[HN Gopher] Setting up Starlink ___________________________________________________________________ Setting up Starlink Author : giuliomagnifico Score : 332 points Date : 2021-04-10 11:36 UTC (11 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.jeffgeerling.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.jeffgeerling.com) | tester756 wrote: | >Unfortunately, since Annie's farm was 60 miles (100 km) away | from my house, she seemed to be outside my assigned 'cell' of | coverage: | | It cannot be changed somewhat dynamically? e.g by call to SpaceX? | | >(she works remotely for Reputation) | | How's that relevant? | Robotbeat wrote: | I think the license SpaceX has for the terminals is for fixed | locations, although SpaceX is applying for mobile terminals (ie | for trucks, RVs, etc). | geerlingguy wrote: | Because a lot more people these days are moving out to more | remote areas and working remotely where it was just not | possible in years past. Starlink would open up a lot more parts | of the non-urban world to this possibility. | poisonborz wrote: | > It's powered through PoE++ (using around 100W of power | continuously) | | Not familiar with Sat gear, but this number seems extremely high | to me for just powering an antenna (and some motors occasionally) | m463 wrote: | Seems to me that most "normal" satellite gear like satellite tv | is receiver-only. | paranoidrobot wrote: | It's not just an antenna. | | It's actually a whole satellite terminal as well as all the | electronics for controlling the phased array. It can operate | entirely without the router they give you - plug in a computer, | or another router (into the white port on the POE injector), | and off you go. | | e: | | If you're interested in watching a Teardown of Dishy, you can | see one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOmdQnIlnRo | akamhy wrote: | Just for comparison satellite dish (Satellite television dish) | uses approximately 30 watts | | https://joteo.net/en-us/electricity-usage-calculator/electri... | portillo wrote: | A satellite dish does not transmit any information to the | satellite. Satellite TV is a pure broadcast system in the | forward direction. | | Moreover, comparing a parabolic receiver with a phased array | is quite unfair. The amount and complexity of the electronics | and processing power required is several orders of magnitude | different. | banana_giraffe wrote: | A better comparison might be HughesNet. Not perfect since | it's different classes of satellites, but their modem is | spec'd at drawing up to 60 watts on their latest gen. Though, | in practice, it tends to draw around 15-25 watts, at least | according to comments I can find online. | wyager wrote: | One of the benefits of this (maybe justified retroactively, but | very real) is that it melts snow off the dish. | parsimo2010 wrote: | Other users have measured power consumption around 100W | constant in operation. | https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/l22f1u/power_cons... | | Power consumption could probably be a bit lower, but there are | limits. Keep in mind that this is a phased array maintaining a | relatively high bandwidth and high SNR link with the satellite. | This is complicated microwave electronics design, a whole | different ball game than old grandpas bragging about how they | made a contact with someone across the ocean with 5W on their | homebuilt HF radio. Starlink may have also made a conscious | decision to make the user terminals "overpowered" so they can | use a less sensitive receiver on the satellite, saving SpaceX | weight, power usage, construction costs, and launch costs. The | cost of more power usage is paid for by the user with an extra | penny per month in their electric bill. | andreasley wrote: | More like $10/month, not a penny. | parsimo2010 wrote: | That's assuming that you could get the power consumption | down to zero, which is impossible. While a penny was an | exaggeration, a 5W power savings over a month is about 50 | cents savings on someone's power bill. | fastball wrote: | Yep, for me it would be $8.50. | | For reference, this is an order of magnitude greater than | the typical power consumption for existing satellite dishes | / 4G modems, which typically operate at around 10W of power | consumption. | parsimo2010 wrote: | For reference, most existing satellite dishes are receive | only, and 4G modems only have to close link on a tower a | few miles away, and at RFs where atmospheric attenuation | is much lower. | jwcacces wrote: | And it has 2 motors for dynamic aiming | [deleted] | tzs wrote: | > Keep in mind that this is a phased array maintaining a | relatively high bandwidth and high SNR link with the | satellite. | | Is it transmitting anything to the satellite when you are not | actually trying to send internet data? | geerlingguy wrote: | It's definitely doing... something. I had my Kill-A-Watt in | it for a few hours with some usage and lots of idle | periods, and between the dish and router, power consumption | was never below 94W. Average around 104W, peaks at 124W. | | Motors weren't being used during my measurement period | either. | | The dish gets pretty warm in operation (it was already a | warm spring day, so it wasn't trying to de-ice or | anything). | csomar wrote: | My guess is that it's always communicating with the | Satellites to adjust its position. | nickysielicki wrote: | For anyone interested in a teardown, Shahriar at The Signal | Path is a pro and he did one here: | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6MfM8EFkGg | geerlingguy wrote: | Highly recommended. Goes deep into the antenna design and | overall components (and why it costs so much to | manufacture). | StringyBob wrote: | There's a pretty crazy amount of electronics in the dish. They | are likely selling it at well below cost at present. | | Teardown showing PCB at: https://youtu.be/iOmdQnIlnRo?t=2152 | | And more detailed RF analysis at https://youtu.be/h6MfM8EFkGg | walrus01 wrote: | the closest thing I have ever previously seen to a starlink | phased array is the flat panel phased array radar in the nose | radome of an air superiority interceptor type aircraft. | geerlingguy wrote: | The CEO just mentioned first version of the dish cost $3000 | to manufacture, and it's currently down to $1500. Major goal | is to reduce manufacturing cost, since they're selling the | thing for $500 and taking a loss right now. | walrus01 wrote: | 100W is actually really low in the class of two way satellite | equipment that's capable of 100 x 15 Mbps speeds or greater. | | I am not talking about ordinary cheap consumer grade hughesnet | or viasat stuff, but if you were to do the power budget for an | idirect x3 modem and a traditional geostationary ku-band VSAT | setup with a 20W BUC, the actual AC wall power consumed would | be quite a lot more. Just the BUC is going to be 200W. | rocqua wrote: | Is this cell limitation a billing thing, or is it maybe more | fundamental? | | Perhaps the unit needs to be pre-programmed on where to look for | satellites in a way that changes when the unit is moved? | wyager wrote: | I read something that made it sound like this was about FCC | rules on roaming vs stationary ground stations. | paranoidrobot wrote: | They've said it's a requirement for the beta. They're limited | the number of customers per cell. | | If they didn't lock you to a location, folks would say they | were going to use it out in the boondocks, and then acutally | use it somewhere it's already at the capacity limit they've | set. | fortran77 wrote: | And Jeff introduced a new character: Flannel Shirt Jeff! He's the | one who does outdoor work. | wyager wrote: | I've been using Starlink for a few months now. It's great for the | cost. | | One annoying thing is their super non-standard and kind of broken | network setup if you want to use your own router. They have two | subnets with different IP ranges (cgNAT and local) on the same | Ethernet link. You have to do some weird manual routes, interface | resets, and dhcp client configuration if you want things to work | reliably. | walrus01 wrote: | The issue you're seeing there, using your own router, is that | during a network-unavailability outage, the starlink terminal | will continue serving as a DHCP server to whatever you plug | into it. When the network is up and you plug a router into it | that's a dhcp client, it'll get an IP address in cgnat space | and periodically renew it. | | When they're doing network maintenance/beta downtime/terminal | firmware updates, your router will fail to get an IP address in | the cgnat space, but the terminal itself will give the router a | new lease in 192.168.100.x (you can ping the antenna at | 192.168.100.1), and your router will be happy because it has | successfully received a lease and can keep renewing it). | | Then when the network unavailability is finished, your router | keeps its 192.168.100.whatever address and the terminal doesn't | issue it a new cgnat address. | | This sort of setup is weird and not normal, so once your | default-configuration DHCP client WAN port router is stuck, you | need to manually tell it to go get a new lease, or set up your | dhcp client in such a way that it always rejects IPs and leases | in 192.168.100.x. I can see why they do it, because they want | the starlink app on peoples' phones to be able to communicate | with the grpc endpoint on the terminal during outages. | | But they'll clearly need to do something different with the | terminal's firmware and how it treats BYOD router customers, | because people will expect to connect a ordinary DHCP client | and have it 'just work', and resume working after an outage has | cleared. | garaetjjte wrote: | Seems weird. I think they could just always assign local | address and route all traffic from CGNAT address to it? It | would mask real address from connected device, but as it is | CGNAT it isn't very useful anyway. | iam-TJ wrote: | Using a very short lease time for 192.168.100.0/24 when CGNAT | isn't available would be one way SpaceX could deal with that. | The DHCP client would then be frequently renewing the lease. | | When CGNAT is available the terminal's DHCP server releases | 