Setting up Starlink • Hacker News Board

Re: Setting up Starlink

#201

Post by dboreham » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 7:03 PM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #183

gkop wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relative to the helpful details on LTE you posted, though? (Obviously Starlink is incomparably better than the status quo satellite options...) Why do you expect better than LTE? And would you say more about WISP behavior? I know WISPs are all over the place, but in my small experience, a technically competent WISP will not look at your usage unless there’s contention impacting other customers. Like, Starlink has sai…

Typical WISP last mile: Something like a ubiquiti rocket 5ac gen2 on an RF elements 60 degree horn antenna, in a 40 MHz TDD channel somewhere in the 5.x GHz band, aggregate capacity of the entire AP might be around 240 Mbps. Shared between 20 to 30 customers. I'm regularly seeing 250-330 Mbps down on Starlink right now with beta equipment, and very, very few WISPs except those who are doing 60 GHz based PtMP micro-PO…

WISP and Musk are ruled by the same Shannon, so I'm skeptical that there will be a significant advantage over the long term, but satellite has a big advantage it terms of coverage -- the difference between "can you see that tiny hilltop in the distance over the trees?" and "can you see the sky?"

Re: Setting up Starlink

#202

Post by walrus01 » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 7:05 PM UTC

dboreham wrote: post #201

walrus01 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typical WISP last mile: Something like a ubiquiti rocket 5ac gen2 on an RF elements 60 degree horn antenna, in a 40 MHz TDD channel somewhere in the 5.x GHz band, aggregate capacity of the entire AP might be around 240 Mbps. Shared between 20 to 30 customers. I'm regularly seeing 250-330 Mbps down on Starlink right now with beta equipment, and very, very few WISPs except those who are doing 60 GHz based PtMP micro-PO…

WISP and Musk are ruled by the same Shannon, so I'm skeptical that there will be a significant advantage over the long term, but satellite has a big advantage it terms of coverage -- the difference between "can you see that tiny hilltop in the distance over the trees?" and "can you see the sky?"

Same Shannon limit, but very different bands and channel sizes as well. Most WISPs are limited by the unlicensed frequency bands that exist in FCC part 15, and things like 3.5 and 3.65 GHz. One of the things that can go wrong with that is many WISPs in the same area fighting over the same bands from 5100-5900 MHz.

By comparison LTE fixed last mile services in some places (where expensive spectrum is owned by entities like tmobile) have some of the prime tree-penetrating frequencies in the 600 and 700 MHz bands, and 2.5 GHz band. One of the reasons why clearwire was acquired by sprint was for their 2500 band.

Re: Setting up Starlink

#203

Post by yhager » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 7:09 PM UTC

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…

Have you been using ssh at all? How's that experience? That's my main use case.

How about video/audio calls? does Wi-Fi calling work well?

Re: Setting up Starlink

#204

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 7:13 PM UTC

yhager wrote: post #203

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…

Have you been using ssh at all? How's that experience? That's my main use case. How about video/audio calls? does Wi-Fi calling work well?

[deleted]

Re: Setting up Starlink

#205

Post by walrus01 » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 7:14 PM UTC

voisin wrote: post #53

nevi-me wrote: post #10

The cell grouping is interesting. A colleague likes the outdoors, so he's preordered one for his Suzuki Jimny, to mount on it. I wonder if Starlink are considering this use case. I haven't been able to preorder mine, because we're planning on moving out from the city to a small village next year, but the Starlink website requires a street address. Our villages are quite primitive, no street names (I think it's cos no…

Interesting edge case of no street names (which in retrospect is not an edge case at all given the use case for remote users!). Wonder why they haven’t allowed GPS coordinate input?

they do when you sign up in a geographic location as a "available to ship now" beta customer, after putting in your address, it brings up a view of a satellite/google maps view of your area and asks you to zoom in and click on the map on the precise location where the terminal will be installed.

