Starlink

[brucehoult]

I'm surprised there's been almost no mention of Starlink on eevblog forum. The only two things I could find were a note more than two years ago of the 2nd Falcon 9 launch carrying Starlink satellites, and another 1.5 years ago in a post complaining about poor conventional internet speeds just casually mentioning Starlink as a possible future solution.

The first members of the public started to get Starlink about eight months ago when it went into "beta".

I'd have thought some members of this forum would have it by now, but I can't find any discussion at all.

After being homeless (staying with relatives) for almost two months in NZ's awful housing market at the moment, on January 3 I was told I was the successful applicant to rent a rather rural house north of Whangarei. Apparently there is no phone line at all -- certainly there are no sockets anywhere. Vodafone and Spark signal is good, but they both say they don't do fixed 4G wireless at this location, and in any case speeds are pretty low on those. My relatives on the edge of Whangarei have Spark 4G and get 25-30 Mbps down and 5-8 Mbps up.

I went on the Starlink site, entered my upcoming address, and was informed I could put in a full order right away at a cost of US$499 for the equipment. I did so. The actual charge was NZ$913 including shipping and GST. Once connected, the monthly charge is NZ$159 including GST. The service is unlimited.

After ordering on January 3rd, the equipment shipped from Long Beach CA on January 7th, and arrived on January 14th and I briefly tested it the same day. I moved into my new place on Saturday January 22nd.

In the box is the 60cm dish permanently attached to a mounting tube a bit longer than the dish radius and to a 30m fairly rugged ethernet cable, which I believe you can extend if you need to. There is a power brick / PoE injector with an IEC connector and standard NZ power cord, an ethernet socket for the disk, and an ethernet socket to your home network. There is also a Starlink-branded WIFI router with one spare ethernet connector labelled "AUX" (with a rubber plug in it). You don't have to use their WIFI router if you don't want to (except maybe for setup?) Anyway, I'm using it at present. Lastly there is a low tripod for the dish. The feet of the tripod have holes to allow you to screw it down to something. The tripod should be mounted more or less horizontally, but a typical home roof slope is ok. Mounting it on a wall or bargeboard would not be -- you can buy other mounts for that (or make one yourself).

Unusually, everything comes in the box already cabled together. You can simply click the dish into the tripod, put it out on your lawn, and plug the 3-pin plug into the mains, and you're ready to go. You need an app on your phone to do a little configuration (mostly SSID and password).

Out of the box my dish took one minute to boot up and position the dish horizontally (it has internal motors), ten minutes to get an internet signal, and another ten minutes to get a stable internet signal and tilt itself to its final working position: in my case at an azimuth of -176.6º, and elevation 66.3º. I'm at -35.5 latitude but the elevation seems to be similar everywhere -- just north or south azimuth varies (always away from the equator, except perhaps at > ±53º latitudes).

I've done a few speedtest runs on my iPhone SE and M1 Mac Mini. The results are attached. The summary is that download speeds are normally between 250 and 300 Mbps. I've never had less than 190, and I've had one result of 399. Upload is normally between 25 and 30 Mbps but I've had as low as 9 and as high as 58.

Ping time is mostly around 75ms to servers in Auckland (which speedtest chooses automatically), BUT they are more like 50-55ms if I manually choose a server in Sydney. The signal actually goes from me up to the satellite, down to a ground station near Whangarei, Wellsford, Auckland, or maybe even Christchurch (depending on which is closest to the satellite I'm using at that time), then to Starlink's POP in Sydney, then back to NZ if that's what speedtest chose.

Speeds seem to correlate quite well with how far away and what azimuth the satellite is at. The fastest results were when starlink.sx showed a satellite passing close to directly overhead.

There are lines of roughly equally-spaced satellites travelling roughly SE (in the same orbit / plane) and lines of satellites travelling roughly NE. You pass under one SE plane and one NE plane about every 5 min 25 seconds. One satellite in each of those planes will pass fairly close to overhead you, the others up to a few hundred km either side. You might get a satellite from each plane overhead you at the same time, or they might be spaced out in that 5 1/2 minute period -- this depends on your exact latitude. But wherever you are there will be a general pattern of passing satellites that repeats fairly closely (not exactly) every 5 1/2 minutes.

[brucehoult]

Wow, really no one has anything to say!

* brucehoult slinks off

[rhodges]

I got in line in April 2021 after my AT&T wireless was shut down. They just turned off the 3G service I had been using for a decade or so.

When I got the Starlink email last week saying my system was ready, I placed the order just 12 minutes after the email was sent. The kit arrived yesterday. I had a location picked out that seemed so-so for obstructions. Ideally, the dish would be best on a mast just above the top of the house, but that's not happening soon.

The kit had the dish mounted on a bit of pipe, a short mount with four feet, the router, and a big coil of cable. I started unrolling the cable from the wrong end, and I had to endlessly pull the cable out of knots as I unrolled it. I should have put a plastic bag around the cable end in case it fell in the snow, but I was lucky and it stayed dry.

The router is nothing like what the pictures and videos showed. Apparently in November 2021, they changed the dish (now square) and the router. This new model has a large glass front with some kind of graphic and what looks like status lights. I plugged in the dish cable and power cable, and waited for the lights. No action. I went away for a few minutes and when I came back I looked at the dish, and it was now horizontal. Great, something is happening. But still no status lights.

I will note my annoyance that the new router does not have an ethernet interface. It is wifi only. But for only $20, I can order the external ethernet adapter. It goes between the dish cable and the router. Okay, what's another $20? And it is available... in March. So I set up a WRT54GL access point with OpenWRT as a wifi client for the Starlink router. It works for my wired network.

The first couple hours were very rough, more down time than up. But it got better, and now on day 2, I am seeing downtimes of a couple seconds here and there. I must have been lucky with my dish location, as the Starlink app reported only two obstruction downtimes, with a total of  5 seconds. Plus 10 seconds of "network" and 13 of "unknown" down time.

I am getting great speeds (up to 40 megabits/s over my 802.1g wifi) and the Starlink app usually reports about 40ms of latency. The app bandwidth tester did three tests, and they ranged from over 100Mb/s to over 300Mb/s.

Overall, I am very happy with my initial experience compared to my AT&T wireless LTE 4G service (which has a 100GB/month limit with harsh penalties for going over).

[brucehoult]

Cool! Thanks for the report.

A lot of people seem to be getting the square dish now. Mine came just three weeks ago but is the 2nd gen round dish.

I don't like the lack of information and configurability of the supplied router compared to what you normally expect e.g. client lists, setting up DHCP ranges and DNS, routing inbound ports to particular computers etc. But it works fine -- the range and speed are good. The Starlink router has an ethernet socket with a rubber plug in it, which I guess I could connect to a switch, but I believe you can also simply not use their router at all and just plug your home network directly into the power brick / PoE injector.

I just moved to this house haven't got all my computers or a home network set up yet, so working with the supplied WIFI router has been ok so far.

[radar_macgyver]

I set up a Starlink dish at my work site which is in a rural area. Existing data is through a wireless link to hop the ~10 km to a nearby location through which we get a connection to main campus. The link is symmetric 20/20 Mbps, and has some reliability issues which I hoped to solve with Starlink. I use an Edgerouter Pro with a dual WAN configuration to do a failover link between the wireless and Starlink, and share it with my workgroup. I've had it going since May 2021.

