• baronofclubs@lemmy.world
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    35 minutes ago

    A society grows great when old men plant fiber whose speed they know they shall never download from.

  • buddascrayon@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    Hmmm ditch lightning fast and stable fiber for the mediocre speed and unstable micro satellite internet connection controlled by a petty asshole…

    What to do, what to do?

  • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    Honestly, I think starlink is a fantastic idea in general, but this is clearly bullshit. Starlink works well in tandem with fiber, not as a replacement.

    It’s just never going to be as cost effective as installed fiber. Fiber is obviously the right technology to use in heavily populated areas i.e. for the vast majority of Internet users. And where the population is sparse and laying fiber for individual customers is cost prohibitive, that is where satellite connectivity shines. If SpaceX or anyone else is pretending otherwise, they’re being blatantly deceitful and malicious. That’s not in Internet users’ best interest.

    • Saleh@feddit.org
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      27 minutes ago

      As fiber is rolled out more, i see less and less why it would be cost prohibitive?

      All you need to do to connect a remote place is lay a cable. More expensive if you need dig a trench and put the cable in there. But if it can be done for electricity it can be done for fiber.

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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      28 minutes ago

      lets get down to the real reason he wants to do this. he would be able to turn off connection for millions if they piss him off, or hand over the data to said political actors like putin or trump, also to manipulate future elections like he did last time.

  • foggenbooty@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    Fibre is an investment that can be used and upgraded for decades. Starlink is a subscription service forever to a private company.

    • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.com
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      4 hours ago

      And upgrading is piss cheap. Just change transceivers.

      Same fiber cable that does 1gbps can do 100tbps.

      • dropped_packet@lemmy.zip
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        2 hours ago

        That’s not true… There are different types of fiber with different throughputs depending on the class of the cable and the length of the installation.

        • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.com
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          1 hour ago

          It is true.

          Multimode (what I think you’re trying to reference) isn’t used in distance applications at all, it’s only for short in-building links. Anything that your ISP would provide you would be single-mode. Carrier/Backbone is virtually 100% SMF as well. SMF (OS1 and OS2) don’t really have a bandwidth cap. It’s all transceivers not the fiber.

          But the point is that fiber that ALREADY in the ground, you can upgrade simply by changing the transceivers. It doesn’t matter the length, SMF/MMF, or anything else… you just get a transceiver rated for the length of run (power of the led/laser, and the optics). The length is irrelevant otherwise as the presumption is that the install in the ground has been shown to work in the past already.

          Old standard ITU-G.652 single-mode has been made to push multi-petabit transfers in lab environments. The only change was the transceivers. And to be clear, ITU-G.652 was standardized in 1984. Nobody rips out the fiber from the ground (caveat is that the cable itself hasn’t degraded). You just upgrade the optics/transceivers.


          “It’s not the fiber that’s limiting—ITU-T G.652 defines physical specs (dispersion, attenuation), not throughput. Field trials over 96.5 km of real-world G.652 fiber showed 56.5 Tb/s using advanced DWDM and modulation

          source: https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.01873

            • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.com
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              59 minutes ago

              The context of the discussion does…

              SpaceX doesn’t provide in rack or in-building connectivity.

              SpaceX is an ISP. You wouldn’t have an ISP running multimode.

              • dropped_packet@lemmy.zip
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                40 minutes ago

                ISP’s absolutely run multimode. That’s how you get fiber into a building or between buildings. Different types of fiber all play a role in a network deployment.

                Broad statements are misleading. OM4 multimode won’t push 10gb at 500meters no matter how good your hardware is.

  • etherphon@piefed.world
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    5 hours ago

    Yeah! I want my internet connection run by a man baby who turns off your access if he doesn’t like you!

  • Brkdncr@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    I’m a starlink customer and think it’s one of the best advancements in the past decade as it provides real access to rural addresses. The side effects of this is nearly immeasurable.

    Spacex needs to STFU about this though. Fiber should continue to be deployed where possible.

