Starlink adds another 100Gbps connection to the SeattleIX

[EB66]

I'm very glad to see the SIX getting some attention on HN. I have a lot of respect for how that IXP is operated -- Chris Caputo runs a tight ship. Their one-time fee structure is very friendly to small participants and very unique for an IXP of that size -- that alone should be lauded. SIX governance is very open and transparent. I can't recall the last time they incurred a major unscheduled outage. I wish more large IXPs were run like the SIX.

[rossmohax]

You made me curious to look up how SIX survives then. Apparently they entirely depend on donations, many of which are not monetary, but essential infrastructure (racks, power, fiber connections etc)

[linsomniac]

Aside, but super surreal...

I went to that page, see the top item is Starlink, the next link is "Welcome Danga Interactive AS32150". That's kind of a small AS compared to Starlink's 146K, but then I realize that used to be my AS, tummy.com.

[davis]

That's Brad Fitzpatrick https://twitter.com/bradfitz/status/1488682672960376832

[sam0x17]

Starlink is such a scam all my relatives signed up for the $600 beta and now more than a year later still no way to use the service. All the while they keep promising it's only 1-2 months out.

[disillusioned]

Admittedly, frontloading the deposit to determine market interest and where to scale with actual dollars is a bit scummy (see: Cybertruck/Model S/3/X/Y/everything Tesla does deposits) but the service IS live in a lot of markets and DOES have real, actual users. Calling it a "scam" implies that those things aren't true.

But I agree that Elon time is absurd and irritating and sure feels like a scam. (I would argue FSD being sold for SIX GODDAMN YEARS on Teslas is _absolutely_ a scam.)

[andrewf]

You can see a lot of Starlink’s peering at https://www.peeringdb.com/net/18747

[jcun4128]

I barely understand what this is. Wondering would you find these through traceroute or something? huh

Or people populate them at will

[mike_d]

I'm not sure what they are actually using this for.

All Starlink customer traffic egresses via Google's network, and all their ground stations are along Google fiber paths.

[fblp]

Amazing that this is run by a non-profit. Wish more of the internet was like this!

[Karrot_Kream]

The internet is a lot more like this. The web isn't.

[ollybee]

It is the norm in Europe for IXPs to be run by non-profits. See this for more info http://drpeering.net/HTML_IPP/chapters/ch12-9-US-vs-European...

[colechristensen]

A lot of the internet is things like this

[troydavis]

For anyone who wants a bit of history, Jared Reimer did a presentation for the SIX's 20th anniversary. This was at NANOG in 2017:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2ChhZcH2ok (slides: https://archive.nanog.org/sites/default/files/4_Reimer_Seatt...)

[radicaldreamer]

You can see a San Francisco IX's members here, not as gigantic as this one, but you have Indies like monkeybrains right next to Netflix and Google https://www.sfmix.org/participants

[_wldu]

I hope they ship soon. I preordered Starlink and put down the deposit in Feb 2021. Still nothing.

[TowerTall]

>SpaceX - Starlink (AS14593) has added 2x100G bringing their capacity to a total of 2x2x100G

Why not 4x100G?

>Welcome Apple Inc. (AS714) at 2x1x100G.

Why not 2x100G?

>Akamai Technologies, Inc. (AS20940) has added 3x100G bringing their capacity to a total of 3x100G and 2x100G

And why not 5x100G.

How does one read these numbers?

[jamies]

1yr plus PacNW user; this is likely adding needed backhaul for this high demand region.

[virtuallynathan]

I follow Starlink's IP space and connectivity closely, if anyone is interested, see this: https://old.reddit.com/r/StarlinkEngineering/comments/ofly6k...

[hexo]

100Gbps today is like 300 customers. Hmmmmmm

[Retric]

Residential customers don’t use anything close to maximum bandwidth regularly.

It gets better as you with faster connections and more users. At 100Mbps you can roughly do 20:1 over subscription, bump that to 1Gbps and 50:1 generally works fine. StarLink is aiming for roughly 50-100Mbps connections so this likely represents around 20,000 to 40,000 customers per 100Gbps link.

