points by devindotcom 11 years ago

Plus, inferior/high-latency is fine if it's global. I'm guessing people won't generally be trying to play Call of Duty on these universal links, but rather getting essential services like wikipedia, email, etc.

carbocation 11 years ago

The latency is like 11ms. It's not going to substantially worsen my COD ping.

  • throwaway90999 11 years ago

    No, the latency for traditional satellite internet is between 600ms to 1000ms (one full second). Cite: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/satell...

    • apendleton 11 years ago

      The whole point of the original comment is that these are LEO satellites, rather than the geosynchronous satellites in use for previous internet service. These won't be traditional; they'll be about a thirtieth as far away.

      • throwaway90999 11 years ago

        There were mentions of both technologies and I was replying to devindotcom who was talking about how high latency satellites are still useful. Here's a link to that comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8920059

        That is why I was careful to specify traditional satellite internet services. It appears the distinction was lost.

    • Crito 11 years ago

      That article is about satellite internet using geostationary satellites. Those satellites are as much as 200 times farther away than satellites in LEO.

      22,236 miles up, opposed to LEO which starts at about 100 miles up.

      • throwaway90999 11 years ago

        Yes I am aware. I am discussing the replies above me, not the article.

    • ericHosick 11 years ago

      The distance between geosynchronous orbit and low earth orbit is huge. One is ~22,236 miles and the other is 99 miles to 2,000 miles.

    • freeqaz 11 years ago

      For geostationary orbit, yeah it's high latency. That's like >22k miles up. Low-earth orbit is a few hundred miles. The difference in latency is huge.

      The highest cost is that you will lose sync with the satellite, since they will be rotating over the horizon frequently. If you can launch enough satellites, then you can have multiple in view at any given time and thus keep a continuous link.

    • tsotha 11 years ago

      That's because geostationary orbit is at 22,000 miles. These will be more like Irridium, which is at 485 miles. You can go lower, but it's more expensive because of extra fuel costs.