They probably won't... Links between satellites will use a different routing scheme. Traditional network protocols will "disappear" at the sending ground station, only to "reappear" on the receiving one.
A video link of a simulation was posted on a different comment that shows the "routing" between multiple satellites.
Why wouldn’t they use something like BGP to route between the satellites? Because the topology is explicitly known ahead of time and so the routing can be more “hard coded?”
An interesting side effect of this network is that latency experienced by any two users, anywhere on the network, should be close to equal.
It depends. If you're connecting to a data center across the street, the latency will probably be worse. If you're connecting to one on the other side of the world (or somewhere where the packets have to take a more circuitous route), the latency might be better. The satellites aren't that high up so latency won't be a huge issue.
I think bandwidth limitations will be more problematic. The Earth is really big, and there's not really a good way with LEO orbits to focus your satellites over urban vs rural areas. IOW you can focus coverage on lower latitudes but not really certain longitudes.
IIRC previous FCC filings said each satellite would have ~20 Gbps of bandwidth. That'll be great if you're in a rural area, and I think the gigabit speeds some people are hoping for are actually possible in certain situations. However a lot of people think that they're going to be able to replace the Wifi router in their apartment with a Starlink antenna... I don't think that will be practical any time soon. I'm not an RF person but I doubt there's enough spectrum for each satellite to have tens of thousands of users simultaneously.
edit: also, like with 5G the signal quality is going to be crappier when it is rainy or cloudy.
It's going to be a similar situation to cell phones. When you purchase the product, you know that it will be slow some times outside of your control, but that's the trade off for being able to get connectivity almost anywhere. With no hassle as long as you can see the sky. On your boat? Sure! On your farm 30 miles from anything? Sure!
It will be interesting to see if they geo-lock the base stations or will allow you to move them and then re-calibrate/re-register your location for load balancing.