    • Lectral@lemmy.ca
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      2 hours ago

      The side effects include filling orbit with space junk, crashing satellites to Earth, and blinding our ability to see meteors with a collision course for Earth. The side effects may not be predictable, but they’re definitely measurable.

    • AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today
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      7 hours ago

      Fiber should be deployed to rural addresses like yours (and should’ve been a long time ago). Instead, that money was funneled to the likes of Time Warner and Comcast who never even followed through on their part of the deal. Now, SpaceX is getting funneled the cash.

      I’m super thankful that WA State supports and gives assistance to counties building out public LUDs for fiber access, many paying attention to rural communities first. I escaped Comcast two years ago because of it.

      • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        Fiber should be deployed to rural addresses like yours

        I don’t disagree, it should be deployed to rural areas. It’s never going to happen though, it’s just not profitable.

        Sure, electrical infrastructure was deployed to the whole country, but it doesn’t need to be replaced and upgraded as frequently as Internet infrastructure does. Even if some rural areas do get fiber at some point, don’t expect the infrastructure to be upgraded regularly enough to stay comparable to denser areas.

        You’re never going to find a company willing to do that job. We could do it at the national level, but I have my doubts that the country is headed in that direction.

        • AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today
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          58 minutes ago

          That’s what the subsidies are for. Plus, fiber does not necessarily need to be upgraded after installation (especially rural, where there’s less customers in general). It’s not copper or coax, it doesn’t have the same limits, and can usually handle huge amounts of data (the limit primarily being the transceivers at both ends). The costs of upgrading would also likely be lower than the initial install, something that couldn’t be said about providers like Starlink. Fiber is about the most efficient, cost effective (especially in the long term), and future proof way to provide internet. Starlink is overall much more expensive to maintain.

          But yes, without the local, state, and/or federal governments supporting it, people in rural areas won’t have a choice.

      • MangoCats@feddit.it
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        5 hours ago

        Time Warner and Comcast need to have all that grant money clawed back. They contracted with the taxpayers to deliver a service and they didn’t even make a good faith effort to start.

      • Brkdncr@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        It can’t, and the taxes you would pay to support fiber to my home would be extreme.

        But fiber to a local wireless solution? Sure. But even that’s not possible for everyone, and they were expensive and unreliable until starlink started showing up. LEO internet has its benefits.

        • thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works
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          4 hours ago

          Except that US ISPs have already been provided upwards of $80b to roll out a fiber optic backbone for rural connections, and have instead largely pocketed the funds and sat on their hands.

          It has largely fallen to smaller communities to incorporate their own local ISPs and manage their own roll-outs, as such projects aren’t viewed as worthwhile for private companies.

          Honestly, if Australia could roll out a national fiber backbone (almost a decade ago!) across the same approximate landmass as the contiguous 48 states at less than 10% of the overall population; there is no valid reason that the wealthiest nation to have ever existed can’t also do so.

          Even if a Federal program (not under this administration, obviously) was to just run fibre parallel to the existing interstate highways, and leave the last (20) miles to local utilities - it would be cheaper, faster and more reliable than LEO - and without all the additional negatives that come with that!

        • AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today
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          3 hours ago

          We can definitely afford it, especially with LUDs plus federal subsidies. That’s literally what they’re for.

      • cole@lemdro.id
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        54 minutes ago

        there’s no fundamental physics limitation that makes this true. in fact, light in a vacuum travels faster than in glass fiber, so the theoretical latency of LEO internet is actually faster compared to fiber over a certain distance

    • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
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      4 hours ago

      Starlink has been much better than every other option where I am, but I will switch to fiber as soon as it gets here.

      They’ve been promising fiber here for over a decade, but I can finally see them installing it two miles up the road now. Hopefully it will actually be available sometime soon.

    • MangoCats@feddit.it
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      5 hours ago

      Seriously, this is in the “well, we know you want all the free money you can get, but: no. Now go do your thing on your own dime.”

      Fiber in the ground is infrastructure like paved roads. Satellites? One counter-orbiting frag bomb can take out a satellite constellation in less than a day.

