[HN Gopher] I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)
___________________________________________________________________
I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)
Author : JamesSwift
Score : 182 points
Date : 2022-02-03 14:09 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jeffgeerling.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jeffgeerling.com)
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| I get it. If you already have internet, then Starlink is not for
| you. There are lots of questionable design choices (particularly
| in version 2), it's picky about placement, etc. etc.
|
| But if your other choice is HughesNet or its competitors, that
| throttles you after 15 GB (2 days of non-streaming usage for me),
| or 50 GB, the Starlink "shortcomings" are irrelevant. With
| Starlink, if you can get it, and if you can site it without
| blockages, you have "real" internet. Reasonable speeds and no
| caps/throttling.
|
| The massive over-subscription (presumably by people who have no
| functional alternative) suggests it serves a need.
|
| Just not a need for people who have a non-DSL wired alternative,
| like Jeff Geerling.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _15 GB (2 days of non-streaming usage for me)_
|
| This sounds exceptionally high. What do you do that uses so
| much?
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| Perhaps I over estimated. I know that my 15 Gb hotspot
| allocation only lasted a few weeks (days was perhaps too
| strong). I used two carriers to get 30 Gb. But one MacOS
| upgrade (on one computer) and the allocation is gone.
|
| And then there is Zoom.
|
| I think that it is difficult to estimate one's internet usage
| if you can go somewhere else when you need do to something
| big. If 15 Gb is your only allocation, for home and work, it
| doesn't last long.
| swah wrote:
| Probably 4k video content ?
|
| > The download size of a 140-minute 4K video, for example,
| would be approximately (14 GB x 2) + (.233 GB x 20) = 33 GB
| or .233 GB x 140 = 33 GB.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| he said non streaming.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| There are _a lot_ of data guzzlers in a modern household...
| seriously, the proliferation of high-speed broadband internet
| has had massive consequences for everyone _not_ enjoying that
| luxury.
|
| The worst offenders are social networks like Twitter,
| Instagram and Facebook, _especially_ if you have video auto
| play enabled. Because almost everyone has an ultra-high-DPI
| screen these days, they expect high video and image quality,
| and that 's a _lot_ of data.
|
| Next up are media sites: auto-playing videos again, followed
| by "normal" advertising and actual content. Just for popular
| papers and media: A single (!) page load of the front page of
| Germany's respected newspaper Suddeutsche clocks in at 7.7
| MB, Spiegel has 6.6 MB, tabloid BILD has 10 MB. US NYT is 9
| MB, Fox News is 6MB, CNBC 8.7 MB. Even relatively plain
| Stackoverflow's front page clocks in at 2 MB.
|
| And then, there are all the updaters (looking at you, Windows
| Update), the other phone-home telemetry and analytics stuff,
| _even more_ ads side-loaded by modern "smart TVs"...
|
| Where the _fuck_ have we gone wrong? Is there any chance to
| get "the old" Internet back without putting everyone in
| advertising in jail for a decade?
| dan1234 wrote:
| That's not even a full Xcode update nowadays!
| onemoresoop wrote:
| What if you move, do you have to buy another kit??
| woah wrote:
| The hype a couple of years ago was at a fever pitch. Starlink
| was going to replace all forms of internet with space-ey
| goodness. Millions of people getting 100mbps for $50/m on cable
| who just didn't like the cable company's call center reps were
| clamoring for Elon to save them from their predicament.
|
| I was working in the ISP space, and we did some rough back of
| the envelope calculations which showed that Starlink could only
| ever service a very low population density, based on the radio
| spectrum fundamentals.
|
| Now people are realizing the obvious- it's an incremental
| improvement over other satellite internet options. It's great
| for people in very rural places, but if you are in or near a
| town of any size, you likely have a better option available.
| frebord wrote:
| "Incremental" is not the right word when you go from 700ms
| latency down to 30ms
| humanlion87 wrote:
| I don't think the general hype was that Starlink would
| replace existing ISPs everywhere. It was always understood
| that this product was for rural/remote areas that don't have
| direct lines for internet connection.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| I know a surprising number of Starlink customers who are
| paying more for slower service compared to our incumbent
| ISP (Comcast). This seems to have been a very common part
| of the hype. I get it, there have been times in the past
| that I've used fixed LTE to avoid Comcast, but I actually
| think I was still paying less and getting faster service on
| fixed LTE as compared to Starlink.
|
| Notably these are all of the Starlink customers I know
| despite living in a region with vast rural areas... I've
| heard from a couple people I know out in the country that
| they are stuck on the waitlist. I think Starlink may have
| prioritized urban areas first for whatever reason (just
| higher customer count presumably).
| StillBored wrote:
| Well, at least in my case there was some hope that it would
| set a floor for internet service in larger towns where the
| local cable/telco monopoly just milks the customers for
| $100+ a month for really subpar internet service (I pay
| about that for 20Mbit upload from the cable co, the DSL
| provider can barely do 2 up 40 mbits down for roughly the
| same price). Where as a couple miles away the DSL provider
| strung fiber to compete with google and the price is less
| than they would charge me for said crummy internet.
|
| The joke here is that the lucky few percent of people who
| can get fiber here have two choices, but the rest of us are
| stuck in the 1990s. And this is a dense area, far more
| dense than 100 miles W of here in the little towns of
| population 1k that can also get fiber from their local
| telco co-op.
| woah wrote:
| That density means there is no way that Starlink will be
| able to service more than a couple percent of your town
| any time soon.
| justapassenger wrote:
| That was totally the hype. I had multiple friends, living
| in SF, telling me how they'll finally ditch Comcast and use
| Starlink. I also had other friends telling me how SpaceX is
| going to bankrupt all ISPs in the world, and they'll make
| trillions of dollars in revenue. And even here, in comments
| to this very article, you can still find people waiting for
| Starlink, to lower down their internet cost, while they
| live in suburbs of big metropolitan areas.
|
| Anything that's coming from Musk has a huge hype, for
| better or worse.
| steelstraw wrote:
| Even though Musk was saying that it's not really meant
| for cities and wouldn't be a serious competitor there?
|
| "the SpaceX CEO argued that Starlink won't be a major
| threat to telcos because the satellite service won't be
| good enough for high-population areas and will mostly be
| used by rural customers without access to fast
| broadband."
|
| https://arstechnica.com/information-
| technology/2020/03/musk-...
| justapassenger wrote:
| > Starlink was publicly announced in January 2015, with
| bandwidth to carry up to 50% of all backhaul
| communications traffic, and up to 10% of local Internet
| traffic, in high-density cities. CEO Elon Musk said that
| there is significant unmet demand for low-cost global
| broadband capabilities.
|
| Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink
|
| It's typical Musk - announcing something that sounds
| super cool and impossible, because it's impossible. Ad
| later quietly scale it down to something still pretty
| cool, but nothing like it was presented initially. And
| ride the hype as much as you can in the process.
| mdasen wrote:
| Elon Musk often makes contradictory statements. He's more
| recently said that Starlink has received 500,000 pre-
| orders and that, "Most likely, all of the initial 500k
| will receive service. More of a challenge when we get
| into the several million user range."
|
| Some of this might be coming from real-world experience
| with the network and an update on previous incorrect
| assumptions. Part of it might be simply making bombastic
| claims.
|
| Right now, Starlink hit around 100,000 customers with
| 1,700 satellites. With the full 12,000 satellites we'd
| then expect 700,000 customers. That might change given
| that the satellites aren't geostationary and they haven't
| launched in many countries, but to hit a million
| customers in the US, they'd need to increase the number
| of customers per satellite significantly. Maybe there are
| improvements they can make that we don't know about, but
| it seems like Starlink's advantages are in making cheap
| rockets and cheap satellites - which is very cool, but
| they likely don't have radio advantages.
|
| Starlink is also thinking about an additional 20,000
| satellites so it's possible that they'll just keep
| increasing the number of satellites. Still, if they're
| seeing linear gains, that's still a relatively small
| number of users even with 32,000 satellites (and even the
| 12,000 is 4-5 years away).
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210510/08050146767/el
| on-...
| ghaff wrote:
| Starlink is a game changer if you don't have decent wired
| broadband. We had about 1 Mbps download and were the last house
| on the road who could get it. Then we didn't even have that.
| Verizon hotspot was "ok" but data was expensive so you had to
| watch your usage. Starlink isn't perfect--had a couple of days
| downtime over Christmas--but basically it works fine with 20+
| Mbps bandwidth.
|
| With the prior DSL, I couldn't have worked from the house in a
| meaningful way. (My AT&T wireless is also very marginal.) Now I
| mostly could.
| swah wrote:
| For those of us outside US, how far from the urban area you
| have to be to not have good LTE and/or fiber internet? (Also,
| does Amazon deliver in those places?)
| mdasen wrote:
| It's hard to answer something like this. Even for Europe,
| it's hard to answer something like this. There's a big
| difference between Inverness in Scotland (47,000 people in
| the city and 63,000 in the urban area) and London. Are you
| measuring from the city center or from where things drop
| off to farmland?
|
| In Europe, cities often drop off into farmland very
| abruptly. You have built-up areas and then very abruptly
| farmland. In the US, you can have suburbs where there's 1
| house on an acre (4,000 square meters) going for a long
| time. Even 1 house every 2-4 acres (8,000-12,000 square
| meters) isn't unusual.
|
| If you look at a satellite map between cities in the
| Netherlands, you can see that there isn't any sprawling
| houses between Rotterdam and Utrecht. Places like Oudewater
| exists, but it's dense. It might not be as dense as larger
| cities, but people don't have enormous plots of land. You
| can easily walk to neighbors and shops. In the US, a lot of
| people live in areas where it can be 5 miles to get to
| shops.
