# Starlink



## Grinderman (Mar 3, 2021)

Anyone out there have Starlink internet yet? I just sent in my deposit.


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## brino (Mar 3, 2021)

I have a friend at work that does.
Us rural folks were at a disadvantage for choices, he now says it's great.
He gets speeds like never before and only a few seconds of outage a day.

He said he saw online where others are doing automated speed-tests every minute of the day and graphing them.
Since it is unlimited it's zero extra cost.

He also said it should get better, both coverage and through-put when the satellite constellation is more complete.

-brino


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## Grinderman (Mar 3, 2021)

I haven't seen too many negative things said about it so far. My service is poor, only getting 1.5mbps(not a typo) so really looking forward to getting the dish. It's suppose to be far superior to the satellite systems out there now because the satellites are closer to earth and there's going to be thousands of them. The astronomers aren't happy though.


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## rabler (Mar 3, 2021)

I've put in a Starlink deposit.  Was really a shock to move from cable internet to Hughesnet satellite when we moved to Indiana.  I think I was better off with my first ISDN line into the office back in the early 90's.  Only time I can watch any videos (including youtube) is between 2am and 8am "off peak" hours.


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## C-Bag (Mar 3, 2021)

I'm watching this close as I'd love to get off the cable. I hope other users respond.


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## ttabbal (Mar 3, 2021)

Wired will always be a better experience overall. It's just physics. As much as I hate Comcast, no wireless can touch them there. That said, the other systems can certainly be "good enough". Particularly for our friends in more rural areas.


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## Grinderman (Mar 3, 2021)

I think what really attracted me to starlink was the ease of installation and of course the speeds. Everything comes in the box. Find a good spot for the dish, run the cable and plug it in. It aims itself and even melts the snow off in winter. Kudos to SpaceX
The options where I live are few and I found myself using my phone hotspot a lot if I wanted to watch videos, so anything above those speeds will be wonderful.


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## FOMOGO (Mar 3, 2021)

I know I will be looking into it, and then Verizon can kiss my *!*. Mike


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## C-Bag (Mar 3, 2021)

ttabbal said:


> Wired will always be a better experience overall. It's just physics. As much as I hate Comcast, no wireless can touch them there. That said, the other systems can certainly be "good enough". Particularly for our friends in more rural areas.


I guess it’s all where you are as we constantly have sped probs with Comcast. Sometimes it’s like dialup I swear.


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## ttabbal (Mar 3, 2021)

C-Bag said:


> I guess it’s all where you are as we constantly have sped probs with Comcast. Sometimes it’s like dialup I swear.



Ah, yeah, if they are that bad I can see being irritated. I pay for and get 1gb down. Up is something stupid like 45mb, but whatever. It's as good as I can get here. And it is what they told me to expect. 

Even now, what starlink achieves is pretty darn cool. Hopefully more competition helps push everyone to do better.


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## 7milesup (Mar 3, 2021)

Us rural guys really get the shaft when it comes to internet.  For the previous 11 years I had Charter cable for internet and it was very good.  "Only" around 100mb up but for this area, that is pretty good.  
Fast forward to our new house further out into the country....  CenturyLink DSL is my "option". I get a whopping 40mb, which is about as good as it ever will be.  There is fiber about 400 yards down the road from a different company which is serving a cell tower, but they will not come to my house unless I cough up $10k for them to bury it.  
Interesting @Grinderman that your speed is so poor at the moment.  They are talking about 150mb from my understanding.  I did sign up for email notification from Starlink, which I just got back saying that it is now available.  

As a side note, Elon Musk believes that he will make $30 billion a year on this new endeavor.  I hope he does something good with that money down the road.


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## savarin (Mar 3, 2021)

screws up astro photos though not that I take any


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## C-Bag (Mar 3, 2021)

I just checked my Comcast and it’s 117mbs down 7mbs up. And this I a really good day. There are folks on Reddit getting 135mbs down and 20mbs up. Weather does effect it negatively though.


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## Grinderman (Mar 3, 2021)

Just checked mine. 1.0 mbps down, .4 up. Come on Starlink, send me a box!


