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Starlink pings
HEXUS reported on laser reticulation upgrades for the Starlink satellite constellation in January of this year. This upgrade meant Starlink subscribers could enjoy better coverage and reliability, with future connections expected to be as fast as 10 Gbps. This improvement came very soon after the first UK customers received Starlink test kits (£ 500 up front, plus 89 cfm) which may be the only fast internet option in some areas.
The likes of Starlink could be a “game / life changer” for some, such as a user in rural Illonios, USA. Elon Musk personally responded to the aforementioned user, via Twitter, to highlight some important improvements to come for the service in the “coming months”. Musk told the Rural Client that “Ping should improve dramatically in the coming months. We’re aiming for less than 20ms. Basically you should be able to play competitive FPS games through Starlink.” If you check out the original Tweet that Musk replied to, user stats said the download speeds were excellent at 260 Mbps, but the ping was 58ms. (For reference, I just tested my 120Mbps fiber internet, and it pinged 18ms over a laptop wireless connection).
Later in the responses, we got a bit more technical information from the boss of Tesla, regarding ping times. “More ground stations and less stupid packet routing will make the biggest differences,” Musk wrote. “Looking at the speed of light at ~ 300 km per millisecond and the satellite altitude at ~ 550 km, the average photon round trip time is only ~ 10 ms, so a lot of stupid things must occur to generate a ping> 20ms. “
Japanese fiber zings
In August 2020, HEXUS reported the crashing of world record internet speeds by researchers at University College London (UCL). Researchers used existing fiber optic cabling for record data transfers of 178 Tbps.
Today, Japanese researchers broke the UCL record from afar. A team led by physicist Benjamin Puttnam from the Japan National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) used a quad-core coupled optical fiber cable (different from the current standard single cable) as well as a technology Wavelength Division Multiplexing to demonstrate data transfers of 319 Tbit / s over a distance of 3000 km. Yes, it uses quad cables, but they’re supposed to be the same diameter as standard single-core fiber – so OK for upgrades to existing infrastructure.
A report published by Science Alert indicates that the cables require new technology amplifiers, using components dependent on thulium and erbium, every 70 km. Researchers based in Japan continue to refine cabling and support technology like amplifiers to increase both transmission capacity and range.
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