192.168.100.0/24 and issues/proxies the CGNAT lease. | | The terminal would be the default route so packets to | 192.168.100.1 would still reach it and responses can be | correctly routed back to the client using the Starlink | monitoring application. | wdb wrote: | Amazing that satellite internet can be faster than internet here | in (West) London (W9) | bserge wrote: | Wow, I'm impressed! I thought it would take more than a decade to | implement when it was announced, but it's here and it works. Just | amazing. | | 100/16 Mbps is pretty decent I guess, hopefully it doesn't go | down as the number of users goes up. The latency is great imo, | 40ms using satellites? I don't think anyone has achieved that | before. | | Would a bigger dish work better or not? | house9-2 wrote: | > 100/16 Mbps is pretty decent I guess | | Its fantastic, can't wait until this is available where I live. | Currently paying $200+ a month for 20Mbps from local wireless | company. | | 2 miles North from here there is AT&T fiber and Comcast | available, 5 miles South there is Comcast (150Mbps) but I'm in | a small community of homes where only options are satellite or | fixed wireless. | Scoundreller wrote: | Make friends with someone on fibre 2mi away with an old TV | tower or at the top of a hill. Set up your own link. | sillyquiet wrote: | This seems weirdly specific and not terribly practical | advice | esaym wrote: | > I thought it would take more than a decade to implement when | it was announced, | | The idea of low orbit satellites for internet has been around | at least since the late 1990's [0] | | [0]:https://tinyurl.com/9frjxbhz | zikduruqe wrote: | > 40ms using satellites? | | Starlink sats are low earth orbiting (about 250 miles away). | The really high latency sats that people used to use were | geosynchronous sats that are parked about 30,000 miles away, | and the round trip delay between earth, bird, earth. | Gwypaas wrote: | Aiming for 20 ms later this year. (Elon time) | | A bigger dish would not lower latency but may increase signal | strength leading to better throughput. But it's not a simple | parabolic antenna. It is the first consumer oriented phased | array antenna tracking the satellites as they move across the | sky, so that would increase the antenna cost even more. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array | daniellarusso wrote: | So, could multiple single units be coupled together? | | I assume that would be less expensive than creating larger | circuit boards, shipping and packaging. | BurningFrog wrote: | I read that as "future versions of the antenna will be much | improved", in price and performance. | | I know Moore's Law is being repealed, but that's still how | new types of electronics work, right? | geerlingguy wrote: | I think in the antenna's case, the primary goal would be to | reduce costs for now (while still maintaining reliability), | since the things currently cost $1500 per unit to make | (SpaceX takes a loss on each new customer initially, for | now). | kube-system wrote: | Moore's law was specific to the way IC manufacturing | worked. While it does (/did?) help reduce the price of | electronic simply because they relied on ICs, the big price | decreases you see in products after their early-adopter | phase are likely just general economies of scale. | | Making small early batches of anything is more expensive | per unit than making a ton of them --- regardless of | whether it's cutting edge tech or a plastic chair. | walrus01 wrote: | I have seen as low at 15.85 ms from my starlink terminal to | downtown Seattle. On average it's more like 22-23 ms. | toast0 wrote: | Centurylink DSL from across the sound to Seattle is | generally 21ms, although there is little deviation. (Two | line bonded vdsl) | walrus01 wrote: | just the segment from your modem to the DSLAM is probably | 14-16ms, which can be typical for VDSL2. | Reventlov wrote: | << A bigger dish would not lower latency but may increase | signal strength leading to better throughput. >> | | A better signal strength would probably lead to better | modulations being used, therefore, less transmission and | reception time, and a better latency, or am I wrong ? (at | least that's the case for Wi-Fi: the better the signal | strength, the lower the transmission time so the better the | latency). | swiley wrote: | It could also mean less retransmission, depending on how | the MAC works. That would lower the average latency. | labcomputer wrote: | Latency in this case is dominated by time-of-flight to the | satellite. | | At 100 Mbps with a 40 ms latency, there are about 2 | megabits in the air between the ground station and CPE. | Denvercoder9 wrote: | _> Latency in this case is dominated by time-of-flight to | the satellite._ | | Is it though? Starlink orbits at 550 km, time-of-flight | from ground to satellite to ground would be only 3.7ms, | twice that makes ~20% of the roundtrip latency. | bcrl wrote: | There are more than 2 roundtrips. Any MAC that has to | perform time division multiplexing on a shared uplink has | to poll all base stations over time to figure out which | ones have data to transmit, and how much data is queued. | Once the satellite knows how much data the ground station | has to transmit, it assigns sufficient timeslots, | transmits the assignment and then waits for data to come | back. This is very similar to PON networks where upstream | is shared, but the difference is sub-1ms latency vs 4-5ms | latency. Sadly, this does have unfortunate latency | implications for how long web pages take to load and | render. Streaming video should, however, work swimmingly. | spookthesunset wrote: | It's interesting they'd do TDMA over some flavor of code | division multiple access (CDMA). | | From what I read it has to do with the fact the antennas | are high gain directional antennas and not | omnidirectional ones like on cell phones. With cell | phones you are kinda walking around in a soup of cell | signals all sharing the same spectrum at once... you and | hundreds of other people are broadcasting in the same | frequencies at the same time and they all tell each other | apart because they all use a different "language"; the | Wikipedia CDMA article does an excellent job explaining | this. | | I would think that as more satellites get launched they | could use WCDMA and signal from your station could be | seen by multiple satellites in orbit much like a cell | phone can reach multiple towers. | | Writing it out... I bet TDMA is required because the FCC | would never grant a block of spectrum where hundreds of | thousands of ground stations were using low gain, | somewhat omnidirectional antennas to reach a | constellation of satellites in space.... | bcrl wrote: | It's even more complicated than that. Thanks to MIMO | antenna arrays, signals from multiple ground stations can | be received and decoded at the same time (MU-MIMO). The | advances in radio MACs over the past 20 years is | seriously impressive compared to what was considered high | tech in the 1990s, and it's all a result of Moore's law | making it cheaper to do more math in the same size and | power envelope as older semiconductors. | spookthesunset wrote: | Had to look up MIMO. | | That is actually really cool. | | So it is doing some combination of time division and | spacial division. | Robotbeat wrote: | 550km is the closest approach. Usually it will be at | least sqrt(2) times that (ie at least a slant angle of 45 | degrees), maybe 2 times that. Plus the latency from the | Gateway to the actual server. And the Gateways can have | even greater slant angle to the satellite than the mobile | terminals. | Denvercoder9 wrote: | I don't think it'll usually be at a slant angle of at | least 45deg. The beta requires a field of view of 100deg | after tilting. I can't find the maximum tilt angle, but | SpaceX has authorization to transmit only 25deg degrees | above the horizon, so the maximum slant angle is 65deg. | Robotbeat wrote: | But think what that means in terms of SOLID angle, not | linear angle. | Denvercoder9 wrote: | Orbital planes are so close together that it doesn't make | much difference. However, now that I've actually | calculated it, your sqrt(2) factor seems to be about | right for the average distance -- there's too few | satellites per plane in the current phase. | | In this phase Starlink uses 72 orbital planes, with 22 | satellites per plane, so 1440 satellites in total | (they're almost there). It orbits at 550km above Earth's | surface, so the orbit has radius 6921km, which gives an | orbital length of 43486km. | | Separation between orbital planes varies depending on | your latitude, but assume the worst case, where it is | 43486km / 72 / 2 = 302km1. Thus, the nearest orbital | plane is at most 302km / 2 = 151km away from the orbital | plane directly overhead. However, since the planes | process, on average the nearest orbital plane is only | half that, or 76km away from the plane overhead. | | Satellites within each plane have a separation of 43486km | / 22 = 1976km. Thus, there's always a satellite at most | 1976km / 2 = 988km away1 from any point in each orbital | plane, and on average there's a satellite half that away, | or 494km. | | Adding all this together, the nearest satellite is on | average [?](550^2 + 76^2 + 494^2) = 743 km away (at the | worst latitude). | | [EDIT: Actually, that's improper averaging, the correct | average is obtained with [?][?](550^2 + x^2 + y^2) dx dy | / [?] dx dy on x=0..151, y=0..988, which yields 777km]. | | The original plan used 24 planes with 66 satellites, | which reduces average distance to 617km. At more | favorable latitudes the difference with the current | design would be even larger. | | [EDIT: This should be 635km.] | | 1 This is distance on the surface of the orbital sphere, | straight-line distance is a bit less. It probably doesn't | make much difference. | [deleted] | gameswithgo wrote: | The latency may well be better than landlines in some cases. | For instance, data from an edge cache in your city will be | faster than starlink. But data from china? Starlink may win. | | I wonder if it could improve gaming/video conferencing with | people far away. | [deleted] | geerlingguy