- cross-posted to:
- FuckThis@europe.pub
- cross-posted to:
- FuckThis@europe.pub
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I’m so glad other countries are coming up with their own satellites just for the expressed interest to boycott musk.
Telsat Lightspeed, from the Canadian company that invented commercial domestic satellite communications in 1971.
Kessler syndrome here we come!
Ok then Go yell at musk about it.
Why? That won’t accomplish much.
I just want people to know we are Fucked. This stupid fucking satellite Internet race is going to destroy Earth’s orbital infrastructure.
Oh hell no. Fuck off with this won’t stand up to the bully but will stand on everyone else you think you can bully bullshit.
You are being the exact reason we are fucked.
Coward.
We have to stand up together, there’s literally nothing I can do by myself. That’s why I need to let people know, so they stand with me.
I’m sorry if you feel like you’re being bullied.
No, please no
We don’t need thousands of satellites to provide internet, the entire idea and design of Starlink is utterly stupid.
I can look up at the sky not and see stars and… Those fucking star link satellites.
We’re already close enough to a Kessler effect scenario without adding thousands of satellites, and with governments world wide now ready to just shoot satellites (seriously, can everyone please stop voting for dumb fucks while we’re at it?) can we please PLEASE stop this?
Just use fiber internet or where not possible, use geostationary satellites. We don’t need semi low latency everywhere
There are areas of the planet where there is no signal or fibre. Clearly as you and I are capable of posting on an online social; you and I are not in one of these dead spots but they do exist. And some of these areas have to exist in order to provide sustainable lifestyle for the other more built up areas (farmland gets left in the dark much of the time)
Just something to think about before you run around running your mouth talking down with privilege of where you’re speaking about it.
And before you even utter the phrase ‘they should…’ or ‘someone should’
No. Stop. You first. you’re someone. You up end your life and go live there and fix it ‘sustainably’ and bump into all the problems with your online solutions and work it out and fix it before you talk about what everyone else should be doing in areas and lifestyles you don’t care to exist in enough to empathize or understand yet still benefit from.
And why is it only a problem with OTHER COUNTRIES do it while you sit there mute as musk does it?? So it’s all ok that he does it under the name of capitalism but should any other country act in their own agency you suddenly get all crunchy about it?
No. Absolutely not buying this ‘ok for me but not ok for thee’ bull rap.
There are areas of the planet where there is no signal or fibre.
So, we should take the billions per train launch, and install microwave backhauls and cellular service to cover those dead zones.
If they have electricity, than fiber is practical. For the tiny few that don’t, fine. But even then, for the billions invested in launching these satellite clusters, it just might be cheaper to build a handful of crazy long terrestrial microwave links.
Honestly, I think starlink is a fantastic idea in general, but this is clearly bullshit. Starlink works well in tandem with fiber, not as a replacement.
It’s just never going to be as cost effective as installed fiber. Fiber is obviously the right technology to use in heavily populated areas i.e. for the vast majority of Internet users. And where the population is sparse and laying fiber for individual customers is cost prohibitive, that is where satellite connectivity shines. If SpaceX or anyone else is pretending otherwise, they’re being blatantly deceitful and malicious. That’s not in Internet users’ best interest.
Starlink works well in tandem with fiber, not as a replacement.
It doesn’t even work well in tandem.
Starlink has a single benefit going for it right now: Lack of uptake.
They only have a swath of spectrum, and that has a physical upper limit to how much information it can carry, in total. So does fiber. But, Starlink gets to share that with all users (Much like how cable internet works, its shared bandwidth for everyone on the loop). Fiber, you get your dedicated pipe.
This isn’t even getting to view obstruction (A plane will cause a drop out), latency, jitter, etc. These are all physics problem that just cannot be solved without violating the laws of physics. Latency, at a minimum, is 2.6 ms, and that’s just for the first leg.
It’s crazy to say it doesn’t work well in tandem… I mean, it’s demonstrable, If it didn’t work, people wouldn’t use it, but they do. And there is no other way to reach users in some places. Starlink can reach users that only a long range wireless solution can work for. There are some other long range wireless solutions, but this one does work.
