Data centres critical for LEO and MEO performance

[Daniel Puchert]

South African data centres bracing for satellite explosion

South African data centres are set to play a critical role in making low-earth orbit (LEO) and medium-earth orbit (MEO) satellite services perform effectively in the country and on the continent.

While space-based Internet communication has been around for decades, the big change in recent years is that the satellites supporting this connectivity have been put into much lower orbit.

 

[Randomwasavailable]

Let me know when Starlink is officially available in South Africa. We need leaders who balance principle and pragmatism, prioritising effective solutions over rigid ideology.

 

[nicroets]

LEO is not new.

Iridium satellite constellation - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

What is new is the ability to launch satellites at a fraction of the cost using Falcon 9 with vertical landing and high reliability.

Launching satellites are now cost competitive with cel towers. Starship will tilt the scales even further.

So Starlink is really the only viable player in this space. By far the most satellites.

 

[SauRoNZA]

LEO is not new.

Iridium satellite constellation - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

What is new is the ability to launch satellites at a fraction of the cost using Falcon 9 with vertical landing and high reliability.

Launching satellites are now cost competitive with cel towers. Starship will tilt the scales even further.

So Starlink is really the only viable player in this space. By far the most satellites.

Iridium is asstastic L-band though…basically worse than dialup.

 

[cda]

This is such a stupid article. A downlink station takes what maybe a quarter of a rack these days? That and the competition for bandwidth costs would be global, SA data-centers wont make a penny.

The best bet for SA is to mandate that Starlink and others operate in SA only if the transit for the users in SA is routed through SA

 

[nicroets]

This is such a stupid article. A downlink station takes what maybe a quarter of a rack these days? That and the competition for bandwidth costs would be global, SA data-centers wont make a penny.

The best bet for SA is to mandate that Starlink and others operate in SA only if the transit for the users in SA is routed through SA

I think the article is hinting that, if SA legalizes Star Link, it's likely that that most Google and Facebook requests by Sub-Saharan Star Link users could be served by SA data centers.

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One of the killer features of Star Link it's that it's intercontinental latency will be lower than fiber because light travels faster in the upper atmosphere than through glass. This ultra low latency has applications in arbitrage trading.

What you are suggesting would ruin this feature for South Africans.

 

[cda]

One of the killer features of Star Link it's that it's intercontinental latency will be lower than fiber because light travels faster in the upper atmosphere than through glass. This ultra low latency has applications in arbitrage trading.

Might want to check your maths on that one…

 

[nicroets]

Might want to check your maths on that one…

Theoretically it can definitely beat fibre to the other continents. It's just a question of engineering.

Starlink Has Begun Delivering Promised Latency Cuts

In his January 12 SpaceX update, Elon Musk said the biggest goal for Starlink from a technical standpoint is to get the mean latency below 20 ms. He expanded by saying that given the speed of light, 8 ms is the absolute minimum latency for a satellite at 550 km. He believes they can optimize...

circleid.com

https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/somv06/starlink_latency_a_question_that_keeps_me_up_at

 

[cda]

Theoretically it can definitely beat fibre to the other continents. It's just a question of engineering.

Starlink Has Begun Delivering Promised Latency Cuts

In his January 12 SpaceX update, Elon Musk said the biggest goal for Starlink from a technical standpoint is to get the mean latency below 20 ms. He expanded by saying that given the speed of light, 8 ms is the absolute minimum latency for a satellite at 550 km. He believes they can optimize...

circleid.com

https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/somv06/starlink_latency_a_question_that_keeps_me_up_at

That is based entirely on an enormous simplification of the speed of light, not tropospheric EM field propagation which is a very different problem. Starlink is not a laser. The problem isn't latency it’s frame loss, collision management, interference, and what that all does to network flow control.

Fibre is just categorically more predictable than RF and has significantly higher bandwidth unlike an RF link which has a limited fixed spectrum shared by the clients over an area.

 

[nicroets]

Star Link has lasers between satellites.

Starlink

High-speed internet. Available almost anywhere on Earth.

www.starlink.com

Collision management and network flow control is just engineering. They are building one of the largest ISPs in the world, so they can invest in solving these issues.

Yes, there will be more sources of noise. And forward error correction (FEC) adds delays.

But arbitrage traders will be willing to accept a lower bitrate with a simpler and faster FEC algorithm. Arbitrage traders might even be willing to use data without error correction.

 

[neoprema]

South African data centres bracing for satellite explosion

South African data centres are set to play a critical role in making low-earth orbit (LEO) and medium-earth orbit (MEO) satellite services perform effectively in the country and on the continent.

While space-based Internet communication has been around for decades, the big change in recent years is that the satellites supporting this connectivity have been put into much lower orbit.

Yes, but they'll be playing a role in whoever bribes Gov officials the most so expect Chinese and Russian LEO rubbish to be the first uptake... and Starlink that refuses to be bullied into paying....