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## NCjeeper (Mar 3, 2021)

Only game in town here is Century link. They only offer a whopping 3mbs. Can't wait for starlink in our area.


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## 7milesup (Mar 3, 2021)

Grinderman said:


> Just checked mine. 1.0 mbps down, .4 up. Come on Starlink, send me a box!


What does a "box" do and if you don't have one now, how do you even get Starlink?


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## Grinderman (Mar 3, 2021)

The box with the Starlink dish and hardware so I can dump this crappy internet. Go to the Starlink site to see if you're eligible. They will send you an invite, you send them a $99 deposit and wait.


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## 7milesup (Mar 3, 2021)

Grinderman said:


> The box with the Starlink dish and hardware so I can dump this crappy internet


Oh, so the 1.0mb is not Starlink but rather your local ISP?


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## Grinderman (Mar 3, 2021)

Correct


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## Larry$ (Mar 3, 2021)

I'm on fiberoptic but during peak times YouTube videos will have interruptions and run slow. It seems likely that StarLink is going to kick some providers in the a$$. Hope he makes boatloads of $ with it and uses the $ to send politicians to Mars.


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## 7milesup (Mar 3, 2021)

Grinderman... Yeah, that is horrible.  Really curious about your Starlink experience after you get set up.


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## 7milesup (Mar 3, 2021)

Larry$ said:


> I'm on fiberoptic but during peak times YouTube videos will have interruptions and run slow. It seems likely that StarLink is going to kick some providers in the a$$. Hope he makes boatloads of $ with it and uses the $ to send politicians to Mars.


Crikey.... don't do that.  I was hoping we could keep Mars pollution free for a while.


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## Grinderman (Nov 24, 2021)

Just a quick update on Starlink. I preordered mine with the $99 deposit on 3/2/20 and they said it would be available in my area (SE WI) mid to late 21. Just got an email yesterday from them saying it will now be early to mid 22 On the plus side though, service should even be better with more satellites in orbit.


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## rabler (Nov 24, 2021)

Grinderman said:


> Just a quick update on Starlink. I preordered mine with the $99 deposit on 3/2/20 and they said it would be available in my area (SE WI) mid to late 21. Just got an email yesterday from them saying it will now be early to mid 22 On the plus side though, service should even be better with more satellites in orbit.


Same thing, same email.  I was given an estimate of March 2022 for service.  Blamed the chip shortage in part.
They did say it'll be a newer home unit too.


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## C-Bag (Nov 24, 2021)

Kinda expected that even if there wasn't shortages everywhere. Few things move as fast as Musk's brain and his timelines for these crazy huge projects are never real world. Thing is he's unlike all the snakeoil salesmen of the past, he does finally deliver. Musk truly lives that old saw "the impossible just takes a little longer." gotta admire that. 

Still it's unnerving to think of that whirling mess of satellites overhead and if anything ever upsets that applecart the domino effect can't be good.


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## Lo-Fi (Nov 24, 2021)

Just had Dishy shipped to a customer site, will report back. My mate out in the middle of nowhere up north is still loving his Starlink setup.
Sorry to hear about your delay, I gather demand has been high! 
I'm expecting the old school (slow and expensive) satellite internet providers to be bust in a year or two, there's quite literally no way for them to compete.


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## RJSakowski (Nov 24, 2021)

ttabbal said:


> Wired will always be a better experience overall. It's just physics. As much as I hate Comcast, no wireless can touch them there. That said, the other systems can certainly be "good enough". Particularly for our friends in more rural areas.


That depends on where you live.  I live at the end of the line for service, a half a mile from the nearest customer.  We will never get fiber optic service out here. The payback isn't there.  Our "broadband" service is less than 4Mbps. download and .5Mbps upload.  And those are the good days.  During wet weather, it drops out completely.  Centurylink, our provider, says the service meets their specifications.


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## Grinderman (Nov 24, 2021)

I get stuff from Hughes net in the mail all the time. At one point even considered trying them, but now just laugh as I throw it in the garbage.