Look, I don’t like Elon, I don’t like monopolies, I’m not a secret shill for SpaceX, but I can admit the truth right in front of me. You don’t have to stretch the truth to say Starlink isn’t a good system for the vast majority of people, so why do it? Why create a false narrative? Why get all defensive about a technology?
And finally, I do not see any reason to care about an extra 5 ms latency.
And there is no other way to reach users in some places.
There is, if we decided to instead of giving Elon billions every few months, we used that money to expand the fiber networks.
Starlink can reach users that only a long range wireless solution can work for. There are some other long range wireless solutions, but this one does work.
There are myriad technology solutions that are both viable, and already being used. Capitalism means we don’t deploy them. Oligarchy means we instead choose to do things that are more expensive, but happen to benefit a friendly oligarch.
You don’t have to stretch the truth to say Starlink isn’t a good system for the vast majority of people, so why do it?
Except, it isn’t. Its just the one with the hype.
Some people live in places that aren’t connected to large electrical grids, they have local generation and micro grids for a small community. Isolated mountains or small islands, or deserts are good examples of these situations. So if connecting to the electrical grid wasn’t realistic I’m willing to bet that a fiber connection also isn’t realistic.
It’s hard to believe you think fiber can work for literally everything. I really don’t know why you’re bothering to dig in on this issue, it’s so easy to prove otherwise. I hadn’t even mentioned the use case of vehicles yet, boats, planes, trains, trucks, campers, obviously you can’t run fiber to a vehicle. Or truly remote locations where people don’t live, but researches work there, Antarctic bases, etc.
Also, I think you misunderstood my last line. I’m saying Starlink isn’t right for most people. I’m just not making things up to say that.
So if connecting to the electrical grid wasn’t realistic I’m willing to bet that a fiber connection also isn’t realistic.
If fiber isn’t possible due to electrical grids being non-existent… A power hungry sat transceiver will likely be a non-starter, too.
It’s hard to believe you think fiber can work for literally everything.
I don’t think it can. I also don’t think Starlink can work for literally everything, either. There are better, and faster, and cheaper solutions like Microwave backhauls and cellular data service for the last mile.
I hadn’t even mentioned the use case of vehicles yet, boats, planes, trains, trucks, campers, obviously you can’t run fiber to a vehicle.
Boats are the one outlier here, that cannot be reach via cell service, with a fraction of the cost of Starlink. And sure, boats can use it, and boats should pay the full cost of the package. No need for government money to fund them, they didn’t need it before, and don’t need it now. Boaters were quite satisfied paying their Iridium bills in the past.
In France they authorised air hanging fiber, so they just use electric poles and hang the fiber under the 220 volt lines, as a last resort.
Cheap as hell. Or, where there’s a will there is a way.
We do this in some parts of America too. My grandmother’s local electric co-op provided fiber to her house this way in the middle of know where.
Starlink still requires ground stations, and those ground stations can and are a limiting factor. I was up at a cabin that had Starlink, and service is still in the “better than nothing” phase.
There is concern for fucking up things like radio telescopes. Also, creating a Kessler syndrome event. “But LEO wouldn’t have an issue with that because it would burn up”. Two things:
- Everything in LEO being destroyed is still really bad. Astronauts would likely die.
- Objects in lower orbits can get ejected into higher orbits and hit things there. Kessler sydrome in LEO could potentially start a chain reaction in higher orbits.
Plus, the EU and China are understandably worried about Musk being the only game up there and want to deploy their own equivalent systems. So now there’s not just one system of satellites threatening Kessler syndrome, but possibly three.
Just roll out fiber everywhere like we have with electricity.
While it is possible for objects in orbit to be knocked into a higher orbit, it’s certainly not common. It basically requires a collision with another object in a highly elliptical orbit, this is not a kind of orbit we use very often.
Also, these low orbit constellations are simply nowhere near the majority of satellites, up in geostationary orbit. It’s not realistic to imagine any debris from LEO ever reaching GSO, the distance between is just too vast. In general, Kessler syndrome would only extend downward from higher orbit, extending up to a higher orbit would be extremely unlikely.