wrote: | I know my Spectrum cable connection gets high 30s range for | latency. Starlink is close at low 40s, and as they get more | sats up, that latency average may go down. | Denvercoder9 wrote: | Right now, that's not really the case though, as the | satellite interlinks aren't operational yet. All your traffic | goes through a base station relatively close to you, and | continues over "regular" fiber around the world. | tyingq wrote: | This article and accompanying videos are interesting in | that regard: https://www.circleid.com/posts/20191230_starli | nk_simulation_... | | It suggests they _could be_ lower latency than a great- | circle path ground fiber without the satellite interlinks. | 7e wrote: | If you're paying 20+ms per bounce through the atmosphere, | no chance. | Robotbeat wrote: | Not true as the slant angle can be pretty large for | Gateways. It is still in principle possible to beat | fiber. | justinwp wrote: | In my experience, Starlink isn't suitable for many uses right now | without some kind of wan bonding(speedify, speedfusion, etc). I | currently have two cellular modems + Starlink bonded with some | routing rules forcing connections(streaming) directly to | Starlink. Since I installed in early March, it has improved | significantly and I will probably switch the default routing | rules to use Starlink and only use the bonded connection for ssh | and similar. | | Overall, I am very pleased and looking forward to the continued | improvements. | | More on my setup, charts, etc here: | https://jpoehnelt.medium.com/upgrading-to-starlink-bc6d4cd7e... | walrus01 wrote: | This depends on your current latitude and obstructions - my | starlink terminal above 49N is averaging 0.22% packet loss | (1/5th of 1%) to stuff in a telecom facility in downtown | Seattle. Its overall packet loss over a multi day period is | actually better, and jitter is lower, than on a docsis3 cable | connection at the same place. | | The simultaneous density of satellites and gaps, or lack of | gaps at your location will have a big impact on the terminal's | availability and packet loss to gateway at the other side of | the ground-to-space-to-ground link. | tyingq wrote: | _Aside: The router design is as impractical as it is futuristic. | The thing would fall over if you looked at it sideways, and the | solitary LED on the front was hard to see unless in a dark room | or looking closely, straight at it. Hopefully a 2nd iteration | will be better!_ | | Wow, he's right about the shape of the router. It also looks like | it forces the ethernet cable in front if you want to be able to | see the LED, and the cable itself is pointed downward: | https://preview.redd.it/42rc9fkqwnw51.jpg?width=960&crop=sma... | | I suppose that's a minor nit, given what Starlink delivers, | though. I'm curious how practical it might be for on-board | aircraft wi-fi. That's a space that could use a leap in | bandwidth/tech, as FAA certification makes it difficult to keep | equipment current. I'm curious if tracking is hard since the | satellites and the "ground station" are both moving around...the | aircraft on all axis points. | boardwaalk wrote: | Acting like the LED not being bright is a /negative/ thing is | odd to me. Why would you care if it's lit up unless you're | investigating an issue and you're right in front of it anyways? | Just seems well designed to me. | geerlingguy wrote: | I absolutely detest bright LEDs, but in this case, it's a dim | LED set back in a recessed hole in the router that is hard to | make out at all unless viewing it straight on. | | Better this than a blaring blue LED I guess, but it would be | nice to just have it easier to see in general. Having a shiny | brushed reflective surface to the router (instead of, say, | black or pure white) exacerbates the problem. | | The router looks 'cool' like the Cybertruck, but could use | some refinement physically. The shape also makes it hard to | mount on a wall, or even to place it horizontally if the need | arises. | ncallaway wrote: | > I'm curious how practical it might be for on-board aircraft | wi-fi | | I suspect it'll work well for this scenario. My understanding | is that the cruising speed of a plane is relatively slow | compared to all the other motion involved (LEO satellites move | fast!). The US Air Force is reportedly working with SpaceX to | test Starlink in various conditions including in flight | https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/air-force-testing- | starli.... | oxplot wrote: | Note that one can use any router with the dish. Basically the | dish provides you with a NATed private IP which you can assign | to the WAN interface of your router of choice and go from | there. | wyager wrote: | It's a bit more complicated than that if you want | reliability. They have two IP ranges on the same physical | link, and their patched DHCPD is not standards compliant. If | the dish loses its connection, you will be stuck with a | useless local IP unless you block DHCP leases in the 192.168 | range. | geerlingguy wrote: | I haven't tested this yet, but apparently if you use your own | router you may be able to get an IPv6 address assigned. | tyingq wrote: | Oh, that's interesting. Is the router then completely just a | commodity thing that has no specific Starlink functionality | at all? | | Edit: Some reddit posts suggests the Starlink App doesn't | work if you don't use the router. But also that the app isn't | terribly useful outside of the "obstructions view", which is | mostly a one-time need during installation. | freedomben wrote: | That's correct. The starlink app only works when using the | included router. The app is useful if you like to see | numbers and graphs of dropped packets, throughput, etc, but | otherwise isn't needed. | ShockedUnicorn wrote: | The starlink app works with your own router, you just need | to set up a static route. | | https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/jqhoqz/starlink_ | a... | yokem55 wrote: | It works fine if you add a static interface route to | 192.168.100.1/32 on the wan interface of your router. | mensetmanusman wrote: | I use the command interlocking strips for all my devices that I | want standing up: | https://www.command.com/3M/en_US/command/products/~/Command-... | | E.g. putting echo dots near a ceiling, or little lamps in a | spot to prevent tipping by children, for routers to stand, etc. | | I like the satisfyingly 'click' when things are in place :) | tw04 wrote: | >Wow, he's right about the shape of the router. It also looks | like it forces the ethernet cable in front if you want to be | able to see the LED, and the cable itself is pointed downward: | https://cdn.hackaday.io/images/8430831598574092393.jpg | | I'm not sure the image you link is a fair representation of the | router. The one he actually shows is SIGNFICANTLY | shorter/smaller/wider and honestly while it's similar it's a | different shape. | | https://i.imgur.com/Pdw4cAf.jpeg | tyingq wrote: | Hrm, okay. Linked to a different image that shows the shape | from two different aspects. | person_of_color wrote: | The prices aren't competitive for metros.. what am I missing? | argvargc wrote: | I wonder how much ignorance in the world will be required, | before HN stops downvoting people for asking questions? | mlindner wrote: | I mean the question itself is pure ignorance and also shows a | kind of lack of care of others. As one other commenter | responded "New York City has subways, why do cars exist?" is | the kind of question it was. | ncallaway wrote: | That it's not trying to compete in the metros, and that lots of | humans live outside the metros? | eyesee wrote: | Metro areas aren't the target. There is a large, underserved | market that doesn't have access to broadband internet, and for | those customers this is a breakthrough. | wolfram74 wrote: | Also while we aren't really used to this being the case with | ISP's, lots of products get cheaper from when they are first | offered. I think they're pricing a bit higher to start off | with to just make sure they don't join the giant heap of | bankrupt satellite internet companies. | JohnJamesRambo wrote: | It's sad that it is even necessary in the US. Telcos were | given massive amounts of money by the government with | promises they would do this and then they simply didn't and | said cell phone service was good enough. I would posit that a | populace educated on cell phone internet is largely | responsible for the rise in intense anti-science stupidity | and lack of fact checking we are experiencing. People on | phones are too easy to manipulate and sway, the ad giants | have mastered it. | postingawayonhn wrote: | > It's sad that it is even necessary in the US. | | Isn't it fantastic? The system of (mostly) free enterprise | has created an affordable high speed service product that | can be accessed anywhere on the planet. | _ph_ wrote: | That this works on most of the planet. If you can get fibre or | good DSL for a reasonable price, take that. But even in the US | large parts don't have fibre available, especially in rural | locations. Many countries don't have any networking | infrastructure. It will be a total game changer once mobile | versions (airplanes, ships, yachts) become available. | ghaff wrote: | For some level of density, wires/fibre is usually going to be | the better bet. But even though where I live isn't exactly | rural, it's definitely not urban or conventional suburban, | and cable is still fairly marginal. | izacus wrote: | The question is: will this stall development of more scalable | fibre optic infrastructure and municipal fiber - to support a | proprietary single corporation solution? | Sebb767 wrote: | Can fiber rollout actually be stalled even more? | | But on a more serious note, with fiber you can supply a | whole street with symmetric gigabit links pretty easily and | for what is pretty much a one-time cost of laying the | fibers. Upgrading the line to 25 GBit and up is done by | only switching the receivers, once that becomes | economically viable. Even if the satellites can handle | multiple hundred gigabits (they can't), it would be | impossible for them to compete with fiber in either | bandwidth, price