• ubergeek@lemmy.today
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    4 days ago

    Previous satellite Internet using satellites in geosynchronous orbit had 1500ms latency, for comparison.

    Yes, and are far more stable, not hyped, and are already at pretty much peak congestion. Starlink will get progressively worse, the more people use it. Right now, it’s over provisioned.

    The point is, unless you’re playing some hyper competitive game where a 30ms difference in reaction time is noticeable (

    Ever try a voice call with 30ms of latency?

    • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Yes, and are far more stable, not hyped, and are already at pretty much peak congestion. Starlink will get progressively worse, the more people use it. Right now, it’s over provisioned.

      They were not more stable. Any occlusion, including thick clouds, would degrade the signal to being unusable. I used Hughsnet for years, then swapped to cellular (100ms+ latency) and finally to Starlink. Starlink is a pretty solid 100Mb/s, with low jitter, packet loss and latency.

      Ever try a voice call with 30ms of latency?

      Yeah, I use voice chat every day, it’s not noticeable.

      • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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        3 days ago

        They were not more stable. Any occlusion, including thick clouds, would degrade the signal to being unusable

        You have the same issue with Starlink…

        Yeah, I use voice chat every day, it’s not noticeable.

        The people on the call do…

        • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          You have the same issue with Starlink…

          No, because the Starlink satellites are 350 miles above the Earth while geosynchronous satellites are 13,000 miles above the earth. Because of the Inverse-Square Law they can transmit a signal that is orders of magnitude stronger.

          In addition, geosync satellites are locked at a single fixed position and received by a single dish antenna so any obstruction along the line will disrupt the signal.

          Starlink’s recievers use a 1200 element x-band phased array so it can lock on to multiple sources and track them as they move across the sky. Each satellite link is its own channel. Losing contact with one satellite simply causes the data to be routed to one of the 4-5 other locked satellites.

          The people on the call do…

          30ms of latency is less than 1/3rd of the latency of most Bluetooth headsets that people use every day to talk on their phones. It is not noticeable at all.