Also, while astronauts could die, we keep enough emergency escape vehicles docked for the entire iss crew. NASA is full of smart people and they’re generally risk adverse these days, I don’t think anyone would die, but it would certainly be a shame to evacuate the iss.
Plus, the EU and China are understandably worried about Musk being the only game up there and want to deploy their own equivalent systems. So now there’s not just one system of satellites threatening Kessler syndrome, but possibly three.
This is in fact a worrying situation. Not because I think Kesler syndrome is a realistic concern, but because there’s only so much space in low earth orbit. I really don’t like one company having a monopoly on low orbit communications, but having layers and layers of satellite constellations also seems like a dangerous situation.
Just roll out fiber everywhere like we have with electricity.
I’m all for that in theory, but whenever we dedicate funds to that cause… telecoms just walk away with it. If the US isn’t interested in holding them accountable, I don’t really see any reason to throw more money their way. That said, Starlink is doing fine, I see no reason to throw money at them either.
lets get down to the real reason he wants to do this. he would be able to turn off connection for millions if they piss him off, or hand over the data to said political actors like putin or trump, also to manipulate future elections like he did last time.
I’m a starlink customer and think it’s one of the best advancements in the past decade as it provides real access to rural addresses. The side effects of this is nearly immeasurable.
Spacex needs to STFU about this though. Fiber should continue to be deployed where possible.
The side effects include filling orbit with space junk, crashing satellites to Earth, and blinding our ability to see meteors with a collision course for Earth. The side effects may not be predictable, but they’re definitely measurable.
Seriously, this is in the “well, we know you want all the free money you can get, but: no. Now go do your thing on your own dime.”
Fiber in the ground is infrastructure like paved roads. Satellites? One counter-orbiting frag bomb can take out a satellite constellation in less than a day.
Fiber also has far better performance that satellite can never match.
there’s no fundamental physics limitation that makes this true. in fact, light in a vacuum travels faster than in glass fiber, so the theoretical latency of LEO internet is actually faster compared to fiber over a certain distance
This makes no sense on the face of it. Let’s say the satellites are 100 km (or miles) above the earth. If I was to connect to a server 10 km (or miles) away, my complete route over fiber is 10 km. My complete route over satellite is just over 200 km (assuming it’s between those two points). Now, let’s say the server is 500 km (we’ll assume the earth is flat over this expanse, even though that’s about 5° around the earth). So our fiber link has to go 500 km, more or less. Our satellite link has to go about 540 km, best case scenario. If we raise those satellites, it only gets worse (it’s probably closer to 860, best case scenario, for satellites at 350 km).
I just did a quick check, and the curvature of the earth over that 500 km scenario is about 20 km (it won’t be 20 miles for 500 miles).
Now, you might start to argue that were talking about straight lines, and that’s true for satellites but not for fiber. And that might be true. But we’ve already shown that the hop to space and back is already increasing that distance by 60% or more. But those two or so straight lines are just til you get to the Starlink hub, so you aren’t going to reduce this much more than the numbers above. And yes, fiber will have some extra distance due to following the grid rather than straight lines. But, again, that only matters to the ISP hub and then you’re back to the same distances.
The other argument you listed is the speed of light in space/atmosphere vs. fiber, and it’s a valid point. Not there are some interesting things done with guiding light to the center of the fiber, which is another way of saying there are multiple refractive indexes, but let’s go with a refractive index of 1.5. That means the speed of light in glass is 2/3×c, or that light in space can go about 50% farther. And that’s about the added distance for using LEO satellites.
tldr: All the benefits of transmitting through air or space are basically negated by the added distance, where the best-case scenario is only slightly better than the worst-case scenario for fiber.
Satellites need to orbit at some distance above the planet though, so the round trip will always be fairly long even for ones with a pretty close orbit.
For nieve signal distances, that can sometimes be true. That’s not how starlink works however. It bounces the signal between satellites, each adding latency. Overall, fibre wins in almost every situation.
The bigger problem is saturation. Most things you can apply to radio waves can be applied to light in a fibre. The difference is you can have multiple fibres on the same run. This massively increases bandwidth, and so prevents congestion.