I measure 150-200 Mbps down, between 10 and 25 Mbps up, it's possible this is because of my router configuration. On occasion, the downlink gets choked, maybe it's switching satellites? The statistics page tells me how many dropouts there were in the last 12 hours, most days its a couple of outages that are a few seconds long, the reported cause is often "network issues". I have the first generation Dishy (round, not square), and I don't use the included router, just the PoE injector brick. We've had several snowstorms recently, and the antenna does a good job melting the snow away. I still have the included tripod stand, mounted on top of a shipping container and weighted down with some concrete blocks. In our location, we often have high winds, and it hasn't blown away yet. I have a pole mount on order, to mount it firmly to a communications tower. That will also discourage any cats from seeking warmth too

I've been very happy with the setup, it's a huge improvement over the previous arrangement in terms of speed and uptime (recent snowstorm knocked out power at the remote end of the wireless link, Dishy kept on going). I do wish the Ethernet cable to Dishy was removable, it makes cable routing simpler and I'd be less worried about the cable getting cut.

They do not currently offer static IP addresses, they do CGNAT so you get a 172.x IP. As far as I know, they don't support IPv6, but I haven't tested it.

Starlink as a company is pleasant to deal with as an individual, but if you are trying to buy service for, say a government site, things get difficult. One of the things I do for work is deploy radar systems on field campaigns around the world, this was one of the reasons we tried out Starlink. However, I can't figure out how to get them to send a quote for service, or establish a service contract outside of me as an individual paying for it with a credit card. Hope this changes soon, it'll be a game-changer for the science community to have high bandwidth data in the field for our instruments.

[SmallCog]

Starlink as a company is pleasant to deal with as an individual, but if you are trying to buy service for, say a government site, things get difficult. One of the things I do for work is deploy radar systems on field campaigns around the world, this was one of the reasons we tried out Starlink. However, I can't figure out how to get them to send a quote for service, or establish a service contract outside of me as an individual paying for it with a credit card. Hope this changes soon, it'll be a game-changer for the science community to have high bandwidth data in the field for our instruments.

We're in no rush to change anything at work, but this is certainly a company/technology we're keeping an eye on for future projects or upgrades in that "science" field

[brucehoult]

Do you know they announced "business" accounts yesterday? Five times the cost ($500/month), the dish is twice the area and gives higher data rates. They're advertising it specifically for connecting branch offices together, and multiple dishes per account. And actual customer service.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Wow, really no one has anything to say!

* brucehoult slinks off

Missed the OP, sorry.

As someone who is in a somewhat remote location not that far from the nearest capital city (Sydney), I can certainly sympathise your predicament. Banging foreheads with so-called telco 'authorities' who forbid anyone to place infrastructure where they refuse to themselves is tedious.

In days of yore, to break away from dial-up, I had to use a object that had a Ethernet port, a 12v input jack and a pop-up antenna that was supplied by a company called unwired. The ads depicted the device on a table right beside the laptop. Ha!

Long story short it was like pulling teeth getting this thing to connect to the tower. Thank Heavens for the great, but very small support forum they had because it was populated by users and techies alike. I learned how to make a waterproof box completed with 5-sided interior lined aluminium that was hoisted up a old radio pole I've got here. I learned more than I ever wanted to know about directional radio, wireless device handshake protocol and God knows what else.

Wasn't long until the company was bought out and the service got switched off because apparently the bandwidth was more valuable for another purpose(?). I then graduated to the marvellous ADSL1. Not ADSL2, mind you. My copper running to the house needed a special router that could remain on ADSL1 cos 2 was dogshit with my wires.

Then a National Broadband Network got announced. Lighting fast fibre to the house was promised. Over ten years later and all we've been offered is a expensive wireless broadband solution and a thing mounted on the side of my house that I don't own, not allowed to touch and frankly, is an eyesore.

And whilst good at first, it now sux at nighttime during netfux time. 

I pay too much for the lowest tier but do welcome this new service. And I'm glad you're covering it. 

When I saw your photo of the antenna mounted on the pallet, it almost warmed my cold, dead heart.

With all that pointless crap I said, I must still pose a few critical questions:

1) Can you run a small server or two?

2) What happens when the service gets saturated with users?

3) How mobile is it? Can you or are you allowed to move the receiver to another property?

4) Can one, as a ordinary user, examine the connection quality?

[ve7xen]

1) Can you run a small server or two?

No, you don't get publicly routable address space and they provide no interface to forward ports. They claim to be working towards IPv6 support which would presumably allow this eventually (IPv6 only of course).

Do you know they announced "business" accounts yesterday? Five times the cost ($500/month), the dish is twice the area and gives higher data rates. They're advertising it specifically for connecting branch offices together, and multiple dishes per account. And actual customer service.

Anxiously waiting / hoping that along with this they announce proper support for some form of routable IP. $dayjob has many customers that could potentially make use of this, where only legacy DSL is a viable option currently, but being stuck behind CGNAT is a non-starter. And honestly even as a home user I'd be pretty annoyed at the CGNAT and lack of IPv6. Ideally static v4 or v6 on the business accounts, but I'll take what I can get. Price might be a bit of a sticking point too. Actually offering a business-targeted solution that allows multiple location management under one account is a good start though.

Overall I've heard good things about the service from home users, and they seem to be growing their network infrastructure rapidly. It's going to be a game-changer for a lot of rural communities. I've visited many folks in rural areas who are making do with 1-10mbps fixed wireless that's usually pretty flaky.

[fourfathom]

I gave them by $99 deposit the beginning of October 2021 and the delivery schedule is still for "late 2022".  My neighbor signed up earlier and has had the system for a few months -- he loves it.

[brucehoult]

When I saw your photo of the antenna mounted on the pallet, it almost warmed my cold, dead heart.

Merely "sitting on", not mounted :-) I just wanted to get a few extra cm of height to get closer to the feijoa hedge and the house roofline being the joint horizon to the south (the most critical direction in NZ/Aus).

Seems to be working ok. I'll attach the obstruction map from the app. It maps which parts of the sky it doesn't receive expected signals from, so it knows to switch to another bird before that happens. You can clearly see the row of bamboo off the SW (left side of this screenshot)

1) Can you run a small server or two?

I'm not aware of any language saying you're not allowed to (and I'm sure not going to go looking for it). As with most consumer ISPs you'd need to use some form of dynamic DNS. I haven't actually been keeping track of my IP numbers but I've just now set up a cron job to do that every 15 minutes. I'll report back after a few days.

The provided WIFI router doesn't have any interface for setting up pinholes, but you are not required to use their router -- it just makes for a more foolproof OOBE.

2) What happens when the service gets saturated with users?

They are restricting the number of users in each "cell", a hexagon roughly 20 km across. Right now they are only allowing people in fairly rural areas to order the service.

There are currently 1288 operational satellites in the initial "shell" (set of orbits with satellites 450 km up) with a further 241 on "standby". I think the launch late January brought the total number of satellites to just over 2000. They are now building a new "shell" of satellites with sat-to-sat laser links that will allow your downlink to be far from you, rather than the maybe 1000 km [1] it has to be at present so that the same satellite can see both you and the downlink ground station at the same time.

Starlink have permission to launch and operate 12,000 satellites, and are seeking permission to increase this to 30,000.

That will give a lot more capacity than now.

It's never going to be able to cope with thousands of people in a city or city suburb. But those places have fibre and/or good 4G/5G signal.

3) How mobile is it? Can you or are you allowed to move the receiver to another property?

You can move house. But you can only move to somewhere where a new user would be allowed to sign up.

Putting it on your RV yacht and moving around every day is not currently supported.

4) Can one, as a ordinary user, examine the connection quality?

You can of course use the normal tools such as ping. The app does goes you a little:




[1] don't confuse this with the often publicised figure that you need to be within 500 km (or some other figure such as 600 or 680 km) of a ground station. That's assuming that you have only one nearby ground station and expect 100% continuous coverage. That means that at times the best satellite will be 500 km the other side of the ground station, and therefor 1000 km from you. I believe that even if you are, say, 2000 km from the nearest ground station, there will from time to time (about every 5 minutes worst case) be a satellite somewhere more or less in the middle, and you can get internet via it for a few seconds or a minute or two. That might be useful in an emergency or to do a batched upload/download, but you're not going to get the kind of continuous internet people expect in that situation.