or latency. | tim333 wrote: | It's quite expensive. I imagine fiber can still make money. | wyager wrote: | Fiber is not and probably never will be economical for | rural areas. Most of the rural fiber rollouts that exist | today are pretty transparent subsidy milking schemes. | | I was thinking about buying 40 acres in the middle of | nowhere earlier this year. It had no electrical power | within a mile, but there was a buried gigabit fiber line | running down the dirt road. It probably cost at least | hundreds of thousands of dollars to serve fewer than a | hundred people. I called the ISP to ask about pricing. It | was cheaper to buy a fiber/phone combo than just fiber. | Why? "We get more subsidies that way." | | Starlink is clearly a superior option in cases like this. | tzs wrote: | When the entire constellation of Starlink satellites is | deployed the aggregate bandwidth of all of them will be | less than a handful of fiber optic cables. | | Starlink is not designed to compete with fiber or copper in | areas where you have a high density of internet users over | a significant area. | | It is for less dense areas, or those few people in areas | otherwise well served by fiber or copper that have a house | that ended up in a gap between infrastructure build outs. | gerikson wrote: | Isn't starlink a service aimed at areas that can't easily get | the sort of internet service that's cheap to provide to metro | areas (i.e. rural areas)? | xbmcuser wrote: | You still need fiber to the towers for good connectivity. The | amount of infrastructure needed to install even for 4g in | remote areas is very expensive compared to these now that | spacex can get the satellites up for very cheap as secondary | payload with the most of the expense is borne by the primary | payloads. | shp0ngle wrote: | Wouldn't it be cheaper and more cost effective to cover those | areas by 4G mobile phone network? | yardie wrote: | Have you seen what they do to install just a few blocks of | 5G antennas? Ripping up pavement, trenching fiber and | power. And that is just in a high density city. | gerikson wrote: | 4G does not require as dense a cell network as 5G. | jml78 wrote: | My in laws live In the middle of nowhere. Their option | for many years was 3G and eventually 4G. Having to visit | them, 4G was just unbearable. Eventually ATT said they | could just barely get 1.5Mbps down service. | | That was superior to the 4G service they got. Just | because it is 4G doesn't mean it is services well and not | overloaded even in rural areas. | | Starlink will be the first real viable high speed | connection they will have ever been able to get | ghaff wrote: | My dad's house in Maine is at the very end of a DSL | connection. He get up to about 1Mbps down with a tailwind | --which is barely usable even for non-video. I couldn't | really work from the house. (And there's essentially no | cell service at all.) And the neighbors further down the | road basically have nothing at all other than | conventional satellite.) | _flux wrote: | I think Starlink would give a realistic option to deploy | those 4G base stations in rural areas--they need | connectivity as well. | Avamander wrote: | Starlink would also give a realistic option to deploy a | communal ISP somewhere isolated. | tnorthcutt wrote: | Have you tried using 4G as your only connection? Even | carriers that provide "unlimited" transfer typically | throttle your connection after a certain amount of usage. | fpoling wrote: | I use 4G as my primary Internet connection in Oslo, | Norway. The apartment block where I live has a 100 years | old copper line and DSL gives like 10 MBit/s with 100ms | ping. | | For about 90 USD/month one can get 60 MBit/s connection l | both ways with ping bellow 20s. The connection is only | throttled after 2 TB of data. But then you need a router | and an antenna. | | Or one can pay like 15 USD/month extra to upgrade the | mobile subscription with 10 MBit/s connection and the | throttling limit of 1TB. The ping is about 30. | throw4738 wrote: | I am in Europe on unlimited data plan for 35euro, it gets | throttled down to 8Mbps after 600GB. | rsyring wrote: | That this service is designed for customers who don't have | other good internet options and are therefore somewhere between | willing and _thrilled_ to pay $100 a month for good service. | freedomben wrote: | Exactly. The absolute fastest I can get without Starlink is a | flakey WISP with ~20 down (they advertise more, but well, | it's a lie). That's why I bought Starlink as soon as I could. | lxgr wrote: | I live in the city center of a major city and the only wired | provider available at my address peaks out at 0.3 Mbit/s upload | during workdays. | | 4G is better, but not by much (given that apparently everyone | of my neighbors has already switched to that in favor of the | cable provider). | | One of my neighbors has already pre-ordered Starlink. | User23 wrote: | I lived downtown in a major city and my landlords had an | exclusive deal with AT&T so while my neighbors were getting | 400 Mb cable I was getting 15 Mb DSL. | throw4738 wrote: | Try to downgrade to 3G, it is in phone setting, you should | get 3 Mbps easily. | kiwijamo wrote: | Many carriers are now reducing radio bandiwdth available to | 3G due to reallocating spectrum to 4G (or even 5G) so this | isn't a viable long term plan. | lxgr wrote: | 3G is much slower than 4G on my network. Most 3G networks | in my country are scheduled to be switched off in the very | near future. | tyingq wrote: | It would be interesting if they had a plan to promote using | them as a redundant path, where the cost was lower unless you | actually used it. | ghaff wrote: | I doubt they'll price it that way but I'd definitely consider | getting it as a backup where I live because my cable Internet | is "OK" but definitely a bit glitchy and inconsistent. | Especially as I've been pretty much full remote since pre- | COVID I'll pay to get more reliable Internet at home. | kortilla wrote: | New York already has a subway system, why do cars exist? | rcxdude wrote: | Metros are not the target market at all, in part because | starlink (nor any other satellite internet) cannot serve above | a certain density of customers (because there's only so focused | you can make radio waves). Even with their planned upgrades and | perfectly even distribution of their customers across the | continental US, starlink could not serve more than a few | percent of households. (Even Musk has said that it is not | competition for the big ISPs, but that hasn't stopped a hype | machine on the internet for assuming it will be). | nevi-me wrote: | The cell grouping is interesting. A colleague likes the outdoors, | so he's preordered one for his Suzuki Jimny, to mount on it. I | wonder if Starlink are considering this use case. | | I haven't been able to preorder mine, because we're planning on | moving out from the city to a small village next year, but the | Starlink website requires a street address. | | Our villages are quite primitive, no street names (I think it's | cos nobody's thought of it). So, the nearest town where there's | street names, is quite far. | | I was feeling uneasy about using it as an address, this article | sort of cements that concern. | | I have 50/50Mbps fiber, but reckon we could still be served by 20 | down if needed. Exciting! | TheWoolRug wrote: | You can put a google plus code (like coordinates) into the | starlink address finder for places without street addresses. | andrepd wrote: | Why not just coordinates? Talk about overcomplicating. | paranoidrobot wrote: | Probably because a plus code is harder for someone to screw | up. | | Find the place on Google Maps, copy the plus code. | | Rather than entering lat/lon coords... except did you get | the sign right, or maybe you flipped lat/lon, or got a | significant digit out. | nevi-me wrote: | Interestingly, the plus code for me is almost working. | It's sending me to another place once I've put in the | location on the site. | | It's a good start though, I'll try other close plus codes | until I get it right. Would still have been better to use | coordinates. | jws wrote: | ... or you used minutes with a decimal minute, or minutes | and seconds, or maybe decimal degrees. | | There comes a time when a format has so many confusable | variants, it's best to make a new unambiguous format. | | I prefer "three words". You get three words and they | identify a location suitably accurate for navigation. | https://what3words.com/ | zertrin wrote: | If only 3 words wasn't a proprietary black box, which | demands that you use their service / api and that you are | not allowed to reproduce it without their assent. Plus | there's a bunch of other drawbacks to w3w if you just | search a bit online. | | At least the algorithm for plus codes is known and can be | reused even if Google decides to drop it in the future. | kortilla wrote: | A system that depends on a functioning proprietary API to | resolve coordinates is idiotic. That's so unreliable that | it can't be used for anything more than an ephemeral | exchange. At that point you might as well have a 3 word | url shortened link. | andrepd wrote: | I prefer an unambiguous and open way of communicating | locations on the surface of the Earth, to a proprietary | service from a company with a long history of pulling the | plug on products. | coder543 wrote: | "Plus codes" are also known as "open location codes", and | they are open source, not proprietary, nor do they rely | on a central service. | | You appear to be conflating other proprietary systems | with this open one. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Location_Code | | https://github.com/google/open-location-code | yosito wrote: | > Probably because a plus code is harder for someone to | screw up | | Probably because a plus code is harder for someone to use | with non-Google services and open source map tools | coder543 wrote: | It's open source... anyone can encode and decode plus | codes: https://github.com/google/open-location-code | kwhitefoot wrote: | Clicking on a map location in Google maps shows a context | menu where the first entry is the latitude and longitude, | click that and it copies it to the clipboard. No need to | use a Google specific encoding. | jws wrote: | You don't need an address. I'm in the preorder queue for a | small island with no streets, much less addresses. | nemo1618 wrote: | whoa. Is it _your_ island? What region? How large is it? I | need more details. | [deleted] | collsni wrote: | Yeah man strapping this puppy on my camper was my plan. It will | be interesting to see how it works out | tyingq wrote: | _" he's preordered one for his Suzuki Jimny, to mount on it. I | wonder if Starlink are considering this use case."