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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday August 15 2020, @05:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the not-too-shabby dept.

SpaceX Starlink speeds revealed as beta users get downloads of 11 to 60Mbps:

Beta users of SpaceX's Starlink satellite-broadband service are getting download speeds ranging from 11Mbps to 60Mbps, according to tests conducted using Ookla's speedtest.net tool. Speed tests showed upload speeds ranging from 5Mbps to 18Mbps.

The same tests, conducted over the past two weeks, showed latencies or ping rates ranging from 31ms to 94ms. This isn't a comprehensive study of Starlink speeds and latency, so it's not clear whether this is what Internet users should expect once Starlink satellites are fully deployed and the service reaches commercial availability. We asked SpaceX several questions about the speed-test results yesterday and will update this article if we get answers.

[...] Beta testers must sign non-disclosure agreements, so these speed tests might be one of the only glimpses we get of real-world performance during the trials. SpaceX has told the Federal Communications Commission that Starlink would eventually hit gigabit speeds, saying in its 2016 application to the FCC that "once fully optimized through the Final Deployment, the system will be able to provide high bandwidth (up to 1Gbps per user), low latency broadband services for consumers and businesses in the US and globally." SpaceX has launched about 600 satellites so far and has FCC permission to launch nearly 12,000.

[...] Although the Ookla speed-test latencies for Starlink don't hit Musk's target of below 20ms, they are below the FCC's 100ms threshold. For competitive online gaming, Ookla says players should be in "winning" shape with latency or ping of 59ms or less, and "in the game" with latency or ping of up to 129ms. The 35 best cities in the world for online gaming have ping rates of 8 to 28ms, an Ookla report last year said.

Latency tests are affected by the distance between the user and the server. The Ookla tests revealed on Reddit showed the tests going to servers in Los Angeles and Seattle; SpaceX's beta tests are slated for the northern US and southern Canada, but a Stop the Cap story says that testers so far are in rural areas of Washington state only.


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by zocalo on Saturday August 15 2020, @07:34PM (1 child)

    by zocalo (302) on Saturday August 15 2020, @07:34PM (#1037209)
    A fairly major potential target market would be fine with a fraction of 25Mbps and latencies much higher than these early tests are providing (I expect they'll both get a lot better as the system matures). There's an *awful* lot of remote telemetry installations out there that currently rely on cellular APNs that could benefit hugely from the additional reliability of having several satellites overhead instead of one or maybe two cellular towers. Provided that Starlink can provide a commercial VPN option similar to APNs or MPLS that guarantees traffic segregation then they could potentially eat the cellular providers lunch here. As an example, one utility I have worked with that provides services to approx 1/12 of the geographical area of the UK, has over 5,000 such cellular-based telemetry nodes.
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  • (Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Monday August 17 2020, @01:14PM

    by Muad'Dave (1413) on Monday August 17 2020, @01:14PM (#1037798)

    I think antenna size and directivity is going to limit Starlink's usefulness in that application. According to Elon's tweet shown in this article [dailymail.co.uk], the antenna is about 1m in diameter and has motors to adjust its orientation. It's not clear if that means it performs a single adjustment on installation or if it continuously tracks sats as they fly overhead. If it's the former case, then careful installation would eliminate the need for motors. If it's the latter, then you've got a mechanical point of failure to deal with.

    Either way, a 1m dish is a major pain for telemetry sites that may have limited antenna mounting infrastructure. If there's a way to use a different antenna configuration (perhaps a long boom yagi) then maybe Starlink could compete against cellular - it's hard to beat a tiny little whip antenna!