    • Seefra 1@lemmy.zip
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      2 hours ago

      Don’t worry, the way things are going the star link satellites are going to shoot themselves. Unfortunately together with everything else in the low orbit.

    • Pennomi@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      Starlink has much better latency than most satellites, but still 10 to 50 times as much as fiber.

        • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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          2 hours ago

          Uh, how often are you using the Internet to connect to a computer in your home town? Maybe 5% of the time?

          I’ve never used Starlink, but with a basic understanding of geography and optics, I’m going to bet that in most scenarios the latency difference between Starlink and fiber is negligible, sometimes even being faster on Starlink, depending on the situation.

          That said, I’m not suggesting Starlink is a realistic replacement for fiber, just that latency isn’t the big issue. (It has other serious issues)

            • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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              2 hours ago

              Ok, so actual question, How useful are CDN endpoints these days with https everywhere? Because you can’t cache encrypted content. Also you can’t cache live content like video calls or online games. I’d imagine the percentage of cacheable content is actually fairly low these days. But like I said, I don’t actually know the answer to this, i’d be curious to hear your take.

                • The_Decryptor@aussie.zone
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                  49 minutes ago

                  Browsers partition the cache by “origin” now though, so while it can cache HTTPS content, it can’t effectively cache shared content (It’ll store multiple independent copies).

                  So Youtube still works fine, but Google Fonts is pointless now.

                  Edit: Oh yeah, and any form of shared JavaScript/CSS/etc. CDN is now also useless and should be avoided, but that’s always been the case.

        • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
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          4 hours ago

          My average latency on Starlink over the past year is 32 ms. It varies throughout the day from around 20 to 40 ms.

          If you are getting 90ms on fiber, you are either pinging a server that’s a long ways away or something is very wrong.

          • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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            4 hours ago

            If you look at the rest of the comments, you’ll see I was taking about my ping in a game. Not my shortest path to a nearby server.

        • Pennomi@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          Probably no. Your ping is abnormally high for fiber, I’d expect a sub 10ms ping for you.

          • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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            6 hours ago

            That makes a lot of assumptions about what I am pinging, and the networking context.

            In my case I was quoting my average ping in VRChat.

            How can you quote 10-50 times higher and then tell me no when I calculate what that means for me?

            Is it because latency does not scale in that way?

            • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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              6 hours ago
              1. Run a traceroute like traceroute cnn com
              2. Kill that by ctrl-c at the third line.
              3. Ping that third IP address.

              Don’t try to ping UK.battle.net or your numbers will be skewed by everything in between.

              • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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                6 hours ago

                About 5ms.

                Based on the various replies, it sounds like the poster I was originally replying to does not mean pings in any context.

                They just mean in this context. Along optimal routes. Right?

            • xthexder@l.sw0.com
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              6 hours ago

              You’re probably really far away from the VR Chat server. Try pinging Google or Cloudflare, which will tell you ping to the nearest datacenter (a rough estimate of ping caused by your local ISP).

              Based on their numbers, you could probably expect 50-100ms to Google, and then add an extra 90ms to get from there to your VR Chat server.

              My personal fiber connection gets under 2ms ping on Speedtest

                • xthexder@l.sw0.com
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                  6 hours ago

                  That makes sense then. When people talk about their ISP ping, they’re usually talking about how long it takes to get out of the ISP’s network. So that 5ms Cloudflare ping is likely pretty close to what people would consider your internet’s ping.

                  Speedtest.net is a really common tool for measuring this, since it will automatically check where the closest server is. For your connection, any ping above 5ms you can probably assume is based on your physical distance to the server, or latency on the server’s end. I’m guessing Google doesn’t have a server quite as close to you as Cloudflare

              • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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                6 hours ago

                So you were only talking about when testing with ideal servers? Why is my example an exception? Are all games an exception?

    • Guidy@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      A subscription that somehow still manages to use surge pricing? I’m assuming that’s the next logical step.