Starlink is the Dream project of Elon Musk. StarLink was originally designed to connect the whole world with faster internet speed. With StarLink Typical Up-link and Down-link speed is expected to increase dramatically.
The major advantage of StarLink project is lowest ping time.
With StarLink ping time is expected to reduce by half of the existing 56ms time.
Well I will Explain you all the terminologies step by step, So stay tuned.
1) Why StarLink is needed?
Generally connecting to internet requires to install massive infrastructure. This includes telecom radio towers, fiber cables, receivers, converters and much more.
Installing these entities take enormous amount of time and resources and money.
Sometimes it becomes very challenging to install these on geographically challenged areas.
Remote areas which has very less population were ignored due to cost to return ratio.
Relying on these tower based technologies is not always great for general public. Also is doesn’t ensure the vast coverage.
Even though if infrastructure is installed, it doesn’t give optimum level of performance. Additionally end user gets very slow speed and very high ping time.
So these are the challenges in traditional Ground based tower technologies.
To overcome this issue an ideas is proposed which solves all the issues listed above. That ideas was StarLink. Starlink expected to achieve below targets.
Benefits of StarLink
1) Faster Internet connection
2) More wider reach of internet connection, at any part of the planet(excluding polars)
3) Cheaper internet connection.
4) Faster ping time.
5) More people connected to internet.
2) What is starLink? How StarLink will work? Basic understanding!
StarLink is the huge collection of artificial satellites which will revolve around earth.
Total of almost 12000 satellites will be launched into the space. Those satellites will be placed at lower earth orbit.
All 12000 satellites will be placed like a mesh in around the earth.
Why We needed so many of the satellites are used for StarLink?
StarLink uses tremendous amount of satellites to achieve its goal.
Because of so many satellites first whole globe gets a coverage.
Each satellite will act as a node thus giving many nodes to take request.
What is lower earth orbit?
Lower earth orbit is categorized from 400 to 1000 miles above the earth surface.
Mainly they are used for placing the objects/satellites required for telecommunication purpose.
Why StarLink uses lower earth orbit?
Well lower earth orbit has many advantages for communication
- Data has to travel very less distance
- Placing the satellites into lower earth orbit takes much lesser effort.
Since total 12000 satellites are planned to be sent to space, using the lower earth orbit was a wise option for Starlink.
Understanding StarLink with example.
I want to send a data from New York to Singapore.
In the normal scenario generally data will go from the fiber cables placed below ocean. In some cases satellite is used to transfer the data.
As of now both modes are either time consuming of not cost effective.
How startLink can solve this issue.
First Data will travel from New York to nearest orbiting startlink satellite. Lets call it as a node A.
Node A is placed at new York. Node Z is placed at Singapore, and there are total 4 nodes present in between node A and Z.
A person from new York passes data to Node A.
first data will travel to Node A which is placed in lower earth orbit, this will take less time to travel as compare to normal communication satellites which are placed 35000 miles above surface.
Once Node A get the Information it passes to next node.
As next node gets the data it will pass to next node and finally reaching to node Z.
Here time taken to reach from node A to node z is much lesser than traditional system.
Each node will be communicating using laser beams i.e. using light medium
Speed of light is higher in vacuum as compare to glass.
Opposite to space when using glass i.e. fiber cable as a medium for light, its speed reduces and hence increases ping time and latency.
Overall About startlink
Starlink expected to solve connectivity issues to remote areas at greater extent.
Project Starlink will result in lower ping time. SpaceX has already started deploying satellites to earth orbit. Sooner testing at large scale might be conducted to test out the reliability and the performance.
It is expected that people at remote areas will get the cheaper internet due to startlink project.
Starlink will bring the cost of satellite communication to ground.
Project Starlink Wiki
Please find the indepth info at wikipedia page. As the new updates will come I will create the new posts about project StarLink.
So what you think? Starlink is useful for general people and will be cost effective as promised? Let me know down in the comments.