Just checked the numbers. Starlink is up at 550km. That means a minimum round trip of 1100km. In order to beat a fibre run, you are looking at over 2000km distance. Even halving that to (optimistically) account for angles, that’s still a LONG run to an initial data center.
Fiber should be deployed to rural addresses like yours (and should’ve been a long time ago). Instead, that money was funneled to the likes of Time Warner and Comcast who never even followed through on their part of the deal. Now, SpaceX is getting funneled the cash.
I’m super thankful that WA State supports and gives assistance to counties building out public LUDs for fiber access, many paying attention to rural communities first. I escaped Comcast two years ago because of it.
It can’t, and the taxes you would pay to support fiber to my home would be extreme.
But fiber to a local wireless solution? Sure. But even that’s not possible for everyone, and they were expensive and unreliable until starlink started showing up. LEO internet has its benefits.
We can definitely afford it, especially with LUDs plus federal subsidies. That’s literally what they’re for.
Except that US ISPs have already been provided upwards of $80b to roll out a fiber optic backbone for rural connections, and have instead largely pocketed the funds and sat on their hands.
It has largely fallen to smaller communities to incorporate their own local ISPs and manage their own roll-outs, as such projects aren’t viewed as worthwhile for private companies.
Honestly, if Australia could roll out a national fiber backbone (almost a decade ago!) across the same approximate landmass as the contiguous 48 states at less than 10% of the overall population; there is no valid reason that the wealthiest nation to have ever existed can’t also do so.
Even if a Federal program (not under this administration, obviously) was to just run fibre parallel to the existing interstate highways, and leave the last (20) miles to local utilities - it would be cheaper, faster and more reliable than LEO - and without all the additional negatives that come with that!
Honestly, if Australia could roll out a national fiber backbone (almost a decade ago!) across the same approximate landmass as the contiguous 48 states at less than 10% of the overall population; there is no valid reason that the wealthiest nation to have ever existed can’t also do so.
Did Australia lay a national backbone as you said, or did they connect individual neighborhoods, or individual homes? Because all three of those are very different situations with very different costs associated.
I mean the US has had a national fiber backbone since 1995, but that doesn’t really mean anything about fiber to the home. I’m not sure rolling out a fiber backbone 10 years ago is really anything to brag about. However, extending the backbone to connect neighborhoods would be extremely helpful in lowering the costs to get fiber to the home, if that’s what they did in Australia, then that would indeed be laudable. If at the national level, they payed for fiber rollout to every home or every street… Well that would surprise me, but that would also be awesome!
So yeah, what did they do?
Edited to add: sorry, backbone was probably the wrong term to use.
The actual history of Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) is actually needlessly complicated - primarily due to a (somewhat) successful sabotage attempt by our Conservative government in the early 2010s.
But basically, every single new home is built with Fiber to the Home, and every single metropolitan and suburban home either has Fiber to the Home (or Premises), or at the very least Fiber to the Curb through a remediation process to replace the Conservative-implemented Fiber to the Node boondoggle.
We also have a number of neighbourhoods stuck with HFC (again due to Conservstice sabotage) which while still delivering 100+ Mbit connections - are a bit of a technical dead end and will need to be remediated at some point in the future.
Basically, nbnCo serves as a national broadband wholesaler providing high speed connectivity (100, 250, 500, Gigabit) to something like >95% of the population.
The most remote communities are also serviced either through a fixed wireless option or satellite.
Basically though, unlike the US we don’t have a significant number of people still on dial-up and haven’t had so for a very long time.
I’m sure we could afford it from muskrat’s government contracts ( our tax money )
Fiber should be deployed to rural addresses like yours
I don’t disagree, it should be deployed to rural areas. It’s never going to happen though, it’s just not profitable.
Sure, electrical infrastructure was deployed to the whole country, but it doesn’t need to be replaced and upgraded as frequently as Internet infrastructure does. Even if some rural areas do get fiber at some point, don’t expect the infrastructure to be upgraded regularly enough to stay comparable to denser areas.
You’re never going to find a company willing to do that job. We could do it at the national level, but I have my doubts that the country is headed in that direction.