|
| In the US, people often have the issue that the wired
| internet doesn't go up their street which might be a couple
| miles with only a handful of houses. In the US, they might
| face costs getting it from the street to their house
| because their house is set back a hundred meters from the
| road. This isn't super typical, but it's typical enough
| that it effects a lot of people.
|
| I think part of the issue is that there is no real
| demarcation between the urban area and outside it in the
| US. I can look at a satellite view of a city in Europe and
| clearly discern city vs farmland. In the US, a lot of rich
| people left the city for suburbs where they could set land
| use policies that kept lower income people (and often
| minorities they didn't want around) out of their town (and
| out of their schools and out of their tax base). They still
| wanted to be able to commute into the city, but often
| passed laws mandating minimum lot sizes, minimum setbacks
| from the street for houses, and emphasized local control to
| prevent housing they deemed undesirable from being made.
| These places have fine wired internet.
|
| But they kinda slowly melt into progressively more rural
| places rather than having a clear demarcation. The US's
| emphasis on cars and a certain cultural idealism around
| rural life means that there are people that want to live
| semi-rural while not really having a rural lifestyle or
| job. They just drive farther and cheap fuel and subsidies
| make that possible.
|
| The lack of coherent land use policies means that the area
| where people consider themselves as part of an urban area
| can keep expanding. Maybe a developer wants to build new
| housing. The city and suburbs don't want more housing and
| so the developer picks a piece of land just past the last
| suburb. It's another 15 minutes from the city by car, but
| with skyrocketing housing prices, there are probably going
| to be some people who think it's a reasonable trade-off.
| What's the difference between an hour commute and an hour
| and 15 minute commute? Why shouldn't I trade 10 hours of my
| life every month for a larger house?
|
| A lot of European countries have greenbelts around their
| cities where you aren't allowed to do a lot of development.
| It prevents things like the US suburbs which initially were
| thought of as 5-10 miles outside the city and now often go
| all the way to the next city creating a giant area that
| people commute from.
|
| But these suburbs aren't the problem. The thing is that the
| suburbs then meld into really rural areas - but those
| really rural areas aren't that far from the suburbs that
| rich people live in and commute to the city from and those
| suburbs have big-box stores like Walmart and Target and
| they have high speed internet. If you live in a rural area
| that's 5 miles from such a suburb, you think "I'm not in
| the middle of nowhere! I'm just 5 miles from this place
| that has a Walmart and high speed internet and a
| supermarket!" If you're 5 miles outside a city in Europe,
| you're in farmland - but very often the houses all seem to
| be on one main road even through that farmland rather than
| up winding roads that lead nowhere (other than a few
| people's houses).
|
| In the US, because there's this gradual drop-off in
| density, there can be this "why not just a little more"
| mentality. "Why not just a little farther out to get a tiny
| bit more land? It's working for the suburb next door that's
| just a tiny bit denser."
|
| And a lot of Americans want to live in a rural area with
| acres of land, but in a commuting way. US policy often
| supports this choice - fuel prices, road subsidies, same-
| price delivery by the postal service, and billions spent
| trying to give them modern communications choices. That
| last one is key for this. The US is offering billions for
| rural internet and Starlink is going after that money.
|
| Starlink is partly happening because the US government put
| a large amount of money available to anyone creating rural
| broadband options. The US Postal Service makes sure that
| rural areas can still get their deliveries.
|
| I think "how far outside the urban area" is a hard question
| to answer because it's hard to answer where the urban area
| is in the US. The issue is that there's a lot of people
| that live in pretty rural areas in the US. Amazon and other
| deliveries are available. LTE and often even 5G is
| available, though often not with enough bandwidth at the
| moment to supply home internet (though companies are
| looking to change that). A lot of places with low density
| have fine wired internet. But when there isn't a clear
| demarcation of urban vs rural, there's still going to be a
| place where certain things stop, but people are going to
| wonder about the cut-off: I'm just outside the place that
| has broadband and it's only 15% less dense here.
|
| I think that's the big thing. You might be 50 or 100 miles
| outside the city, but the gradual reduction in density
| while still being surrounded by non-farmers can make you
| feel like you're still a part of non-rural life while your
| neighbors and shops get farther and farther apart. Good
| wired home internet usually extends well away from cities
| in terms of miles (though often with annoying monopolies),
| but people really spread themselves out in the US.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| What about a small coop ISP? If you manage to use electric or
| telephone posts deploying fiber and getting a carrier is
| doable, at least here in Spain.
| mdasen wrote:
| Some towns in the US have done this, but it isn't without
| difficulties.
|
| Just looking at a satellite map of Spain, I see La Langa.
| It seems like it has very few people, but they all live in
| a small town center. Looking at Ucles, it's the same: tiny
| place, but everyone is living in the town center.
|
| Let's look at Potomac, MD in the US. The roads are
| sprawling with giant houses all far apart. That's a lot
| more distance to run fiber to get it to each house. Potomac
| is a rich suburb of DC and has fine internet (it's still
| dense enough for that), but the US keeps sprawling. Look at
| a satellite view of Pike Township, PA. There's a lot of
| houses with huge distances in between and no discernible
| town center.
|
| > If you manage to use electric or telephone posts
| deploying fiber and getting a carrier is doable
|
| I think this can also be an issue in the US since place
| might not have easy/cheap access to those utility poles.
| Title II carriers in the US get cheap, regulated access to
| utility poles. That's traditionally been your phone
| company. I believe the FCC tried reclassifying broadband as
| Title II under the Obama administration, but it might have
| been reversed under the Trump administration. If you're
| someone that already has access to the utility poles, you
| don't want more people getting cheap access to them.
|
| Even if you have access to the utility poles, you can face
| difficulty. As noted, you aren't wiring up a town center,
| you can be wiring up places with a huge amount of distance
| between people. Even if that isn't a problem, property
| owners might want new cables buried. Even when power lines
| are above ground, sometimes they're underground from the
| street to the house. Many houses might be set back from the
| street by 50 meters so it can be a larger distance. You can
| have a 300m road with 3 houses on it each with a 50m set
| back from the street.
|
| That's not to say it isn't possible (and some towns have
| created coop ISPs), but costs add up. Ucles has 140 people
| in it, but everyone seems to live within a 250m radius of
| the city center. That seems pretty easy to wire up. Pike
| Township, PA has 1,700 people that are incredibly spread
| out. That seems a lot harder to wire up. It's not
| impossible, but it seems harder.
| clvx wrote:
| Similar situation but I switched to T-Mobile. I have a
| Starlink order but it got delayed 6 months. At this point,
| I'll just cancel it because T-Mobile Home Internet is a game
| changer.
| cagey wrote:
| I did exactly this. Started using T-Mobile Home Internet
| (5G "trashcan" modem) back in 21.02 (same month I ordered
| Starlink); TMHI service has gotten progressively better
| since that time. 21.12 I received my Starlink ultimatum
| ("if you don't cancel in 14(?) days we're sending your HW
| and billing you $100's more") and I decided TMHI @
| $50/month (yes, completely unlimited) was sufficient. Also
| Verizon now has competing 5G and LTE offerings, so I figure
| worst case I (who have NO wired ISP option) at least have a
| strong backup plan. As another redundancy: everyone in my
| household has migrated to Visible cell phone service, which
| provides unlimited (but throttled at 5-10 Mbps) hotspot
| which we use maybe 2-3 times per month when TMHI service
| gets sluggish.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I thought about switching to one of those mobile internet
| providers, but it wasn't available in my area, which I
| don't quite understand. My providers network is certainly
| available, as I use it on my phone daily. Maybe it's using
| some different band?
| clvx wrote:
| My location "didn't have coverage" as I live at the edge
| of my town followed by Murdoch's ranch next to me. I
| talked to the rep to the point of just let me try it as
| there's nothing to lose. They already provide full refund
| on the product for the first 30 days. At the beginning
| the signal and speeds were shit(using trashcan). I
| installed a couple of MIMO antennas. Now, I have 30Mbs
| up/down consistently. I believe 5G is gonna be a game
| changer for rural areas. It's just easy: plug it, turn it
| on, use it. No technicians, no wiring (if you don't use
| antennas), no fixed place in your house.
|
| Also check cellmapper to check for near by antennas and
| bands. More info in r/tmobileisp
| cagey wrote:
| I suspect availability of 5G or LTE "home internet"
| service is gated by not only signal strength but also by
| the vendor's assessment of their (tower, backhaul?)
| capacity in the locale.
| mdasen wrote:
| It's definitely not just about coverage, but also about
| how much capacity they have in an area. They don't want
| to overload the network given that home internet users
| will use a lot more data than mobile users. Likewise,
| they don't want to sign up people for them to have a bad
| experience, cancel service, and spread bad word of mouth.
|
| T-Mobile has been managing how many people they sign up
| in an area. Sometimes T-Mobile's home internet is
| available in your area, but then they get a certain
| number of signups and it becomes unavailable in your area
| until they're able to increase capacity or customers
| cancel. It's possible that it was available in their area
| and others signed up for it.
|
| AT&T is only offering service in very limited areas and
| it seems like they're mostly trying to replace their DSL
| connections that they don't want to upgrade to fiber.
|
| Verizon's service is currently pretty small scale, but
| they're looking to grow it. Again, it will be limited
| areas because no one wants to overwhelm the network.
|
| Even if you have good phone service, there's a big
| difference between someone using 10GB on mobile and
| someone using 500GB as a home user. Signing up 10 home
| users could be like adding 500 new phone users in a small
| area. That can be a lot of traffic and they don't want to
| start seeing their mobile users cancel service because
| home users are clogging up the network. So they want to
| roll it out a bit slowly, especially as they increase
| capacity over the next few years with midband 5G.
| alexktz wrote:
| How "unlimited" is the T-Mobile Home Internet package?
| AshleyGrant wrote:
| In my experience it's been totally unlimited. I try not
| to abuse it, but when I re-image my desktop, Backblaze
| will end up uploading multiple terabytes (even though
| I've inherited the backup state and the drive/directory
| structure is identical). I've never had a single issue.
|
| The Home Internet service is 100% deprioritized compared
| to postpaid cell phone data, so they really are selling
| "excess" capacity.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| My biggest gripe is the fact I can't transfer it to my cousin,
| who lives on a farm with 300 Kbps DSL, 70 miles away.
|
| Back when preorders started, it wasn't obvious how slow
| Starlink would be to expand, and it also wasn't obvious
| transfers wouldn't be a supported feature for many months.
|
| Even so, my cousin also signed up in hopes to get Starlink, and
| 11 months later her date was moved from 'late 2021' to 'late
| 2022'.
|
| And yes, I've tried many address hacks to see if I could get my
| dish moved there, none have worked.
|
| They shouldn't have dropped the 'beta' moniker last year if the
| service is truly so far from its final state (IMO).
| anarazel wrote:
| That's within the feasible distance for a point to point
| wireless bridge. If geography permits - which is not that
| likely. Not cheap, but might be better than alternatives.
