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A comment on We need internet that isn't owned by big telecom. Parent comment

Re:We need internet that isn't owned by big telecom by vandweller on Sunday December 17, 2017 @06:47PM (#15948349)
Could you expand on this? Do you think latency is the limiting factor for a LEO network?
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Re:We need internet that isn't owned by big telecom by vorotato on Sunday December 17, 2017 @07:01PM (#15948411)
A geosynchronous orbit is ~36000km

36000 km / speed of light = .12 seconds

So thats a ping of 240, minimum. That's assuming everything else in the system happened instantaneously.

If you can however manage to solve the whole aiming at a moving target 360 kilometers away then maybe you could do a LEO network, and yeah the ping would be closer to 1.2 assuming again literally everything was instantaneous.

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Re:We need internet that isn't owned by big telecom by jacques_chester on Sunday December 17, 2017 @07:48PM (#15948598)
As you note, LEO is very different from geostationary. Moving target doesn't strike me as impossible. A LEO satellite has a very predictable path, a stationary dish has a predictable movement relative to that path and a mobile phone knows where it is at all times.
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Re:We need internet that isn't owned by big telecom by foobarian on Sunday December 17, 2017 @10:46PM (#15949240)
One has been online [1] since '98, so it's definitely possible. Question is probably in details around bandwidth and handoff performance.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellatio...

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Re:We need internet that isn't owned by big telecom by greglindahl on Sunday December 17, 2017 @09:09PM (#15948890)
There are several companies building (and a few shipping) flat-panel phased array antennae that can "point" at a moving target 360 km away. They also can switch to a new satellite instantly.
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