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posted by chromas on Thursday June 11 2020, @06:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-ping-in-your-general-direction dept.

Ajit Pai caves to SpaceX but is still skeptical of Musk’s latency claims:

The Federal Communications Commission has reversed course on whether to let SpaceX and other satellite providers apply for rural-broadband funding as low-latency providers. But Chairman Ajit Pai said companies like SpaceX will have to prove they can offer low latencies, as the FCC does not plan to "fund untested technologies."

Pai's original proposal classified SpaceX and all other satellite operators as high-latency providers for purposes of the funding distribution, saying the companies haven't proven they can deliver latencies below the FCC standard of 100ms. Pai's plan to shut satellite companies out of the low-latency category would have put them at a disadvantage in a reverse auction that will distribute $16 billion from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF).

But SpaceX is launching low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites in altitudes ranging from 540km to 570km, a fraction of the 35,000km used with geostationary satellites, providing much lower latency than traditional satellite service. SpaceX told the FCC that its Starlink service will easily clear the 100ms cutoff, and FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly urged Pai to let LEO companies apply in the low-latency tier.

The FCC voted to approve the updated auction rules yesterday. The final order isn't public yet, but it's clear from statements by Pai and other commissioners that SpaceX and other LEO companies will be allowed to apply in the low-latency tier. The satellite companies won't gain automatic entry into the low-latency tier, but they will be given a chance to prove that they can deliver latencies below 100ms.

[...] SpaceX met with commission staff over the last few days of May, telling them that its broadband system "easily clears the commission's 100ms threshold for low-latency services, even including its 'processing time' during unrealistic worst-case scenarios." We contacted SpaceX today about the low-latency change and will update this story if we get a response.


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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @11:56AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @11:56AM (#1006240)

    From Germany,

    ping to 8.8.8.8, is 12ms
    to my cheap host: 12ms
    to pravda.ru: 60ms
    to kernel.org: 150ms
    to baidu.com: 300ms

    but wait, what are we trying to prove here? Link latency or internet routing times? Because if you are trying to show link latency, the ping time is your provider on other side of modem, not stuff on internet. For me that is 10-12ms. I know that in places in Canada, with long DSL lines, you are happy with 30-40ms just to the provider.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by richtopia on Thursday June 11 2020, @02:25PM (2 children)

    by richtopia (3160) on Thursday June 11 2020, @02:25PM (#1006295) Homepage Journal

    I think we are demonstrating the threshold ping of 100ms is reasonable. To generalize, a ping to your same continent is less than 100ms. If Starlink can demonstrate that, then they qualify for these incentives.

    • (Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Thursday June 11 2020, @11:48PM (1 child)

      by Osamabobama (5842) on Thursday June 11 2020, @11:48PM (#1006666)

      Has anybody posted the time for two RF round trips to Starlink satellites? That's got to be about 6 milliseconds, one-way, with the satellite directly overhead at 1100 km. That brings us to 32 milliseconds, plus processing time, best case for a two-way round trip. Maybe that gets worse by a factor of two before the next satellite is in position (I just made that up). So if they can do the non-RF part of the ping within 36 ms, it should be achievable.

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