[bitwelder]

More disappointments with Starlink

[Bicurico]

I was considering Starlink for our weekend/holiday property in the mountains. The property is within a very small classified village (30+ permanent habitants, clssified as in Portuguese heritage).

The internet options are limited to ADSL, TV is provided over satellite and there is regular phone line. Because ADSL is really old tech and the neighbour claims to get around 20MBPS maximum, I opted for now to just take a monthly prepaid 4G SIM card for internet. This is an unlimited speed/data access, valid for 30 days. Then you have to top it up with another 30 days. The advantage for me is that I am not stuck in any fidelity program, the usual ones are over a period of 2 years and I still hope that the fibre will reach this village someday! The speeds vary between 10-100MBPS, normally a connected computer (over WIFI) can get solid 20MPBS. Sometimes my wife, daughter an I are surfing the net, each on his own device and it kind of just works.

Anyway, I looked up Starlink and the geographic location is suported! Yeah!

But then I looked at the prices and went directly into Nay! mode. About 500 Euro for the equipment and 150 Euro per month for the servioce (if I am remembering it correctly). That is much too expensive for me.

I pay 60 Euro per month on my primary residence for 1GBPS fibre (200MPBS download), free national phone, free international phone (20h00-8h00), one generous SIM card (my daughter does not manage to exceed the plafond, including mobile internet) and 60 analogue TV channels plus 100+ digital channels.

So either Starlink comes down to a 50 Euro/month rate or I wait for Fibre to show up on offer.

4G (actually I am using 4.5G, which is using channel bonding and I bought a router for that from Austria, since they are not available in Portugal) is pretty useable, including Netflix.

What is missing and annoying me (since they switched this feature off recently) is that a remote access to my router is no longer possible. This means I cannot do a VPN or other connections.

It would be interesting to know if that is really possible with Starlink.

As a side note, I had a satellite internet subscription for one year (TooWay), just to test it and write a report about it. Surprisingly it worked well enough and prices were fairly acceptable. The problems/limitations were: no remote access, limited data, fairly lonk ping times (the service used geostationary satellites).

Regards,
Vitor

[rob77]

More disappointments with Starlink

that guy is just butthurt because he's not able to transfer the subscription to his cousin

complaining about the expensive custom cable for new dishes and suggest rj45 for outdoors  for a device which is supposed to be self-installed by the end user  he never dealt with weatherproofing any rj45 connection for sure..

[brucehoult]

But then I looked at the prices and went directly into Nay! mode. About 500 Euro for the equipment and 150 Euro per month for the servioce (if I am remembering it correctly). That is much too expensive for me.

I pay 60 Euro per month on my primary residence for 1GBPS fibre (200MPBS download), free national phone, free international phone (20h00-8h00), one generous SIM card (my daughter does not manage to exceed the plafond, including mobile internet) and 60 analogue TV channels plus 100+ digital channels.

If you live somewhere with enough population density to support fibre then Starlink will never compete with that. It also can't support a lot of people in a small area anyway.

I don't know what the euro monthly price is, but the US price is $99 (plus tax?) and here in NZ it's NZ$159 (US$105.47, Euro 93.48) including our 15% VAT.

150 Euro a month seems unlikely.

When I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area before COVID I was paying US$70 plus tax a month for really slow (30/10?) Comcast cable internet with a really low (1000 GB) "unofficial" monthly limit (which I exceeded once and got warned).

Starlink is a pretty good deal. Not competitive with city prices for other technologies, but it's for people who are NOT in cities and can't get anything else.

[brucehoult]

that guy is just butthurt because he's not able to transfer the subscription to his cousin

If the map he showed is accurate, his cousin is just out of something like Joneburg MO and within a couple of miles of I-70. She may be on a farm, but that's a pretty densely populated area.

With the small number of satellites at present they can only support thinly populated areas -- the people who really need it.

If he actually got it a full years ago -- not in May or something -- then he must have had some kind of special journalist access. The constellation was also much thinner a year ago. They have got a full shell of satellites now, so there are essentially no outages due to gaps in coverage.

[Bicurico]

But then I looked at the prices and went directly into Nay! mode. About 500 Euro for the equipment and 150 Euro per month for the servioce (if I am remembering it correctly). That is much too expensive for me.

I pay 60 Euro per month on my primary residence for 1GBPS fibre (200MPBS download), free national phone, free international phone (20h00-8h00), one generous SIM card (my daughter does not manage to exceed the plafond, including mobile internet) and 60 analogue TV channels plus 100+ digital channels.

If you live somewhere with enough population density to support fibre then Starlink will never compete with that. It also can't support a lot of people in a small area anyway.

I don't know what the euro monthly price is, but the US price is $99 (plus tax?) and here in NZ it's NZ$159 (US$105.47, Euro 93.48) including our 15% VAT.

150 Euro a month seems unlikely.

When I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area before COVID I was paying US$70 plus tax a month for really slow (30/10?) Comcast cable internet with a really low (1000 GB) "unofficial" monthly limit (which I exceeded once and got warned).

Starlink is a pretty good deal. Not competitive with city prices for other technologies, but it's for people who are NOT in cities and can't get anything else.

You are correct. The monthly fee right now is 99 Euro.

Still it is three times more expensive than my current solution. But yes, if money wasn't a problem, I would love to have it.

The location is pretty remote for Portuguese standards, but 4G is luckily available and operators seem to expand the fibre to the smallest locations, using the electricity poles

I am interested to know if remote access using DynDNS is possible.

Regards,
Vitor

[radar_macgyver]

Do you know they announced "business" accounts yesterday? Five times the cost ($500/month), the dish is twice the area and gives higher data rates. They're advertising it specifically for connecting branch offices together, and multiple dishes per account. And actual customer service.

I looked this up, does look interesting. The $500/mo is a bit steep, though.

... being stuck behind CGNAT is a non-starter. And honestly even as a home user I'd be pretty annoyed at the CGNAT and lack of IPv6.

I don't know for sure if they support IPv6. Edit: looks like it does. Getting around CGNAT could be done with a VPN tunnel, I am reading up on Wireguard to figure out how to do this. Us North American customers are used to getting a real IP, many other parts of the world are forced to use CGNAT.

As with most consumer ISPs you'd need to use some form of dynamic DNS. I haven't actually been keeping track of my IP numbers but I've just now set up a cron job to do that every 15 minutes. I'll report back after a few days.

I am interested to know if remote access using DynDNS is possible.

This won't help with CGNAT, since Starlink would have to forward specific ports to your CGNAT'd address. Using Wireguard or similar, one could set up a tunnel to somewhere that does have a fixed IP (AWS instance, for example).

Here's a nice live map of their network: https://satellitemap.space/ It shows the cells that Bruce was referring to (they're a bit bigger than 20 km though). Almost all the launched SVs are just bouncing their signals to the nearest earth station, but new ones will have links between satellites to reduce the round-trip delays.

[ve7xen]

Edit: looks like it does.

'Experimental' support in some areas with a /56 PD is the official word. I don't know if that means it's available everywhere and just unsupported or what, but it's not tenable to base our services on something that's not part of the contracted service and may break/disappear at any time.

CGNAT is an unfortunate necessity for 'latecomers', there simply aren't enough addresses to go around - but it really should come with full-fledged IPv6, especially on a greenfield system. It does look like they're doing that, just not as a first-class citizen. I'd also expect static IPv4 to be available for some price on the business plans, as it's pretty essential for business customers.

Almost all the launched SVs are just bouncing their signals to the nearest earth station, but new ones will have links between satellites to reduce the round-trip delays.