That’s what the subsidies are for. Plus, fiber does not necessarily need to be upgraded after installation (especially rural, where there’s less customers in general). It’s not copper or coax, it doesn’t have the same limits, and can usually handle huge amounts of data (the limit primarily being the transceivers at both ends). The costs of upgrading would also likely be lower than the initial install, something that couldn’t be said about providers like Starlink. Fiber is about the most efficient, cost effective (especially in the long term), and future proof way to provide internet. Starlink is overall much more expensive to maintain.
But yes, without the local, state, and/or federal governments supporting it, people in rural areas won’t have a choice.
That’s what the subsidies are for.
Yeah I’m not in favor of that, not again. The US has provided funding to ISPs to be used explicitly in expanding rural broadband access, we’ve done it on multiple occasions. Every time ISPs simply pocket the money and do nothing.
Fool me once, twice, three times…
So hey, if the US wants to have the FCC do it themselves, just hire crews to lay fiber, then sure. It’ll be inefficient and expensive, but it would at least get done. But I’m not in favor of giving a dime to the existing ISPs…
You miss my point. My original comment says as much, that the subsidies all went to big telecom, but it should have gone to local utility districts for local buildouts of fiber. I’m literally sending this message from my LUD-funded fiber that my state subsidized, and my ISP is a local company exclusive to my county’s fiber network. It’s fantastic, and what should be getting the funding instead of Comcast, Time Warner, and now SpaceX.
Most of the addresses my LUD serves are unincorporated, including mine. So, it actually is possible, if your state and county give enough of a shit.
Well you’re absolutely right then, sorry for the confusion.
Nationalized fiber networks or locally managed municipal fiber has always been a winning proposition. I’ve heard so many success stories about those rollouts and the only opposition to them has come from big ISPs who are scared they’ll be replaced (because they should be). Unfortunately, that’s a really strong opposition… Those ISPs have so much money and so much power, they’re managing to shift legislation, pass laws that make municipal fiber systems illegal (for the benefit of the consumers of course).
Hello neighbor!
Time Warner and Comcast need to have all that grant money clawed back. They contracted with the taxpayers to deliver a service and they didn’t even make a good faith effort to start.
Starlink has been much better than every other option where I am, but I will switch to fiber as soon as it gets here.
They’ve been promising fiber here for over a decade, but I can finally see them installing it two miles up the road now. Hopefully it will actually be available sometime soon.
What’s wrong with 4g? I live in a rural region and have been using it for years
For me? 40/5 was about the best I could get. Mountains between me and the towers.
Unreliable, high latency, slow bandwidth and data caps?
None of the issues you mentioned are 4G issues in itself. Do you realize the sarellite is much further away than 4g tower? It sounds like bad ISP. I have none of said issues. Even gaming is great, getting around 20-30ping on local country servers.
I’m not defending satellites, I’m saying fiber is much superior at all the things I mentioned above.
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Yeah, because all the gamers love to play online with a 3 second latency.
Those dial up days on avp2 were peak gaming though. I don’t want them to return, but I remember those days very well.
The term "tech neutral’ brings back terrible memories of the conservative Liberal successful campaign in #auspol against the #NBN (national broadband network) 😞
I got a better idea: a civil war against oligarchs
all you can eat latency and an oversaturated network on devices with a limited lifespan… what else could you ask for!
A subscription that somehow still manages to use surge pricing? I’m assuming that’s the next logical step.
Starlink has much better latency than most satellites, but still 10 to 50 times as much as fiber.
Just for reference, I get about 45-50 ping playing Marvel Rivals on Starlink.
That’s basically perfect, with regards to online gaming.
I got better ping playing Quake multiplayer in 1996
That used dedicated servers, right?
Online and not LAN? I have doubts.
On fiber, while I don’t play that game, I’ve never seen a ping longer than 10-13msecs.
The point is, unless you’re playing some hyper competitive game where a 30ms difference in reaction time is noticeable (this is less than 1 frame in a fighting game, for example) Starlink works perfectly well. Lower numbers are better, but for games you only need to compare that number to human reaction times (150-200ms) to see that both are small values less than the reaction time of any person.
