As of right now >90% of the starlink satellites in orbit function in what we would call a bent pipe topology, where a moving LEO satellite at any given moment in time needs to be simultaneously in view of a starlink-run earth station and the CPE.

They have been launching satellites with sat-to-sat laser links but such architecture is by no means fully operational yet. It does appear to be the intended architecture in the long term, to enable several hops of satellite in between a CPE and a starlink-run earth station.

My best theory would be that this is using existing starlink earth stations in Slovakia or Poland. They may have accelerated the commissioning of some of the newest ones.





On Mon, 28 Feb 2022 at 16:36, Jay Hennigan <jay@west.net> wrote:
On 2/28/22 16:17, Michael Thomas wrote:

> As a practical matter how does this help? You need to have base
> stations/dishes, right? Can they be beefy ones that can pump out
> gigabytes that would be capable of backfilling the load? Or would it
> need to be multiple in parallel? Wouldn't that bandwidth be constrained
> by the number of visible satellites in the constellation? I wonder if
> they've ever even tested it with feeding into an internet facing router.
> Could tables on the satellites explode?

If there aren't fixed Internet-connected earth stations line-of-sight to
the satellite that's serving the remote terminal, Starlink will relay
satellite-to-satellite until a path to an Internet-connected earth
station is in reach.

 From the linked article:

"Musk has previously stressed Starlink’s flexibility of Starlink in
providing internet service. In September, Musk talked about how the
company would use links between the satellites to create a network that
could provide service even in countries that prohibit SpaceX from
installing ground infrastructure for distribution.

As for government regulators who want to block Starlink from using that
capability, Musk had a simple answer.

“They can shake their fist at the sky,” Musk said."

--
Jay Hennigan - jay@west.net
Network Engineering - CCIE #7880
503 897-8550 - WB6RDV