[HN Gopher] Starlink's current problem is capacity
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Starlink's current problem is capacity
Author : caution
Score : 50 points
Date : 2022-07-27 14:30 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jeffgeerling.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jeffgeerling.com)
| virtuallynathan wrote:
| Peak time speeds are definitely a bit lower than when I was one
| of the only customers in the area, but it's still very good.
| Almost always >50Mbps, which is faster than the DSL alternative
| available.
| foxyv wrote:
| I think StarLink could stand to build terrestrial "Not-
| Satellites" in areas that are very densely built, if they could
| get it past the FCC. Something similar to 5g microcells that
| users could switch to if they want better bandwidth.
|
| I mean, why go to the Satellite network if you are less than 10
| miles from a city center. Then you could leave the satellite
| uplinks to surrounding rural areas and users looking for ultra
| low latency.
| krallja wrote:
| That's just a WISP, which have existed since the 1990s.
| jonathantf2 wrote:
| Maybe they could do this in like RV parks where there'd be a
| lot of Starlink users - force the individual dishes to connect
| to a local network then have one big dish on property that
| links to the sats.
| lolc wrote:
| You mean, like a cellular network?
| raxxorraxor wrote:
| Don't quite understand why you would like to use Starlink in a
| city, especially without roaming support. Damn hipsters. What is
| awesome about it is to have internet in remote location that have
| no chance of ever getting a land line.
| Karunamon wrote:
| The Internet options available in the city can be surprisingly
| awful. And not just on speed/capacity basis, but on customer
| service as well. I have lived in many places where what
| Starlink is offering now is better than any service available
| for purchase.
| phil21 wrote:
| For me - backup Internet for a large-scale power outage or
| other event like an ice storm that knocks down
| telecommunication lines.
|
| I've worked from home via the Internet since the late 90's, and
| having a backup has been drilled into me as a hard requirement
| from hard-won experience. Living in Chicago this came in handy
| just last year when a box truck took out my primary fiber
| connection and most of the block for a few days, and I failed
| over seamlessly to Comcast.
|
| When/if I get approved for Starlink, I'll cancel comcast and be
| using it as my backup. Hopefully they become mobile soon as
| well, so I can take it with me on adventures.
| boulos wrote:
| You can get the "RV" variant now at starlink.com/rv. It's a
| little bit more per month but allows roaming and turning it
| on and off. On the downside, it's explicitly lower priority
| on the network than the fixed ones.
| sschueller wrote:
| I use 5G as a backup. It costs me only around 40 USD and
| includes the modem which I have attached to my router.
|
| If you are in a city there are cheaper back solutions than
| starlink.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I don't think I can find 5G modem for 40USD, but I think
| for 40 or 45EUR I could get pre-paid internet good for a
| year or two from all three operators here.
|
| And at least one of those will likely work. If not, I
| probably don't have much power anyway.
| 2snakes wrote:
| Maybe Google Fi.
| floydnoel wrote:
| When my local fiber backbone was cut last year, many
| neighborhoods including mine lost service. Guess what
| happened to the 5G? I had a hotspot for backup use, and it
| was useless. Turns out the towers use the same backbone!
| [deleted]
| PaulHoule wrote:
| People hate the cable company. There are a lot of rich people
| in cities who would love to burn dollar bills to spite the
| cable company, they compete with people in a radius of 300
| miles or so for bandwidth.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| I have one and it's both a middle finger to the cable company
| and supporting the development of Starship.
|
| Even without Starlink, you could have convinced me to donate
| $100 a month . The fact that my donation comes with a pretty
| amazing piece of tech is a bonus.
| jlokier wrote:
| I'm in a city center, and my small office network is currently
| 4G through a Samsung phone because it's faster than anything I
| can get on the landline.
|
| This is a city where some buildings have up to about 200Mbit/s
| on either cable or FTTP, but these are not available at all
| properties. The best landline speed I can get is "up to"
| 17Mbit/s downlink, which is slower than the phone, the landline
| uplink is ridiculously slow, and to top off the landline is
| more than twice the price of unlimited 4G.