“SpaceX - Starlink (AS14593) has added 2x100G bringing their capacity to a total of 2x2x100G. They are connected to the route servers.” In other words they hit 40,000 to 80,000 customers and are preparing for another 40,000 to 80,000.

[walrus01]

No, it's not, you can fit an absolute shitload of individual 1 gigabit per second symmetric last mile residential customers in the actual usage of a 100Gbps transit port, before it starts hitting 65Gbps in evening peaks and you start thinking of needing to upgrade.

[kloch]

Aside from oversubscription only a fraction of any customer's traffic will traverse the IX. The ratio will depend on who Starlink is peering with on the SIX (not necessarily everyone) and the traffic flows to/from those ASN's.

That said there are some very significant content peers present on the SIX: Akamai, Amazon, Apple, Edgecast, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Valve, among others. Hurricane Electric is also there and has an open peering policy despite being a very large ISP with a significant percentage of Internet routes and traffic.

[kondro]

More like 15,000 if you average 1TB per customer per month with 50%-ish burst.

[vultour]

You really think your ISP reserves 300Mbit of their bandwidth just for you?

I got curious and checked the local IX (smaller EU country), one of the largest ISPs has 4x100G connections, but their combined maximum ingress+egress almost never goes beyond 100G.

[Johnny555]

I think my ISP would treat that as a million customers.

[southerntofu]

Read your contract for gigabit fiber. Here in France the ones i've read best promised 512Kb/s available bandwidth at any time, for consumer offers advertizing between 100/100 and 1000/250Mbit/s.

Dedicated gigabit bandwidth is still in the thousands of euros monthly, or in the hundreds in optimal situation (if you're already in a well-connected colo).

[paxys]

Retail consumers do not receive dedicated bandwidth. ISPs will oversubscribe the promised amount 25x-100x because not everyone is using it at peak capacity 24x7.

[wumpus]

I don't think this is for customers, they are using Google's network for customers. More likely it's for the Starlink building.

[ummonk]

Does 2x100G mean 100G each way?

[toast0]

No, at this level, connections are symetric. The next question is probably why is it reported as 2x2x100G? That's most likely two separate connections which are each an aggregated connection of two 100G connections. This is likely to two separate routers on the Starlink.

[martyvis]

Most network links imply duplex. From this (and the description detail in the OP), I would say they have added 2 links (to the 2 they had previously), each link will have 100Gbps up and down through the IX.

[martinald]

No, 200 each way (2 100gbit links).

Not really sure why this is a big deal - IX bandwidth is very very cheap. It looks like seattleIX charges $7500 as a one off payment to add a 100gbit link: https://www.seattleix.net/pr20191218).

[adamredwoods]

Is this a direct 'connection' to the satellites?

[walrus01]

No, this is at one part of the most fundamental core terrestrial portion of the internet, how ISPs talk to each other.

[southerntofu]

An Internet eXchange Point (IXP, or IX in some languages) is a physical room or building where network operators meet and exchange trafic. The internet flows on physical cables, but depending on where the data goes different tariffs apply.

As an ISP, you will pay a transit company to transport your traffic to areas/operators you don't have connection to (very expensive, especially for small ISPs who get charged >1€/Mbit/s). So there's an incentive to establish direct connection with other operators your traffic may need to reach: that's what an IXP is for. Typically, you pay a membership fee to pay for services (electricity, network cabling), and then you can exchange traffic with everyone there for free (peering).

So there's really nothing new, unexpected or exciting about this announcement. It's just an ISP getting ready to exchange more traffic with other ISPs.

[julbook]

This is a great news, giving some love on SIX

[wolverine876]

What is the significance of it? Wouldn't adding bandwidth be expected?

(Do even Y Combinator companies get as much coverage on HN as Musk's?)

[wmf]

Yeah, given that they're adding customers continuously they should be adding peering and transit proportionally.

[southerntofu]

There is zero significance: it's just expensive cables.

[simondotau]

Please don’t turn Hacker News into Reddit.

[dang]

Please don't post unsubstantive or flamebait comments here. We're trying for something else.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30189253.

[mandeepj]

> Elon says they will reach safer than a human self driving this year.

Ha! Don’t worry. He will continue to say that for the next few years