Shouldn't have much impact on latency, the purpose of the freespace links is to expand the coverage area of each ground station, so more remote / difficult to serve areas can be supported.

[brucehoult]

Here's a nice live map of their network: https://satellitemap.space/ It shows the cells that Bruce was referring to (they're a bit bigger than 20 km though).

The hexagons shown there are completely unrelated.

The display on starlink.sx is a bit more accurate, but still an educated guess -- the cell sizes are about right, but the alignment is completely arbitrary.

[rob77]

CGNAT is an unfortunate necessity for 'latecomers', there simply aren't enough addresses to go around - but it really should come with full-fledged IPv6, especially on a greenfield system. It does look like they're doing that, just not as a first-class citizen. I'd also expect static IPv4 to be available for some price on the business plans, as it's pretty essential for business customers.

no it's not, static IPv4 is a nice to have, not essential. you can easily workaround the NATs with VPN.. i'm hosting some servers behind 2 NATs .. the server has a vpn connection to a VPS running openvpn with a public IP address.. all public DNS records are pointing to that VPS and it just forwards the traffic through the VPN to the server behind NAT. another benefit is that when my fibre connection goes down i can use LTE as backup - the VPN reconnects and my servers are still available with the same public IP

but fully agree with the ipv6 point.

[ve7xen]

no it's not, static IPv4 is a nice to have, not essential. you can easily workaround the NATs with VPN.. i'm hosting some servers behind 2 NATs .. the server has a vpn connection to a VPS running openvpn with a public IP address.. all public DNS records are pointing to that VPS and it just forwards the traffic through the VPN to the server behind NAT. another benefit is that when my fibre connection goes down i can use LTE as backup - the VPN reconnects and my servers are still available with the same public IP

but fully agree with the ipv6 point.

In other words, you have public IPv4, it's just coming from another provider. However you get it, the service is pretty necessary for many businesses (though as things go more cloud-y, it's becoming less so).

Can you set up tunnels and get your traffic through the NAT? Sure, at the cost of latency, MTU, complexity, failure points, and whatever a nearby VM costs you to host. But requiring that kind of jank for basic functionality is not really a characteristic of a business-class connection, at least in North America; that's part of what you're paying extra for. This is the kind of thing you use to get past a restrictive hotel WiFi, not something you want to run your business on if it can be avoided.

[richnormand]

Lots of interesting points raised in this thread.

The subscription cost and long term viability are what I remember from this youtube:

Unless there are many hidden substities and no other large scale competition.

Any though?

[brucehoult]

I just started tracking my Starlink IP number 40 hours ago. It changed from 103.152.127.142 to 103.152.127.143 sometime between 04:15 and 04:30 NZDT this morning.

The only outage in the last 12 hours was 10 seconds at 04:16 "Network Issue"

[CatalinaWOW]

Surprised you couldn't find anything on Starlink.  A brief search shows mentions in at least 38 threads, with roughly half a dozen that are specific Starlink discussions.  Some of the others are off topic/side tracks that are fairly extensive.

Starlink for me is frustrating.  It looks like a very good service for rural locations, and I am rural.  But I am rural in a mountainous, forested location.  According to the Starlink app I have no where near enough sky view to use their service.  And even if I could I would be many months or even years from the front of the service line.  Maybe when the constellation is built out and they have sold enough that the line gets short the situation will change, but for the foreseeable future I am stuck with expensive and unsatisfactory internet service.

[brucehoult]

What does "debunking" even mean here?

The system exists, it works as advertised, it has about 150,000 customers at present I think, which would be $15m a month revenue.

It is a good business? No idea. Not at that level of customers, obviously, but that's growing. Do all of Musk's business plans work out? No. Do a lot of them? Yes.

The Tesla buying Solar City trail doesn't seem to have a verdict yet. The latest I can find is this:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/judge-narrows-tesla-shareholders-lawsuit-against-musk-over-solarcity-deal-2021-10-25/

Some notes:

4:14: the original dish's cable is permanently attached. The new square dishes have a connector. People are now complaining about the connector chosen ...

5:15 It will cost SpaceX $750m to supply 500k dishes at a loss (subsidy ... the same as mobile phones are often sold, with a contract). Sounds about right.

5:45 "For the forseeable future Starship isn't ready to launch Starlink sats." Dunno. It's delayed, but mostly due to launch license delays at the moment. They'll probably have successful orbital launches this year, and Starlink is the obvious first payload. Even without recovery of the stages, Starship will still be much cheaper per satellite launched than Falcon 9.

6:15 "They haven't used Falcon Heavy. Why?" Because you can't fit any/enough more Starlink satellites inside the payload fairing to make it worthwhile? Gen 1 Starlink sats weigh about 260 kg, so 60 of them is 15,600 kg, well below the Falcon 9's 22,800 kg capability to LEO. Seems they're already volume limited with normal Falcon 9.

6:40 Will need 700+ Falcon 9 launches to get 42,000 sats up. No, stupid. Most of the sats will be launched by Starship. We know this. Starship is critical to long term Starlink plans.

6:50 SpaceX charges the US government $62m for a launch with a new 1st stage, $50m with a used one. Taking the average and multiplying by 700 launches gives $38.5 billion.

No, stupid. *Price* is not the same as *cost*. In particular the price you charge a finicky customer that requires prolonged contract negotiations by lots of your staff, a paperwork stack as high as the rocket, etc etc is multiple times the actual cost of providing the rocket. That's why you get $400 hammers and $600 toilet seats.

The boosters SpaceX is using for Starlink have generally already done 5 to 10 launches for paying customers. No paying customers are using such heavily used boosters. This means they are essentially free to SpaceX -- just the cost of barging them back, some (probably by now) minimal inspection and refurbishment, and the fuel (about $200,000).

One day, one of those boosters with 10+ flights on it is going to go BOOM. Will it be after 12, 15, 20, 30 flights? No one knows. SpaceX will of course be sad to lose 50 or 60 Starlink satellites, but they'll have another batch ready in two weeks.

The 2nd stage is thought to cost about $12.4 million. The fairing costs $6 million, but they're recovering and reusing a lot of those.

The actual cost to SpaceX of the average Falcon 9 launch for Starlink may be around $15m, 3.7x cheaper than the video estimates.

But they're getting off Falcon 9 and on to Starship as soon as possible, remember?

8:10 "SpaceX has 10,000 staff, which at entry level salary costs $457 million a year to service only 500,000 subscribed."  No, this is ALREADY INCLUDED in the cost of the rockets and satellites. You're double counting. And that's for everyone at SpaceX, including those building and selling rockets to other customers (at a profit), developing new stuff etc. And Starlink will have FAR more than 500,000 customers soon. That's just the pre-orders. Many will (like me) be waiting until they have an actual need for Starlink, and will simply buy the gear at that time -- I never had a preorder.

This guy is simply not making a serious attempt to work out the economics.

Performance:

11:30 "Starlink has a maximum download speed of 61.32 Mbps in August 2020." Uhhh .. ok. And in February 2022 I normally get 250 to 300 Mbps, with a low of 192 and high of 399.6

12:00 "our cable broadband does 819 Mbps down 915 Mbps". Congratulations. And perhaps you mean fibre not cable. Starlink is not meant to and will never compete with fibre. It's for people who can't get fibre.

The next 5 minutes or so saying starlink is inferior to viasat and hughes are irrelevant given this far too low speed used for Starlink. The net is full of customers switching from viasat or hughes to Starlink and being very happy about it.

Skipping a lot of rubbish to the conclusions at 40:45 ...

1) "Starlink adds no new product to the market place. It can't compete on speed or price with existing Viasat or HugesNet products." That's simply false in late 2021 and 2022. Starlink is massively faster and lower ping times.

