[HN Gopher] Starlink speeds in US dropped from 105Mbps to 53Mbps...
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Starlink speeds in US dropped from 105Mbps to 53Mbps in the past
year
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 82 points
Date : 2022-12-02 20:04 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| chrisco255 wrote:
| This is the opposite of my personal experience. For me, the
| service has been more reliably performing at higher speeds and
| since launching more satellites there are fewer drops in
| connectivity.
| smt88 wrote:
| Good for you, but not relevant for the topic in the article.
| The FCC should make decisions based on data, like the data
| collected by Ookla (if the FCC can't collect its own), not
| based on anecdotes.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Good for the FCC, but it's not very useful if the data is all
| from congested cities, I can't find where they list their
| sampling.
|
| Starlink shines when it comes to rural/remote environments,
| not cities where towers and fiber can reach.
|
| Side note, look at HughesNet and Viasat in their data, LOL!
|
| edit: instead of downvoting if someone could find the
| sampling method?
| pessimizer wrote:
| Nobody else thinks that the FCC decided to exclusively pull
| data from congested cities (I guess in order to
| intentionally fool theselves?), so they have no reason to
| look up the sampling method. You however do, so you should
| look it up, go through it, then give your evaluation of it.
|
| When you make up an accusation from whole cloth, people are
| going to downvote it. They'll probably downvote even harder
| after you ask for other people to give you proof to refute
| the accusation that you made up from whole cloth. If you
| find the sampling method, and it turns out your suspicions
| were true, and then you write a comment explaining that,
| they'll give you hundreds of upvotes to offset these two or
| three well-deserved downvotes.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| You misunderstand. I'm saying if they didn't look at only
| the rural cells then there's not much point in using that
| to determine whether to award funding for providing rural
| broadband...
|
| Just because there's a lot of people in highly populated
| cells that drag down the speed for people in those cells
| has nothing to do with the speeds of the lowly populated
| cells.
|
| tldr; it makes no sense to average all cells together, as
| the goal is to improve the areas where existing
| infrastructure have failed in _specific regions_.
|
| (and in those areas, where hughesnet, or viasat, or old
| DSL were the few options, Starlink does it's best)
| mike_d wrote:
| Cities vs rural has no impact on Starlink speeds. You fall
| into a "cell" which is a hexagonal region roughly the width
| of California. Each cell is served by a satellite that has
| a 20 Gbps downlink to a ground station. Everyone within
| that cell shares that 20 Gbps, and everyone using the
| ground station (4-8 cells) shares the backhaul capacity of
| that site.
|
| (This is oversimplified but puts the capacity scoping in
| context)
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Providing broadband to rural america, what this whole FCC
| broadband push has been about, concerns those cells where
| there aren't many people over a large spread of land,
| where towers and laying down lines doesn't make sense.
|
| So if you take a cell that has LA in it, it will be much
| more congested than if you took a cell in Wyoming, or
| Nebraska.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Of course it's relevant. The FCC doesn't make its decisions
| based on HN comments, so I'm not sure why the aggro response
| here. I'm stating my personal experience with the network,
| over the past year. I'm on the network now at peak time in
| Florida and clocking 80 Mbps.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Are you in an area of relatively low population density?
|
| I would guess that places like rural California and Texas have
| seen an increase of user density which would cause bandwidth
| decreases. If you're in a place with relatively slow user
| growth, you could be getting advantage of increased total
| bandwidth of the satellite constellation.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| No I am mostly in Austin, Texas. Although I do travel and
| have used it in New Mexico, Tennessee, and Florida with 100+
| Mbps.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| My thought is being on a coast would have the best throughput
| because you're the first/last "in-view" as the constellation
| passes over.
|
| Could have lots of variability though.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Is home internet pretty much "fast enough" for anyone else right
| now?
|
| I used satellite internet for almost a full year. I was about 20
| minutes drive from 3G.
|
| Honestly, it was absolutely fine. Video conferences, online real
| time games, streaming videos...
|
| Right now I'm on a copper line. Granted, it's only us villagers
| and country folk using it since the local big town moved to
| fibre. But again, the speed is fine.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Same. They actually just upgraded service near me, for 30$ more
| I can quadruple my internet speeds. I talked to my roommates
| and even with multiple heavy internet users we really see no
| need to at all.
