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Setting up Starlink

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: Setting up Starlink

#151

Post by spookthesunset »

bcrl wrote: post #148
spookthesunset wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s interesting they’d do TDMA over some flavor of code division multiple access (CDMA). From what I read it has to do with the fact the antennas are high gain directional antennas and not omnidirectional ones like on cell phones. With cell phones you are kinda walking around in a soup of cell signals all sharing the same spectrum at once... you and hundreds of other people are broadcasting in the same frequencies a…

It's even more complicated than that. Thanks to MIMO antenna arrays, signals from multiple ground stations can be received and decoded at the same time (MU-MIMO). The advances in radio MACs over the past 20 years is seriously impressive compared to what was considered high tech in the 1990s, and it's all a result of Moore's law making it cheaper to do more math in the same size and power envelope as older semiconduct…

Had to look up MIMO.

That is actually really cool.

So it is doing some combination of time division and spacial division.

Re: Setting up Starlink

#152

Post by walrus01 »

Gwypaas wrote: post #4
bserge wrote: post #2

Wow, I'm impressed! I thought it would take more than a decade to implement when it was announced, but it's here and it works. Just amazing. 100/16 Mbps is pretty decent I guess, hopefully it doesn't go down as the number of users goes up. The latency is great imo, 40ms using satellites? I don't think anyone has achieved that before. Would a bigger dish work better or not?

Aiming for 20 ms later this year. (Elon time) A bigger dish would not lower latency but may increase signal strength leading to better throughput. But it's not a simple parabolic antenna. It is the first consumer oriented phased array antenna tracking the satellites as they move across the sky, so that would increase the antenna cost even more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array

I have seen as low at 15.85 ms from my starlink terminal to downtown Seattle. On average it's more like 22-23 ms.

Re: Setting up Starlink

#153

Post by walrus01 »

freedomben wrote: post #106
geerlingguy wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their router uses OpenWRT and supposedly you can hit it at 192.168.1.1, but when I try that I get a redirect to www.starlink.com

I did the same thing and got the same redirect. I haven't experimented with anything except GET / but it would be interesting to try throwing some params in there and trying other paths.

all of the interesting data is served from the phased array antenna unit itself, not the router...

https://github.com/sparky8512/starlink-grpc-tools

https://pythonrepo.com/repo/sparky8512-starlink-grpc-tools

Re: Setting up Starlink

#154

Post by walrus01 »

poisonborz wrote: post #31

> It's powered through PoE++ (using around 100W of power continuously) Not familiar with Sat gear, but this number seems extremely high to me for just powering an antenna (and some motors occasionally)

100W is actually really low in the class of two way satellite equipment that's capable of 100 x 15 Mbps speeds or greater.

I am not talking about ordinary cheap consumer grade hughesnet or viasat stuff, but if you were to do the power budget for an idirect x3 modem and a traditional geostationary ku-band VSAT setup with a 20W BUC, the actual AC wall power consumed would be quite a lot more. Just the BUC is going to be 200W.

Re: Setting up Starlink

#155

Post by 1timewonderacc »

I really hope StarLink completely replaces CenturyLink DSL. CenturyLink DSL 30mbps DOWN and 5mbps UP, real world speed is 2mbps DOWN and 512mbps UP. Never goes above this speed. CenturyLink DSL is a complete rip off. Costs $45 and they charge for the modem $10. $55/month total I would be willing to pay $99/month if it had at least real world speed of 30mbps DOWN and 5mbps UP ^_^

Re: Setting up Starlink

#156

Post by justinwp »

notaplumber wrote: post #94
freedomben wrote: post #73

I'm using Starlink right now. AMA. I'm in East Idaho. Currently my dish angles itself to the north. It rarely moves itself north/south, and slightly moves east/west throughout the day. I've read that right now it locks onto a single satellite, although they're adding multi-satellite support later. My speeds are inconsistent, and interestingly they start slow (around 60 Mbps) but after a couple seconds they'll get to…

Can you setup Starlink without the app, i.e: no cell phone? I'm getting real tired of devices that have no management/setup UI of their own.

I setup without use of the router or app.

Re: Setting up Starlink

#157

Post by walrus01 »

7e wrote: post #76
freedomben wrote: post #73

I'm using Starlink right now. AMA. I'm in East Idaho. Currently my dish angles itself to the north. It rarely moves itself north/south, and slightly moves east/west throughout the day. I've read that right now it locks onto a single satellite, although they're adding multi-satellite support later. My speeds are inconsistent, and interestingly they start slow (around 60 Mbps) but after a couple seconds they'll get to…

Can you compare with T-Mobile’s 5G home Internet plan? Similar numbers advertised, $60 a month, no caps.

"no caps" - but watch what happens if you move 200 or 300GB downstream on a LTE based last mile residential connection in a month. you'll either get shut off, throttled to a few Mbps, or billed extra. Look at the fine print in the terms of service. If you have a household with multiple people that watch netflix, download movies, or even want to download a single xbox one or PS4/PS5 game (they can be 120-180GB now), watch out.

Re: Setting up Starlink

#158

Post by walrus01 »

freedomben wrote: post #125
geerlingguy wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can answer that I've been monitoring the full setup (dish + router) through a Kill-A-Watt for a few days, and it never goes below 94W, and averages a little over 100W.

I don't have numbers for just the starlink stuff since I have other things plugged in to my UPS, but that sounds about right. The power brick is always warm to the touch. My other ISP also uses PoE to power a wireless dish (line of sight) and uses a little less power but not a ton less.

the power consumed for a WISP PtMP last mile CPE radio is considerably less than starlink. Typical CPE for a ubiquiti, cambium or similar antenna will be 8-12W at the AC wall power side of the PoE injector. Starlink is more like 100W constant.

Re: Setting up Starlink

#159

Post by walrus01 »

StringyBob wrote: post #49
poisonborz wrote: post #31

> It's powered through PoE++ (using around 100W of power continuously) Not familiar with Sat gear, but this number seems extremely high to me for just powering an antenna (and some motors occasionally)

There’s a pretty crazy amount of electronics in the dish. They are likely selling it at well below cost at present. Teardown showing PCB at: https://youtu.be/iOmdQnIlnRo?t=2152 And more detailed RF analysis at https://youtu.be/h6MfM8EFkGg

the closest thing I have ever previously seen to a starlink phased array is the flat panel phased array radar in the nose radome of an air superiority interceptor type aircraft.

Re: Setting up Starlink

#160

Post by justinwp »

In my experience, Starlink isn't suitable for many uses right now without some kind of wan bonding(speedify, speedfusion, etc). I currently have two cellular modems + Starlink bonded with some routing rules forcing connections(streaming) directly to Starlink. Since I installed in early March, it has improved significantly and I will probably switch the default routing rules to use Starlink and only use the bonded connection for ssh and similar.

Overall, I am very pleased and looking forward to the continued improvements.

More on my setup, charts, etc here: https://jpoehnelt.medium.com/upgrading-to-starlink-bc6d4cd7e...

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