2) "Starlink does meet the contracted "RDOF" requirements (100 Mbps down, 20 Mbps up, 100 ms latency, 2000 GB/month) to get a US government subsidy to provide internet to rural Americans."  Simply not true since the first shell of satellites was completed in late 2021.

3) "the market for Starlink is restricted to remote locations in North America, Europe and Australia, all of whom are already covered by other providers. The rest of the world needs running water more than it needs satellite internet". Interesting opinion, possibly not shared by a couple of billion people in India and China.

4) satellite collision risks ("Kessler syndrome").

5) "this is not a trillion dollar industry. It's not even a $10 billion industry". It's a $10 billion industry if they get 8.4 million $99/month customers signed up around the world. That seems conservative to me. USA has 60 million rural population, Australia and Canada 7 million each, NZ half a million. That's probably a reasonable estimate for the number of people who will not have fibre internet in the next decade (or ever).

6) effect on astronomy -- ohhh and "affecting the ability to detect asteroids that will collide with Earth". Uhh .. detecting them isn't much use if you don't have anyone who can launch an interplanetary interceptor rocket on short notice...

7) yet another "rocket Jesus" failure requiring bailout.

My summary: this guy just has a whole lot of misconceptions. From double-counting costs, to confusing prices and costs, to assuming no technological improvements or mass production savings. Both user terminals and satellites will get cheaper, launches will get much cheaper. With the laser-linked satellites now being launched fewer ground stations will be needed. Higher value customers (e.g. businesses paying 5x as much) will be added.

Maybe the whole thing will be financially viable and maybe it won't be. Musk isn't perfect by any means, but I think he's probably done his calculations a lot better than this guy has.

And meantime, I've got nice internet at a reasonable cost that would not otherwise be possible in this location, and it's probably going to work for at least the next five years.

[brucehoult]

Surprised you couldn't find anything on Starlink.  A brief search shows mentions in at least 38 threads, with roughly half a dozen that are specific Starlink discussions.  Some of the others are off topic/side tracks that are fairly extensive.

I get three, including this thread.

Starlink for me is frustrating.  It looks like a very good service for rural locations, and I am rural.  But I am rural in a mountainous, forested location.  According to the Starlink app I have no where near enough sky view to use their service.  And even if I could I would be many months or even years from the front of the service line.

I have a friend in California who's house is in the middle of a forest of very tall redwood trees. The app says he doesn't have enough sky view. In real life it works fine.



As for service queue, not knowing your address I can't say.

What I do know for 100% sure is that here in northern New Zealand there is no service queue if you live more than an easy bicycle ride from a decent town.

[Ed.Kloonk]

I have no doubt that any legal pushback on starlink is from mono/duo/oligopolistic existing companies annoyed that a new kid in town is playing on their turf. It is they who bankroll the shenanigans.

In terms of press coverage, ask yourself if anyone other than Musk was involved, would any article that you are reading be presented differently.

The big elephant in the room is that the existing status quo have agonised about how to connect users in the less densely populated areas. They sit and wait for obsolete tech to mature to then be reused where it is too often, too little, too late.

Finally someone has the balls to bridge the gap and it shits them. And they will tell you that someone flooding the market(?) with a new service interferes with their expectation of some day supplying their own service.

And shareholders bitching about not knowing what Musk bought. Gimme a break. Musk is one of the most watched mover and a groover that ever lived.

[CatalinaWOW]

Surprised you couldn't find anything on Starlink.  A brief search shows mentions in at least 38 threads, with roughly half a dozen that are specific Starlink discussions.  Some of the others are off topic/side tracks that are fairly extensive.

I get three, including this thread.

(Attachment Link)

Starlink for me is frustrating.  It looks like a very good service for rural locations, and I am rural.  But I am rural in a mountainous, forested location.  According to the Starlink app I have no where near enough sky view to use their service.  And even if I could I would be many months or even years from the front of the service line.

I have a friend in California who's house is in the middle of a forest of very tall redwood trees. The app says he doesn't have enough sky view. In real life it works fine.

[ Attachment Invalid Or Does Not Exist ]

As for service queue, not knowing your address I can't say.

What I do know for 100% sure is that here in northern New Zealand there is no service queue if you live more than an easy bicycle ride from a decent town.

Just go to the blog homepage (search entire forum) and use Starlink as the search term.


The sky view thing is interesting.  But it is a large investment given such contradictory data.  Starlink themselves say no.  Numerous reviewers say no, including one I remember who was wildly enthusiastic about the service but reports that he loses service predictably when the satellite goes behind one of the few trees on his property that are tall enough to block the view.  I don't know what your redwood friends situation is; he may have extremely poor internet options and intermittent connectivity may be satisfactory to him.  Intermittent connectivity is my primary complaint with my current service providers - Viasat and 4G phone service.  While the higher speeds are attractive my primary annoyance is loss of connectivity.  Getting 400 page not found errors because the net went down for longer than the search timeout gets old very quickly.

[brucehoult]

Just go to the blog homepage (search entire forum) and use Starlink as the search term.

That's what I did. Same result no matter whether I use the search box in the top right (with "Entire forum") or the Search button in the row with "ome Help Search Profile ..."

[oPossum]

I get 9 results using advanced search for 'starlink' in topic subject only.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Just go to the blog homepage (search entire forum) and use Starlink as the search term.

That's what I did. Same result no matter whether I use the search box in the top right (with "Entire forum") or the Search button in the row with "ome Help Search Profile ..."

If by chance the search term was 'star link'  (with a space in between), I got a result which is closer to what you are saying.

[brucehoult]

I really didn't expect that looking for the single word "starlink" was an advanced search!

[oPossum]

Normal search returns 38 results.

[brucehoult]

Normal search returns 38 results.

Not for me, it doesn't. I've already showed screenshots.

[rob77]

no it's not, static IPv4 is a nice to have, not essential. you can easily workaround the NATs with VPN.. i'm hosting some servers behind 2 NATs .. the server has a vpn connection to a VPS running openvpn with a public IP address.. all public DNS records are pointing to that VPS and it just forwards the traffic through the VPN to the server behind NAT. another benefit is that when my fibre connection goes down i can use LTE as backup - the VPN reconnects and my servers are still available with the same public IP

but fully agree with the ipv6 point.

In other words, you have public IPv4, it's just coming from another provider. However you get it, the service is pretty necessary for many businesses (though as things go more cloud-y, it's becoming less so).

Can you set up tunnels and get your traffic through the NAT? Sure, at the cost of latency, MTU, complexity, failure points, and whatever a nearby VM costs you to host. But requiring that kind of jank for basic functionality is not really a characteristic of a business-class connection, at least in North America; that's part of what you're paying extra for. This is the kind of thing you use to get past a restrictive hotel WiFi, not something you want to run your business on if it can be avoided.

or you can see it the other way...
- you have a very easy and fast redundacy - you connect through any other connection and services are instantly up & running  with zero configuration change.
- the VPS provider has DDOS protection, IPS and IDS in front of your VM, your internet connection doesn't - so using a dedicated VM to get the public IP is beneficial
- many businesses are using VPNs , so one more doesn't matter.  MTU is not a problem as long as icmp works (pmtu discovery goes through) , or you can clamp the MSS to make sure it will work also for clients behind networks managed by idiots.
- the cost of the VM is the same as the cost of a static IPv4 address, but getting some extra benefits.
- another point is that at least in the EU the ISP is required to keep connection tracking data, so technically you would have to inform every visitor of the hosted web page if you host it directly on the IP of your internet connection.

regarding failure points.. yes it's one more.. but we're talking about hosting services behind a internet connection which is for connecting end users and doesn't have a SLA suitable for hosting services... move your servers to a server hosting if this is a issue.