|
| I'd like the speed and latency of FTTP, and failing that a good
| speed of VDSL over FTTP, but since I can't get either and I'm
| on the top floor of a 4 story building, I've wondered if
| Starlink would be an improvement over 4G.
| adastra22 wrote:
| I'm in San Jose. My choices are 25Mbps DSL or cable internet
| through Xfinity. After my previous interactions with Xfinity I
| will never touch them again.
|
| Starlink is looking pretty good by comparison.
| coder543 wrote:
| You should also check out recent wireless options like
| T-Mobile's 5G Home Internet, which reportedly works quite
| well, and it makes a lot more sense (in my opinion) from an
| infrastructure standpoint than urban Starlink, unless you
| just absolutely require an internet connection that can
| continue working during a city-wide internet disruption. It's
| also like half the price of Starlink, with no upfront cost at
| all, IIRC. I've also seen people online get speeds upwards of
| 700Mbps, which is higher than I've seen anyone report on
| Starlink, but it is apparently highly variable from location
| to location based on your local cell network infrastructure.
|
| I think Verizon and AT&T also offer 5G Home Internet options,
| but T-Mobile's offering seems to be the best from what I've
| seen online.
|
| (Keep in mind that all of these services provide a
| specialized box that acts as a cell modem and router, and it
| should offer much stronger and better connectivity to the
| carrier's network than a mobile phone.)
| icedistilled wrote:
| In cities and suburbs it will often be the case that there is a
| single cable provider who charges approximately the same as
| starlink due to being a regional monopoly. At my old place the
| sole choice was cox who had monopoly on internet because the
| only other option was at&t dsl that offered 5mbs download for
| $60+/month. I was seriously considering starlink.
|
| Two blocks over there was google fiber and at&t fiber but might
| as well have been 100 miles away for all the good that did me.
| Actually it would have been better because I wouldn't get adds
| telling me about fiber only to find it wasn't available.
| zepearl wrote:
| For me it's incredible that it's like that in the US (I
| assume you're in the US as you mention "google fiber" and
| "at&t").
|
| You folks have to change that, decouple who lays cables from
| who can use them, or at least make companies who lay cables
| let any provider access them, etc... - look at how some
| european countries deal with it (at least the ones that have
| the most happy users - details will probably be important)
| and do the same => no risks.
|
| (Repeating what I wrote in the past ) I'm in Switzerland
| living nearby Zurich but using a small regional Internet
| Provider located 50km away (outside the region I'm living in)
| and my parents are in a different region in a 800-souls
| village and use a major national provider, and we both ended
| up getting FTTH, with similar costs and great reliability -
| cables in both cases initially layed down spontaneously by
| companies not directly related to the providers, hoping that
| we would start using them at some point (I waited for 1 year
| being scared of complications but my parents switched
| immediately as their old ADSL connection was extremely
| unreliable) => this is a practical demonstration that this
| system works & good for everybody (customers & providers &
| whoever lays down the cables), therefore no reason not to
| adopt it.
| matt-p wrote:
| I think they are doing OK.
|
| Delivering even 30-100Mbps to half a million customers all over
| the world is no mean feat. Complaining that your speeds dip below
| 100Mbps on a unmetred low latancy satellite connection is just
| pathological. Most of the world do not have access to this speed
| on fixed line networks. You can't get these speeds with even
| VDSL.. Fttp and cable are the only fixed technologies beating a
| satellite. Have a think about that.
|
| That works out at several terabits of traffic at peak times. I
| think they should be able to make good improvements with more
| ground stations and inter satalite links even if they never
| launch another satellite.
| dvdkhlng wrote:
| > You can't get these speeds with even VDSL..
|
| That's not quite true. At least in germany, VDSL2 with
| "supervectoring" profile 35b [1] is routinely used, advertised
| as 250 Mbit internet service [2].
