Wow, they rolled it out without IPv6?

Right? At this point why would you even design the system to carry anything other than IPv6 natively? You can always get IPv4 via a tunnel if needed.

Thanks - what does a regular traceroute look like?

Any discernible pattern for the hops through the constellation?

Any general thoughts about the topology?

I appreciate it. My family got into the beta today, not just the pre-order but it sounds like it won't ship for a few weeks. Thanks again.

Traceroutes are all going out to the world through this google AS right now. Using the hurricane tool as a convenient GUI presentation of what it is: https://bgp.he.net/AS36492

nothing obviously satellite related shows up at layer 3. There's a few hops of stuff with no rDNS, and then the edge of the AS36492 network and whatever transits or peers your traffic is going to.

You can clearly discern from pinging your first hop (15.9 to 30ms away) that it's something on the other side of the up-and-back satellite link.

topology at present is logically a bent pipe. satellites need to be simultaneously in view of your terminal and a spacex earth station. The ten satellites they launched into a polar orbit last month are the first with inter-satellite laser links.

> satellites need to be simultaneously in view of your terminal and a spacex earth station.

Does that mean that there is no connection between satellites?

Correct. The intersattelite laser link is still vaporware at this point, and I’d wager always will be. It turned out to be a much more difficult problem than they originally anticipated, and so they’re basically not doing it. I will be very surprised if it ever happens.

https://wccftech.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-laser-test/ ahem

That they had a successful “test” of it a year and a half ago does not mean it’s in use now. Current starlink is just receiver -> satellite -> ground station, there is no lasers in use.

Why do people keep betting against Elon's plans, they always lose in the long run.

While some of the satellites do have point to point laser links for communicating directly with other satellites in the constellation, it's not widely utilized yet, and all communications are ground station to satellite and back to base station.

https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2020/09/23/starlink-packe...

It's unlikely that anyone's traffic is passing through multiple satellite links at this time, but that may change with higher elevation orbits serving states like Alaska.