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A comment on Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps. Parent comment

Re:Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps by manquer on Saturday August 15, 2020 @01:58AM (#24166362)
You are thinking just software , Hardware tech is very different for wireless. The benefits from beam forming, MIMO or any of the advancements in 3G/4G/5G only benefit wireless. There has been similar technical improvements in wired which only benefit that medium, they keep cramming more signal on the same size cable every generation.

Even in software at L3-7 the encoding tech is probably same of course, however protocols L0-2 is very medium dependent. The loss , noise, signal strength patterns all change depending on the medium so does

Even at L4 and above UDP based stacks benefit in wireless compared TCP based transport, if your application can handle it of course. The next gen HTTP is getting designed around UDP in some part to reflect the changing way people access the internet , a lot more traffic is mobile and wireless today so designing around wireless makes sense.

Personally even as app developer who works only with L7(HTTP) and L6 (SDP) I have specifically developed non trivial optimizations, workflows and APIs for mobile clients which were not needed or used by web clients due to different connection parameters of wired/ WiFi as opposed to wireless 2G/3G .

So yes there is lot of difference and most people working at any layer cannot ignore the medium.

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Re:Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps by shaklee3 on Saturday August 15, 2020 @11:30AM (#24169571)
I'm very aware of MIMO and the other physical layer technologies. But the original topic was about how wireless could somehow progress faster in these metrics than physical mediums. Mediums like fiber have progress much more in the last decade by adding more wavelengths and different modulation technologies compared to space technologies. SpaceX is only using MIMO in the sense that they have a phased array antenna, but that's not the same as your typical wireless router at home with multiple antennas. The other issue is space is severely power limited, so they are not going to get really high modulation schemes that fiber or cable have enjoyed (256+QAM) for many years.
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