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## 7milesup (Nov 24, 2021)

RJSakowski said:


> That depends on where you live.  I live at the end of the line for service, a half a mile from the nearest customer.  We will never get fiber optic service out here. The payback isn't there.  Our "broadband" service is less than 4Mbps. download and .5Mbps upload.  And those are the good days.  During wet weather, it drops out completely.  Centurylink, our provider, says the service meets their specifications.


Me too RJ.  My service isn't nearly as bad as yours, but we too live on a dead-end road with limited homes.  Centurylink is not putting any money into upgrading their service, unlike Mosaic in our area.  Mosaic is putting fiber in everywhere, but our road is one of the few in a "protected" CenturyLink area.  Pure crap is what it is.  CenturyLink will die out with Starlink coming.


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## rabler (Nov 24, 2021)

I think a lot of services know their days are numbered, and are just riding it into the ground because the cost of competitive upgrades are outside their budget.  They’ve lived too long on a customer base that didn’t have another choice.

Of course it’s hard to compete with the shear mass of resources Musk can bring direct, and spaceflight is his passion.  Starlink is a stepping stone in that plan.


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## RJSakowski (Nov 25, 2021)

7milesup said:


> Me too RJ.  My service isn't nearly as bad as yours, but we too live on a dead-end road with limited homes.  Centurylink is not putting any money into upgrading their service, unlike Mosaic in our area.  Mosaic is putting fiber in everywhere, but our road is one of the few in a "protected" CenturyLink area.  Pure crap is what it is.  CenturyLink will die out with Starlink coming.


The sad thing is that Centurylink got a large grant to upgrade rural broadband in Wisconsin some years back  but invested in their more profitable areas.  It will be interesting to see what happens with this latest tranche of grants in Wisconsin.   Like you, I have no other option for a wire/fiber optic based  solution.  Satellite service has been poor here; the next door neighbor tried it and went back to the land line.  Because of the hills, we can't use terrestrial relays.

There is a proposal to set up a network of mini relays serving a few homes each.  The "towers" would be farm silos or utility poles  linked together with similar relays in the line of sight.  Such a relay would serve the half dozen or so homes in our valley with a capital investment far less than running fiber optic cable.

Starlink is another possibility.  The one issue now is cost but if we can provide voice service  with it, it is economically feasible  (we don't have cell service at the house because of the surrounding hills.). Anorher consideration is serviice during a power outage, although a UPS could take care of that.


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## Lo-Fi (Nov 25, 2021)

Starlink is definitely fast enough to support sharing a connection with a few neighbors assuming you can get line of sight to set some directional WiFi links going out to them as the final leg.


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## Ultradog MN (Nov 25, 2021)

I threw out my television 20 years ago. Haven't had one since. Neither did my wife when I married her 8 years ago.


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## pdentrem (Nov 25, 2021)

That needs updating to disconnecting the WiFi!


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## 7milesup (Nov 25, 2021)

If you decide to do a long range AP or similar,  I would look into Ubiquiti systems.  They have decent pricing for what amounts to enterprise solutions. Their control console is pretty amazing.


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## Forty Niner (Nov 26, 2021)

Grinderman said:


> Anyone out there have Starlink internet yet? I just sent in my deposit.


I'm currently moving to a rural location and losing my 200+mbs Spectrum internet.  I have AT&T DSL at the rural house and the d/l is just over 4mbs.
Just like others who have posted here, I am searching for a better option.  I paid my deposit to Starliink and am on the wait list.   We'll see if that ever becomes a reality.

A neighbor at the rural location uses an unlimited T-Mobil hotspot which is quite good.  But when I inquired to T-Mobil they turned me down saying they didn't want to overload their tower.....    AT&T hotspot plans are expensive and have data caps here.


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## Aaron_W (Nov 26, 2021)

RJSakowski said:


> That depends on where you live.  I live at the end of the line for service, a half a mile from the nearest customer.  We will never get fiber optic service out here. The payback isn't there.  Our "broadband" service is less than 4Mbps. download and .5Mbps upload.  And those are the good days.  During wet weather, it drops out completely.  Centurylink, our provider, says the service meets their specifications.