[ve7xen]

or you can see it the other way...
- you have a very easy and fast redundacy - you connect through any other connection and services are instantly up & running  with zero configuration change.
- the VPS provider has DDOS protection, IPS and IDS in front of your VM, your internet connection doesn't - so using a dedicated VM to get the public IP is beneficial
- many businesses are using VPNs , so one more doesn't matter.  MTU is not a problem as long as icmp works (pmtu discovery goes through) , or you can clamp the MSS to make sure it will work also for clients behind networks managed by idiots.
- the cost of the VM is the same as the cost of a static IPv4 address, but getting some extra benefits.
- another point is that at least in the EU the ISP is required to keep connection tracking data, so technically you would have to inform every visitor of the hosted web page if you host it directly on the IP of your internet connection.

regarding failure points.. yes it's one more.. but we're talking about hosting services behind a internet connection which is for connecting end users and doesn't have a SLA suitable for hosting services... move your servers to a server hosting if this is a issue.

Look, providing small business network services is what I do for a living. I know the ins and outs of it, what businesses require, what level of technical ability they have in house, and how the services are / can be delivered. This is the kind of solution we engineer and deploy for them, to solve exactly these kinds of problems. A typical small business doesn't have in-house IT staff, may not have any dedicated IT staff at all, and even the typical consultants in this space that I have dealt with are not skilled up enough at networking to deploy something like this in a reliable and effective fashion. Sure it is 'easy' if you know what you are doing, but most of the potential customers for this service don't, and don't even know who to hire to make it work well for them. They or their consultant buys/subscribe to Meraki, plugs in the boxes, and can't handle much else. They aren't going to be building an opnsense firewall to terminate a wireguard VPN to a VPS they manage themselves that's doing their inbound NAT. The point is that since it doesn't come with a feature that is essential to many business, and you will have to hack it yourself, makes it less attractive, not that it makes it useless...

Anyway this is all off-topic, so I'll leave it at that.

[brucehoult]

The point is that since it doesn't come with a feature that is essential to many business, and you will have to hack it yourself, makes it less attractive, not that it makes it useless...

We don't know what features the Starlink BUSINESS OFFERING (Starlink Premium) will or won't have for FIVE TIMES the price.

I think it would be a mistake to expect they haven't thought these issues through. It's not rocket science.

The OOBE for the standard Starlink kit is *exceptional* for average unsophisticated home customers who just want to plug it in and have it work using the supplied WIFI router. Much easier than any DSL or cable or fibre or 4G kit I've ever seen.

[Psi]

Looking at Starlink with an eye for very very long term.  (Not current Starlink but what might exist 40 years from now)
I do wonder if we will get to the point where miniatured phased array antennas and future RF technology will allow cellphones to communicate with Starlink directly.  I think we maybe seeing a glimpse at the future where your cellphone may work anywhere on earth.

[SilverSolder]

Looking at Starlink with an eye for very very long term.  (Not current Starlink but what might exist 40 years from now)
I do wonder if we will get to the point where miniatured phased array antennas and future RF technology will allow cellphones to communicate with Startlink directly.  I think we maybe seeing a glimpse at the future where your cellphone may work anywhere on earth.

That's where we need to get to...

[brucehoult]

Looking at Starlink with an eye for very very long term.  (Not current Starlink but what might exist 40 years from now)
I do wonder if we will get to the point where miniatured phased array antennas and future RF technology will allow cellphones to communicate with Startlink directly.  I think we maybe seeing a glimpse at the future where your cellphone may work anywhere on earth.

Our tech is getting fairly close to fundamental limits now, so I don't know whether or not that is possible. Maybe it's possible right now to have a hand-held device communicate at 100+ Mbps rates with a satellite 450 km up, but just too expensive to build.

But it's always going to be 6500 times easier than talking to a geosynchronous satellite 80 times higher, and over the equator, not over you. Worse case for each system (Starlink at 30º above the horizon, geosynch from polar regions) is about a 50:1 distance ratio.

[brucehoult]

"Common Sense Skeptic" has just today uploaded a new video "MUSK ON TRIAL - Kimbal the Cook Pt1"




I note that this channel expresses its unbiased and unbounded skepticism on 8 topics and no others:

1 ) Elon Musk

2 ) Kimball Musk

3 ) Tesla

4 ) SpaceX (12 videos on Starship alone)

5 ) Solar City

6 ) Neuralink

7 ) The Boring Company

8 ) the dangers of long term living in space or on Mars


I must say it's quite reassuring he focuses his laser vision and knowledge on such a wide range of topics.

[brucehoult]

This morning at 05:28 AM my Starlink dish got a new software version and spent 2 minutes rebooting and reacquiring internet.

Interestingly, I have the same IP address after as before. So there is still just one IP change in 5.5 days of monitoring it.

[mawyatt]

Looking at Starlink with an eye for very very long term.  (Not current Starlink but what might exist 40 years from now)
I do wonder if we will get to the point where miniatured phased array antennas and future RF technology will allow cellphones to communicate with Startlink directly.  I think we maybe seeing a glimpse at the future where your cellphone may work anywhere on earth.

Might be possible, and maybe sooner than you think 

Tests are being conducted this month on a new type phased array system based upon a millimeter wave voltage controlled transmission effect in Liquid Crystals, which just might lead to the displays in laptops, phones, iPads, and computers becoming MMW phased array systems.

Anyway, here's a 128 Channel Controller for some demos of this new technology going on this month, 64 channels shown. First results from a couple days ago were the beams were spot on

If things go well this will be condensed into a chip. Also, think some research is ongoing into Faster Than Nyquist Communications 

Fun stuff indeed!!

Best,

[mawyatt]

Another bit of advanced technology related to phased arrays. Think of a system where the elements in the array aren't fixed in time or space relative to each other, but constantly moving. Each element can become an effective member of an overall phased array by controlling the special waveforms to/from each element in real time, thus forming a dynamic in time and space synthetic aperture phased array system.

What if these "elements" were individuals/vehicles/aircraft with radios/phones wandering around in the air, in the battlefield, in the desert, on the beach, at sea, on a campus, in an office, on the interstate and so on??

This was a component of a successful DARPA program called CLASS (Computational Leverage Against Surveillance Systems) from a decade ago!! Awhile back we did the computational chip for the special algorithms that made this happen!!

Now what if all those individual "elements" were mini-phased array clusters implemented with LCDs in phones, laptops, displays, Pads, all teaming together to form dynamic massive phased array systems and creating a much larger effective aperture and greater effective number of elements

Best,

[Psi]

Now you have me thinking about a multi channel phased array antenna built inside a MEMS chip that vibrates each nodes position back and forward at high speed to create a much larger phased array 

[Ed.Kloonk]

[floobydust]

This doesn't make sense, dated Feb. 9, 2022 and the birds are already up there, or this is 49 additional ones:
"...Elon Musk’s firm said it expects as many as 40 of the 49 brand-new Starlink satellites deployed in a launch last Thursday were destroyed. The cosmic storm struck just one day after a Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched the costly satellites into orbit."
https://nypost.com/2022/02/09/a-geomagnetic-storm-had-disastrous-consequences-for-spacexs-latest-effort-to-launch-starlink-satellites-into-orbit/

[coppice]

This doesn't make sense, dated Feb. 9, 2022 and the birds are already up there, or this is 49 additional ones:
"...Elon Musk’s firm said it expects as many as 40 of the 49 brand-new Starlink satellites deployed in a launch last Thursday were destroyed. The cosmic storm struck just one day after a Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched the costly satellites into orbit."
https://nypost.com/2022/02/09/a-geomagnetic-storm-had-disastrous-consequences-for-spacexs-latest-effort-to-launch-starlink-satellites-into-orbit/

The storm occurred between the rocket going up and the satellites moving to their final orbits. Now 40 of the 49 satellites sent up this time will not be able to reach their final orbits, and will fall back into the atmosphere. 49 is a small part of their total deployment, so its not a threat to their business. However, it is interesting how much a solar storm can screw up an activity close to Earth.

