Author Topic: Test driving the new starlink  (Read 594 times)

Kingcreek

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Test driving the new starlink
« on: April 15, 2023, 11:14:33 AM »
After 27 years living out in the sticks with a halfassed cell phone signal and almost a year on the waiting list, Mr musk delivered.
Temp startup in the driveway since roof mounting options are still being evaluated but so far so good.
It’s going through a bunch of updates and calibrations but speeds are good and I have a better idea of the alignment it wants. It’s liking a 30 degree angle on a NNW line.
Some of it will have to start over when I roof mount it. Waiting for the wife to get home before the old man gets up on the new steel roof.
I might have to have a couple big walnut trees dropped but that won’t bother me. We will see.
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Hawkmoon

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Re: Test driving the new starlink
« Reply #1 on: April 15, 2023, 12:23:04 PM »
What kind of speeds are you seeing for ping, upload and download?
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Ben

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Re: Test driving the new starlink
« Reply #2 on: April 15, 2023, 12:28:23 PM »
I am strongly debating going from my microwave to Starlink, and as a fellow rural guy, will be very interested to follow this thread on your progress with antenna placement. I got that Starlink app, and have used the "antenna location tool", only to find that even when I'm standing in the middle of a pasture, it still hits me with an "obstruction" warning, even if only like 2-3%. I'm curious how well correlated that is to actual antenna placement and activation.

Be careful on that roof!  =)
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Kingcreek

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Re: Test driving the new starlink
« Reply #3 on: April 15, 2023, 12:33:27 PM »
It’s still going through some setup functions and I unplugged to move the cable and it restarted maybe.
Download speeds are 110-120 Mbps and I have some obstructions
Other analytics are not yet available
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Kingcreek

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Re: Test driving the new starlink
« Reply #4 on: April 15, 2023, 12:34:56 PM »
I just ordered a different mount. Roof is getting hot and it’s slick even in athletic shoes. I’m not going back up until I get the flat wall mount for the gable end.
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Kingcreek

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Re: Test driving the new starlink
« Reply #5 on: April 15, 2023, 12:36:59 PM »
I moved the antenna and I’m getting 96-100 Mbps with 57 ms latency on the throughput speed test.
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Ben

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Re: Test driving the new starlink
« Reply #6 on: April 15, 2023, 12:40:18 PM »
I moved the antenna and I’m getting 96-100 Mbps with 57 ms latency on the throughput speed test.

Whenever you have some time down the road to look at the detailed data, I'd be interested in knowing what your hourly downtime is and length of each outage and how that might affect your uses. I see a lot of stuff about multiple outages per hour from obstructions of like 5 seconds per, and wonder if that's noticeable for things like streaming, or if those outages are "buffered out" so to speak.
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AZRedhawk44

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Re: Test driving the new starlink
« Reply #7 on: April 15, 2023, 04:39:13 PM »
Whenever you have some time down the road to look at the detailed data, I'd be interested in knowing what your hourly downtime is and length of each outage and how that might affect your uses. I see a lot of stuff about multiple outages per hour from obstructions of like 5 seconds per, and wonder if that's noticeable for things like streaming, or if those outages are "buffered out" so to speak.

I have starlink and I have a small obstruction on my northeast horizon.

There was recently a patch that my dish/router downloaded and installed last week.  Prior to the patch, the visual representation of my obstruction was much larger.  After the patch, the obstruction is smaller and has quite a few holes in it that the dish can evidently reach satellites close to the horizon.  My neighbor did not trim or alter his tree at all.

My dish favors a NW orientation and I am served by a ground station in Colorado, despite living in Phoenix and my closest ground station being Yuma.  Advertisers that try to geolocate me think I'm in Colorado and feed me Colorado political ads and such.