| [deleted]
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I work at a rural farm and live in a big city. The farm had
| satellite which was okay, but they had a hard monthly data cap
| of 200GB, at which point they would severely throttle speeds.
| There was no option to pay for a higher cap. During summer time
| the owners (many) kids would visit and with all their video
| streaming we would hit the data caps about two and a half weeks
| in to the month. Then when the owner needed to do a video call
| for work, due to the throttling, he had to text everyone and
| ask them to stop using the network for an hour. It was a pretty
| fragile system. Now we have starlink and it's a big
| improvement! Though the short drop outs (under 2 seconds)
| sometimes cause issues with video calls.
|
| At my place in the city I get symmetric gigabit fiber for $39 a
| month. This is the first time I've ever had fiber. It's pretty
| wonderful to upload a 10GB 4K video to YouTube in a few
| minutes, download a full movie while I make some popcorn, and
| pull down an OS image in seconds. I don't "need" gigabit but I
| absolutely am happy to have it!
| rr888 wrote:
| This is expected with a new network though right? My first 4G
| phone was a rocket then slowly slowed down over time as more
| people got 4G phones.
| wmf wrote:
| I certainly didn't expect them to use an elaborate waitlist
| system to onboard far more customers than the network can
| handle.
| kjksf wrote:
| 53 MB is more bandwidth that their competition (ViaSat,
| HughesNet) ever offered.
|
| Starlink can handle the customers just fine.
|
| By definition, if the customers could get something better
| for less money, they would.
|
| Plus SpaceX is launching more satellites. They are at 1/20 of
| the number of satellites they want to have, so the total
| bandwidth available will go up.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I think not everyone understands this (we all have to learn at
| some point right?) so coverage like this is informative for
| people who didn't know.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I could see there being an opportunity for 4G+Starlink setups.
|
| Run Starlink when you need the throughput and turn off that
| 100w heater when you don't.
|
| I'm already looking into a timer to turnoff my modem, gaming
| console and router at night just to turn off that ~20w load
| doing nothing.
|
| http://www.tpcdb.com/list.php?page=2&type=12
| Netisneverfree wrote:
| Since this is network and internet related, just want to chime in
| with some experience using non-standard internet connection
| methods. It may help in understanding what's happening here.
|
| Starlink as I understand it, while using 'satellites' is more
| like 'terrestrial tower' based internet, but with low-orbit
| stations in use instead of towers erected on a high hill. I make
| this distinction, because of other 'satellite' internet companies
| having been used to compare it in the past, in my opinion,
| erroneously.
|
| Satellite internet like Xplornet for example, do something else
| where you have just a few satellites only, providing line of
| sight connection for EVERYONE on the facing side of the planet
| for that satellite.
|
| Starlink is more like terrestrial tower because you have
| essentially a choice of which satellites you want to use to
| connect through, since there are many that could be connected to
| at any time. This is like terrestrial tower, because your home
| might be closest to a tower in a town near you, but the other
| tower just off the side a bit further away gets less usage and so
| you have less issues connection due to congestion or 'things'
| getting in the way. Things could be tree canopies, house roofs,
| etc.
|
| So what I figure is happening here after reading the article, is
| that their current configuration is reaching levels of congestion
| that can't keep up with the demand they expected, and so they are
| going to start launching more satellites to keep up with the
| demand. They are also looking to increase the broadcasting
| signals strength to help ensure a higher quality connection to
| those who do connect to their system.
|
| That's basically terrestrial tower internet itself in a nutshell
| from my experience using it in the past. Even their ping times
| are similar.
|
| Now for those who get their knickers in a knot because 'thing
| orbiting planet in space is always a satellite'. Yes, I know.
| It's technically satellite internet in that right. But my point
| is that this isn't how we should be thinking of it.
|
| We should instead be calling it Aerial internet, since it helps
| differentiate from the other satellite internet (which in my
| usage experience is crap and should only be used in the worst
| case scenarios) and terrestrial tower which is also not the
| greatest, but is better than stuff like Xplornet.