[CatalinaWOW]

In a further announcement they said that the satellites were oriented in a low drag mode and then the electronics were put into a "safe" mode to minimize the chances of damage.  The forty lost satellites never came out of safe mode.

Speculation on my part.  There are several possibilities here.  A software bug.  Damage from the solar storm.  Batteries ran dry before solar cells could be re oriented for better power.  And several more.  It will be interesting to see how much effort Starlink puts into figuring out.  I can see arguments for everything from nothing on up to a full on NASA human safety type analysis.

[brucehoult]

This doesn't make sense, dated Feb. 9, 2022 and the birds are already up there, or this is 49 additional ones:
"...Elon Musk’s firm said it expects as many as 40 of the 49 brand-new Starlink satellites deployed in a launch last Thursday were destroyed. The cosmic storm struck just one day after a Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched the costly satellites into orbit."
https://nypost.com/2022/02/09/a-geomagnetic-storm-had-disastrous-consequences-for-spacexs-latest-effort-to-launch-starlink-satellites-into-orbit/

49 brand new ones. They are launching a batch of 49 satellites approximately every two weeks.

It was 60 at a time before, with the first gen sats going into the first shell, but that's complete now. The gen 2 sats with sat-to-sat laser links are heavier, plus they are being put into orbits 20 miles higher (no big deal) and I think also some into higher-inclination orbits, not the most efficient 53º (from Florida) of the first shell.

SpaceX knew the solar storm was forecast before the launch -- I believe the event had already happened at the Sun but the effects hadn't gotten to Earth yet. They just may not have been sure of how serious the effects were, and decided to do the experiment. They can well afford to, and if it turned out to be no big problem then that would be good information for next time.

Note that a lot of the news sources don't make it clear the affected sats were not in their final ~500 km high orbits. When they are launched they go into elliptical orbits with a much lower perigee, with an explicit goal that any satellites that fail to check out correctly will deorbit quickly.

CNBC projected the firm could lose $50 million in the incident, based on SpaceX’s previous acknowledgement that launches costs about $30 million and the estimated cost to construct each satellite.

Less. The first stage rocket was on its 6th flight. It's long since paid for. Elon has publicly said marginal cost of a launch with a reused booster and fairing halves can be as low as $15m. The actual fuel and oxidiser used cost around $200k.

These are the perfect launches for experiments. It's not some $2 billion satellite that people have spent 20 years of their lives building. There are no humans on board. The Starlink satellites cost something, but the only practical lower cost payloads would be taking water or fuel to an orbital depot (which doesn't exist yet).

Some of the boosters being used have done 10 or 11 flights now. One day soon, a booster on its 12th or 15th or 20th or 50th flight will blow up. That will be good data to have too.

[bw2341]

From what I've read, SpaceX aren't calling the laser satellites gen 2. That refers to upcoming much larger satellites that can only be launched by Starship.

I'm not sure if the laser satellites are heavier, but I do remember that this particular launch is in the southerly direction. Launches to the north or south shouldn't differ much in propellant usage, but the southerly direction needs "dogleg" manoeuvres to avoid populated areas. This does consume extra propellant. This would be a contributing reason for fewer satellites onboard. According to the webcast presenter, the descending node launch is preferred to reduce weather constraints at this time of year.

[bw2341]

Speculation on my part.  There are several possibilities here.  A software bug.  Damage from the solar storm.  Batteries ran dry before solar cells could be re oriented for better power.  And several more.  It will be interesting to see how much effort Starlink puts into figuring out.  I can see arguments for everything from nothing on up to a full on NASA human safety type analysis.

https://www.spacex.com/updates/

SpaceX's updates page has a detailed answer. The solar storm warmed the upper atmosphere enough to increase atmospheric drag by 50%. Maybe the onboard thrusters are not powerful enough to overcome the drag or the control software was not designed for this condition.

[brucehoult]

From what I've read, SpaceX aren't calling the laser satellites gen 2. That refers to upcoming much larger satellites that can only be launched by Starship.

I could have got that wrong, I don't know.

There shouldn't be any satellites that can *only* be launched by Starship. Even if they were 50x heavier, they can still do them one at a time with Falcon 9. The reason for Starship, as I understand it, is just to get more satellites up more quickly to expand coverage and the business as fast as possible. Not because any individual satellite is sooo much bigger.

[Psi]

There shouldn't be any satellites that can *only* be launched by Starship. Even if they were 50x heavier, they can still do them one at a time with Falcon 9. The reason for Starship, as I understand it, is just to get more satellites up more quickly to expand coverage and the business as fast as possible. Not because any individual satellite is sooo much bigger.

I think he means. "Can only be launch by Starship in a quantity that makes sense given how many need to be launched in a reasonable time frame."
It will be a numbers game. etc.  Need to launch 30k of them within 10 years.  If we use falcon9 it will take 30 years. etc..

Remember, Starlink is supposed to pay for all the mars stuff, so it needs to be up and running and raking in ridiculous amounts of cash by the time they're ready to build 100's / 1000's of starships for building the mars base.

Even if you disagree with that happening, that's the plan. So decisions are made with that in mind.

[wraper]

All satellites which are launched since November 2021 (a few v1.5 launches happened earlier) are v1.5 and have laser interlinks. V2 will be larger and will provide much larger bandwidth per satellite.

[tautech]

It seems your speeds are pretty respectable Bruce and so they'd wanna be for the price although giving the coverage Starlink offers would be in no way cheap.
I'm still surprised the little ISP's haven't gained the traction in the NZ market with the big boys are still pissing around improving the nationwide network and completely losing their focus on the end user. 

NZ rural connectivity is mostly shite away from the cities so their are many possibilities to swipe the bread and butter from under the big boys noses so a few years back we went and cut our copper and went with a 5GHz P-P link from a small mom&pop ISP for data and phone over the same link.
Now with a good personal relationship with them we also beam our link to more of their customers as our residence is on relatively high ground and as reward we now get their services for free. 

Using off the shelf simply configurable HW available today is were it's at for a value packed solution if the ISP has access to decent fiber near an elevated site and then bouncing it even 100km is quite straightforward.
We also provide another more elevated high site with a 1 GB/s 11 GHz backhaul link to bounce connectivity to other high sites, some up to 25 km away.

So Bruce, this ^ maybe an option to reduce your Starlink costs if you can spare some BW to close by locals.

[brucehoult]

It seems your speeds are pretty respectable Bruce and so they'd wanna be for the price although giving the coverage Starlink offers would be in no way cheap.

It's not cheap, but it's not outrageous compared to other fast internet options in NZ -- or to *any* kind of internet for rural users.

Sure, if I lived in a city I could get fibre comparable to Starlink (but lower ping) for $85 per month. But I'm not in a city.

In December and January before I found this place, I was staying with relatives on the outskirts of Whangarei, 7 km by road from the Kamo traffic lights. In early 2018 I'd upgraded them from DSL that on their shitty phone line was giving under 1 Mbps to Spark 4G that gave around 30 down and 10 up. They were most pleased. I don't remember the price, but the first time their daughter and grandkids came to stay they upgraded from 120 GB to 300 GB and were paying $160/month. Unfortunately 300 GB wasn't going to be enough with me there, so I investigated the options. It turned out that Spark now has a plan they could change to that is $70 a month for UNLIMITED. It's still the same slow(ish) speed but, yes, cheaper.

Neither Spark nor Vodafone would do 4G home internet at my location. It seems uber.nz is an option. They have an unlimited plan for $120, but the speeds are only apparently never more than 50 Mbps and could be quite a bit lower depending on obstacles, other nearby users etc.

