[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.
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