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Comment by arcticfox | Hacker News Reader

I'm really confused what is going on here.

It's really baffling how someone motivated and talented enough to make such a tracking site would have such an odd opinion section.

Obviously, Starlink is not the best choice in all situations, but it is so compelling on some dimensions that such a flatly negative opinion is bizarre for anyone with even a cursory understanding of what's going on.

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What dimension? It's not competitive for anyone who can get high-speed internet right now, and it's not clear if it will complete with traditional satellite in cost.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1272363466288820224

This is demonstrably false. Look at the YouTube video posted this week that simulated delayed. The best delay, with only hops between satellites, was 40ms or so. That didn't account for any of the higher later delays or transport network.

Good thing then that SpaceX has enough ground stations that no hops are required in the continental US.

I'm referring to the satellite to gateway hops. There absolutely are many of those just to cross the continental US. The satellite altitude is such that it only covers a small part of CONUS before it has to have off to another satellite.

Why would they use satellite hops for those? They'll just put your packet onto an internet backbone fiber. Starlink is last mile service, not backbone.

You're comparing apples to oranges. The 40ms in that video is for Seattle to NY via multiple satellite hops, which is a hypothetical configuration. Elon's tweet is talking about one hop only, from satellite to ground station, which is the intended configuration for v1. There will be dozens or hundreds of ground stations in the US to support this.

For existing GEO satellites, the equivalent measurement is 600ms. That's the relevant comparison. With just 20ms added on top of regular internet latency it would still be usable for competitive gaming at all but the highest levels, as the tweet says.

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