Question 1

What is IronClouds?

Accepted Answer

IronClouds is a shared operational view of your satellite network. It aggregates telemetry from one or more Starlink accounts into a single live dashboard so everyone on your team — operator, engineer, O&M, manager, program manager — can see the same picture at the same time, from any device. The platform is a fully managed service on our AWS infrastructure — or deployable inside your own private or GovCloud AWS environment — with role-based access, 90-day historical analysis, configurable alerts, and multi-tenant isolation.

Question 2

How do I get access?

Accepted Answer

Access is invite-only. An Owner or Operator in your tenant sends an invite from the Access Control page. You receive a Cognito email with a temporary password, and set a permanent one on first login.

Question 3

What user roles are available?

Accepted Answer

Owner — full access, can manage users and tenant settings. Operator — can view all data and adjust poll settings. Analyst — read-only across allowed accounts. Viewer — dashboard and live streams only. Users can belong to multiple tenants with a different role in each, and Platform Admins (a separate capability for service providers running the platform) can oversee multiple tenants.

Question 4

Can I be in multiple tenants at once?

Accepted Answer

Yes. One user account can belong to several tenants — for example, a service provider's primary tenant plus the customer tenants they support. You switch between them from the header without logging out. Each tenant keeps its own roles and data isolation.

Question 5

Can everyone on my team look at the same data at the same time?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and that's the core of the platform. The chart the operator sees during a live trip is the same chart the engineer sees at their desk and the same chart the program manager sees on their phone. Alerts, annotations, and live updates are shared across every seat in real time. No screenshots, no replay, no "did you see that?"

Question 6

Is my data private?

Accepted Answer

Yes. By default IronClouds runs as a fully managed service on our own hardened AWS infrastructure (us-east-2), with your fleet's data isolated to its own tenant and not used for any purpose other than running the platform for you. For programs that require it, the platform can instead be deployed inside your own private or GovCloud AWS environment, so the data never leaves your boundary. Authentication uses AWS Cognito; traffic is TLS-encrypted in transit and AES-256 at rest. Every database query is tenant-scoped at the Lambda layer — a user in one tenant cannot see another tenant's data through the UI or the API.

Question 7

Can I use IronClouds on my phone?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The platform runs in any modern browser — desktop, laptop, tablet, phone. A field operator with a phone sees the same chart an engineer sees on a monitor. Responsive layout adapts to screen size. Live video streams and the Constellation globe both run on mobile.

Question 8

How do I reset my password?

Accepted Answer

Click "Forgot password" on the login page. AWS Cognito sends a reset code to your email. An Owner can also trigger a password reset for any user from the Access Control page.

Question 9

What does the dark/light mode toggle do?

Accepted Answer

Switches between a dark tactical theme and a light mode. Preference is saved in your browser and restored on next visit.

Question 10

How does Starlink polling work?

Accepted Answer

A scheduled AWS Lambda polls the Starlink Fleet Manager API once per minute per account, pulls telemetry for every active terminal, and writes results to DynamoDB. Each dish also emits sub-minute stream samples (~15-second resolution) so charts and alerts can see motion between poll cycles. DynamoDB TTL expires records after 90 days automatically.

Question 11

How does the alerts Lambda decide when to fire?

Accepted Answer

Every minute it reads every telemetry-stream sample written since its last run, evaluates each against the configured thresholds (signal, latency, packet loss, throughput, obstruction, IP changes, individual Starlink alert codes), and writes alert records plus optional chart annotations for any new threshold crossing. Because it reads the stream — not just the latest snapshot — it catches brief spikes that used to slip between the one-per-minute cadence.

Question 12

How does tenant isolation work at the database layer?

Accepted Answer

Every Lambda that reads or writes telemetry, annotations, or account data checks the caller's tenant context from their Cognito JWT and filters results against the tenant's ACCOUNT# record set in the ironclouds-tenants table. A user in Tenant A making a request for Tenant B's data gets a 403 — regardless of whether the request goes through the UI, the API directly, or a direct query.

Question 13

What is the local gRPC agent?

Accepted Answer

For Starlink dishes on your local network, a lightweight Node.js agent connects directly to the dish's gRPC interface (port 9200) and forwards data to the platform. Enables on-network telemetry for terminals that aren't visible via Fleet Manager.

Question 14

How long is metric data retained?

Accepted Answer

90 days, enforced automatically via DynamoDB TTL. The History page queries any window inside that range. For longer retention, export to S3 on demand from the History page.

Question 15

What does PoP mean?

Accepted Answer

Point of Presence — the Starlink ground station your dish is currently routing through. Each telemetry cycle resolves the dish's IPv4 back to a Starlink hostname via DNS PTR lookup, then maps it to a human-readable city and IATA-style code. You see routing changes as they happen.

Question 16

What's the TLE source for the Constellation page?

Accepted Answer

Public satellite catalog TLEs for Starlink and Kuiper. Positions are propagated client-side with SGP4 and rendered on a 3D globe in real time. The underlying TLE files are refreshed periodically to keep positions accurate.

Question 17

How does live video streaming work?

Accepted Answer

Video feeds ingest through AWS IVS (Interactive Video Service). Cameras push to IVS endpoints, the platform embeds the IVS player for low-latency playback. Recording is optional and stored in S3 for later playback alongside the telemetry that was captured at the same time.

Question 18

Why is IVS in us-east-1 when everything else is in us-east-2?

Accepted Answer

AWS IVS is only available in specific regions. All IronClouds resources run in us-east-2 except the IVS-specific components which run in us-east-1. Cross-region latency is negligible for video streaming.

Take the guesswork out of what your satellite network is doing.