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| If my handy online calculators are working correctly, 70km
| distant would require a 300+ ft tall tower on each side for
| that P2P bridge. Just to deal with the curvature of the
| earth and not counting for anything else that might be in
| the way.
| anarazel wrote:
| It would likely have to be more than one hop, yes...
| jacquesm wrote:
| What's the point of satellite internet if you can't move the
| dish around? That would seem to be one of the USPs...
| ZetaZero wrote:
| It's a low orbit satellite, which limits the amount of
| coverage for each satellite. And currently (without the
| sat-2-sat laser link), there needs to be a ground station
| also in range. If his cousin's house isn't close enough to
| a ground station, it just doesn't work. That's why Starlink
| is allocating based on addresses.
| zekica wrote:
| This range is not 70 miles, it may be 300+ miles. My
| location in eastern Europe currently can connect to
| ground stations in Poland and Turkey (600 miles apart).
| ZetaZero wrote:
| Right. But if you live near the edge of coverage, say 280
| miles, and your friend lives another 70 miles out, he
| could be 350 miles from the nearest base station. I know
| this is an oversimplification of the issue. But maybe the
| friend would be connected to a different ground station,
| that happened to be full.
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| If you have no alternative, you get reasonable internet
| (100+ up/20+ down) with no data caps or throttling. It's a
| big step up from a hotspot/LTE connection (if you can even
| see the cell tower).
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I'm not an expert on the Starlink network, but their
| coverage isn't uniform. Even across the 48 states. The
| constellation provides more effective bandwidth in some
| areas than others.
|
| SpaceX has a government subsidy to provide high speed
| internet right across the street from my parents house. But
| they have no satellite coverage in that area according to
| their own map. I don't really understand the business plan
| of SpaceX with respect to starlink.
| gpm wrote:
| > But they have no satellite coverage in that area
| according to their own map.
|
| There is nowhere in the lower 48 where starlink has no
| _satellite_ coverage, I believe there are still areas
| where they have not built out ground stations though, and
| since most of the satellites don 't have laser links to
| talk to other satellites (due to issues with their
| original lasers not fully burning up on re-entry - now
| fixed) they need to have a ground station under the same
| satellite as the customer.
|
| They also have limited bandwidth to any one satellite, so
| they need to limit the density of their customers.
| Satellites move up and down lattitudes, but at any one
| time the density of satellites is higher at higher
| latitudes, so they should be able to serve more customers
| there.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| You're just arguing nuance & semantics.
|
| For an ISP that uses satellites, ground stations are
| equivalent to satellite coverage. It doesn't matter how
| many satellites they have, if there isn't a ground
| station to connect to you don't have coverage.
|
| Inter-satellite links also don't do anything useful if
| you don't have enough ground stations. Even if you had a
| ground station with infinite bandwidth there is no way a
| single satellite can have the entire network linked
| through it. It's a really neat thing to have a single
| voice channel connect through a constellation from
| somewhere like the southern Indian ocean, but you can't
| really run 100+ mbps pipes like that.
|
| This is completely different than something like a
| military communications satellite where both ends of the
| connection are communicating through the same satellite.
| The 48 states could be totally in the dark (no power, no
| comms) and a military communications satellite still
| functions fine.
| gpm wrote:
| I wasn't arguing, I was just adding nuance. Now I'm
| arguing though.
|
| The nuance between ground station coverage and satellite
| coverage is extremely important for understanding
| spacex's business plan, which is relevant to your comment
| since you were saying "I don't really understand the
| business plan of SpaceX with respect tostarlink", with
| the implication that it doesn't make any sense. The
| difference between ground station coverage vs satellite
| coverage is the difference between "we're still building
| out the infrastructure, but we have the hard bits in
| place" and "this business model never scales because we
| need to launch way more satellites just to have basic
| coverage over the continent". It shouldn't be surprising
| that they're not done scaling the ground infrastructure,
| but that's not an impediment to their long term business
| model, because it's not the expensive bit.
|
| > Even if you had a ground station with infinite
| bandwidth there is no way a single satellite can have the
| entire network linked through it.
|
| This is a straw man, no one ever suggested that the
| entire network would be linked from a single satellite.
|
| Rather the primary purpose of inter-satellite links is
| that you can expand coverage to areas away from ground
| stations. You route the traffic to a nearby groundstation
| (or better, a groundstation close to it's destination)
| with bandwidth available.
|
| > but you can't really run 100+ mbps pipes like that.
|
| Yes you can, I don't have numbers for starlink's inter-
| satellite links, but in general that technology is at the
| ~10gbps / laser link range, each satellite has 4. Light
| travels through space faster than in fiber, so if routed
| intelligently this actually lowers ping too.
|
| > This is completely different than something like a
| military communications satellite where both ends of the
| connection are communicating through the same satellite.
|
| Ironically, this actually describes how the current
| system works (as long as you treat the endpoint as a
| groundstation, and not an IP address somewhere on the
| internet).
|
| The future system is _more_ robust, even if there is no
| "other end" to talk to locally, spacex will (with inter-
| satellite links) be able to route you to an "other end"
| anywhere around the globe.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > This is completely different than something like a
| military communications satellite where both ends of the
| connection are communicating through the same satellite.
|
| Tell us you know nothing about military satcom without
| telling us you know nothing about military satcom.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Well given that I worked on military comms for over a
| year I'd say I'm pretty knowlegeable.
|
| Let's see, this system predates even my birth: https://en
| .wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_Satellite_Communications...
|
| It's still in use as recently as 2009, by pirates
| however. Newer systems include some form of conditional
| access to prevent anyone with the gear from using them.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| I mean, OK, sure, but even Milstar Block I (mid-1990s
| tech) had a crosslink capability. And Milstar has already
| been folded into the the AEHF program, and the ESS
| program is already on track to replace AEHF.
|
| It's a bit like saying "a bicycle is different from an
| automobile, because automobile frames are made from
| wood", and then pointing to a Morgan to prove the point.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Due to the orbits, the northern US has the highest
| concentration of sats. Specifically I think if you use
| the Washington-Oregon border and extend that line across
| the entire US that's roughly where the highest
| concentration is. That said, I think they already have
| full coverage in the entire lower 48.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| I don't understand though. His cousin is 70 miles away,
| are the satellite coverages that small?
| giantrobot wrote:
| The satellites just relay signals from a customer ground
| station to a Starlink-owned ground station. That ground
| station has a wired Internet connection.
|
| So coverage at your house is dependent on you and a
| Starlink ground station being in the ground track of some
| Starlink satellites. Because of their low altitude it's
| entirely possible for your house being in the ground
| track of satellites but the nearest Starlink ground
| station being outside.
|
| At some point in the future Starlink satellites will have
| laser communications between each other. Then only one in
| that group needs to be able to see a Starlink ground
| station and the others can route customer signals to it.
| jagger27 wrote:
| It's about the base station capacity, in theory. Though
| it seems super unlikely that an address that's only 70
| miles away would be on a different base station.
|
| This will change dramatically once sat-to-sat laser comms
| are fully online as it will put more base stations "in
| range".
| jacquesm wrote:
| I'm not so sure about that. At 200 Km altitude that the
| footprint of the satellite wouldn't be all that large
| depending on the phase array arrangement. It might not be
| able to swing that far sideways and still get enough
| signal strength. These antennas don't move physically,
| the use phase based signal steering (black magic to me).
| colechristensen wrote:
| A lot of it has to do with satellite orbits, and
| basically the constellation is just far from complete.
| olyjohn wrote:
| The point is that it's better than what anybody 5 miles
| outside of the city core can get. Local and state
| governments won't allow wireline competition, so this is
| the best we can do.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| IMO they are just getting you used to the idea of what is
| normal. Then they gonna introduce $500/month "mobile" plan
| that many sailors will swallow like a bargain!
| thaeli wrote:
| ..they did this a few days ago. You nailed the price
| point, too.
|
| Notably, this is only about twice the cost of a high
| speed "business" internet connection from the cable
| companies in a high density area. Regular Starlink is
| priced at about twice a high speed "consumer" internet
| connection, so the premium seems reasonable for the
| available-in-austure-areas part.
|
| I do hope they end up coming out with a version for RVers
| that has the lower throughput but allows arbitrary
| roaming.. but I do understand putting roaming on a
| premium plan first, since it plays such havoc with per-
| cell capacity planning.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Is the cell capacity planning required since there are no
| laser interlinks or it's going to be forever like that?
| reportingsjr wrote:
| Due to the design of satellite based internet they are
| fundamentally limited on how many dishes they can support
| in a certain area while still achieving advertised
| bandwidth rates.
