FCC approves SpaceX plan for satellite broadband network

Re:FCC approves SpaceX plan for satellite broadband network by kbenson on Friday April 06, 2018 @06:30PM (#16778062)

They aren't accounting for devices in the path for land nor space, so the question becomes are there more or less devices in the average path for each case, and by how much, and what's the average penalty occurred for each device in each case?

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Re:FCC approves SpaceX plan for satellite broadband network by jacquesm on Friday April 06, 2018 @07:21PM (#16778365)

Undersea optic cables use optical amplifiers, which is a pretty neat trick and does not introduce latency, and so should not count as a hop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_amplifier

In the end it is probably mostly a matter of how many hops that will determine which is the faster path, the two paths are mostly equal in other respects, I suspect the latency incurred for each hop is roughly the same, assuming they use error correction and re-transmission on the link layers between the satellites.

If it all gets passed through blindly then it will be a bit quicker because there is no decoding step involved but I highly doubt that because it would lead to substantial inefficiencies and loss of capacity (the difference between a switched and hub). Smarter to be a bit slower and to maximize the routing capabilities of the satellites so as to optimize for the scarce resource: inter-satellite bandwidth.

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