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by herpderperator 231 days ago
That would cause your active connections to break because the source IP changed entirely. Are you sure the IP changes abruptly, or they keep it for as long as the session is live? Though keeping the original IP would mean that, for example, if you are sailing around the world, you'd start getting worse and worse latency as all your data continues going to the original ground station which may be on the other side of the world at that point.

An interesting problem - I wonder what they truly do here. I suppose people expect interruptions with Starlink so doing an IP swap wouldn't be all that different to losing service due to obstruction for a few minutes.
1 comments
ianburrell 231 days ago
IP addresses change all the time. It changes when connect to WiFi, it changes when enter new country, it changes when provider gives you new address. I cant tell if changes on mobile, it looks like mobile providers hand off to next tower, but there must be a limit of how far can go before routing breaks.

Everything retries cause there isn’t difference between new address or bad connection. Most of time we don’t notice cause not using device. Or because most connections are short lived.

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herpderperator 231 days ago
I'm aware that the public IP changes when a phone (on which one hardly has much control over how things run anyway), switches from cellular to a WiFI network.

Your comments are more practical (and maybe aimed at a layman's use of Starlink) but I am talking about the theory of Starlink supposedly interrupting a perfectly-working connection in order to change your IP, which interrupts everything, by design of TCP/conntrack. Whether that operation is fatal or not due to retries or whatever else is not my point at all.

Also, ISPs at home don't randomly disconnect you to give you a new IP. They may give you a new IP when you disconnect and reconnect for other reasons, but they should never dump your connection on purpose just to give you a new IP for no reason. That's not good design at all, hence the question about how Starlink handles wanting to give you a new IP.

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