|
| There is a very, very high probability that if they allowed
| people to move starlink transceivers/dishes around that a
| number of areas would end up with higher concentrations
| than wanted, and starlink would have a lot of angry
| customers.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| ianai wrote:
| I wonder if a minimal location change rate or policy
| would work? If if your coordinates don't change often
| enough then you get rate limited gradually down to a
| HughesNet rate. Want mobility? Then it's 1/10th the speed
| while you're outside your home region. Stay in a region
| long enough and you get the worst rates or a change of
| region. Oh and charge differently for different regions.
| softwarebeware wrote:
| I can just imagine what Burning Man would look like under
| a sea of Starlink dishes and still no one can get
| bandwidth.
| codechad wrote:
| thinkcontext wrote:
| > My biggest gripe is the fact I can't transfer it to my
| cousin
|
| This seems like a gripe very particular to you and not
| generally relevant.
| tomatoman wrote:
| what happens if you have to move to another area they serve?
| Do you still have to wait for them to reactivate it, or you
| have to throw it out and buy a new one? Can't you just say
| you now live with your cousin?
| brk wrote:
| But your gripe seems to be centered around something they
| never claimed as a selling point initially.
|
| Just because they do not have the coverage of other satellite
| systems does not mean it is still a beta.
| csours wrote:
| What happens if you just take it there and plug it in?
| robalfonso wrote:
| He's got a video where he tried this and was unable to get
| it working.
| causi wrote:
| Yeah, that was my first thought. After reports of success
| from people mounting it to the roof of their RVs I thought
| you could move it anywhere you wanted.
| AshleyGrant wrote:
| You can physically move it wherever you want, but you
| have to hope that there is an opening available in the
| "cell" at the new location, otherwise, you've got a
| paperweight.
| Diederich wrote:
| Each Dishy is assigned to a specific ground station, so
| you can freely move it around as long as it's 'close
| enough' to that ground station. (I don't know the
| distance by memory..) There's a way to ask Starlink to
| switch your ground station, which is what people with the
| RVs are doing.
| reportingsjr wrote:
| The dish won't work since it knows where it is via GPS and
| where it is supposed to be. There is a little bit of
| tolerance in where the dish can be moved, but certainly not
| 70 miles of leeway.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > There is a little bit of tolerance in where the dish
| can be moved,
|
| There is so little tolerance that people are finding the
| dish only works say, in their driveway because the dish's
| required location is based off mapping data that puts a
| certain address at certain coordinates, regardless of
| where the house is (which might be set back considerably
| from the road.)
| gambiting wrote:
| Ha, reminds me of the tiny 3G picostations you could get
| from your mobile operator for a while when 3G was in its
| infancy - if you said you had really poor signal at your
| home, they would send you a small 3G station you could
| use in your home and which used your own internet for
| data and calls....but the hardware had a GPS built in to
| make sure it was never moved from the address it was
| assigned to(otherwise you could take it say, abroad, and
| make calls with your own numbers without paying for
| roaming - not that in that specific scenario paying for
| roaming would have made any sense anyway).
| Danieru wrote:
| The geo tieing makes more sense as a product of spectrum
| regulation. If you move the Pico station they might not
| even own the resulting local spectrum.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| The GPS was also required for time sync for
| interconnectivity with the cellular network, to my
| understanding.
| shagie wrote:
| > hardware had a GPS built in to make sure it was never
| moved from the address it was assigned to
|
| There are also 911 implications.
|
| https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.nena.org/resource/collection/1F
| 053...
|
| If you move it, and call 911 - how does the carrier
| determine the address where the call originated?
| csours wrote:
| So, some cars have a decent antenna/hardware for 4G/5G to
| WiFi bridge; would it make sense to have a picostation
| inside the car as a repeater?
| the-dude wrote:
| I only ever heard the term _Femtocell_ for this. Also,
| wouldn 't an IP check suffice? Are you sure it had GPS?
| gambiting wrote:
| Yep - https://www.engadget.com/2007-03-28-hands-on-with-
| the-samsun...
|
| IP would be absolutely trivial to spoof so that's not a
| proof of anything really.
| jdofaz wrote:
| The one I had years ago did have GPS, I was told the
| reason was for accurate 911 locating. It was a hassle
| because we were trying to use it in an office and the GPS
| antenna needed to be near a window.
| mpmpmpmp wrote:
| My static IP geolocates to a town 50 miles away. So
| unless it's some list that has good accuracy i wouldn't
| think so.
| gruez wrote:
| >Are you sure it had GPS?
|
| AFAIK even regular cell sites have GPS for timing
| purposes.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| If you were to take it abroad your provider would also
| not have a license to use the frequencies it needs.
| jws wrote:
| ATT's product along this line was a complete failure for
| me. I didn't have a street address at the fixed (albeit
| remote) location, and there were no street addresses I
| could pretend to have within its tolerable radius. They
| had no way of enabling the device without it being near a
| street address.
|
| The technology would have worked just fine, they just
| couldn't fill in their E911 entry with anything that
| would work.
| traviswt wrote:
| Disclaimer: I am a very happy Starlink customer that has no
| other option for internet besides terrible LTE.
|
| Starlink never originally advertised the ability to transfer
| service or even sell your hardware. It was very clear from
| the beginning you had to use it for the address you provided,
| and their communication was very clear to that effect.
|
| You are definitely correct that logically you should be able
| to sell your kit, transfer service, or just move with it
| (Elon has said you'll eventually be able to use it on an RV).
| But you took that logical end result and set your own
| expectations based on assumptions that were not aligned with
| reality.
|
| You are not in the target market, of course you're going to
| be frustrated.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >(Elon has said you'll eventually be able to use it on an
| RV)
|
| Mobile antennas will also require separate FCC approval.
| lostlogin wrote:
| That just seems crazy. Why?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| The FCCs primary concern is devices not interfering with
| each other. Part of that is cutting up areas
| geographically and by spectrum, so you know that the
| 100MHz FM station in one area won't over lap with
| another's and both can transmit. My guess would be that
| mobile transmitters are required to fill out paperwork
| about how they won't interfere anywhere in the US. I
| could be wrong though.
|
| "Requires separate approvals" does not always mean that
| approval is hard to get. It might require a version of
| the dish that doesn't do something v1 or v1 and v2
| current do however.
| zucker42 wrote:
| > even sell your hardware
|
| If you can't sell it, is it really yours?
| 34679 wrote:
| Curiousity and frustration would have me moving it anyway.
| Have you tried?
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| Jeff had an episode where he took it out to his cousin's
| farm, and it didn't work there.
| btian wrote:
| You should have done more research before signing up imo.
|
| I have synchronous gigabit wireless internet from Sail
| Internet. It has pretty much all the same issues you
| mentioned about Starlink except the last one, but I'm not
| making a video to complain about it.
|
| Engineering involves trade-offs, and it's just a reality.
| [deleted]
| staunch wrote:
| Early adopters have early adopter problems. Are you genuinely
| surprised Starlink doesn't support something they didn't
| claim to support and that most users don't even need?
| Complaining about "beta" labels, which everyone knows are
| meaningless?
|
| FYI: I unsubscribed because of this video (previous to it
| showing up on HN). It's obviously disingenuous clickbait.
| Look at the title alone. And it even goes into a pointless
| discussion about Elon Musk that has nothing to do with
| Starlink itself. Lots of good technical YouTubers avoid this
| crap. I was surprised you felt the need to engage in it. I'm
| not mad, just disappointed :-)
| softwarebeware wrote:
| I don't interpret it as complaining or disingenuous. It
| feels like he's sharing his experience and says a lot of
| positive things about it. But it just turns out it can't do
| what he intentionally bought it for.
|
| I was genuinely informed by the experience.
| mhitza wrote:
| > 15 GB (2 days of non-streaming usage for me)
|
| I needed to run mostly on LTE tethered connectivity for a
| couple of months, and 30 GB a month of data was more than
| enough for my daily development process, and background youtube
| music mixes (at lower bitrates).
|
| Unless you're rebuilding containers/redownloading dependecies
| daily, 15 GB of data should be pretty reasonable.
| Diederich wrote:
| > If you already have internet, then Starlink is not for you.
|
| We bought a property in a very rural area in mid 2020. One of
| the hard requirements was verified high speed Internet access.
|
| Our home has good performing Comcast. But I also pay $100/month
| and have a Dishy on my roof. Fortunately our home is very tall
| and we're able to get about 95% visibility, since our home is
| in the middle of a forest.
|
| Why am I paying an extra $100/month? Because our Comcast has
| outages. It's not surprising since we're at the end of miles
| and miles of above ground cable that has hundreds of trees
| pushing up against the wires and poles.
|
| I'm a pretty well off 'tech person' so an additional $100/month
| to cover a few hours of use makes sense.
|
| (Wireless coverage is terrible around here, so that was never a
| backup possibility.)
|
| I'm pretty convinced that Starlink is not only going to
| revolutionize many people's lives, but it's also going to be a
| cash cow for SpaceX, in large part funding their Mars
| ambitions.
| deeviant wrote:
| It would be no surprise to hear, I think, that a lot of us on
| this forum are well off 'tech persons'.
|
| Internet scores higher than running water for me on
| prioritization, but I still couldn't bear to waste the
| resources to have a sat uplink for the 1-2 days a year
| comcast goes down. Taking a slot from somebody that actually
| needs it feels off to me too. It would only likely be worth
| it if your particular area has abnormally bad comcast uptime.
|
| That said, we just purchased a beautiful rural property with
| a wonderful house, and will rent it out until starlink or
| fiber( local company is 1-2 years out) hits it. So maybe I'm
| just sore that people are taking starlink slots when they
| absolutely don't need it and its 2 years out =P
| Diederich wrote:
| All fair points, thank you. And congrats on your property!
|
| The comcast outages are far above anything that's 'normal'.
