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Comment by tiernano | Hacker News Reader

So, bit of digging, StarLink's ASN is 14593 [1]. They show as having 302 V4 blocks and 59 V6 blocks of space [2]. Some of that space (well, most) looks to be GeoLocated in the US, but some show as other countries. Same with the V6 blocks [3]. My guess is that each V4 block is assigned to a given country or Geo Location, and same with a larger V6. Given they use CGNAT, they wont need as much V4 blocks to split out. If you bring your device with you, it will show a new IP Address... Also, as of note, I have seen, at some stage, that it either shows Google's IP range, or that Google was announcing their blocks in Ireland at one stage... I dont have it myself, but did some digging when a someone i know got it...

[1]: https://bgp.he.net/AS14593 [2]: https://bgp.he.net/AS14593#_prefixes [3]: https://bgp.he.net/AS14593#_prefixes6

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Geolocation is a fiction, it’s just lists that claim addresses are in some country. Nobody is under any obligation to make sure those claims are true.

Also true, but as someone who ran my own asn and space for 5 years, it can be a pain when it doesn’t work. Spent a good chunk of time making sure my space showed as Ireland, not us or Germany. Netflix, Disney+ and others all didn’t like me to start… but there are ways of fixing it.

how can you run ur own asn ??

It's not that hard. Look up what your local internet registry requires (ARIN, RIPE, APNIC, AfriNIC, LACNIC) to allocate an ASN and allocate a /24 or at least approve a transfer of a /24. Typically you should have a location with two internet providers that will propagate your prefixes via BGP to their peers and transit. Find companies willing to accept your money so you can meet the requirements, also find someone with a /24 to transfer to you assuming your registry doesn't have any.

Tada. You've got an ASN and are running it.

Yep, this - the process isn't hard but it is tedious. W/ ARIN you also have some waiting to do - and must register as a business and pay that registration fee.

I ran as204994.net. There are some details about how i did it still there. I leased the v4 and v6 space due to cost.

Many of Musks companies have access to internal google API's that aren't available to the public.

For example, the in-tesla car map uses various google data sources in ways the regular API doesn't support.

Sure just like any (big) company paying for a contract.

Usually not with Google... If you went to Google and said "I will pay you $1M to make a custom version of Google maps for my company with a pink background but no other changes", they wouldn't do it.

Most teams keep the sales guys a long way from engineering, and one customers request rarely makes it in.

$1m is what - one person-year, two? Sure that's not enough. However it doesn't mean the api is custom. Just not the same as the public one. For your specific example, Tesla renders thier own map tiles.

Could be Waze APIs?

out of curiosity, any other examples?

The Google IPs might be because SpaceX and Google have agreements where Starlink downlinks can use the network connectivity at Google data centers (and vice versa)?

Google paid for Starlink. It's their loon replacement

Are you able to substantiate that claim somehow? I know SpaceX has a commercial arrangement to pay Google for services used to deliver Starlink, I'm not aware of anything close to "Google shut down Loon; Starlink is the replacement; Google is subsidizing/funding Starlink".

I'm not the OP but I also heard rumors that Starlink bought Loon IP specifically the LTE stack. Given that we know Starlink was using the Google network in the early days and Loon was officially shut down months after Starlink beta started, it's not hard to imagine that there's some partnership.

Google invested 900 million into starlink & shut down loon around the same time. There's tech from Google in starlink. Starlink uses Google cloud. In fact starlink used to show up as Google Fi. They now have their own network.

Maybe they meant that google invested to the tune of $1B back in 2016 making it one of the largest spacex investors.

google caching appliances. https://support.google.com/interconnect/answer/9058809?hl=en

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