ISPs go. You just don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.
Starlink is designed to demise on re-entry. It's a core criteria.
-
Starlink demises on re-entry.
-
This post did not contain any content.
Pros of fibre:
- cheaper: much cheaper than copper or satellites.
- faster: latency is faster than copper and wireless (to satellite).
- very high bandwidth: theoretically unlimited. In practice a commercial fibre optic multicore run for domestic use at street/town level will be pushing ~800Gb/a, and this number generally doubles every few years as tech advances. The new spec being finalised is 1.6Pb/s.
- high stability: does not give a crap if it's cloudy, foggy, or rainy, or if the trees have wet leaves, or if it's just a very humid day, unlike all forms of outdoor wireless comms. Does not care about lightning strikes, as copper does.
- long life: 25 to 30 years life quoted for most industrial in-ground fibre, but real life span is expected to be much longer based on health checks on deployed cable in countries with large fibre rollouts. Upgradable without replacing the medium throughout that lifecycle.
- lowest power usage: fibre optic uses far less power and energy than 4G 5G and satellite infrastructure.
Cons of nationwide fibre:
- billionaires who launched thousands of satellites make less money.
- monopoly Internet Service Providers won't be able to fleece their cable internet customers some of the highest charges for net access in the world.
- people will tell you "uhm acktually wireless internet is the speed of light also as it communicates via photons", but will usually leave out all of the interference it experiences.
There's nothing better than fibre optic infrastructure for general public Internet connectivity. Wireless/satellite should only be a last resort for remote users.
-
This post did not contain any content.
Shouldn't the 5G covid brain control serum chip nanobot people be upset about this?
-
Starlink is designed to demise on re-entry. It's a core criteria.
What does that mean to you exactly? All the ones that burnt up early weren’t designed for that lmao
-
That's...not really a cogent argument.
Satellites connect to ground using radio/microwave (or even laser), all of which are electromagnetic radiation and travel at the speed of light (in vacuum).
Light in a fiber travels much more slowly than in vacuum --- light in fiber travels at around 67% the speed of light in vacuum (depends on the fiber). In contrast, signals through cat7 twisted pair (Ethernet) can be north of 75%, and coaxial cable can be north of 80% (even higher for air dielectric). Note that these are all carrying electromagnetic waves, they're just a) not in free space and b) generally not optical frequency, so we don't call them light, but they are still governed by the same equations and limitations.
If you want to get signals from point A to point B fastest (lowest latency), you don't use fiber, you probably use microwaves: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/private-microwave-networks-financial-hft/
Finally, the reason fiber is so good is complicated, but has to do with the fact that "physics bandwidth" tends to care about fractional bandwidth ("delta frequency divided by frequency"), whereas "information bandwidth" cares about absolute bandwidth ("delta frequency"), all else being equal (looking at you, SNR). Fiber uses optical frequencies, which can be hundreds of THz --- so a tiny fractional bandwidth is a huge absolute bandwidth.
Microwave point-to-point radios are fastest because they travel through air, but more importantly, are typically the shortest path possible by line-of-sight.
Being 66.7% of speed of light doesn't matter terribly when you consider that the cable path is shorter by more than 66.7% of path taken by satelite link.