I'm not even that remote, 100 miles from San Francisco and 2 blocks from the county courthouse, so you would think we would have decent internet. Speeds in the county are pretty lame and only get worse as you get outside the couple of small cities up here, in fact the county had an investigation open with the FCC against AT&T and Comcast for intentionally reducing service speeds. The industry shill who was running the FCC the past few years blocked the investigation because of course his buddies at AT&T and Comcast would never do such a thing.   

My wife is a much bigger computer gamer than I am so she was all over Starlink before I even knew what it was. We are just waiting for our area to be included. I will be happy to add another nail in the coffin to the traditional cable and internet providers, just a bonus if it makes the dreaded buffer circle go away forever on youtube videos.  



rabler said:


> I think a lot of services know their days are numbered, and are just riding it into the ground because the cost of competitive upgrades are outside their budget.  They’ve lived too long on a customer base that didn’t have another choice.
> 
> Of course it’s hard to compete with the shear mass of resources Musk can bring direct, and spaceflight is his passion.  Starlink is a stepping stone in that plan.



The cable and internet providers have brought this on themselves. They thought they were too big to face real competition, but they didn't count on a real life James Bond super villain to step in and ruin their gig.


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## Grinderman (Aug 29, 2022)

Just an update about Starlink. I put my deposit down in March of 2021 and still waiting. The other day I looked outside and a guy was marking our lawn with paint and little flags. I went out to find out what’s going on and he told me they are installing fiber optic internet on our road. I felt like giving the guy a hug! We have had poor internet here always (1.5 mbps down). Bye, bye Starlink, hello fiber


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## mksj (Aug 29, 2022)

FYI, I just installed the Starlink system, pretty straight forward providing you have a clears view of the sky. You can check your location with a phone app that they have. I previously had ATT wired internet which was pretty slow at 6-8 Mbps, with the Starlink I am closer to 100 Mbps with an average latency of around 50ms. I do not expect them to pull fiber into were we live, speaking to the ATT tech the business model doesn't support it. My main reason for switching is with ATT the monthly bill for their internet/Direct TV package just keeps going up and the TV channel content is horrendous considering how much you pay. Almost all the channels are infomercials and the few regular TV channels also bombard you with advertisements. So pretty much plan to stream everything going forward, will see how that goes. Will have to see how it does in rain storms/bad weather, but given that the DirectTV satellite also goes down in heavy rainstorms it can't be any worse. I consider a reasonable investment, and they have a 30 day refund policy from the date that the dish is delivered. I put in my order for the Starlink about  Dec. 2021, so about an 8 month wait.


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## Boswell (Aug 29, 2022)

I live outside of town with only electricity provided as infrastructure. No chance of fibre or any other form or hardwired internet.  I was on the wait list for Starlink until Verizon started offering 5G Home Internet service.  I was able to increase my bandwidth over the previous rural wireless solution by about 4X and cut my cost in half.  Long story short, I pulled off the Starlink wait list and got my $100 deposit back. The verizon 5G home internet is not 100% reliable but good enough for now.


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## rabler (Aug 30, 2022)

mksj said:


> FYI, I just installed the Starlink system, pretty straight forward providing you have a clears view of the sky. You can check your location with a phone app that they have. I previously had ATT wired internet which was pretty slow at 6-8 Mbps, with the Starlink I am closer to 100 Mbps with an average latency of around 50ms. I do not expect them to pull fiber into were we live, speaking to the ATT tech the business model doesn't support it. My main reason for switching is with ATT the monthly bill for their internet/Direct TV package just keeps going up and the TV channel content is horrendous considering how much you pay. Almost all the channels are infomercials and the few regular TV channels also bombard you with advertisements. So pretty much plan to stream everything going forward, will see how that goes. Will have to see how it does in rain storms/bad weather, but given that the DirectTV satellite also goes down in heavy rainstorms it can't be any worse. I consider a reasonable investment, and they have a 30 day refund policy from the date that the dish is delivered. I put in my order for the Starlink about  Dec. 2021, so about an 8 month wait.