_ | | It sounds like they don't support a roaming base station for | now. From the FAQ: https://www.starlink.com/faq | | _Can I travel with Starlink, or move it to a different | address? | | Starlink satellites are scheduled to send internet down to all | users within a designated area on the ground. This designated | area is referred to as a cell. | | Your Starlink is assigned to a single cell. If you move your | Starlink outside of its assigned cell, a satellite will not be | scheduled to serve your Starlink and you will not receive | internet. This is constrained by geometry and is not arbitrary | geofencing._ | | Sounds like some sort of authorization comes down from the | satellite, and they don't want to have to push all | authorizations from all satellites. Which is odd for a full | duplex service. Searching around google suggests a "cell" is | roughly a 4.5 mile radius circle, and you probably aren't in | the center. So movement would be pretty restricted. | swiley wrote: | I wonder if you can schedule changes to this. | modeless wrote: | This is changing soon. SpaceX filed with the FCC for approval | for mobile ground stations on vehicles like RVs, boats, and | planes. It's coming! https://fcc.report/IBFS/SES-LIC- | INTR2021-00934/3877177.pdf | voisin wrote: | Interesting edge case of no street names (which in retrospect | is not an edge case at all given the use case for remote | users!). Wonder why they haven't allowed GPS coordinate input? | walrus01 wrote: | they do when you sign up in a geographic location as a | "available to ship now" beta customer, after putting in your | address, it brings up a view of a satellite/google maps view | of your area and asks you to zoom in and click on the map on | the precise location where the terminal will be installed. | mdasen wrote: | Starlink has said that they're planning on offering a roaming | use-case, but they aren't there yet | (https://www.slashgear.com/spacex-starlink-cell-location- | limi...). | | Part of the issue is that Starlink cells are going to be very | limited in capacity for the foreseeable future: | https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/09/analyst- | probes.... Cowen suggests that Starlink "should eventually be | able to serve 485,000 simultaneous data streams in the USA with | 100Mbps speeds or 1.5 million streams with over-subscription." | That's in late 2026 or 2027 when Starlink has deployed around | 12,000 satellites (they're at about 10% of that now). If a | bunch of people decide to bring Starlinks to a popular area, | the cell for that are simply won't have the bandwidth to | support all those users. Imagine people going to Burning Man | with lots of Starlinks or bringing their Starlink when they go | on vacation. It's not meant to be a portable WiFi hotspot. I'm | guessing that portable use might cost more since Starlink has | to assume that you might be taking up capacity in places where | bandwidth is more scarce. | | In terms of preordering, you can order without a street | address. Starlink's website says, "Can't find your address? Try | a Plus Code with City" (and links to https://support.google.com | /maps/answer/7047426?co=GENIE.Plat...). | | One thing I would also point out about Starlink is that they | only guarantee that you'll be able to use the $500 dish (plus | $50 shipping) for 12 months before being forced to replace it. | Starlink is new tech and I'm guessing SpaceX wants to be able | to upgrade things without maintaining support for less- | efficient, older equipment. I don't expect them to force | upgrades on people on a whim, but they do spell out that the | $500 dish might not be allowed on their network a year after | your purchase. I don't think they want to make customers | unhappy, but I think they want to make sure they can upgrade | their network without getting sued for not supporting expensive | customer-purchased equipment forever. | londons_explore wrote: | > they only guarantee that you'll be able to use the $500 | dish (plus $50 shipping) for 12 months | | I would guess that if they disconnect your dish from the | network, they'll give you a new one for free. I know that | isn't what their terms and conditions state, but it would be | bad business to do anything else. | | They'll hope that most users choose to upgrade first (for | more speed or other features). | japanuspus wrote: | $500 is pretty much free for this equipment. Production | price is currently around $3000 according to SpaceX | president Gwyneth Shotwell [0]. | | [0]: | https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1379457265435078665 | londons_explore wrote: | Since the antenna can't be used for anything other than | receiving starlink service, it isn't really logical not | to consider the cost as "$500 + $100/month forever" | coder543 wrote: | That tweet says <$1500. ("less than half the original | $3000") | | 33% of the manufacturing cost isn't nearly _free_ , in my | opinion, but it is definitely a loss leader product. | Scoundreller wrote: | > Imagine people going to Burning Man with lots of Starlinks | or bringing their Starlink when they go on vacation. | | I deeply hope people aren't going to those to download OS | updates and watch Netflix. Might have some crazies that feel | the need to livestream the whole thing, but should be okay if | only a handful at a time. | londons_explore wrote: | A neat way to prioritize users is to give priority to | whoever has downloaded _least_ in the past 24 hours. | | Then those who abuse the data get slow service and nobody | else. | sgtnoodle wrote: | You could imagine a handful of starlinks providing the | backhaul for public wifi at an event. | mikepurvis wrote: | I imagine they'll eventually have more expensive plans | available for mobile/roaming applications, but obviously you | want a well spread base load to avoid saturating any one area. | It sounds from some of the other posts like they also do a | bunch of active assignment/handoff stuff as the satellites | pass, and that gets a lot more complicated once you're also | accounting for moving ground stations. | [deleted] | snurfer wrote: | Our Starlink connection (backup WAN) recently switched from a New | York ip to one near Chicago. I think we've switched to a downlink | station that is geographically closer and we're getting better | pings and, possibly, better throughout (needs more testing). | | The service is expensive, but it's been a fun way to | "participate" with all the exciting stuff SpaceX is working on. | walrus01 wrote: | for a very brief period of time my starlink connection was | exiting the cgnat to the internet in chicago (the first hop | that was a public IP was 1-2ms from various ISPs' looking | glasses in chicago), and the latency matched for return trip to | LEO/back, down to earth station in the pacific northwest, and | then transport circuit to chicago and back. Then after a couple | of days it went back to Seattle. | lquist wrote: | Any way to track how many subscribers Starlink has on anything | like a real-time (weekly or monthly would be awesome) basis? | eigenschwarz wrote: | I have Starlink and am in a wooded part of New England. I mostly | agree with freedomben's points. All I will add is I still use my | cell phone hotspot (Verizon -- only carrier that gets a modicum | of service where I am) for Zoom calls or similar. Starlink is | definitely fast but too many hiccups for video calls. | | Edit: More musings. There is a push to get broadband in our area | within the year. If that happens and Starlink's service remains | the same, I will cancel Starlink. For _me_ continuous | connectivity is much^3 more important than speed. | m463 wrote: | I suspect the hiccups will gradually disappear as more | satellites get deployed. | | 60 satellites batches, just about every week, pretty amazing: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Launches | malux85 wrote: | I'm in rural NZ and I can't wait for Starlink to be available | here (it says late 2021 for my area) | | I have been trying to get the local ISP to install their system | for 6 weeks now, their service is just terrible. Installers don't | answer the phone, they make promises they don't keep, I have the | keep hounding them, and the ISP itself has a monopoly position so | they are abusive in pricing and customer service because you have | no alternative :( | | There is nothing more frustrating than having money to pay for a | service, the desire to have it, and the company who's selling | just being abusive and totally useless. (Example: before I got | involved they were selling my elderly parents 8,000$ in unneeded | networking equipment they told them was required) | | Save me Starlink! | Jemm wrote: | So I can't use Starlink for mobile Internet. Bummer would be | great to take around on an RV. | m463 wrote: | I think that would be the killer app. | | My take is that they're manually scheduling satellite | customers/aiming/timeslices and as they get more sophisticated | they will allow this. | | The ultimate would be a self-contained electric rv with fold | out panels - solar for the motors, climate and appliances, and | satellite for internet connectivity. | | I think an acceptable middle-ground would be the ability to | call-it-in change your address. But then there would be people | that would get an address in boise, then set it up in NYC. | 1timewonderacc wrote: | I really hope StarLink completely replaces CenturyLink DSL. | CenturyLink DSL 30mbps DOWN and 5mbps UP, real world speed is | 2mbps DOWN and 512mbps UP. Never goes above this speed. | CenturyLink DSL is a complete rip off. Costs $45 and they charge | for the modem $10. $55/month total I would be willing to pay | $99/month if it had at least real world speed of 30mbps DOWN and | 5mbps UP ^_^ | kiwijamo wrote: | 512mbps UP? | uomo wrote: | I assume they meant 512kbps... or they just have strangely | great upload speeds. | freedomben wrote: | I'm using Starlink right now. AMA. | | I'm in East Idaho. Currently my dish angles itself to the north. | It rarely moves itself north/south, and slightly moves east/west | throughout the day. I've read that right now it locks onto a | single satellite, although they're adding multi-satellite support | later. | | My speeds are inconsistent, and interestingly they start slow | (around 60 Mbps) but after a couple seconds they'll get to | 150-200 Mbps (which is awesome for downloads). Latency is | consistently in the low 30ms. I get some downtime every day, so | it really is a "beta" like they say. I have a backup WISP. | | Setup was literally take dish out of the box, insert into tripod | (included), plug in cables, connect to the wireless routers SSID | and activate with the starlink app. After that I put the included | router into storage and plugged in my Protectli[1] running | CentOS. Everything works great. My only complaint is the CGNAT, | but given the difficulty associated with procuring IPv4 | addresses, it's understandable. | | [1] I love this thing. Highly recommend: | https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0741F634J/ref=ppx_yo_dt... | 7e wrote: | Can you compare with T-Mobile's 5G home Internet plan? Similar | numbers advertised, $60 a month, no caps. | walrus01 wrote: | "no caps" - but watch what happens if you move 200 or 300GB | downstream on a LTE based last mile residential connection in | a month. you'll either get shut off, throttled to a few Mbps, | or billed extra. Look at the fine print in the terms of | service. If you have a household with multiple people that | watch netflix, download movies, or even want to download a | single xbox one or PS4/PS5 game (they can be 120-180GB now), | watch out. | gkop wrote: | Um how do you expect Starlink to treat you once it's GA? | walrus01 wrote: | A whole lot better than the quotas and caps enforced on | consumer grade geostationary satellite stuff right now | (hughesnet, viasat) that is available in the same price | tier of $85-130/month. And also better than 90% of WISPs. | gkop wrote: | Relative to the helpful details on LTE you posted, | though? (Obviously Starlink is incomparably better than | the status quo satellite options...) | | Why do you expect better than LTE? | | And would you say more about WISP behavior? I know WISPs | are all over the place, but in my small experience, a | technically competent WISP will not look at your usage | unless there's contention impacting other customers. | | Like, Starlink has said they won't service urban areas, | to prevent degradation due to contention. So I expect | them to use the usual TOS and technical controls... to | prevent contention. I don't see what makes them special | here. If they had some special sauce to provide more | cumulative bandwidth to subscribers than LTE and WISPs, | I'd expect them to open up to urban areas stuck with | Comcast, and profit massively. | walrus01 wrote: | Typical WISP last mile: Something like a ubiquiti rocket | 5ac gen2 on an RF elements 60 degree horn antenna, in a | 40 MHz TDD channel somewhere in the 5.x GHz band, | aggregate capacity of the entire AP might be around 240 | Mbps. Shared between 20 to 30 customers. I'm regularly | seeing 250-330 Mbps down on Starlink right now with beta | equipment, and very, very few WISPs except those who are | doing 60 GHz based PtMP micro-POP setups can match that. | It's a real challenge for a WISP to have a few dozen | houses all trying to download the latest 180GB Call of | Duty update connected to one AP. | | I'm not nearly as optimistic about WISPs in the long run, | compared to my views 8-10 years ago. Really difficult to | reach locations will go to starlink or similar (as a | replacement for consumer grade geostationary), other | places where the customers per square km density is | sufficient will eventually get overbuilt with GPON last | mile that provides vastly more throughput and capacity. | | The most clueful and forward thinking WISPs I know are | all making every effort possible, within whatever capital | resources are available to them, to develop in house | capacity for doing rural aerial FTTH. Buying bucket | trucks, getting training, learning how to splice fiber, | design GPON architecture, working with state PUCs for | pole access, etc. | dboreham wrote: | WISP and Musk are ruled by the same Shannon, so I'm | skeptical that there will be a significant advantage over | the long term, but satellite has a big advantage it terms | of coverage -- the difference between "can you see that | tiny hilltop in the distance over the trees?" and "can | you see the sky?" | walrus01 wrote: | Same Shannon limit, but very different bands and channel | sizes as well. Most WISPs are limited by the unlicensed | frequency bands that exist in FCC part 15, and things | like 3.5 and 3.65 GHz. One of the things that can go | wrong with that is many WISPs in the same area fighting | over the same bands from 5100-5900 MHz. | | By comparison LTE fixed last mile services in some places | (where expensive spectrum is owned by entities like | tmobile) have some of the prime tree-penetrating | frequencies in the 600 and 700 MHz bands, and 2.5 GHz | band. One of the reasons why clearwire was acquired by | sprint was for their 2500 band. | gkop wrote: | Replying to your reply, I don't buy it. Your experience | now on Starlink is analogous to being the first WISP | subscriber on a newly deployed AP. Time will tell anyway. | (And I will still be a grateful Starlink customer at my | off-grid cabin, even with the throttling and caps. | Starlink is a game changer!) | walrus01 wrote: | My perspective is informed by having been in locations | previously dependent on geostationary based satellite | services, as a comparison. | | For people who have budgeted, procured and installed | 'serious' two way geostationary stuff in the past (one | example of which would be a 2.4m two port linear compact | cassegrain antenna, NJR PLL LNB, a 40W BUC, a Comtech | CDM760 modem and a 1U sized Cisco router), for 1:1 SCPC | dedicated transponder capacity based services, starlink | is atonishingly fast. | | I could pull out a check book and spend $45,000 on buying | terminal hardware and $30,000 a month in transponder | space and not be able to achieve the speeds that starlink | can do right now. Even if starlink was only 20 Mbps down | and 4 Mbps up, go price what 20x4 service will cost by | traditional geostationary right now (hint: start looking | at $1200 per Mbps per month and multiply by N number of | Mbps). | | It is indeed a good theory that I'm seeing unreasonably | higher than normal speeds right now and better latency, | jitter and packet loss because I'm in a similar situation | to being the first customer on a new WISP PtMP AP sector. | But I also have a great deal more confidence that | spacex's continued paces of launches and satellite | deployment will keep up with providing at least a 100 | Mbps down x 15 Mbps up service. I do not think that they | will let it degrade into a contended-service-hell where | customers see a very poor end user experience. | | My perspective on starlink is also informed by knowing | the price right now for Inmarsat and Iridium based | offshore and aviation data services (sub 2 Mbps) and the | $ per megabyte costs. There's already starlink aviation | terminals in beta, and terminals for maritime and | offshore use. It'll be a game changer there. The market | for a globe-covering LEO high throughput satellite | network is much larger than just the US48 state consumer | residential internet/small business last mile internet | market. | ericmay wrote: | I can't compare but I think one of the selling points is | going to be the satellite coverage for Starlink versus | T-Mobile's cell towers. | | I do like T-Mobile's offering as an alternative to these | crappy cable companies. | m463 wrote: | Thinking about it, they may complement each other. | | t-mobile will probably have cell towers/coverage where | people live vs starlink which grants coverage where people | do not live. | freedomben wrote: | I can't because the nearest city to me with 5G is several | hours away. The 4G at my house is super spotty. I've used it | for Webex calls when my home internet went down and it will | _mostly_ handle that, but I would never want to rely on it | for my primary connection. | darksaints wrote: | Have you tried T-Mobile? I don't know what they have | configured, but they certainly own a lot of midband 2.5mhz | spectrum in east idaho. They have 140mhz in Idaho Falls and | Twin Falls, and 180mhz in Pocatello, and at least 60mhz | everywhere else in east idaho. It looks like they have a | decent amount of sites too. I'd have to dig a bit more but | if you don't have access to 5g on T-Mobile today, it's not | gonna be more than a couple months away. | freedomben wrote: | Fascinating! I go to Idaho Falls fairly often. My phone | is Verizon but my wife's in T-Mobile (MVNO). I don't | think her phone is 5G capable though. | snielson wrote: | I have the Tmobile service. I use at least 500 Gb/mo without | problems. Others on the reddit forum use over a Tb without | problems. The terms of service say Tmobile will deprioritize | us when there is congestion, but I haven't experienced it. | Also, it appears that Tmobile is limiting the number of | subscribers in a given area to prevent degraded service. | Overall, I like it (full disclosure: I have a dual Wan setup | with xfinity being the other provider) | simonebrunozzi wrote: | Besides Starlink, I'm curious to hear more about your | Protectli. Why do you like it so much? What can it do, that you | can't do on your own computer with some scripting and such? | ytjohn wrote: | Not OP, but the Protectli is just hardware and you install | your own OS. So it is running your own computer with | "scripting and such", just a separate low-power, small | footprint computer with dual NICs. This is good for