Work-wise, I used to notice satellite swaps about every six minutes if I was on a VoIP call, but from a typical web browsing perspective I wouldn't notice anything at all.  Since this new patch, I haven't seen the same troubles with VoIP as I was having before.  Gaming-wise, I do sometimes get a disconnect from a PVP style game.  Probably about once every 90 minutes on average.

I get about 100mbit down and 10mbit up with around 60ms latency most of the time.  Towards the evening that drops to 40/4 or so due to congestion, and latency goes up a little bit.  Still very usable and we frequently have two separate 1080p streams going in the house at a time with no problem.
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Kingcreek

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Re: Test driving the new starlink
« Reply #8 on: April 15, 2023, 05:03:56 PM »
In the first 5 hours there is only one outage over 2 sec and it’s says “reboot” after it.
I’m figuring out better central placement of the router, cable path, and I have just enough cable. 🤞
One end of the cable will pass through a 3/4” hole, the other end is huge. It will take a little work to go from wall to basement across basement then up to attic to target gable but I think I’m getting it figured out. I’m gonna hire a young fearless guy I know to help when the new mount comes in. Probably going to involve anchoring a ladder with the tractor loader. 4-12 pitch with standing rib steel is a little hairy, at least for this old man. The gable I’m shooting for will be easier (same pitch shorter distance) than the one I attempted earlier. I could barely manage the pitch with 2 hands and no tools.
I’m exactly 330 degrees off true north and 25-30 degrees N facing from horizontal level. If obstructions are a problem removal of one very old black walnut should clear it and I’ve thought about taking it out anyway. It’s lightning damaged and the only remaining threat to the house.
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Hawkmoon

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Re: Test driving the new starlink
« Reply #9 on: April 15, 2023, 05:23:44 PM »

Other analytics are not yet available

Sure they are: https://www.speedtest.net/
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Ben

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Re: Test driving the new starlink
« Reply #10 on: April 15, 2023, 05:33:11 PM »
Thanks for that info AZ.

This thread had me start researching again. I came upon this video talking about Starlink now instituting data caps. They seem to be in congested areas and you still get 1tb, but I wonder if that will lower at any point if more people start using the service?

https://youtu.be/R0w9Y8urXDc?t=466
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Big Hairy Bee

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Re: Test driving the new starlink
« Reply #11 on: April 16, 2023, 09:57:56 PM »
I'm hearing good stuff with sailors who have this on their sailboats with a gimbal mount.  Some are even ready to ditch their sat phones.

Kingcreek

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Re: Test driving the new starlink
« Reply #12 on: April 19, 2023, 02:47:19 PM »
I would advise anybody ordering starlink to determine which type of mount you’ll require and order it WITH the initial equipment bundle.
It’s not very convenient to have the equipment and wait for the mount to become available.
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sumpnz

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Re: Test driving the new starlink
« Reply #13 on: April 20, 2023, 12:23:54 AM »
Loving Starlink.  Had it since last fall.  Sooooooo much better than any alternative.

Kingcreek

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Re: Test driving the new starlink
« Reply #14 on: April 29, 2023, 03:04:39 PM »
The other mount finally came and I got it mounted. Still need to run cable but I only have to get back up on that hateful roof once more.
I extended my aluminum extension ladder with pads on the ends feet in the tractor loader bucket and raised my loader until the ladder matched the pitch of the roof. Used a folding ladder to get into the bucket then went up and down the rungs.
Won’t be operational again until I finish the cable. I was going to put the router in a central part of the house but the older wiring in that part is no ground. I’m going to try it upstairs and if I don’t get good enough signal I’ll buy an Ethernet adapter for $25 and a better whole house wifi
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Calumus

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Re: Test driving the new starlink
« Reply #15 on: May 09, 2023, 08:40:45 PM »
I actually got a text yesterday from my first client that I installed Starlink for. He’s still thrilled with it at home (and he has 5 sons under 13) so he ordered their business service for his greenhouse. The commercial equipment showed up in 3 days, so set up will be happening early next week.