|
| I've never met anyone who likes using services from folk like
| Xplornet, except obviously ignorant people who never have had
| anything better. The moment I show them the difference between
| their connection and mine back at the farm, or here in urban
| life; they immediately try to make up excuses for it instead of
| accepting it isn't that good.
|
| But that's besides the point. My point is that Starlink is doing
| pretty good if they are only seeing that much of a drop in speeds
| and latency. It's still a usable connection by rural standards,
| which was its intent mostly to begin with. It wasn't meant to be
| used by urbanites who have access to much better; as I understand
| was what was intended by Elon in the first place.
|
| For comparisons sake: Most rural internet only ever gets UPTO
| 50mbps at best, in the best locations. You can expect to get much
| worse in rural areas with terrestrial tower based internet. And
| while many including Xplornet may falsely advertise they can
| achieve higher speeds; latency kills their performance. It
| doesn't matter if you can get 300mbps, if your latency is a full
| second or higher of ping time. not milliseconds. Seconds. Even
| minutes sometimes. Depends on how bad the situation is for you.
|
| So, with that all in mind, despite all the Elon hate going on
| right now; I think Starlink is doing pretty good still.
|
| I don't have it, yet; since I don't need it. But if they keep on
| this path they are on right now, when I move back to the rural
| areas I am probably going to get Starlink as a backhaul
| connection, and a terrestrial tower setup as my main connection.
| Or perhaps vice versa. Depends on which one has the better and
| more stable connection in that area.
|
| But I would never use traditional satellite internet like
| Xplornet. If I ever did, it would be because I have enough money
| that I can throw it away and not care; all just to make sure
| there is a redundant connection to ensure that I have a backup
| for my backup. Even then... I'd rather just get a second company
| on terrestrial to hook me up instead.
| qayxc wrote:
| > I think Starlink is doing pretty good still.
|
| Well, atm., yes. From the very beginning I thought that's it's
| a very risky idea to focus on end users, though. Ships,
| airplanes, mining operations, emergency services, etc. - that's
| where the real benefit and money is.
|
| Ships have rates of up to $60k/mo for low bandwidth satellite
| internet. StarLink maritime is only $5k/mo and every maritime
| plan basically equates ~50 residential users in terms of
| turnover. Special deals with airlines, cruise ships and so
| forth could easily bring in as much money as tens of thousands
| of end-users - including much less hassle with regulators and
| billing.
|
| The problem is that satellite internet (no matter if LEO or
| GEO) scales _very_ poorly and creates an economic death spiral
| (hence the need for Starship) - more users means less available
| bandwidth, thus requires more satellites. More satellites
| require more rocket launches, which costs money and requires
| more users to pay for it, etc.
|
| It remains to be seen whether the current path StarLink takes
| is sustainable from a business perspective. A 30k satellite
| constellation is certainly economically unsound using _current_
| rockets (e.g. Falcon 9), given that it took 3 years to get
| ~3300 into orbit and the average lifetime per Gen1 satellite is
| planned to be around 5 years.
|
| This means 3300 Gen1 sats have to be replaced within the next 5
| years while another 7500 or so have to be launched on top of
| that. With Gen2 sats being heavier, F9 can only take maybe 25
| (this is a guess) instead of 50-60 sats per launch. That'd
| amount to about 87 F-9 launches per year just for StarLink and
| I don't think that's economically feasible (hence Starship).
| But we'll see.
| seanherron wrote:
| I've been using Starlink as my primary internet provider for the
| past year. I'm just outside of Eugene, OR and prior to Starlink
| my only internet options were Viasat or dial-up.
|
| I definitely notice the _variability_ of Starlink. My download
| speed ranges from ~40mbps to ~200mbps, and my upload speed ranges
| from ~5mbps to ~50mbps. This doesn 't really seem to be connected
| to time of day or what I would expect to be typical use patterns.
| My internet is never unusable for Zoom, streaming video, or other
| average use cases.
|
| A lot of people complain about decreased speeds, my personal
| experience hasn't really shown this to be true. What I have
| noticed:
|
| * Over the past year, I've seen a huge improvement in latency and
| packet loss. I used to have latency in excess of 130ms, and I
| would typically see a few dropouts lasting ~30 seconds per hour.