Previous satellite Internet using satellites in geosynchronous orbit had 1500ms latency, for comparison.
Previous satellite Internet using satellites in geosynchronous orbit had 1500ms latency, for comparison.
Yes, and are far more stable, not hyped, and are already at pretty much peak congestion. Starlink will get progressively worse, the more people use it. Right now, it’s over provisioned.
The point is, unless you’re playing some hyper competitive game where a 30ms difference in reaction time is noticeable (
Ever try a voice call with 30ms of latency?
Yes, and are far more stable, not hyped, and are already at pretty much peak congestion. Starlink will get progressively worse, the more people use it. Right now, it’s over provisioned.
They were not more stable. Any occlusion, including thick clouds, would degrade the signal to being unusable. I used Hughsnet for years, then swapped to cellular (100ms+ latency) and finally to Starlink. Starlink is a pretty solid 100Mb/s, with low jitter, packet loss and latency.
Ever try a voice call with 30ms of latency?
Yeah, I use voice chat every day, it’s not noticeable.
They were not more stable. Any occlusion, including thick clouds, would degrade the signal to being unusable
You have the same issue with Starlink…
Yeah, I use voice chat every day, it’s not noticeable.
The people on the call do…
Ever try a voice call with 30ms of latency?
Lol what? You’re not gonna notice a 30ms delay in a voice call…
@ubergeek@lemmy.today downvote with no reply even though you were painfully wrong. Sad.
And I’ll downvote ya again, if I could :)
FWIW, I don’t owe you a reply :)
Yeh, 30ms is still inside the haas delay.
If you are a professional listener (sound engineer, musician, dancer) then you can probably perceive it (in a similar way that eyes theoretically only need 25fps, but 60/120/144 is noticeably better).In 30ms, sound can travel 10 meters.
So, if you’ve ever had a conversation with someone across a classroom, you’ve had a conversation with 30ms latency.For data, 30ms is 8100 km for electricity over copper, or 6000km for light over fibre.
Meaning 30ms over fibre (considering no transmission delays) would be roughly the direct distance between US and UK.
So yeh, 30ms is nothing
ha yeah… not having to make a 340 mile round trip instead of the hundreds of feet to the nearest router will do that
Uh, how often are you using the Internet to connect to a computer in your home town? Maybe 5% of the time?
I’ve never used Starlink, but with a basic understanding of geography and optics, I’m going to bet that in most scenarios the latency difference between Starlink and fiber is negligible, sometimes even being faster on Starlink, depending on the situation.
That said, I’m not suggesting Starlink is a realistic replacement for fiber, just that latency isn’t the big issue. (It has other serious issues)
Much more frequently than you think with CDN endpoints.
Ok, so actual question, How useful are CDN endpoints these days with https everywhere? Because most encrypted content is unique to a single web user, caching isn’t super useful. Also you can’t cache live content like video calls or online games. I’d imagine the percentage of cacheable content is actually fairly low these days. But like I said, I don’t actually know the answer to this, i’d be curious to hear your take.
Edit: it’s weird to get down votes for a question.
Netflix and Amazon Outpost makes it quite useful.
HTTPS can in fact be cached, and most modern browsers will do so unless given a header or something to tell it not to.
Source: Devtools network tab + https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Guides/Caching
Browsers partition the cache by “origin” now though, so while it can cache HTTPS content, it can’t effectively cache shared content (It’ll store multiple independent copies).
So Youtube still works fine, but Google Fonts is pointless now.
Edit: Oh yeah, and any form of shared JavaScript/CSS/etc. CDN is now also useless and should be avoided, but that’s always been the case.
HTTPS / TLS has little to do with it. Don’t think of the endpoint as a cache between you and the origin. The DNS name given to the endpoint is the origin from your browser’s perspective. How content gets cached on the backend is irrelevant to the browser. Live video that someone else in your area is also watching is cacheable. Images to load a page, very cacheable. The personal stuff is mostly HTML specific to you but that’s quite small.
Living right near a massive CX that services the US-Canada border… most times.
So if my ping is currently 90ms on fiber, it’ll become 900ms - 4.5s on starlink?