| And honestly if it was just me, as a decades long 'devops'
| person, losing network connectivity briefly every few days
| and for tens of minutes or longer multiple times a month
| would not be too bad. But my wife does zoom/video
| professionally all day every day with paying clients, so
| when comcast goes to crap it's very important for her to be
| able to reconnect over starlink ASAP.
| shagie wrote:
| > so when comcast goes to crap it's very important for
| her to be able to reconnect over starlink ASAP
|
| Have you looked at something like Firewalla and multi-wan
| setup? https://help.firewalla.com/hc/en-
| us/articles/360051575473-Fi...
| Diederich wrote:
| Thanks for the link! I have considered such technologies,
| and I'll probably end up implementing one at some point.
| It's on my TODO list. (:
|
| My wife reports that she's able to switch WIFI from
| Comcast to Starlink in a matter of seconds, which doesn't
| actually break the video chat session. Not ideal, but not
| terrible.
| CivBase wrote:
| The same could be said of critical reviews of HughesNet. Its
| value is usually in being the least bad of a limited, very bad
| options. That doesn't make the critisism any less valuable.
|
| Say I'm considering moving to a rural location. One of my
| barriers to moving is the quality of my internet access. Along
| comes this fancy new Starlink service and I might be tempted to
| think "problem solved". But reviews like this allow me to
| anticipate problems with the service and reconsider moving
| altogether.
|
| If Starlink is the least bad of your bad options, then this
| review probably just isn't for you.
| modeless wrote:
| A lot of this is poorly informed. The reason many places can't
| get service isn't the number of satellites, it's the number of
| ground stations. The satellites don't communicate with each
| other, only ground stations, so there have to be some near you
| that the satellites can see for the entire time they're over you
| (either one very close to you or several farther away but
| surrounding you), or your signals don't have anywhere to go. The
| next generation of satellites will be able to communicate with
| each other, but they haven't really started launching in earnest
| yet. It may have to wait for Starship.
|
| The proprietary connector is annoying but the antenna needs 100+
| watts. Power over Ethernet doesn't support that, so the antenna
| connector can't use standard Ethernet. If the router additionally
| had a standard Ethernet port then it wouldn't be weatherproof,
| which was clearly a design goal. They should really have done
| some kind of weatherproof housing for an Ethernet connector. I
| expect they will on the next version.
|
| Kessler syndrome is not going to happen because unlike their
| competitors SpaceX intentionally put all their satellites in very
| low orbit where the atmosphere naturally cleans up any debris
| within a couple of years. That's something uniquely enabled by
| SpaceX's low launch costs because it limits the useful life of
| the satellites, requiring frequent replacement. But it's worth
| it.
| richardfey wrote:
| Why the custom connectors though?
| softwarebeware wrote:
| This quote really stands out:
|
| "Many countries, including the US, have a lot of inequality when
| it comes to Internet access and affordability."
| frebord wrote:
| Recently got Starlink. From 10Mbps/0.5Mbps to 150/10 is a god
| send. I'll gladly pay for the extra power consumption.
|
| I have some sympathy for the astronomy crowd, but I wonder if its
| inevitable. And is world wide broadband more/less important to
| society than having to correct for light streaks?
|
| The router debacle is just ridiculous though. All of the
| networking tech being used is so ubiquitous, why not include a
| damn ethernet port. I just received my ethernet adapter 2 months
| later and... it doesn't work. Tried multiple configurations
| including straight into a PC - nothing. to top it off my support
| ticket was closed without any response... so my $300 mesh wifi
| will just sit on the shelf while half the house gets poor
| connectivity.
|
| Overall its exciting to have decent internet and not live in a
| city. The future of it is exciting too -especially the space
| laser links. Imagine a situation where you can hop directly to a
| ground station on or very nearby a data center. A lot of people
| saying Starlink is great if you don't have access to something
| better, but Starlink may end up being the "fastest" internet
| available.
| oversocialized wrote:
| Destroying the night sky is only inevitable if people choose to
| use Starlink and similar services. Considering most people use
| the internet for cat pics, porn, and mindless entertainment not
| sure the trade off is worth it.
| emteycz wrote:
| While most people use internet for porn, these same people
| also most likely use internet for work and business. It's not
| like your browser is locked to Pornhub.com.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| Why? Were cats sleeping on it?
|
| There were recent reports that cats just liked to sleep on the
| dish in very cold weather as they are self heating.
| hanklazard wrote:
| "Then there are other people reading who think he's the
| commensurate con-man"
|
| Does anyone actually think this about Elon? Think what you will
| about the guy's persona, but it seems undeniable that he is doing
| big things in the world (and outside of it).
| retzkek wrote:
| OT: does this use of "commensurate" make sense, or did the
| author mean "consummate"?
|
| commensurate: corresponding in size or degree; in proportion.
|
| consummate: showing a high degree of skill and flair; complete
| or perfect.
| geoffeg wrote:
| I think "con man" is a bit too strong, but he does have a
| history of making promises that either slip significantly
| (misses deadlines by years) or end up not playing out at all.
| There are various reasons I can imagine for that, from naive
| optimism, to marketing or wanting to motivate people.
| reportingsjr wrote:
| There are definitely a lot of people who think this. Go on
| twitter and search for "TSLAQ". There are people deluding
| themselves that Tesla isn't actually shipping the number of
| cars they claim.
|
| Maybe 7+ years ago you could try to make that claim and not be
| a laughing stock, but it's very odd at this point.
| 6d6b73 wrote:
| Tesla constantly lies about its numbers. Even this week there
| was news from Australia, about inflated number.
| vel0city wrote:
| But there is proof of at least one instance of them claiming
| to deliver more cars than reality.
|
| https://www.drive.com.au/news/tesla-australia-admits-it-
| sale...
| jacquesm wrote:
| Elon isn't a con man because he actually delivers but there is
| a streak running through him that doesn't seem to care if he
| deceives people as long as he reaches his higher goals.
|
| He's not a 'nice guy' in my book.
| jandrese wrote:
| There is no doubt Elon has haters that will loudly proclaim
| that everything he does is a scam. Just read any Youtube
| comment section where he appears.
|
| Are they as prevalent as the people who think his feet can't
| touch the ground because they are too holy? I don't know, but I
| do know they exist.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Well, it _did_ seem to be the popular perception before the
| first Tesla came out and the first SpaceX rocket landed
| again...
| osipov wrote:
| zecken wrote:
| Regarding the second LAN port and proprietary cable -- standard
| RJ45 ports are not waterproof, especially if they're delivering
| almost 100W (the max load of this new dishy). I expect that plays
| into the decision making here; also, selling a phase array
| antenna plus power supply plus WiFi router for $500 is actually
| pretty cheap.
| freedomben wrote:
| You're totally correct about RJ45 not being waterproof, but a
| point made in the video, and one that I whole-heartedly agree
| with, is that there's no reason this needs to be a
| _proprietary_ cable. They could still have made a new more
| waterproof cable /jack, but opened the spec and/or allow other
| manufacturers to build them.
| zimbatm wrote:
| The pre-order queue might not be a thing anymore. At least for
| me, I ordered the antenna in January 2022 and got it the same
| month.
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| I ran our satellite internet service out of Iraq when I was
| deployed there* - I think it was HughesNet or Bently Walker. It
| was one of the only ways to get unfiltered open source internet
| at the time, which was a requirement for our mission, and a nice
| bonus for us in general. Compared to no internet, satellite
| internet is pretty good. Compared to anything else? Take anything
| else.
|
| *To be fair this was also like, 10 years ago now, and Iraq sucked
| anyway - but I'm pretty sure bandwidth needs for general internet
| usage haven't gotten any lighter since then so I suspect the
| performance is just as atrocious as I remember.
| TinkersW wrote:
| Ya I helped switch someone from Hughes to the v2 Starlink, it
| is night and day difference, and actually costs less(Hughes was
| like $140 for the shittiest internet imaginable)
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Its interesting to me how the customer service mindset between
| Elon's companies and a company like Amazon is so opposite.
|
| Amazon has a almost militant drive to optimize customer
| experience, will take anything back, will do just about anything
| to please their customers. They state so.
|
| Tesla, Space X in the form if starlink, solar city all seem to
| have pretty piss poor customer service and experience. They get
| away with things you'd never tolerate from your local grocery
| store, car dealership or ISP. But we hold them up on a pedestal
| and say it's a necessary evil, part of the process. Why do they
| need to hold onto millions of dollars in pre-order fees from
| average people when they have so much investment from the rich
| that they could use for that purpose. It's because he isn't
| selling products anymore. He doesn't make his money when the
| product ships, he makes it when he announces a new vaporware
| product, collects pre-orders and stock benefits from the hype and
| press, and then never delivers on the actual product. Its no
| matter to him, by that time he has already made his money and
| cashed out.
|
| The only difference between Theranos and Elon's ventures is that
| his ventures hot the bottom 25% of the goals and timeline so its
| not a total lie. At the same time, it's also not totally honest.
| mprev wrote:
| Theranos couldn't deliver reliable tests using other people's
| equipment, let alone the magic box they pretended to have
| invented. Their claims were pretty much impossible to fulfil.
|
| There are Teslas driving on the roads. Starlink is serving
| customers. SpaceX is delivering payloads.
|
| Like him or loathe him, Musk has delivered multiple times.
| Rygian wrote:
| > The only difference between Theranos and Elon's ventures is
|
| that Elizabeth Holmes is in jail for fraud and Elon Musk signs
| and delivers on deals with NASA.
| sigmonsays wrote:
| hiding cat5e in proprietary connectors is low.
| perydell wrote:
| Article looks and sounds like clickbait. One of the fundamental
| aspects of starlink is the internet access and speed you will
| get. That doesn't seem to be covered here. You took down your
| starlink because you couldn't transfer it to someone else, are
| afraid of the damage starlink is doing to astronomy, and you
| don't like the design decisions about the new dish that you don't
| even have? Sorry, this doesn't make any sense.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| gkfasdfasdf wrote:
| I don't think it's clickbait at all. The concerns about power
| usage, proprietary connectors, and lack of ethernet or WiFi 6
| seem spot on.
| DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote:
| Regarding power usage: old lightbulbs used to be 100W, but
| now I get to high speed internet by connecting to low orbit
| satellites at my rural property... I'm not going to complain
| about 100W.
|
| Propriety connectors: it's not a laptop which i need to
| connect to many things. I set it up and leave it.
|
| Lack of ethernet: sure, that's a legitimate problem for me...
| $20 fix.
|
| Wifi 6: as author said, Starlink isn't fast enough to utilize
| Wifi 6. If author wants Wifi 6 connected devices within the
| home, that's not Starlink's issue.
| gkfasdfasdf wrote:
| Sounds like you are more informed after reading the
| article. Therefore, it's not clickbait.
| DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote:
| I think it is clickbait because I believe nearly all the
| complaints aren't valid. "I bought a new Lamborghini and
| it failed after 100 meters!", then in article we find out
| he brought his Lambo to an old logging road.
| elteto wrote:
| It's typical click-bait YT style: you keep watching and
| watching waiting for "it" to drop and then the video is over,
| your time is wasted, and someone made a few millicents or
| whatever.
|
| I've learned nothing new except that there is a custom cable
| that is somewhat expensive to replace.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| Another tell is that the performer in the video assumes an
| exaggerated facial expression for the thumbnail image, a common
| practice in click bait videos.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Exaggerated emotions are just a way of marketing your video
| to viewers. It's good marketing.
| nikanj wrote:
| I agree, it's very "SEE THIS INSANE DESIGN FLAW IN
| STARLINK"-esque. And the design flaw is "They elected to use
| weather-proof proprietary connectors, instead of letting me
| crimp my own CAT6
| nkrisc wrote:
| Starlink is not the first device to use CAT6 outdoors. There
| are plenty of existing RJ45 options.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| But there are no 100W ones.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Waterproof RJ45/fiber/USB/UHF RF/anything is not new.
| Completely waterproof and weatherproof broadband wireless
| access point is not new, that's what cell tower equipment
| are. Those had been around since late 20th century.
|
| Now, a proprietary, weather hardened, friction fit, outdoor
| connector that repurposes USB-C? that's user hostile new.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| I covered that last year in my 4 month review (and linked to
| that post in the article as well):
| https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2021/spacexs-starlink-revi...
| mikestew wrote:
| TFA doesn't talk about what _you_ think it should talk about,
| so it's "clickbait"? Granted, "YouTube Face" never helps
| bolster one's legitimacy, but what part of the headline did not
| meet expectations? By your own description, the article
| delivered.
| [deleted]
| phkahler wrote:
| >> These connectors are dumb, and I can't think of a good reason
| they exist. There are ways SpaceX could improve networking
| hardware, but proprietary non-standard connectors ain't one of
| 'em.
|
| Did he ever think they might be weather proof? Looks like some
| rubber seals on those connectors. You know, since the dish is
| outdoors and has to deal with rain, sleet, or snow. I certainly
| wouldn't put a standard RJ45 on it.
|
| I'd like to have Starlink at my condo, do they care if I split
| costs with a few neighbors? Do they have group plans? It seems
| like having higher usage from a single terminal would be better
| for them vs having multiple terminals.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| Weatherproof RJ45 fittings are well established and used by
| most outdoor CPE. I do assume that Starlink figured their
| connector design was easier to use (the typical weathertight
| ethernet ferrules are kind of fiddly), but it seems like a poor
| choice overall considering it's going to make installation a
| lot more complicated since the cable needs to be fished with
| connectors on. It seems like a decision that was made to
| benefit consumer "jammed through the window" install to such a
| degree that it will make professional installation
| significantly more difficult, especially that right angle
| connector is never going to be fishable through smurf tube the
| way an electrician would install it, and it'd require a huge
| hole to drill it through the siding the way a cable installer
| would. That's the big advantage of modular connectors:
| installers have the tools to terminate cables, so they can run
| the cable sans connector.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| It seems cable is still ordinary twisted pair, so you can
| just cut it, add extra waterproof connection box and use
| modular connectors...
| [deleted]
| kingcharles wrote:
| If you are in a city, but can't get wired Internet (I'm in
| downtown Chicago), I would recommend trying T-Mobile's Home
| Internet before you go for Starlink. T-Mobile's "Trash Can"
| router is a bit flakey, but the speeds are great and there are no
| limits. Plus, no installation, just plug in and go. For $50 a
| month, it's really a steal, IMO.
| woudsma wrote:
| $240 per month for internet, wow. I didn't realise things were
| that expensive for people living in remote areas.
|
| I'm currently paying ~$40 (converted from EUR) per month for a
| 100Mb/s fiber connection.
| shagie wrote:
| https://broadbandnow.com/national-broadband-map is informative.
|
| Select max speed and then go zoom in somewhere rural and see
| "1Mbps to 25Mbps" and then switch over to min price or provider
| counts...
|
| There aren't a lot of options in rural areas and running wire
| to the spot is expensive.
| adventured wrote:
| That's because it's not. The cost isn't $240 by necessity.
| They're knowingly overpaying for Internet access (they have
| multiple connections, they're not even using Starlink for
| example).
|
| I'm paying $34 / month in a small city in the middle of nowhere
| for 200mbps in the US.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| $140/month to get the most upload bandwidth possible at my
| house (35 Mbps through Spectrum).
|
| Then $99/month for Starlink (for now, at least).
|
| Meanwhile a few blocks away a friend has 500 Mbps symmetric
| access for $50/month.
| iptrans wrote:
| Time to build a wireless link to your friend :)
| anderspitman wrote:
| Seriously though this is achievable with consumer
| hardware[0], as long as you have line-of-sight or close
| enough to it.
|
| [0]: https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-300Mbps-dual-
| polarized-direct...
| mattl wrote:
| How is 5G or LTE service in your area?
| sschueller wrote:
| CHF 64.75 (~71 USD) per month for 25 gbit synchronous [1] here
| in Zurich, Switzerland. The cost now is hardware. The Fiber
| infrastructure in the city is mostly operated by the state
| electrical company. Anyone can provide service over it.
|
| [1] https://www.init7.net/en/
|
| [2]
| https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/df4123cf-5f0e-40f2-bf71-f...
| lsaferite wrote:
| 25Gb ?! Symmetric? Wow.
|
| I guess that's a benefit to a small relatively wealthy
| country?
|
| My question would be, what do you have to even _use_ that
| much bandwidth? I have 1Gb/50Mb asymmetric and my Ubiquiti
| router can't really saturate the down stream. Sure, I could
| invest in a more powerful router, but in normal daily use we
| never even get close to max bandwidth.
| sschueller wrote:
| It's only the city and places that got lucky enough to have
| been connected via Fiber by the state owned phone company.
| There are still areas with garbage connections at a high
| cost.
|
| The reason the city has such a good fiber connectivity is
| because of a vote a few years ago that pushed this. It cost
| a lot of money but was worth every bit IMO.
|
| I hope something like this gets pushed for the whole
| country. I see it as core infrastructure like electricity
| and unlike cable or copper it is way more future proof.
| tylerscott wrote:
| We pay 180 USD a month for a phone line and DSL from Century
| Link. This connection is 1.5 mbps down and 500 kbps up in
| practice (advertised speeds are higher). Starlink has been a
| game changer for us.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| > 180 USD
|
| Damn... hope your wages make up for this man.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| It's crazy, in a lot of rural areas ISPs know they can
| charge the moon for terrible service and they justify it by
| saying how hard it is to service remote locations... at
| least for some 4G is a new alternative that is more readily
| available than Starlink.
| NDizzle wrote:
| I've had Starlink in Rural AR for 10 months now.
|
| I have it currently set to "failover only" on my Ubiquiti device,
| as it's snowing sideways and there is a tremendous (read: 30%)
| amount of packet loss at the moment.
|
| I don't yet know how to do automatic failover due to packet loss
| on a UBNT device, but that's what I'm looking up this afternoon.
|
| Anyways - I have 3 ISPs, with two of them being LTE. One is the
| unlimited ATT iPad plan, since I have a router that currently
| identifies as an iPad (so modern) with the other being TMobile
| home internet.
|
| Up until this snow storm, I had both of the LTE connections in
| failover only mode, using Starlink exclusively since about
| November, when there was an update that stopped the "disconnect
| all active sessions every ~45 minutes when I lose physical sight
| of the satellite I was connected to" problem. I guess that was
| when sat to sat communication came online in my longitude.
|
| I will also note that my IP has been static on Starlink for about
| 2 weeks now, which is the longest it's ever been. It's still
| CGNAT, so multiplayer game hosting is mostly out, unless the game
| handles it. Most don't.
|
| Overall it's a decent thing, but I would recommend at least one
| backup ISP for those rural or thinking of going rural. LTE Hacks
| group on Facebook can help you tremendously if you are
| considering buying a place outside the range of normal wired
| connections.
|
| It's kind of funny that snow took it down 1 day after I started
| looking at the premium option, which I'm considering if I can get
| my workplace to pay $300 per month, with me covering the other
| $200. Kind of dulls the excitement for that...
| jmuguy wrote:
| If you're running an Edgerouter I imagine you could have
| something setup externally to measure packet loss and then if
| it gets high enough automatically SSH into the router and force
| it to failover. Of course you'd also have to setup some sort of
| routing scheme so the external system could then return back to
| the connection when packet loss went down.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| CGNAT ?!? Huh, I would have expected Starlink to be IPv6
| only...
| NDizzle wrote:
| On the following page it shows an IPv4 address with IPv6 "Not
| detected". I have ipv6 enabled on my edgerouter.
|
| https://whatismyipaddress.com/
| iptrans wrote:
| The Internet does not work without IPv4.
|
| It's either CGNAT or ponying up $60 per IPv4 address.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| This an interesting aspect to me because it means even the
| lowest quality, poorest run, failing infrastructure ISP has
| nearly liquid assets of about $30 million USD if they have
| half a million customers.
|
| That's a staggering amount of money & it isn't locked up in
| assets like real estate.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Not just ISPs, some other companies (IBM ?) and
| universities managed to get _huge_ address chunks early
| on for pennies.
|
| This scarcity creates perverse incentives, I'm surprised
| that the governments aren't doing their job in first
| forcing new hardware to be IPv6-compatible, then later
| forbidding new hardware to be IPv4-compatible, like they
| did for digital TV tuners and low consumption light
| bulbs... maybe because the lobbying is pushing in the
| opposite direction in this case for the aforementioned
| reason ?
