HotNets Anonymous
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2018–2021
7:55 · 106K views · Jul 20, 2018
A short visualization from HotNets researchers of routing and latency over SpaceX's proposed Starlink constellation, based on its FCC filings. It shows orbital shells, link topology and how inter-satellite routes could beat terrestrial fiber on long distances.
It is the go-to visual for how Starlink's constellation and laser links could cut global latency, linked in many satellite internet threads.
11 comments from Hacker News
This video goes a bit into the probable topology of the links and gives a good look at how the eventual constellation would look. Eventually in the full constellation there will be 4 easy links to the birds in front, behind, left and right, those 4 will stay in largely the same relative position until they reach the highest latitude of their orbit. Those alone will make an ok link with a bit of a zig zag. The tough ones are those ~180 degrees out of phase those will be crossing roughly perpendicular and at a really high speed. this video
I really recommend watching this simulation of how the Starlink Constellation would massively cut global internet latency: this video
This video [0] really puts into perspective what SpaceX is trying to accomplish. Incredible stuff if they pull it off! [0] this video
There was recently a video posted theorizing this here: this video Very interesting watch. Based off the paper: [LINK]
My understanding is it's tough to beat point to point microwave arrays for directness in a lot of cases, they're already pretty close to the straightline path between some locations. The same is basically true for the longer range low bandwidth links that curve around the Earth. Starlink is at a disadvantage because fundamentally it's pathing across a sphere with a larger radius so even when the path is direct across the Starlink cluster it still has to traverse a longer distance than the equivalent path on the ground. Adding to that the path won't always be directly across the surface of the constellation, depending on where you are and where the destination is you'll find some pockets where the link has to zig zag across the constellation slightly adding to the additional link distance. This [0] isn't necessarily a perfect representation but it does show how starlink's linking may work and how it's not a perfect net. It also doesn't account for the acquisition times for new laser links which were on the order of 20 seconds in another laser sat link test. [0] this video (it's also comparing fiber to Starlink where the best in class now is radio links generally)