Probably no. Your ping is abnormally high for fiber, I’d expect a sub 10ms ping for you.
That makes a lot of assumptions about what I am pinging, and the networking context.
In my case I was quoting my average ping in VRChat.
How can you quote 10-50 times higher and then tell me no when I calculate what that means for me?
Is it because latency does not scale in that way?
Of course. Still, an exception doesn’t disprove expected averages.
So you were only talking about when testing with ideal servers? Why is my example an exception? Are all games an exception?
Because we’re talking about the inherent latency of the connection, obviously.
- Run a
tracerouteliketraceroute cnn com - Kill that by
ctrl-cat the third line. - Ping that third IP address.
Don’t try to ping UK.battle.net or your numbers will be skewed by everything in between.
About 5ms.
Based on the various replies, it sounds like the poster I was originally replying to does not mean pings in any context.
They just mean in this context. Along optimal routes. Right?
So then 10x makes 50ms; sounds about right
Of course they don’t mean in every case. Yeah, if you have to go halfway around the world from two addresses that are very far away from hubs, Starlink might be better. 99.99999% of the time this isn’t happening though and fiber will be better. There are situations for some people where it’s worth it. Fiber is better for the average case though, and it’s where money should be invested.
- Run a
You’re probably really far away from the VR Chat server. Try pinging Google or Cloudflare, which will tell you ping to the nearest datacenter (a rough estimate of ping caused by your local ISP).
Based on their numbers, you could probably expect 50-100ms to Google, and then add an extra 90ms to get from there to your VR Chat server.
My personal fiber connection gets under 2ms ping on Speedtest
It depends on the instance (people can make them in 4 regions of the world) but 90ms is common for US west and east, for me.
- Cloudflare.com: 5ms
- Google.com: 24ms
That makes sense then. When people talk about their ISP ping, they’re usually talking about how long it takes to get out of the ISP’s network. So that 5ms Cloudflare ping is likely pretty close to what people would consider your internet’s ping.
Speedtest.net is a really common tool for measuring this, since it will automatically check where the closest server is. For your connection, any ping above 5ms you can probably assume is based on your physical distance to the server, or latency on the server’s end. I’m guessing Google doesn’t have a server quite as close to you as Cloudflare
My average latency on Starlink over the past year is 32 ms. It varies throughout the day from around 20 to 40 ms.
If you are getting 90ms on fiber, you are either pinging a server that’s a long ways away or something is very wrong.
If you look at the rest of the comments, you’ll see I was taking about my ping in a game. Not my shortest path to a nearby server.
Well, to be fair, the dishes do make great outdoor cat beds!
Weird, that sounds anti-competitive.
Musk = POS Nazi.
They’re welcome to say that, as long as their ruler doesn’t enter the political or policy arena and have the moral depravity to act despite a conflict of interest. As long as corporations don’t have undue influence on politics from lobbying or donations.
We don’t have to listen.
Our representatives should be representing us. …… alright alright you can stop laughing now
Well I say starlink and f’elon can suck my ass.
Fibre is an investment that can be used and upgraded for decades. Starlink is a subscription service forever to a private company.
And upgrading is piss cheap. Just change transceivers.
Same fiber cable that does 1gbps can do 100tbps.
That’s not true… There are different types of fiber with different throughputs depending on the class of the cable and the length of the installation.
Technically that’s true.
You just need to lay the 100Tb/s capable cable in the first place.It is true.
Multimode (what I think you’re trying to reference) isn’t used in distance applications at all, it’s only for short in-building links. Anything that your ISP would provide you would be single-mode. Carrier/Backbone is virtually 100% SMF as well. SMF (OS1 and OS2) don’t really have a bandwidth cap. It’s all transceivers not the fiber.
But the point is that fiber that ALREADY in the ground, you can upgrade simply by changing the transceivers. It doesn’t matter the length, SMF/MMF, or anything else… you just get a transceiver rated for the length of run (power of the led/laser, and the optics). The length is irrelevant otherwise as the presumption is that the install in the ground has been shown to work in the past already.