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| And yet ever more people _only_ have IPv6... and last I
| checked IPv6 server support is around 99% these days ?
| jeffbee wrote:
| It sounds like you have a nifty setup, but I'm surprised you
| would consider such a high price for your third connection. Why
| is it worth so much in your case? For the price, you're
| approaching the amortized cost of burying miles of cable, which
| could be an option for people who are only a short distance
| from wired infrastructure.
| NDizzle wrote:
| Well, if I can get my cost for the premium Starlink to $200,
| I would drop the TMO home internet.
|
| Right now I'm paying $99 for Starlink, $23/mo ATT, $50/mo
| TMO. Hardware costs were $450 for the router and LTE modem
| (EM160g) and roughly the same for (what I know know to be the
| gen 1) Starlink.
|
| I had no idea they rolled out a gen 2 Starlink that's even
| more restricted than the first one. Ah well.
|
| When I was in NORCAL and wired, I was on business internet
| that was $190/mo, so that's about what I'm accustomed to.
|
| I have no idea what it would cost to wire my house. I'm miles
| from any infrastructure.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| You should look it up - some farmers decided to lay down
| their own fiber (also for the neighbors) - access to
| tractors helps !
| LegitShady wrote:
| starlink radomes to keep snow and cats off the dish next?
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| 100W continuous draw is around $15 a month in power alone - this
| buys you unlimited 5G in many places around the world.
| driverdan wrote:
| In many areas cell data is a better choice.
|
| When I lived in a bus I traveled to almost 30 states and spent
| most of my time in rural areas like national forests. Finding a
| good signal was a lot easier than you might expect. Get the right
| hardware with an external antenna and high speed coverage is good
| in most of the country.
|
| Finding a good plan can be tough. If you can get a good T-Mobile
| signal they have unlimited plans for a reasonable price. AT&T has
| data plans that are $1/GB. There are grey market resellers that
| offer unlimited SIMs at an inflated price.
| krisoft wrote:
| So he says that he wanted to give the dish to his cousin. Then he
| describes all the bureaucratic barriers he faced in that plan.
| But what happens if he just places the dish there? Does it
| immediately give an error on first connection, or doest it get
| banned later?
|
| I understand that the limit is because Starlink is oversubscribed
| in the cousin's area, I'm just wondering where the limitation is
| enforced.
| qayxc wrote:
| > But what happens if he just places the dish there?
|
| That's exactly what he tried a few months back. It didn't work
| (no connection was possible IIRC). The service was basically
| geo-fenced back then and still might be.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Did he say that in the video? He never said so in the
| article, and its absence is conspicuous.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| I mentioned it in the previous review (just linked from the
| article). If only it were that easy :(
| sschueller wrote:
| From what I gathered from the video is that it doesn't work
| there because there is no converge. Those 70 miles might be
| just outside the coverage area. I guess if you are right
| outside one of these circles https://starlink.sx/ it won't work
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I've had starlink for probably a year and a half now. It has
| steadily improved, gotten more reliable, and is more able to
| avoid trees (I alas am not in an open plain).
|
| I used to have 10 seconds of blockage every 5 minutes.
|
| Now I get some blockage every... 5 hours?
|
| I also have a 5G modem appliance that I used to use for stuff
| like Zoom. It actually is LESS reliable than the Starlink now.
|
| Do I do massive bandwidth downloads or serve websites? No. I am
| the typical consumer usage.
|
| Is the expense worth giving the finger to the cable company? Oh
| yes.
|
| If I got around to getting rooftop solar and storage or a backup
| generator, then I'd be protected from a grid failure. That
| appeals to me, but then again going off-grid is an obsession of
| the typical aging male techie in America. I think it's the new
| "going republican when you were liberal young": instead you go
| pseudo-libertarian.
| Karsteski wrote:
| Why inject worthless politics talk into your otherwise fine
| comment...
| MrStonedOne wrote:
| sschueller wrote:
| I don't understand why cable connections are so bad when there is
| DOCSIS 3.1. Is it that the cable provider just has such a limited
| link on their end that people are getting speeds sub 100mbit? Are
| they vastly over provisioning their networks?
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| HFC is a mess. It's not worth it to keep improving it. Here in
| Spain HFC providers are rushing to lay fiber because it's not
| only more competitive for real speeds, but because maintinance
| is much easier and cheaper.
|
| The savings come in the form of real state, the "last mile"
| widens a lot, many of the elements of the network are passive
| so you save up energy too, and you can cram up much more
| people/EUR spent.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| There's a few factors, all of which are in some level of change
| right now.
|
| 1) Cable providers in major markets (urban ones) are offering
| gbps service and often slightly faster (1.2gbps) now, at rates
| that I would say aren't great but are not terrible, in my case
| about $100 a month. Unfortunately that gigabit is downstream
| only. So high DOCSIS speeds are happening, just not as
| universally as you'd hope.
|
| 2) One of our biggest cable giants, Comcast, has a legacy
| channel planning problem related to the older Motorola STBs
| guide and on-demand delivery that prevents them reallocating
| additional channels to DOCSIS 3.1 upstream for the time being
| (those channels are in use by the Motorola STBs which don't
| support anything else). This results in a hard 35mbps upstream
| limit for most Comcast customers. Unfortunately the route to
| fixing this is to replace all of the older STBs, which Comcast
| is slowly doing but this requires getting customers to turn in
| their old one and pick up a new one... you can imagine how hard
| it is to get everyone to do this, even offering incentives.
|
| 3) DOCSIS 3.1 can achieve gbps+ speeds over an admirably long
| range but not for a very high customer count. So cable
| providers are transitioning their HFC network over time to a
| "node+0" architecture that resembles DSL with serving area
| DSLAMs... basically they are eliminating distribution
| amplifiers from the cable network and replacing them with
| compact field nodes (CMTS and head end) using fiber uplink.
| This essentially becomes a "fiber to the curb" architecture
| with cable last mile (more like last thousand feet in urban
| areas). It needs to be done mainly to reduce the number of
| customers on each CMTS to reduce contention, and sort of as a
| requirement for full performance of the DOCSIS 3.1 high speed
| upstream channels, but as you can imagine this large-scale
| change to outdoor plant is expensive and time-consuming,
| although it seems largely complete in a lot of cities.
|
| 4) As you get customers on very fast service plans backhaul at
| the node becomes a problem. This is mostly being addressed
| through installing new fiber backhaul routes for the new nodes,
| but in more suburban areas can be a big limitation.
|
| 5) All the TV on the cable takes up a lot of bandwidth and
| makes channel planning more difficult even with the abstraction
| in STBs. This is why major cable providers are starting to
| shift towards an IP-only "over the top" architecture where they
| deliver IPTV over DOCSIS instead of "real" cable television.
| This will help but once again requires all new STBs.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| In my case, Spectrum has decided that they want a flashy
| "gigabit tier", so they provision everything as download
| bandwidth (940 Mbps), and then only assign 35 Mbps upload.
|
| I'd pay extra for business class service, but it doesn't even
| help, it's the same speed just with some more guarantees and a
| stable IP.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Starlink does much the same, no? The median Starlink upload
| appears to be 14Mbit/sec, per Ookla/Speedtest.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| It's the same in my area. I have 200/10 now for about $78
| month. I don't need more than 100 Mbps down under any
| circumstance. I would pay nearly $200/month to get on the
| 940/30 plan here. I don't really feel like paying more than
| double to get internet that is still painfully slow.
|
| Also the DOCSIS network in my area is such low quality it
| isn't reliable anyways.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Yeah ever since the pandemic started, speeds average closer
| to 700 Mbps down (which is still about 3x more than I've
| ever really needed...). I would gladly pay the same amount
| for like 100 down/100 up, but then Spectrum couldn't call
| their service "Gigafast".