I have been using Starlink since March. I have found Starlink does drop service for a few minutes during heavy rain, but not for extended periods.  It can also drop out for half a minute or so between satellites occasionally.  There may be a difference in coverage between our regions so let us know what you experience


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## mksj (Sep 6, 2022)

Just as a follow-up on my recent Starlink install, it has been about a week since I installed the system and so far it has been very reliable and download speeds are about 10X higher then my previous wired ATT service. I have am using their Ethernet adapter to hard wire my house service, but most of my computers are running wireless and I am getting WiFi speeds of 60 Mbps at around 100' feet away and 100-120  Mbps if in the same room as the router. I may add a mesh network, but the speed limitations are more with the external sites as opposed download speed of the dish. No rain yet to see how that effects the signal (my previous satellite TV service would go down  with heavy rain), but there have been no outages or downtime in the last week. The Starlink router WiFi should be at least 3-4' above the floor for better reception. I am planning on adding a VOIP for the home phones, then I will cut the cord with ATT. In my previous house I had fiber/cable and you can get much faster download rates, but overall I am very happy with the Starlink dish network. A bit pricey, but will still be far less then what I pay for the ATT package l had previously. Since I am more rural, there is little chance that fiber/cable will ever be put in as everything is underground. I plan on using streaming services for TV, and internet I mostly use for my consulting work.

A few things on the install, I opted to mount my dish to one of my chimney's. I purchased their ground pole mount which is two 4' sections, and used the upper section with some antenna pole mounts that I got from Amazon. If you need it higher you can add the second 4' section. The poles are setup to lock into the dish mount, so just made life easier. They have other types of  roof mounts available. The plug at the end of the removable 75' dish cable requires a 1.5" hole through the any walls as the plug end is quite large. I have stucco and wood, so used a masonry hole cutter on the outer wall. I did not buy their masonry routing kit, I turned my own wall plugs on my lathe so saved a few $. The  Starlink router WiFi gets quite warm so needs some air circulation.  The dishes do have a heater built in which may help if you live where you have snow in the winter, I turned mine off as there is little chance of snow where I live.


			https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09W9NMQJ8


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## Aaron_W (Sep 7, 2022)

My wife wanted to go with Starlink because our service is mediocre, and she does a lot of stuff that pushes the limits of our service. For what ever reason she was being told we would have to install a tower for the dish because of the trees. This seems weird to me as we have a clear view of the sky to the south which is what most satellite services require but we do have tall redwood trees on the north and east sides of the house. 

At least for now, I guess we will have to stick with the local provider and their phoneline based system.


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## mksj (Sep 7, 2022)

The location of the satellites that the dish will target varies, Starlink has a phone app to scan the skies and gives you a general area in the sky/direction that the dish would be set at. When I used the app on the ground it said I would have spotty reception, on the roof it was fine. As far as I can tell once the dish scans and locks on to an area in the sky it remains fixed in that position.  Starlink has a 30 day return policy from the day you receive it for a full refund for any reason (I assume you would pay shipping back).  So you can try it in different locations and if it doesn't work to your satisfaction then return it. The time savings due to the higher connect speed for me was significant vs. my previous wired connection, and there are no data caps at least for now. I also had constant outages with ATT wired, sometimes for days.


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## rabler (Sep 7, 2022)

The starlink satellites move quite quickly overhead, and rapidly switch between satellites.  Here is an interesting starlink satellite tracker: https://starlink.sx/
There are several others.   It appears that the dish physically orientates itself to one general location and then uses phased array technology to rapidly track the current communications satellites.  Having done some phased array radar work a few decades back, I'd be fascinated with knowing more about the technology inside the dishes, it appears to be quite complex, with several concurrent communications channels used.  It appears from the satellite tracking/switching schemes that it is using one primary satellite for communications but has standby channels to several of the local satellites.  Satellite switching appears to occur with an interval of as little as 5-10 seconds.  That's a lot of compute power to handle all of the message routing.


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## Grinderman (Dec 17, 2022)

I’m the OP on this thread and just wanted to give a quick update. After living in our home for 30yrs we finally have decent internet. I was on the Starlink waitlist for 1.5yrs when I found out they were putting fiber internet on our road (thanks Joe). We have had it for about a month now and It’s fantastic! I’m getting 350mbps down and 11 up for $55/mo, can’t beat it. I’m kind of glad that I’m not dealing with Elon given the current events.


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