I’ve read posts / other articles about how Elon is planning to allow for low latency / gaming on StarLink. I understand how they will increase bandwidth – but isn’t latency limited by speed of light?
In: Engineering
That is it’s theoretical upper limit, yes. However, in our current system, the interchanges between different areas of the internet’s physical web are slowing it down significantly more than light itself would, and light travels slower through fiber than it does through vacuum. Light travels across the diameter of the world in about 0.04s in a vacuum. Ping to cover the same distance would be at about 0.2-3s (best case scenario) in the current web. Starlink has the possibility of cutting that down significantly by avoiding the current bottlenecks of both fiber and cable-based interchanges. We’ll see how it actually turns out.
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