| My latency now is rarely more than 60ms, and I never have
| dropouts.
|
| * Being behind an IPv4 CGNAT is annoying. I get a lot more
| captchas and fraud prevention techniques being applied in my
| browsing.
|
| * Geolocation is way off. I wish SpaceX did a little bit more
| effort to dedicate IP geodata to specific cells in their network
| - everything defaults to their Seattle POP for me.
|
| * The adoption of Starlink out here is astonishing. Virtually
| every house near me has gotten it in the past 2-3 months. It's a
| huge game-changer for people. It's pretty amazing what the
| Starlink team has built out in a relatively short amount of time.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| If you keep terminating in Seattle, maybe it's worth trying a
| VPN provider with ingress in Seattle to keep latency low? Just
| a thought.
| nly wrote:
| Regarding the CGNAT, can you not punch through it with a VPN?
| seanherron wrote:
| Sure - but I'd rather not tunnel everything through a VPN,
| especially given the fact that I already have relatively high
| latency.
| miyuru wrote:
| Some users reported having IPv6 now and there is a site
| hosted on starlink via IPv6.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| And concerns about the frequency of captchas (unless you
| have a truly private/personal VPN).
| kalupa wrote:
| based on the reply post description, I'm not sure this
| would be different from the experience without VPN ...
| rkagerer wrote:
| _Geolocation is way off_
|
| Some might consider this bug a feature :-)
| nekoashide wrote:
| People were tossing traditional internet satellites from roofs,
| chopping off the old dried up copper from the side of the house
| and pushing the wisp tower down.
|
| Starlink made remote living and work truly possible. No more
| turning off video, pixilating and worrying about data plans. And
| low enough latency to make up with skill in games.
|
| But just like everything it got too popular, cellular carriers
| are trying to service that market though and t-mobile might be a
| last mile internet provider with decent speeds and unlimited
| data. But, fiber is also getting buried all over rural areas to
| help with this as well.
|
| Between fiber/cellular and Starlink people are going to get
| interesting data plans for sure though. Wisp are regional and the
| market will shrink because the service is just inadequate and
| poorly maintained. The smart wisp that got federal high speed
| internet subsidies will survive building out fiber even in some
| pretty rural areas.
| aatd86 wrote:
| The advantage of Starlink would be that it could offer a single
| plan worldwide though.
|
| No more roaming charges etc.
| justapassenger wrote:
| > But just like everything it got too popular
|
| Keep in mind that it maybe got too popular for an usable
| service, but it's far from being popular enough to be
| financially sustainable product. You're still at this point
| having a service paid by investors money, like cheap Uber rides
| in 2015.
| Dig1t wrote:
| As someone desperately looking for connectivity options in a
| more rural area (though not that rural, I'm only like 20
| minutes from one of the largest cities in the state) I won't
| hold my breath. My whole neighborhood is on the waitlist for
| Starlink still.
|
| I've called every provider that could possibly service our area
| and nobody has any interest. T-Mobile is supposedly offering 5G
| home internet for people in this kind of situation but they are
| not available in this neighborhood either.
|
| No idea what to do other than wait for Starlink availability.
| There is a WISP, but it is truly terrible and very expensive.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Interesting:
|
| "Starlink outperformed fixed broadband average in 16 European
| countries"
|
| https://www.ookla.com/articles/starlink-hughesnet-viasat-per...
|
| Here are their methods: https://www.ookla.com/articles/how-ookla-
| ensures-accurate-re...
|
| They do not separate between rural and city speeds.
| qayxc wrote:
| Well, the methodology is flawed, or at least it doesn't
| actually reflect what it says on the tin.
|
| It's "consumer-initiated", i.e. what they are _really_
| measuring is which contracts people are using, not which speeds
| are available.
|
| Example: I _could_ book a 500 /100 line at my house (1000
| symmetrical available if I switched providers), but I stick
| with the cheapest plan, which is 50/12 simply because it's good
| enough for my personal use. Same for most of my neighbours.
| Most don't have more than 100/20, though higher speeds are
| readily available.