Old standard ITU-G.652 single-mode has been made to push multi-petabit transfers in lab environments. The only change was the transceivers. And to be clear, ITU-G.652 was standardized in 1984. Nobody rips out the fiber from the ground (caveat is that the cable itself hasn’t degraded). You just upgrade the optics/transceivers.
“It’s not the fiber that’s limiting—ITU-T G.652 defines physical specs (dispersion, attenuation), not throughput. Field trials over 96.5 km of real-world G.652 fiber showed 56.5 Tb/s using advanced DWDM and modulation
source: https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.01873
Your statement didn’t specify an application!
The context of the discussion does…
SpaceX doesn’t provide in rack or in-building connectivity.
SpaceX is an ISP. You wouldn’t have an ISP running multimode.
ISP’s absolutely run multimode. That’s how you get fiber into a building or between buildings. Different types of fiber all play a role in a network deployment.
Broad statements are misleading. OM4 multimode won’t push 10gb at 500meters no matter how good your hardware is.
Broad statements are misleading.
Ignoring the context of the discussion is even more misleading. In the context of this conversation, ISPs providing consumer connections and obtaining grant money, my statement is 100% accurate.
That’s how you get fiber into a building or between buildings.
You just said multimode can’t do significant speeds at distance, yet claim that buildings separated by distance would be connected with it? That logic doesn’t hold.
Intrabuilding or intrarack Yes, you’ll find multimode fiber occasionally. But even these rare cases are increasingly replaced by single-mode as costs drop and bandwidth needs rise.
Everything else (ISP deployments, backbones, FTTH) Single-mode fiber dominates. I haven’t seen a single ISP deploy multimode for consumer-facing services over a typical network radius (~hundreds of meters to kilometers). The only minor exception is MMF from the building network room to an apartment unit, which is irrelevant for this discussion and would be EXCEEDINGLY rare as most buildings would just copper line to the unit. But even in that case… the 20+km from the head end to the building counts for much more than the 20meters to the unit itself.
For all practical ISP purposes, single-mode fiber is what’s in the ground/on the pole, and upgrades are handled via transceivers, not ripping out the cable.
OM4 multimode won’t push 10gb at 500meters no matter how good your hardware is.
But just because you said it…
https://www.corning.com/catalog/coc/documents/application-engineering-notes/AEN075.pdf
and OM4 is suitable for distances up to 550 m
https://www.fs.com/uk/blog/om4-multimode-fiber-faq-highspeed-connectivity-guide-9499.html
OM4: Supports 10 Gbps up to 550 meters.
https://www.timbercon.com/resources/calculators/om1-om2-om3-and-om4-fiber/
OM4 Not specified 500 m* 150 m 150 m
*The IEEE has yet to officially give a distance for 10GBASE-S on OM4 fiber. The distances are decided by the IEEE in 802.3, not The TIA or ISO/IEC cabling standards. Some glass vendors say 500 m, but most are now quoting “up to 550m.”You absolutely can run OM4 at 10gbps at or over 500m depending on your optics/laser.
But Multimode was never the point of discussion as the whole thread is based around broadband services (virtually none of it serviced by multimode, if any at all) and grant money for rural area coverage. Any fiber upgrade in this scenario will 100% be SMF with no qualifiers. In my past 30 years of IT career all buried and pole mounted fiber is SMF that I’ve ever seen for an ISP. I can tell you for certainty that ever fiber I’ve buried in the past 10 years for several companies has been SMF. I’m not even sure that I’ve touched MMF in the past 5 years even in intra-rack setups, I think I might have gotten some with a government auction win about 8 years ago I wanna say? With costs of SMF at near parity for the cable itself and getting closer every year in the modules… it’s a dying form factor and was never really in use for ISP services to begin with.
My fiber ISP runs single mode to my home. And it means it’s all single mode on the pole for the neighborhood.
Multimode just isn’t used all that much anymore. We replaced all fiber links in our DCs with single mode recently. It’s just cheaper, and as the other person said: Its far more future proof.
I say that Emma Stone should divorce her husband and marry me instead.
Company says that everyone should give them money and stop using competing products.
Obvious thing to say in the land of self-interest.