None of this compares to the 450 rubles (US$6) a month I paid for unlimited 100/100 internet in Moscow in 2015-2018.

NZ rural connectivity is mostly shite away from the cities so their are many possibilities to swipe the bread and butter from under the big boys noses so a few years back we went and cut our copper and went with a 5GHz P-P link from a small mom&pop ISP for data and phone over the same link.
Now with a good personal relationship with them we also beam our link to more of their customers as our residence is on relatively high ground and as reward we now get their services for free. 

Using off the shelf simply configurable HW available today is were it's at for a value packed solution if the ISP has access to decent fiber near an elevated site and then bouncing it even 100km is quite straightforward.

Yeah, it's pretty easy to do this stuff. Back in 2005 some friends and I were thinking about doing a community WIFI network around Wellington. Some of us lived in houses with good views, and we knew some other people. We went as far as driving up for example Wright's Hill in Karori and Newlands with small dishes hooked to WRT54's powered by inverters and seeing how easy it was to get a connection (it was easy). That never came together as the community thing, but maybe a year later I got a couple of the then new Meraki units and set up a link between my house (with cable) and a friend a couple of km away across a valley who could only get original DSL. A couple of years later we upgraded to Ubiquiti Nanostation units and had a reliably 70 Mbps between our houses. I supplied him with internet for about ten years until I went to Moscow and he moved elsewhere too.

So Bruce, this ^ maybe an option to reduce your Starlink costs if you can spare some BW to close by locals.

It was fine for me to share my cable connection with my friend because while it was reasonably priced, I did have to pay for every GB (and I charged my friend for what he used). The more internet we used, the happier the cable company was.

It's different with "unlimited" service such as Starlink. Such providers don't tend to take kindly to sharing connections.

I was cruising around on my motorcycle a few days ago and saw a Starlink dish on a "neighbour"s roof, 2100 meters from me. I should go and introduce myself and see how long they've had it. They're two ridges over. I think there's juuust LoS between our road gates over the ridge between, but the houses are both down the hill a little on the "wrong" side.

[tautech]

Bruce, I was up past Kamo a few days ago and the son's inlaws live around another 20km further north. Maybe we should share details and catch up sometime.

All the HW we use is Ubiquity excepting these snazzy little DC POE switches that we use for solar powered remote high repeater sites.
https://www.gowifi.co.nz/power/ws-8-150-dc.html

Karori is where our daughter is and sure is a good high site location for P-P links.

It's different with "unlimited" service such as Starlink. Such providers don't tend to take kindly to sharing connections.

Done with care to a low GB user how could they know ?

[brucehoult]

Bruce, I was up past Kamo a few days ago and the son's inlaws live around another 20km further north. Maybe we should share details and catch up sometime.

Sure thing! I'm now 27 km up SH1 from the Kamo lights, and then 1 km down a gravel road. That's 90 km south of where I was until the end of November (which also could have gotten Starlink, but there was just fine 100/30 VDSL there).

It's different with "unlimited" service such as Starlink. Such providers don't tend to take kindly to sharing connections.

Done with care to a low GB user how could they know ?

If a light user then sure.

[Halcyon]

I know a few people who use Starlink in both rural Australia and metro Sydney. We also have a test dish/service at work that we're evaluating for some projects. From all reports, it works very well. Speed and uptime is generally excellent in the Southern hemisphere.

I did some testing with the placed dish just inside a commercial "garage" with the roller door up. Despite it having only limited view of the sky in one direction, it still maintained a solid connection for the most part. Our current equipment that uses Inmarsat doesn't even establish a connection at all (and is much slower and far more expensive).

[Psi]

Looking at Starlink with an eye for very very long term.  (Not current Starlink but what might exist 40 years from now)
I do wonder if we will get to the point where miniatured phased array antennas and future RF technology will allow cellphones to communicate with Starlink directly.  I think we maybe seeing a glimpse at the future where your cellphone may work anywhere on earth.

I called it, I just got the timeframe very wrong.

T-Mobile just announced they have partnered with SpaceX and will have mobile spectrum on Starlink V2.
Starlink V2 will have the hardware to talk to current cellphones anywhere in the world!
They've figured out how to put large enough phased array antennas on the sats that they can pickup and transmit to your phone in your pocket.

It's mainly to remove all the deadzones in the middle of nowhere for safety. You probably won't be watching YouTube on it, but sms and voice calls will work. And of course the cell area will be huge and each cell will only get around 2-4mbit to share. No plan info so far, but T-Mobile have said their top/most-popular plans will include it.

Timeframe is also unknown but SpaceX will be launching Starlink V2 soon using starship. Obviously going to take years to get enough V2 sats up there but not 40 as I estimated.

[Bud]

Starlink V2 will have the hardware to talk to current cellphones anywhere in the world!

That is a bit of an open statement... Talk to any phone that allows Starlink to talk to it , talk to any phone that Starlink allows to talk to, or what? Hardware is not sufficient typically. All is closed with cryptography.

[fourfathom]

Here's a fluffy video announcement about this: https://www.t-mobile.com/aboveandbeyond.html
I'm a big fan of Starlink and Spacex, "just because".

[Psi]

Starlink V2 will have the hardware to talk to current cellphones anywhere in the world!

That is a bit of an open statement... Talk to any phone that allows Starlink to talk to it , talk to any phone that Starlink allows to talk to, or what? Hardware is not sufficient typically. All is closed with cryptography.

Yeah, we don't have all the details, obviously it's a T-Mobile deal so its for T-Mobile customers on plans that support it.  But Elon said that any emergency calls will work once the network is online, so should benefit everyone in an emergency which is a big deal and will save lives.

And I imagine other carries will come on board too.
They can't let T-Mobile get all the glory for world coverage and I doubt SpaceX would sign an exclusive deal with T-Mobile that forbit them adding other carriers.

[fourfathom]

They can't let T-Mobile get all the glory for world coverage and I doubt SpaceX would sign an exclusive deal with T-Mobile that forbit them adding other carriers.

In the video I posted Elon mentions planning to sign up other carriers in other countries. 

BTW, that video is pretty stupid -- much of it is trying to show how much remote communications can be useful (!).  We get it, please move along.  But there's some good stuff in it.  I didn't watch the whole thing.

[Psi]

There is some wisdom to waiting until the system is actually working. but I think it's cool.

[BTO]

I'm in sydney, I install Starlink dishes for a living.
i saw you mentioned you want to get more height out of your installation

OK, here is what you do
1. No, you don't order the roof mount from starlink

2. Depending on the roof that you have
if it's a tin roof, Use the starlink provided bracket and you put teh screws in the holes at the tips of the bracket
(ensure they go into timber or something solid)

if it's a tiled roof
you want to choose either a TV Rafter mount (this will require you to cut a hole into your roof tile though and have a piece of lead
flashing to cover it
or
you can choose a standard Dual Leg Gutter mount (Satellite dish mount)

but of course, it's not compatible with the starlink dish

BUT.............HERE IS A SOLUTION

You want to use U BOLTS
Now   you have    U  part
and you have the JAW part
this forms a circle for one dish or antenna pole
and then you have the 2 nuts

BUT YOU WANT TO DO THIS
U BOLT----JAW---BACKWARD JAW----JAW-----NUTS

so you buy
1 U Bolt
3 Jaws
2 Nuts
and you arrange them so you end up with 2 holes
the hole between the U bolt and the jaw is for the pole on the gutter mount mast
the hole between the 2 jaws is for the starlink dish

YOU NEED 2 OF THESE SETS
1 goes higher up
the other lower down

Between these 2 holding your dish, it's not going to move
also... do not tighten the shit out of it , Just tighten enough to hold it , Remember, do not break the dish, ok

but yeah, do that and you'll have the mount on your roof