|
| With StarLink there's only type of contract: you get what you
| get and that's that. In Europe for example, there's usually
| more than one option per ISP and you pay more for higher
| bandwidth. So if you're fine with the smallest plan (usually
| around 50mbps), why pay more? So in essence they actually
| answer a different question.
| belval wrote:
| > Starlink's median US upload speed dropped from 12Mbps to
| 7.2Mbps from Q4 2021 to Q3 2022
|
| I wasn't able to find an answer online. Is this the expected "ok"
| upload speed? 7-12Mbps seem low for typical WFH usage like video
| conferencing and sharing your screen.
| fetus8 wrote:
| Well, considering I've been using Starlink since Jan. 2021, the
| upload speeds have been more than adequate for typical WFH
| video/audio calls.
|
| The download speeds dramatically falling over the last year
| have been a major annoyance when it comes to updating games via
| Steam or stuff like Microsoft Flight Sim, but streaming video
| has been perfectly fine the whole time.
|
| Seeing the speeds drop is a bit of a disappointment, but given
| the reliability of the connection versus our previous ISP, it's
| 100% worth it for now.
| belval wrote:
| Thanks! I've been wondering if exiling myself deep in Canada
| and using Starlink to be fully remote was viable. Do you
| notice any impact from the increase latency (compared to coax
| cable or fiber) in meetings/voice chat/video games or would
| it pass the blind test?
|
| Additional question, do you get any connection degradation in
| bad weather events (if you have them)? Things like snow and
| storms.
| fetus8 wrote:
| I don't notice any increase in latency in meetings or voice
| chat. I don't play any real online multiplayer games, but I
| did do some summoning in Elden Ring the other night and I
| didn't notice any lag or weirdness with the other players.
|
| We've noticed some slower speeds and satellite obstruction
| during heavy snow and super heavy intense thunderstorms,
| but otherwise it's been fine in most of the weather events
| we experience out on the eastern plains of Colorado.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| It's faster than all ADSL and most Cable Modem plans, so I'm
| guessing it's fine?
| wmf wrote:
| The RDOF "Above Baseline" tier that Starlink bid on requires
| 100 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up so those speeds are not close to
| adequate.
| birdman3131 wrote:
| Thats standard cable numbers. Sadly.
| smt88 wrote:
| > _7-12Mbps seem low for typical WFH usage like video
| conferencing and sharing your screen_
|
| It's a little slow, but it's not bad.
|
| It is, however, dramatically better than the <1 Mbps upload
| speeds (and <5 Mbps download speeds) that a lot of rural
| customers are getting now.
| extragood wrote:
| General rule of thumb for 1080p video streaming = 8 Mbps
|
| 720p is half the size, so it should be half that rate = 4 Mbps.
|
| I have no doubt that modern image compression algorithms can
| bring that down a bit further without too much impact on
| quality.
|
| So with a median of 7.2 Mbps, that's probably enough for 2
| users to have an acceptable video conferencing experience. But
| if that's the median, then half of their customers have a lower
| upload speed than that and may only be able to get away with a
| single user streaming at a time.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| And that's at full motion. Your bobbing head and fixed
| background takes a lot less.
|
| Same with most screenshares.
|
| I had a 15/1 connection for a while and found no issues with
| Zoom calls. Maybe an issue if you're a professional cammer
| though.
|
| I mostly work on CRUD virtualized apps (effectively
| screenshares) all workday long and will use well under 1gb in
| a day.
|
| My biggest beef with Zoom and the like is being unable to
| restrict resolution/camera quality of myself and others
| (other than setting the others into small sizes).
|
| I'm in Canada where mobile data is expensive, and therefore
| very fast. The provider is happy for you to chew your handful
| of gb per month at full speed and then you top-up with more
| or get hit with overages.
| bawolff wrote:
| Well that would be better than what my [canadian] wired
| internet provided during covid.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| My favourite was when Rogers couldn't complete calls during
| the day at the beginning of the pandemic. They were saturated
| and pushed even more people onto web-conference software.
| pkaye wrote:
| Beyond some minimal throughput, low latency is a bigger factor
| in video conferencing and screen sharing and Starlink has low
| latencies from my understanding.
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