|
| Technologically it's quite a waste of hardware resources and
| electric power to put these kind of data rates on old twisted
| pair copper cables (instead of using fiber everywhere), but
| that seems to be the status quo here right now.
|
| (And I'd guess that the ratio of people being in need of
| satellite internet is much lower in germany than it is in the
| US).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDSL#Vplus/35b
|
| [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervectoring
| orangepurple wrote:
| Many apartments in big cities in the US have telecom
| infrastructure which behaves similarly to a wet string and
| can only pull a few megabits down on a good day. There is no
| alternative for them except T-Mobile Home Internet (5G) if
| they are lucky.
| iAm25626 wrote:
| As someone work in the telecommunications/service provider
| sectors. Capacity management is both an art and science on top of
| it with tight budget constraint. It always amaze me what we/ISP
| can accomplish given how lean the engineering team/budget is.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I don't think this is any surprise... It is entirely expect that
| when user number in shared area increase they have each less
| capacity available. And there might not be viable solutions to
| this when satellites are used.
| olyjohn wrote:
| I'm one of the people who doesn't seem to have any issues with it
| since beta. I did spend weeks setting the thing up to get a clear
| view of the sky, and topped some trees. Trees have grown back in,
| and my sky view is a lot smaller now. But it's still working the
| same as before. I would think these issues would be a lot more
| universal. But maybe, despite being in one of the first cells
| that were opened up, my cell is just not very full...
| geerlingguy wrote:
| It seems really hit-or-miss. Nearer cities, cells seem to have
| that 'rush-hour' problem. More rural areas don't, as often.
|
| Some of it probably comes from whether a particular ground
| station (there aren't very many still, per cell at least) is
| saturated by traffic from a metro area or not.
| [deleted]
| algorithm314 wrote:
| I think the US created Starlink for military use. It provides
| world wide coverage and very small latency that helps a lot with
| UAVs. UAVs that aren't in line of sight need satellite
| communication. They just allow the public to use part of it, so
| as to reduce the cost of the system.
| hedora wrote:
| I think their biggest issue is the mechanical engineering of the
| dishes. They use non-standard mounts, and (despite using bog-
| standard outdoor/riser-rated cat 5e cable) non-standard ethernet
| connectors.
|
| For people replacing an existing internet connection with
| starlink, the cost of swapping out the existing (perfectly good)
| cable and antenna mount dwarfs the retail (and even
| manufacturing) cost of the dish.
|
| Also, they don't document the electrical requirements for the
| ethernet cable, so people end up guessing, forcing it to turn on
| the on-board heater, then checking for voltage droop.
|
| Even oversubscribed, they're better than most rural ISP options
| though.
|
| I agree that the starlink customer support people are extremely
| overworked. In my experience, they're also completely
| incompetent.
|
| The "impossible to update out of date firmware" issue is
| ridiculous, especially since they specifically market the RV
| service for use cases where you buy the dish and then pause the
| service for the 11.5 months of the year when you're not using
| your RV.
| tguvot wrote:
| >I think their biggest issue is the mechanical engineering of
| the dishes. They use non-standard mounts,
|
| They sell for $15 or so pipe adapter. Works perfectly well with
| pole that dishtv was mounted on. The none-standard mount that
| they have (at least on new dishes) besides actually mounting
| dish to pole also has function of holding cable in place
| PinkPigeon wrote:
| Do you happen to know anyone who managed to figure out what the
| electrical requirements for the cable are? We tried mounting
| the antenna outside and connecting the cable via an external
| box to the inside (using cat 6 cable), but Starlink immediately
| started complaining about a 'bad connection', which went away
| when we routed the cable to the power brick unimpeded. But it
| would really be much neater if we could use our own house's
| ethernet wiring. But evidently Starlink doesn't like it.
| jpk2f2 wrote:
| see: https://gist.github.com/darconeous/8c7899c4d2f849b881d6c
| 43be...
| PinkPigeon wrote:
| I'm on the original, round dish, not the rectangular new
| one. I wonder whether this can be done on the round dish,
| as that one used even more power.
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