Re: Starlink routing

[Michael Thomas <mike () mtcc com>]

On 1/23/23 3:14 PM, Eric Kuhnke wrote:
> The original and traditional high-cost way of how this is done for 
> MEO/LEO is exemplified by an o3b terminal, which has two active 
> motorized tracking antennas. The antenna presently in use for the 
> satellite that is overhead follows it until it's descending towards 
> the horizon, while at the same time the second antenna aims itself at 
> where the next 'rising' satellite is predicted to appear at the 
> opposite horizon, and forms a link to it. Make-before-break. If anyone 
> has seen photographs in their marketing material/videos of the Oneweb 
> beta test earth stations in Alaska they are operating using the same 
> general concept.
>
> Oneweb has clearly positioned their market focus for telecoms and ISPs 
> and large enterprise end users, because their CPE equipment is 
> considerably larger, expensive and more power hungry. The beta test 
> sites I've seen installed on top of a telecom equipment shelter occupy 
> an area approximately 8 feet long x 4 feet wide including radomes and 
> mounting.
I'm trying to understand this so sorry if this comes off dumb. So does 
the base station mediate all handoffs where the CPE is told when/what to 
handoff? Or does the CPE have some part in it (other than receiving the 
handoff)? Does the CPE accept control traffic (L2?) from any bird? Are 
there cases where the CPE needs to de-dup packets due to handoffs?

This is pretty fascinating stuff.

Mike