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| This is ultimately what drove me away from Spectrum (along
| with some absolutely piss poor routing that introduced
| massive lag).
|
| $95/month for 400/20. I don't need all of that download
| bandwidth, but I could use a bit more upload bandwidth.
| Stephen304 wrote:
| Upload speed shenanigans is what pushed me to pursue
| Comcast's "business tier" gigabit pro fiber and the last 3 or
| so years have been pure bliss. Unfortunately it's limited to
| locations right around the corner from fiber so yet another
| reason I might live in the same place forever, or at least
| until cheap symmetric 5 gig or more starts becoming the norm.
| somehnguy wrote:
| This is why when I found out Fios was available in my area I
| immediately called. I paid for the highest consumer tier of
| Spectrum available in my area but the upload speeds were
| still capped to awful levels (20mbit, at max). I'm not
| actually getting the symmetrical 1gb/s I pay for with Fios
| either, but it is worlds better than anything Spectrum would
| offer me.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Regarding the number of proposed starlink satellites:
|
| The constellation is proposed to be approximately 10,000
| satellites.
|
| I wondered how this compares to the number of US commercial
| flights per year. The FAA claims it handles 45,000 flights per
| day [1]. If we assume each aircraft has 5 flights per day and
| spends half it's time on the ground, then we might guess there
| are approximately 4,500 aircraft flying above the USA at any
| given instant.
|
| The USA is only a portion of the globe, let's say it's 1/50 of
| the global surface area, and let's assume starlink satellites are
| distributed evenly across the sky. From this we can guess, there
| will be approximately 200 starlink satellites above the CONUS at
| any instant.
|
| So the starlink constellation will be about 5% of the problem
| that commercial air traffic is.
|
| [1] https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/by_the_numbers/
| resizeitplz wrote:
| Except they aren't evenly distributed. Stargazing skews to
| nighttime hours while air traffic skews to daytime hours. Not
| to mention coastal vs inland densities.
|
| That is an interesting comparison though! And it'd be cool to
| compare with more nuanced assumptions - maybe even factor in
| how contrails affect things in addition to the 1:1
| satellite:plane maths.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| I object to Starlink because it ruins the night sky for
| astronomers.
| shortformblog wrote:
| A year or two ago I stayed in an Airbnb with the literal worst
| DSL connection I've ever run into, just dog slow, took literal
| minutes to load a modern website. I have to imagine the benefit
| of Starlink is when your alternatives are so bad that it's like
| having no internet access at all, it looks pretty good.
|
| But many people aren't dealing with that, meaning that when you
| have better options, something like Starlink no longer looks all
| that necessary.
|
| But users who are in a position where real internet is a real
| luxury due to location, Starlink still has value, even if it's
| obviously not perfect. Especially when compared to satellite
| internet options that are comically slow even compared to cable
| modem connections that were common more than a decade ago.
|
| Good critique, Jeff.
| 0x0000000 wrote:
| Funny, I cancelled but haven't taken it down.
|
| Anyone looking to buy a useless Starlink terminal?
| mprev wrote:
| If you can get high speed, low latency, affordable internet
| access another way then Starlink probably isn't for you.
|
| We've just moved to a place where our only other option was a
| PS400 a month leased line delivering synchronous 100Mbps. For
| less than a quarter of that, Starlink gives us roughly
| 120-150Mbps down, around 7Mbps up, and pings around the 30 ms
| mark. Upload is slow but workable for now.
|
| It's easy to complain for clout when you don't actually need the
| service. But if you don't have another affordable option,
| Starlink is remarkable. I keep having to remind myself that I'm
| running a business from my rural home via space.
|
| And, sure, there are elements that aren't perfect (the cable on
| our dish isn't replaceable unless you want to manually splice
| wires, but reports on the Starlink subreddit say that Starlink
| will send you a new dish if the cable gets damaged). The power
| draw is around the same as a fairly typical lightbulb from 20
| years ago, so I can totally live with that.
|
| I know it's frustrating for people who can't get Starlink,
| especially if they know someone who wants transfer their dish to
| them, but that's the price of avoiding oversubscription.
|
| If you can take the Starlink dish off your roof and still post
| your videos complaining about Starlink then you were never the
| target customer anyway.
| mr90210 wrote:
| PS400! Wow. I pay 36 euros for 500mbps in the south of Europe.
| pirate787 wrote:
| Agree 100%. My community is in the DC metro area and despite
| our relatively ex-urban setting, the corrupt local and state
| government has failed us. Subsidies badly misspent and monopoly
| policies that stifle land-based competition. Probably 25-30%
| (thousands of households) have no access to true broadband,
| just unreliable DSL from a bankrupt provider that once put our
| state representative on payroll. We're all clamoring for
| Starlink.
| reportingsjr wrote:
| Starlink won't work well for the sort of sprawling exurbs you
| live in, fyi. It can't support a very high density of dishes
| due to RF bandwidth limitations.
|
| Starlink's key markets are fairly spread out rural areas, not
| infrastructure expensive exurbs and suburbs.
| gambiting wrote:
| >> The power draw is around the same as a fairly typical
| lightbulb from 20 years ago, so I can totally live with that.
|
| Since you mentioned pounds, I just want to address the power
| consumption part.
|
| At averaged 100W power usage, the system will use 2.4kWh of
| electricity every day. In UK the energy prices are absolutely
| exploding - with the government estimating that the "average"
| consumer will be paying 28p/kWh of electricity from April. At
| that price, you are talking PS20 a month in JUST ELECTRICITY to
| keep the system running. That's more than some basic broadband
| offers in this country on a per month basis.
|
| Yes I know that's not an option for you. But damn, PS20 worth
| of electricity a month just to keep my internet router running?
| That's crazy.
| mprev wrote:
| Yeah, I get that it's not insignificant but it's not just a
| router, it's also uploading my packets to a fast moving
| object around 340 miles away. I'd like for it to be less but
| I'd also like for Openreach to put a green cabinet near my
| house and give me VDSL.
|
| To put it in context, my PC isn't on 24 hrs a day but it's
| almost certainly drawing at least 250W for the 9 or 10 hours
| it is on. It's just a cost of working from home.
| vel0city wrote:
| > almost certainly drawing at least 250W
|
| You should throw a meter on it and actually check. My
| recent-ish Ryzen 2600 desktop, 1070 GPU, and 27" monitor
| use <100W when not doing something like intense gaming.
| Even then, under intense gaming its often between 300-500W
| of usage. YMMV, obviously.
| seized wrote:
| If he has older monitors or multiple monitors that can be
| significant load. My older Dell Ultrasharp 24" monitors
| are around 80-100 watts each last I measured.
| Androider wrote:
| For comparison, my US bill is currently 9.5c/kWh, which is
| 7p/kWh. Your UK price is 4x that of mine! The SpaceX office
| where the dish was designed is just down the road from here,
| so I can totally see the engineers thinking "What's the big
| deal, it's only 100W? That's a few dollars a month."
| inesta wrote:
| In California we pay an average of 25-35c/kwh.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| > Your UK price is 4x that of mine!
|
| And just to drive the point home: this is not the last
| price increase we will see. It will rise another 50% in
| October and probably won't fall much until 2024.
| bluedino wrote:
| No built-in ethernet, so WiFi-only? And no WiFi 6? Proprietary
| $60 cable?
|
| Woof.
| NDizzle wrote:
| That's not correct. I haven't quite got all the way through the
| article, but yeah - not correct. It has wifi that you use to
| manage it, but it also has an ethernet port that you can use. I
| have it as one of 3 internet devices at my home in rural
| Arkansas. I would turn off the wifi entirely, if they allowed
| me, for less interference.
|
| The cable is kind of a bummer, but at least it's super high
| quality. I wasn't too happy about having to use a giant step
| bit to drill holes, as I wasn't about to cut the ethernet jack
| off the end of it when I ran the cable in the attic.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| That's how the first version router was (the one I have). The
| new 2nd gen router has WiFi (ac), but Ethernet is not built
| in. You have to buy an extra dongle that costs $20 and goes
| inline to the dish.
|
| The new router does have a bypass mode, so you can get around
| using it at all (though it still needs to be plugged in as
| it's the PoE source through the proprietary cable). The reset
| method is a bit weird, since it doesn't seem there's a
| button. I think you have to plug and unplug it three times
| within a certain time period.
| NDizzle wrote:
| I had no idea they launched a v2. I wonder why they would
| regress so much. The obvious answer is cost... but they
| have to know how much people want good internet service in
| remote areas, right? I'll pay for it and I know I'm not the
| only one.
| ncallaway wrote:
| As mentioned in the article, though, how much could the
| added cost of an Ethernet connector be?
|
| That can't increase the BOM that much, right?
| stickfigure wrote:
| Taking a wild guess here:
|
| Standard PoE+ is 30w, and even the newest PoH maxes out
| at 90w. The new hardware draws more than that, so
| Starlink made up their own PoEish standard with
| proprietary cable/connectors. The $20 dongle is probably
| a custom PoE adapter. The good thing about this setup is
| you only need a single cable run up to your roof.
|
| Adding an RJ45 jack directly to dishy might actually
| complicate the construction. For one thing, it's a
| weatherproofing issue. But now you have two ethernet
| ports and need a switch, which needs software management.
| It's not just a few pennies on the BOM.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > Adding an RJ45 jack directly to dishy might actually
| complicate the construction
|
| It wasn't an additional jack on dishy. It was an
| additional jack on the router.
|
| See here for an example of the router: https://www.androi
| dcentral.com/sites/androidcentral.com/file... One of
| those ports connects to the Starlink (through another box
| which provides the POE), and the other is labeled `aux`
| and is available for LAN.
|
| My understanding for the newer routers is there is now
| only the single port. The router itself doesn't appear to
| be weatherproof'ed in any way, and already needs to be
| installed indoors, so I think it'd just be the cost of
| the RJ45 jack (and whatever internal differences for the
| router).
|
| It just...seems like it cannot be much of a cost savings.
| stickfigure wrote:
| In that case, I truly have no idea. You're right, it's
| weird.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| We're talking about a typical 1 Gbps (non-PoE) LAN port
| on the router, so you could plug in another computer
| hardwired (or a switch).
|
| The jack is pennies, and the rest of the chips to support
| the extra Ethernet interface are still readily available.
| Version 1 of the router had a LAN port (labeled AUX).
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| crawsome wrote:
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| Starlink is definitely demonstrating that there is demand and a
| willingness to pay.
|
| Part of me wonders if it will suffer the same fate as Iridium -
| terrestrial service came in and took the market away. Especially
| if the rollout continues to be so slow.
| rdsnsca wrote:
| Already happening here in Nova
| Scotia.....https://internet.developns.ca will serve 1.5GB fibre
| to 95 % of homes and business by 2025. They want to do another
| plan after to reach the last 5 %.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Terrestial roll out will also be slow because there is little
| financial incentive to do it.
| darknavi wrote:
| Well if that happens that's great.
|
| I think there will always be some sort of market for it if they
| can get ships/planes onboarded.
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