• SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de
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    4 days ago

    Light in glass is actually surprisingly slow

    After some distance, starlink would have better latency, as while the signal needs to go through a bunch of km of slow atmosphere, it would make up for that by having a big part of the signal go through vacuum between satellites

    But latency isn’t everything

    Fiber (when properly installed) is very stable. Satellite and mobile is always at least a little bit flaky

    • TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz
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      4 days ago

      St*rlink orbits at 500 km so you would need to be like 1800 km by land away from your destination to have a better latency. At that point your latency will be terrible anyway

      • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de
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        4 days ago

        Hard to calculate exactly.

        Latency is lower through the atmosphere than in glass (I thought that air was worse, but turns out it’s not. Makes sense. Glass is solid after all)

        So it could be even closer than that. But there’s also the problem of the SL base station having to do the last bit of the route through fiber to the destination again. Do it also depends on where the base station is located in regards to the destination

        • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          Starlink can be more direct as well. The further fiber goes the less direct it is. By the time we’re talking between continents that builds up a lot.