managing | network for your entire house/office/remote site. | | I've got some PC-based firewalls like the Protecli. Mini-ITX, | atom-based, 8gb ram. I can often find these for <$50 on | auction sites. If it's one I'll be the main "owner" of, I | like to run VyOS for firewall and routing. This is the open- | source fork of Vyatta, and Ubiquiti's EdgeOS is a commercial | sibling (granted, EdgeOS has or at least had some advantages | over IPv6 PD). VyOS is debian arm based, so lots of packages | like ZeroTier VPN can be added easily. I like VyOS/EdgeOS | because of the full CLI/scriptable config. | | I recently setup 3 of these for a radio club. These will live | in mountaintop tower locations and provide VPN+NAT. Since | these might get modified by others, I went with OPNSense. | OPNSense is a fork of PFSense with a nice Web UI and | community support. | crocodiletears wrote: | I the app absolutely required? | rubatuga wrote: | We actually launched a service that provides you with a public | IPv4 address and a /56 IPv6 block over WireGuard. It bypasses | CGNAT and provides unblocked ports, including port 25. The | cheapest plan starts at $8/month. Here's a link! | | https://hoppy.network | mciancia wrote: | Looks pricey, whats the advantage of that vs setting up | wireguard on your own vps for less money? | rubatuga wrote: | We are a managed service meaning you can sign up, download | the WireGuard configuration, and forget about it. For a few | extra dollars, you get reliability (we use BGP so we can | failover to different datacenters), and clean IP addresses | that aren't associated with spam or other cloud providers. | stingraycharles wrote: | FWIW and since this is HN, I don't think it's pricey at | all, it seems to very much match what I would expect a | service like this to cost. | | I wonder if I somehow can set up my Mikrotik routers to | tunnel through you and transparently provide IPv6 for my | whole LAN, that would be swell. | coolpanda0 wrote: | can by pass Chinese GFW reliably? | hirundo wrote: | According to the story it's locked to a designated "cell" | with a diameter of something less than 60 miles, so it | would be just a nice modern end-table in China. The fact | that it depends on accurate GPS and phones home | continuously makes the geofence hard to hack. | tonyarkles wrote: | I think they're asking about the Hoppy network, not | Starlink. | rubatuga wrote: | We would be glad to test it out with you, no contacts in | China unfortunately. | teh_klev wrote: | > interestingly they start slow (around 60 Mbps) | | For many of us that's reasonably fast ;). In the UK, FTTC | provided over POTS (often BT or some form of unbundle), the top | end is 80Mbs/20Mbs. | | I don't know what you'd expect with cable provisioned areas | supplied by the likes of Virgin (DOCSIS). | wlll wrote: | 138/20 down/up for me on Virgin (Google speed test, | Manchester to London, using wifi). Was sold 200/20, and have | got that in the past using Ethernet. | nly wrote: | Virgin provide up to 300 or 500 Mbps depending on area | wdb wrote: | Wow that's nice. Virgin. I never seen any cable in the | houses I lived in London. Maybe it's not common in Zone 1? | nly wrote: | They provided underlying connectivity to the premises at | my prior built-to-rent apartment building in zone 2. The | building had its own routers, Ethernet and WiFi | infrastructure, and the management of everything was | contracted out to an IT consultancy. | | 200 Mbps to each apartment was offered so I assume they | had fibre and not DOCSIS. | | I imagine the issue in zone 1 is having to tear up the | roads to get cable installed. In new builds you have to | do that anyway, so it's good business to get in on the | action. | jon-wood wrote: | They have trial areas where they do 1Gbps lines as well, | and when I was using one it would reliably hit that. | te_chris wrote: | We've got that. We were on 200 and it wouldn't go above | 60. Since they finished the upgrade for docsis 3.1 and we | switched to 1gbps it's been what we wanted 200 to be - | reliable and invisible. I hate them with a passion, but | hate the UK gov more for its incompetent handling of | fibre incentives and coordination nationally. | freedomben wrote: | Oh 60 is fast around here too. I mostly meant that I've never | seen a download start slow and progressively get faster. If | anything it usually bursts at the begihning and then | throttles back (comcast did that to me the most) | kiwijamo wrote: | I've observed download starting slow and getting faster on | all connection types: dialup, DSL, fibre, mobile wireless | from 2g to 4g. It's just how TCP operates. Interesting that | your experience on Comcast is different. | anonymousDan wrote: | It's usually quite common over e.g. 4g. You first have to | wake up the radio and attach to a cell tower, which can | take 50ms or so. Once you've done that latency for | subsequent packets can be much lower (e.g. 5ms). | glitchcrab wrote: | FTTH seems to be fairly prevalent in new builds in the UK | now; my house is 5 years old and FTTH is the only option | here. This does rather limit your ISP choices somewhat, but | you can get pretty decent speeds. BT upgraded me to 950/140 | just last week. | yhager wrote: | Have you been using ssh at all? How's that experience? That's | my main use case. | | How about video/audio calls? does Wi-Fi calling work well? | daveevad wrote: | Not OP but I've setup a continuous reverse SSH from a farm in | the South to a Comcast residential service in the Bay area. | | SSH works but there's enough latency and other general | network variation that makes me think it's not quite good | enough an experience to spend a day remotely editting files. | | For anything not requiring really low-latency, Starlink | absolutely shines. Watching the local news from my childhood | farm on the other side of the country via satellite internet | feels like the future. | [deleted] | Fiahil wrote: | How is the power consumption compared to a regular router + | fiber/ADSL dongle ? | geerlingguy wrote: | I can answer that I've been monitoring the full setup (dish + | router) through a Kill-A-Watt for a few days, and it never | goes below 94W, and averages a little over 100W. | freedomben wrote: | I don't have numbers for just the starlink stuff since I | have other things plugged in to my UPS, but that sounds | about right. The power brick is always warm to the touch. | | My other ISP also uses PoE to power a wireless dish (line | of sight) and uses a little less power but not a ton less. | walrus01 wrote: | the power consumed for a WISP PtMP last mile CPE radio is | considerably less than starlink. Typical CPE for a | ubiquiti, cambium or similar antenna will be 8-12W at the | AC wall power side of the PoE injector. Starlink is more | like 100W constant. | Scoundreller wrote: | I see report of 5-10w on ubiquiti gear. | spookthesunset wrote: | How much of that is dumped into the antenna? It's LOS so it | shouldn't need too many watts for TX. | teh_klev wrote: | From the article the author suggests 100W continuous using | POE++. | jasoncartwright wrote: | ISPReview have a good article on this. It's more than I | expect. | https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/03/electricity- | co... | DecoPerson wrote: | At first I thought "30s" meant "30 seconds" rather than | "thirties (ms)." | | My opinion of Starlink and what it means for the world was | being completely reshapen until I read your comment again! | freedomben wrote: | Ah yes, thanks! I did mean thirties but I changed it to `ms` | to avoid confusion :-) | laputan_machine wrote: | I have never heard of adding 'ies' onto the end of numbers | to mean 'ms'. I'm (probably) not alone, fyi! | | What industry is that lexicon from? | __float wrote: | I don't think it meant "ms" specifically, it meant in the | range of 30-40 ms; the milliseconds was implied from the | context. | evilduck wrote: | Internet connection speeds, in context. Latencies faster | than milliseconds are not found in home internet | connections (or anywhere maybe?) and 30 second latencies | in Starlink would have prevented the product from even | existing or would imply faulty hardware. | BenjiWiebe wrote: | That just means 30-39. Probably would be clearer if | written 30's. The ms is implied, due to the context. | FPGAhacker wrote: | That would be a greengrocer's apostrophe. | dylan604 wrote: | what is clearer about implying the 30 posseses something? | the post said 'low 30s', so to me that would imple 30-35, | or even 30-33 if one wanted to call 34-36 mid 30s and | 37-39 high 30s. | stochastician wrote: | This is OT but can you share a little bit more about what it's | like living in East Idaho? I grew up in Boise and now live in | Chicago but with the way things have been going lately I've | been considering moving back, and there's a real appeal to | living in a smaller town in the eastern part of the state (my | dad was from Twin Falls). Internet access is always a bit of a | concern though, which maybe Starlink ameliorates? Sorry to be | so off-topic but you're the first person I've seen on HN from | eastern Idaho! | freedomben wrote: | Sure! I love living here. The only thing is the airports are | small. You have to drive to SLC or Boise for good selection | of flights. Other than that though, I love it. Population | density is much nicer. All the stores and restaurants you | want, but traffic isn't too bad. | | There's a lot of fiber out here, but you'll need to either be | near a city center of in a new enough area. The homes that | are 10 to 15 years old are underserved and you're mostly | stuck with a wireless ISP. But ... Starlink is about to | negate that in my opinion! | walrus01 wrote: | I know a few people from the Seattle area who do part time | work there - unless you enjoy and agree with religious | fundamentalists, die-hard MAGA anti maskers or people whose | personality revolves around owning 35 guns, you might want to | spend some time there first... Boise by comparison is much | more secular and liberal than some of those areas. | ianlevesque wrote: | I'm sure the generalization earned the downvotes but candid | opinions good and bad help paint a more well rounded | picture, thanks. | Baeocystin wrote: | Eh. They aren't wrong per se, but there are a lot of | folks that might look like the fit the picture, but are | just from a different cultural background. A little | tolerance goes a long way in any direction. | s5300 wrote: | A little tolerance goes a long way until you find | yourself in a place with people without a little | tolerance unfortunately | gscott wrote: | City slickers should live in the city. Moving to a rural | area where people want freedom because your 500k a year | job lets you live anywhere and then crying my god there | is someone not double masking! is not a solution. | ecshafer wrote: | As you specify people from Seattle, and these people went | out of their way to point out that the people are | religious, republicans who like guns, I have a feeling they | aren't particularly open minded or tolerant people. | Religious or secular, blue team or red team, basic politics | shouldn't color your ability to get along with people. | Fundamentally people are pretty similar, and American | culture is quite homogeneous. | foerbert wrote: | Well, particularly in the current situation where masks | somehow became a political hill to die on, I think you | are underselling the matter some. | | It's a bit difficult to feel all that neighborly or | friendly with people adamant that they won't even wear a | mask to help protect your own health. | | And all the topics listed - religion, political | affiliation, guns - are all infamous for causing strife. | Even the most tolerant person can easily wish to simply | minimize the chances of a conflict. Tensions over these | matters also only seem to be intensifying, which further | exacerbates the matter. | zorpner wrote: | I would encourage you to listen to, and believe, the very | real experiences of people of color, same-sex couples, | and transgender or nonbinary people who have spent time | in locations like Eastern Idaho. | walrus01 wrote: | > shouldn't color your ability to get along with people | | It sure does when they're also attending anti-mask | rallies, spouting antivaccine propaganda, regurgitating | talking points from infowars, qanon stuff, and running | around waving thin blue line flags making excuses about | rampant police brutality. | | I would encourage you to go to some of those parts of | Idaho as an interracial couple or gay couple, for | tourism, and see what kind of reception you get. | throwaway20222 wrote: | My family and I spend a lot of time in the northern Idaho | handle near Coeur d'Alene. We love it up here. My wife is | Asian (matters to the story), we are liberals, but the folks | are generally* terrific and kind. I star "generally" because | I would say that the average person is much, much nicer than | the folks we meet on the west coast, but the not so great | people are much more open with racist, hateful, and frankly | scary confrontations. We are invited into peoples homes, have | made fast friends with many locals, love the pure beauty of | the place, but the lows are much lower when they happen. | LimaBearz wrote: | Hows the gimble, I read its auto stabilizing is that true? And | how well built is the dish, do you think it can handle long | periods of constant wind exposure of 15+ knots | | I've been contemplating putting one on my boat for use while at | anchor. There is constant movement but its horrible | geerlingguy wrote: | The dish basically locks into an orientation after it links | up with the satellites, so it's not really a "gimbal" in that | it's not constantly moving around. | | The dish is heavy and feels tough; I'd be more worried about | your mount than the dish itself with regard to wind; we're | having 40 mph gusts today in St. Louis and dishy's working | fine. | | I'm more worried about hail, though... hopefully we can avoid | the golf ball variety this spring. | walrus01 wrote: | It's not a gimbal, it's a set of stepper motors and gears. | It's not designed for constant movement or tracking. The | current starlink terminal is a dual beamforming phased array | that will align itself to have its flat face oriented towards | the area above you that has the highest simultaneous density | of satellites at any given point in time. Beta terminals in | north WA state, for example, are angled about 10 degrees off | flat, looking slightly north. | | In fact a current starlink terminal (which has a 6-axis | sensor and GPS receiver built into it) will turn itself off | if it detects movement. The terminals for things like yachts | are not available to the public yet, though I have no doubt | they're in the works. | HeadsUpHigh wrote: | I wish I had 60 mbps :( That would be a big upgrade for a lot | of people. | spookthesunset wrote: | Are the speeds symmetrical? In other words upload is the same | as download? | walrus01 wrote: | no, I've had a beta terminal for months, upstream averages | 15-18 Mbps with brief bursts to 30. | spookthesunset wrote: | 15-30mbps is about what I get for my upstream "gigabit" | cable service. | walrus01 wrote: | that's typical on DOCSIS3 cable since they intentionally | allocate and bond a much greater number of channels for | downstream capacity, to match the usage patterns of | hundreds of users in aggregate. The actual amount of RF | available for upstream is quite small in a typical | configuration. | GoOnThenDoTell wrote: | I hope they can change that, we all need more upload | these days working at home | minhazm wrote: | You can get a modem with 32 down and 8 up channels. 8 up | channels can support over 200 Mbps. But Comcast will | still limit you to 5-10 Mbps. | | Then there's DOCSIS 3.1, which actually supports up to 1 | Gbit/s up, but Comcast still only gives you 35 Mbps on | their gigabit plan. | | IMO it just comes down to Comcast and other cable | providers being cheap and not investing in their | infrastructure to provide better upload speeds, even | though the tech itself is capable of it. | simfree wrote: | Nearly all cable networks use a low split, cutting off | around 42Mhz for upstream bandwidth. Not all bandwidth | from 0 to 42Mhz is usable due to external interference, | most cable systems are able to get 4 full sized 8Mhz | Docsis 3.0 channels into this space and one partial | channel of 3 to 4Mhz. | | Certain ISPs like Cox have started using OFDMA (Docsis | 3.1) upstream channels as it is 50% more efficient than | classic Docsis channels and you can operate it closer to | spectrum with interference since it can run subchannels | at lower modulation | walrus01 wrote: | just because the modem is capable of 8 channels up does | not mean that it's likely your local segment to the CMTS | is configured that way. | bryzaguy wrote: | Thank you for this! I was going to sign my parents up. They | live closer to Boise. | notaplumber wrote: | Can you setup Starlink without the app, i.e: no cell phone? I'm | getting real tired of devices that have no management/setup UI | of their own. | centimeter wrote: | Yes. I'm not even using their wifi box. | geerlingguy wrote: | Their router uses OpenWRT and supposedly you can hit it at | 192.168.1.1, but when I try that I get a redirect to | www.starlink.com | freedomben wrote: | I did the same thing and got the same redirect. I haven't | experimented with anything except GET / but it would be | interesting to try throwing some params in there and trying | other paths. | geerlingguy wrote: | Yeah, after another week or so to get my initial | impressions with the router as-is, I'm going to do some | more experiments and also swap out a couple other routers | to see what I can do. | freedomben wrote: | Sweet man, would you be interested in teaming up a bit? | I'm fairly busy the next couple of weeks but I can find a | little time to do some hacking. I'm FreedomBen on | Keybase, or if you want to email me freedomben <at> | proton mail dot com I can give you a real email address. | Totally fine if not though! | geerlingguy wrote: | It's not the official place where I'm working on this | particular project, but if you have any notes or feedback | you'd want to track/share through my internet-monitoring | project, please feel free! Email is a bit tough, as the | volumes right now mean I sometimes see a message quickly, | other times after days or weeks :) | | https://github.com/geerlingguy/internet-monitoring/issues | walrus01 wrote: | all of the interesting data is served from the phased | array antenna unit itself, not the router... | | https://github.com/sparky8512/starlink-grpc-tools | | https://pythonrepo.com/repo/sparky8512-starlink-grpc- | tools | freedomben wrote: | I do not believe so. I hate it as well but decided to | tolerate it because at least once it is setup, I don't have | to continue using it. | walrus01 wrote: | I do think you need the app and a phone for at least 5 | minutes. I did the initial power up and setup with that, and | after 5 minutes of verifying it worked, replaced the starlink | provided router with my own. Anything that is an ordinary | 1000BaseT 1500mtu DHCP client will get an address when | connected to the PoE injector. | | The weird angled router they had out is just a convenience | for non technical consumers who want an all in one 802.11ac | box. The app on the phone also does the very basic first time | setup step of defining an SSID and WPA2-PSK key. | justinwp wrote: | I setup without use of the router or app. | 0x426577617265 wrote: | I use pfsense with the Protectli -- what exactly are you doing | with CentOS just manually configuring as a FW for your LAN? | | Is the upload/download speed the same? Does your public IP | frequently change? | | EDIT: Ah -- CGNAT. Missed that part. | freedomben wrote: | Yep, I just enable IPv4 packet forwarding and use firewalld | to manage ports. I use dnsmasq to provide DHCP and DNS | services. | | Here are my config files if you're interested. I've redacted | my domain and some of the mac addresses. One of these is a | shell script that sets up the firewall: https://gist.github.c | om/FreedomBen/f8a50c7a98c07171a99c419a5... | isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote: | I was fully expecting some Ansible after looking at the domain. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-04-10 23:00 UTC)