Comment by arter45
6 hours ago
>On orbit, we fixed it by pushing an FPGA update
How does that work? Do you actually VPN into an orbiting satellite? If so, how do you get a public IP for a satellite? Do you just ask an average ISP?
6 hours ago
>On orbit, we fixed it by pushing an FPGA update
How does that work? Do you actually VPN into an orbiting satellite? If so, how do you get a public IP for a satellite? Do you just ask an average ISP?
Why would you need a public IP? Why would you want to expose something like this to the public internet?
I have no idea what they use but there are various commonly used radio communication methods for talking to satellites.
I'm just saying that if they use a traditional IP VPN over the Internet, traffic is of course encrypted, but the two endpoints terminating the VPN must have a public IP.
Of course, this is not necessary if they simply use UHF radio signals encoding bits with pulse modulation, or whatever.
Indeed, that's indeed what I was curious about (Internet vs other channels), since at least part of their tech stack in orbit is relatively straightforward (e.g. linux with preempt_rt).
Why would you VPN here? If you did, why would you do so over the public internet? You can route IP packets over internal links, including via radio (that is the entire point of WiFi after all).
Although it occurs to me that "does your network stack employ either ethernet or IP (and what were the considerations)" might be an interesting question.