He had no other option at the house as Verizon wouldn’t even offer DSL on his street. His greenhouse is just on the next concession over with a 50 acre cornfield in between. DSL is available there; but tops out at 3mbs. So I’ve had him running off of a T-Mobile home hotspot for the past two years. That thing runs between 7-80mbs at any given time. No consistency. The most frustrating part about the greenhouse is that the utility pole right in front of it has both coax and fiber strung on it and nobody will claim ownership of either. I’ve contacted every cable and fiber provider in NJ, and every single one swears it’s not theirs…

Doggy Daddy

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Re: Test driving the new starlink
« Reply #16 on: May 11, 2023, 09:31:51 PM »
The most frustrating part about the greenhouse is that the utility pole right in front of it has both coax and fiber strung on it and nobody will claim ownership of either. I’ve contacted every cable and fiber provider in NJ, and every single one swears it’s not theirs…

Cut the cable.  See whose truck shows up to repair it.
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K Frame

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Re: Test driving the new starlink
« Reply #17 on: May 12, 2023, 07:34:02 AM »
Cut the cable.  See whose truck shows up to repair it.

HA! I threatened to do exactly that years ago and boy did it get a response.

Neighbor had his sewer clog, and they couldn't cut through the obstruction. So, they start digging up the line right outside our shared back fence.

Get down to his line and they find some sort of cable drilled right through the center of it. The only lines running underground back there were, at the time, phone and cable TV (and cable TV was LOT shallower). Electric was also running back there, but this was obviously NOT an electrical line.

Verizon (phone company) sends some people out and they're hemming and hawing over well, we're not really sure that it's our line, we don't think we're responsible for it, we don't have any record of it.... Just basically trying to make the homeowner eat the bill.

It's August, it's hotter than hell and unbelievably humid, and there's a open, leaking, stinking sewer in our back yards.

I went inside, got my big bolt cutters, and said "well, if it's not your line, it must be abandoned, so let's just cut it and get it out of the way."

The Verizon guys weren't too happy with that... but I don't understand, if it's not your line, then it's no big deal to you, right? Yeah, it was their line, it was a live telephone line, and they KNEW it was their line.

They took responsibility for it. Ended up costing them something like $17,000.
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Doggy Daddy

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Re: Test driving the new starlink
« Reply #18 on: May 13, 2023, 03:45:44 AM »
Most excellent!  ^^^
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Bogie

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Re: Test driving the new starlink
« Reply #19 on: May 13, 2023, 06:52:13 AM »
Here in the 'hood, I got the T-Mobile wireless internet tombstone... It runs about 40 going up, 400 coming in... Haven't noticed a problem with streaming video. $50/month.
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Kingcreek

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Re: Test driving the new starlink
« Reply #20 on: May 13, 2023, 11:31:20 AM »
Nobody offered cell based home internet here since our usual signal is LTE or only 1 or 2 bars on the best days. I explored literally every other option before going with starlink. I still have to get a big walnut tree down but with recent storms and tornadoes here the tree guys are booked out. I know a real good crew that is very reasonably priced so I’ll wait for them.
They dropped another black walnut, cut limbs from 2 others, and ground 2 stumps for $1100. Didn’t include any cleanup because I have a loader tractor with hydraulic grapple and a pasture where I can burn brush piles
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WLJ

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Re: Test driving the new starlink
« Reply #21 on: May 13, 2023, 11:43:21 AM »
What do you think about that deal Elon signed with T-Moble so that when Starlink v2 is online T-Moble phones will be able to work anywhere with no dead spots at least for emergency calls
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Ben

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Re: Test driving the new starlink
« Reply #22 on: May 13, 2023, 11:49:28 AM »
What do you think about that deal Elon signed with T-Moble so that when Starlink v2 is online T-Moble phones will be able to work anywhere with no dead spots at least for emergency calls

I think that's when I'll be switching to T-Mobile.  =)
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