4 HN users recommended this explainer3 months2018–2023score 3.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN points to Handley's simulations whenever Starlink latency comes up, as the best visualization of orbits and why laser links could beat fiber over long distances.
Mark Handley of UCL looks at how SpaceX's November 2018 revisions to the Starlink constellation affect network behavior. The video visualizes the orbits and routing and estimates latencies, building on his earlier video and research paper.
“this guy made an excellent youtube video modeling and visualizing the satellite orbits” (HN, 2019)
this guy made an excellent youtube video modeling and visualizing the satellite orbits, the network routing paths across them, and the resulting latencies: [this video] NYC to London on the current internet is 76ms, he shows it across starlink's updated plans as working out to around 46ms. Later in the description he points out a mistake in his own math and says that starlink paths should be 8.7% faster than the video shows, so really jfk<->lhr ~ 42ms.
Models orbits, routing paths and latencies; NYC to London around 46ms.
The FCC filing has a lot of good technical details on the deployment and frequency usage. Additionally, Mark Handley has a good primer on it. It may kill actual east-west terrestrial traffic due to latency improvements: [this video] North-South will still be terrestrial.
Primer on Starlink latency improvements for east-west traffic.
Here's some great visualizations of the orbits and an explanation of what it means that the orbits are optimized for the northern hemisphere. (This confused me at first since obviously any orbit has to go just as far south as it does north of the equator.) [this video]
Visualizes orbits and explains northern hemisphere optimization.
If you want a really great visualization and latency estimates for starlink check out the models and videos this guy came up with: [this video] [link] The comment from the FCC about it not accounting for "processing [&] routing" is kindof nonsense on its face, those are not novel problems they're already done by ever other router and switch, including several other satellite networks.
Great visualization and latency estimates for Starlink.
Mark Handley has done a bunch of videos analysing this on his channel[0]. The TLDR is that there is a lot of room for Starlink to beat existing terrestrial options IF they can get the laser links working on-orbit. This video[1] shows estimates using what was known about proposed configurations in 2018 [0] [link] [1] [this video]
Estimates of Starlink beating terrestrial options if lasers work.
There were recently two simulations done on possible latencies based on the FCC filings. You can find the video simulations in the links at the bottom of this post. You can see international links that have latencies lower than the existing internet by a significant margin. Unfortunately neither of those simulations take into account that the first iteration has been changed to only use radio and no laser links. [0]: [link] [1]: [this video]
Simulation showing Starlink latencies lower than existing internet on long routes.
There's no doubt that this sort of technology can in principle deliver sub-100ms latencies. Take a look at my analysis here with inter-satellite links: [this video] And here without ISLs: [link] Now, these videos assume no queuing delay. It's really hard to guarantee low queuing delay in a traditional IP network, but there's been a lot of research over the years, and we have a range of ideas that can be used to deliver minimal queuing with reasonable utilization. In fact doing this for Starlink is something I'm actively researching at the moment. I'm convinced it can be done, but it won't look like a conventional IP network internally. I don't know what SpaceX will actually do, so if the FCC has doubts, this is perhaps where they are concerned. Other delays might be in the ground segment, but that's more or less the same for SpaceX's terestrial competitors, and the FCC seems to think they can do it.
Author's own analysis showing sub-100ms latency with inter-satellite links.
[this video] is an animation of how it's supposed to work, including latencies There are enough satelites and low enough routing on the lasers to mean packets will arrive from London to NY faster than even a great-circle fibre. In reality how much bandwidth is available is a function of money, and HFTs tend to have a lot of money.
Animation of Starlink operation including latencies.
Forward and back looking lasers would have minimal speed difference, side laser links don't appear to be at extreme speed differences according to these hypothesized connections: [this video]
Hypothesized connections showing modest speed differences across laser links.
> This might as be considered a law of physics - electromagnetic energy will always travel faster, more... through a conductive medium than through air. it actually travels faster through air (no vacuum necessary) than through fiber or copper as those transmit information at 2/3rd of the speed of light while air transmits it at 99% [1]. which is why starlink could in theory achieve better latency than a straight run of fiber optic across the world [2]. this of course doesn't mean that it's better in a mouse because of the overhead of processing such a short distance. [1] [link] [2] [this video]
Shows Starlink could beat straight fiber latency across the world.
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