Since nobody interested in digging out that rabbit hole, I just lurked a little, and that's what I found:
https://whois.ipip.net/AS14593
Starlink have autonomous system with ID AS14593. This AS have only 206,080 IPv4 adresses that is too low for woldwide provider.
On "Graph v4" tab you could research direct connections AS14593 have with other AS'es. On "Upstreams" tab you could find upstreams of Starlink, i.e. channels Statlink use to connect to internet.
Mostly it connected to usual backbone providers and IXes, but there is some random networks I found interesting on the quick view.
- AS46997 NATOLAB - Black Mesa Corporation, US
- AS11164 INTERNET2-I2PX - Internet2, US
- AS14630 INVESCO - Invesco Group Services, Inc., US
- AS1798 OREGON - State of Oregon, US
- AS2152 CSUNET-NW - California State University, Office of the Chancellor, US
- AS207841 INFERNO - Inferno Communications Ltd, GB (some here will be enjoyed by that name)
- AS34019 HIVANE, FR (suspicious because it is a very small murky non-profit network with direct connection to Starlink AS)
- AS293 ESNET, US
You could continue that digging if interested. There are other tabs you could explore. There are tons of info you could find interesting.
SpaceX also have AS27277 autonomous system - http://whois.ipip.net/AS27277
Thats what greedy providers use who want to save few fucking cents creating a lot of problems even for regular users. Don't use providers who too greedy to give you white IP. They greedy in other things too.
As for Musk, looks like greedy person will not shoot thousands of satellites to the orbit. I don't think he have only 200k IPs because he is greedy.
Also, NAT have a limitation too. Today even browsing a single average web 2.0 page establish dozens of connections. Things are musch worse if yser have multiple internet connected devices at home. Each connection will use a port on white IP. There are total of 65536 ports, so if a single user establish a 60 connection you are limited to 1000 NAT'ed users on one white IP address. In practice, more than 100 users on a single IP today is a direct road to connection problems and so user complaints. IPv6 supposed to resolve that problems, but it is still in early stages and looks like will never kick IPv4 as expected. Good enough to use some google, but not enough even for messenger phone call. World is far from full IPv6 adoption.
Eh... thats not quite true... for starters you still get both TCP and UDP... but 1000 is still 200 million users... 100 is 20 million... IPV6 probably still a pipe dream for a while but eventually it is capable.... as long there is enough memory and processing ability you can theoretically have millions of processes per device behind the NAT though... 2^96 theoretical maybe? Probably would never have enough memory for that though lol.
I doubt he cares as long as its gonna be profitable at that amount, they will have to figure out making sure the satellites can actually carry that much load too before they worry about billions of users.
UDP is ostracized now, and NAT is much worse for UDP than for TCP since it is stateless protocol.
And yes, satellite load could be a problem too.
IDK, may be you are right, and Musk just do not run ahead of locomotive.
Not sure what you mean by UDP being ostracized... I use it for all kinds of stuff if it's applicable. Its way faster... time will tell though thats the bottom line. I was very skeptical of it at first given the spectacular dumpster fire that all other satellite ISPs are...
I use it heavily too. It is faster and more versatile. But most internet trafic today is TCP and even VPNs do not make things better for UDP, most use TCP for VPN too.