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Comment by neonsunset | Hacker News Reader

Starlink is seeing heavy use in Ukraine with most stocks in the neighboring countries getting bought up. The reason for that is russian strikes on our infrastructure causing electricity blackouts to the extent of regular internet or 4G being down/highly degraded. As a result, many companies, individuals, offices, etc. are procuring their own sources of energy (diesel/gasoline generators, portable power stations, etc.) and reserve internet connections via Starlink or powerful 4g modems that can reach further cell towers with access to good connection. That with already prevalent use of Starlinks on frontlines (they are very hard to jam and far surpass other satellite offerings).

We do not have access to data but it's not unreasonable to assume that such a spike in use must have eaten into overall network capacity.

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Given that Ukraine is nowhere near the US, even for satellites, that's hardly likely, given that their v1 satellites don't have inter-satellite links.

Even with the link it makes no sense to route Ukrainian traffic all the way back to the US. All they'll do is route to the nearest downlink. Otherwise the intra-sat connections will become a bottleneck, not to mention the added latency.

If the ground station is near the server, then latency would actually be lower with Starlink. One use case of Starlink is HFT on the NYSE from London, a use case that terrestrial networks are too latent for. This is because the speed of light in a vacuum is 50% faster than the speed of light through fiber, and the distance traveled is just as often shorter as it is longer - depending on satellite position.

But you're not accounting for the latency added by the many satellite hops needed to get there :)

Every sat will need to do queueing and signal processing.

That's no different that a terrestrial network, in fact it's likely quicker as for better or for worse they're likely not using HTTP between the birds but rather a more efficient protocol.

Here I've got 18 hops from my office to HN:

    $ mtr news.ycombinator.com -rc 3
    Start: 2022-12-04T09:27:13+0200
    HOST: dotan-OptiPlex-7040         Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
      1.|-- _gateway                   0.0%     3    1.4   1.9   1.4   2.8   0.8
      2.|-- 172.19.19.254              0.0%     3    0.3   0.4   0.3   0.6   0.2
      3.|-- 62.128.42.108              0.0%     3    0.8   0.9   0.8   1.0   0.1
      4.|-- 31.154.12.149              0.0%     3    5.4   7.5   5.4  11.7   3.6
      5.|-- ???                       100.0     3    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
      6.|-- ???                       100.0     3    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
      7.|-- ???                       100.0     3    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
      8.|-- ???                       100.0     3    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
      9.|-- 82.102.131.249             0.0%     3    5.8   5.9   5.8   6.0   0.1
     10.|-- 82.102.131.251             0.0%     3   12.4  12.0  11.2  12.5   0.7
     11.|-- 82.102.131.201             0.0%     3   31.0  71.5  31.0 135.5  56.0
     12.|-- ???                       100.0     3    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
     13.|-- ???                       100.0     3    0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0
     14.|-- 82.102.129.226             0.0%     3   48.9  49.8  48.9  51.1   1.1
     15.|-- et-1-0-23-101.edge1.marse  0.0%     3   79.5  80.0  76.9  83.6   3.4
     16.|-- ae0.11.bar1.sandiego1.lev  0.0%     3  220.4 214.7 210.2 220.4   5.2
     17.|-- m5-hosting.bar1.sandiego1 33.3%     3  798.8 765.5 732.1 798.8  47.2
     18.|-- news.ycombinator.com       0.0%     3  233.2 228.1 220.9 233.2   6.4

  > prevalent use of Starlinks on frontlines

Wouldn't anti-radiation missiles (usually used against SAM batteries) seek these Starlink terminals?

One would expect the missiles be a bit more picky about what they target, or setting up fake targets to defend against them would be way too easy.

Additionally Satellite and Microwave links aren't new technology and are likely used by both sides of military for communication, so there's probably some existing value in making sure you're hitting the right thing.

It's not powerful enough of a source, different frequency bands and, as with GPS too when it comes to jamming, the signal goes mostly upwards so the missile won't be irradiated by it to respond.

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