Re: Setting up Starlink

#206

Post by GoOnThenDoTell » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 7:14 PM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #149

spookthesunset wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15-30mbps is about what I get for my upstream “gigabit” cable service.

that's typical on DOCSIS3 cable since they intentionally allocate and bond a much greater number of channels for downstream capacity, to match the usage patterns of hundreds of users in aggregate. The actual amount of RF available for upstream is quite small in a typical configuration.

I hope they can change that, we all need more upload these days working at home

Re: Setting up Starlink

#207

Post by minhazm » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 7:17 PM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #149

spookthesunset wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15-30mbps is about what I get for my upstream “gigabit” cable service.

that's typical on DOCSIS3 cable since they intentionally allocate and bond a much greater number of channels for downstream capacity, to match the usage patterns of hundreds of users in aggregate. The actual amount of RF available for upstream is quite small in a typical configuration.

You can get a modem with 32 down and 8 up channels. 8 up channels can support over 200 Mbps. But Comcast will still limit you to 5-10 Mbps.

Then there's DOCSIS 3.1, which actually supports up to 1 Gbit/s up, but Comcast still only gives you 35 Mbps on their gigabit plan.

IMO it just comes down to Comcast and other cable providers being cheap and not investing in their infrastructure to provide better upload speeds, even though the tech itself is capable of it.

Re: Setting up Starlink

#208

Post by walrus01 » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 7:19 PM UTC

minhazm wrote: post #207

walrus01 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's typical on DOCSIS3 cable since they intentionally allocate and bond a much greater number of channels for downstream capacity, to match the usage patterns of hundreds of users in aggregate. The actual amount of RF available for upstream is quite small in a typical configuration.

You can get a modem with 32 down and 8 up channels. 8 up channels can support over 200 Mbps. But Comcast will still limit you to 5-10 Mbps. Then there's DOCSIS 3.1, which actually supports up to 1 Gbit/s up, but Comcast still only gives you 35 Mbps on their gigabit plan. IMO it just comes down to Comcast and other cable providers being cheap and not investing in their infrastructure to provide better upload speeds, e…

just because the modem is capable of 8 channels up does not mean that it's likely your local segment to the CMTS is configured that way.

Re: Setting up Starlink

#209

Post by japanuspus » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 7:20 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #140

mdasen wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starlink has said that they're planning on offering a roaming use-case, but they aren't there yet ( https://www.slashgear.com/spacex-starlink-cell-location-limi... ). Part of the issue is that Starlink cells are going to be very limited in capacity for the foreseeable future: https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/09/analyst-probes... . Cowen suggests that Starlink "should eventually be able to serve 485,000 simu…

> they only guarantee that you'll be able to use the $500 dish (plus $50 shipping) for 12 months I would guess that if they disconnect your dish from the network, they'll give you a new one for free. I know that isn't what their terms and conditions state, but it would be bad business to do anything else. They'll hope that most users choose to upgrade first (for more speed or other features).

$500 is pretty much free for this equipment. Production price is currently around $3000 according to SpaceX president Gwyneth Shotwell [0].

[0]: https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1379457265435078665

Re: Setting up Starlink

#210

Post by ytjohn » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 7:20 PM UTC

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #166

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…

Besides Starlink, I'm curious to hear more about your Protectli. Why do you like it so much? What can it do, that you can't do on your own computer with some scripting and such?

Not OP, but the Protectli is just hardware and you install your own OS. So it is running your own computer with "scripting and such", just a separate low-power, small footprint computer with dual NICs. This is good for managing network for your entire house/office/remote site.

I've got some PC-based firewalls like the Protecli. Mini-ITX, atom-based, 8gb ram. I can often find these for I recently setup 3 of these for a radio club. These will live in mountaintop tower locations and provide VPN+NAT. Since these might get modified by others, I went with OPNSense. OPNSense is a fork of PFSense with a nice Web UI and community support.