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I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)

#141

Post by sidewndr46 »

gpm wrote: post #61
sidewndr46 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an expert on the Starlink network, but their coverage isn't uniform. Even across the 48 states. The constellation provides more effective bandwidth in some areas than others. SpaceX has a government subsidy to provide high speed internet right across the street from my parents house. But they have no satellite coverage in that area according to their own map. I don't really understand the business plan of Spa…

> But they have no satellite coverage in that area according to their own map. There is nowhere in the lower 48 where starlink has no satellite coverage, I believe there are still areas where they have not built out ground stations though, and since most of the satellites don't have laser links to talk to other satellites (due to issues with their original lasers not fully burning up on re-entry - now fixed) they nee…

You're just arguing nuance & semantics.

For an ISP that uses satellites, ground stations are equivalent to satellite coverage. It doesn't matter how many satellites they have, if there isn't a ground station to connect to you don't have coverage.

Inter-satellite links also don't do anything useful if you don't have enough ground stations. Even if you had a ground station with infinite bandwidth there is no way a single satellite can have the entire network linked through it. It's a really neat thing to have a single voice channel connect through a constellation from somewhere like the southern Indian ocean, but you can't really run 100+ mbps pipes like that.

This is completely different than something like a military communications satellite where both ends of the connection are communicating through the same satellite. The 48 states could be totally in the dark (no power, no comms) and a military communications satellite still functions fine.

Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)

#143

Post by sleepybrett »

swah wrote: post #128
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 15 GB (2 days of non-streaming usage for me) This sounds exceptionally high. What do you do that uses so much?

Probably 4k video content ? > The download size of a 140-minute 4K video, for example, would be approximately (14 GB x 2) + (.233 GB x 20) = 33 GB or .233 GB x 140 = 33 GB.

he said non streaming.

Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)

#144

Post by iancmceachern »

Its interesting to me how the customer service mindset between Elon's companies and a company like Amazon is so opposite.

Amazon has a almost militant drive to optimize customer experience, will take anything back, will do just about anything to please their customers. They state so.

Tesla, Space X in the form if starlink, solar city all seem to have pretty piss poor customer service and experience. They get away with things you'd never tolerate from your local grocery store, car dealership or ISP. But we hold them up on a pedestal and say it's a necessary evil, part of the process. Why do they need to hold onto millions of dollars in pre-order fees from average people when they have so much investment from the rich that they could use for that purpose. It's because he isn't selling products anymore. He doesn't make his money when the product ships, he makes it when he announces a new vaporware product, collects pre-orders and stock benefits from the hype and press, and then never delivers on the actual product. Its no matter to him, by that time he has already made his money and cashed out.

The only difference between Theranos and Elon's ventures is that his ventures hot the bottom 25% of the goals and timeline so its not a total lie. At the same time, it's also not totally honest.

Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)

#145

Post by csours »

gambiting wrote: post #74
reportingsjr wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dish won't work since it knows where it is via GPS and where it is supposed to be. There is a little bit of tolerance in where the dish can be moved, but certainly not 70 miles of leeway.

Ha, reminds me of the tiny 3G picostations you could get from your mobile operator for a while when 3G was in its infancy - if you said you had really poor signal at your home, they would send you a small 3G station you could use in your home and which used your own internet for data and calls....but the hardware had a GPS built in to make sure it was never moved from the address it was assigned to(otherwise you coul…

So, some cars have a decent antenna/hardware for 4G/5G to WiFi bridge; would it make sense to have a picostation inside the car as a repeater?

Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)

#146

Post by 34679 »

geerlingguy wrote: post #12
fastaguy88 wrote: post #3

I get it. If you already have internet, then Starlink is not for you. There are lots of questionable design choices (particularly in version 2), it's picky about placement, etc. etc. But if your other choice is HughesNet or its competitors, that throttles you after 15 GB (2 days of non-streaming usage for me), or 50 GB, the Starlink "shortcomings" are irrelevant. With Starlink, if you can get it, and if you can site…

My biggest gripe is the fact I can't transfer it to my cousin, who lives on a farm with 300 Kbps DSL, 70 miles away. Back when preorders started, it wasn't obvious how slow Starlink would be to expand, and it also wasn't obvious transfers wouldn't be a supported feature for many months. Even so, my cousin also signed up in hopes to get Starlink, and 11 months later her date was moved from 'late 2021' to 'late 2022'.…

Curiousity and frustration would have me moving it anyway. Have you tried?

Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)

#147

Post by vel0city »

mprev wrote: post #91
gambiting wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The power draw is around the same as a fairly typical lightbulb from 20 years ago, so I can totally live with that. Since you mentioned pounds, I just want to address the power consumption part. At averaged 100W power usage, the system will use 2.4kWh of electricity every day. In UK the energy prices are absolutely exploding - with the government estimating that the "average" consumer will be paying 28p/kWh of ele…

Yeah, I get that it's not insignificant but it's not just a router, it's also uploading my packets to a fast moving object around 340 miles away. I'd like for it to be less but I'd also like for Openreach to put a green cabinet near my house and give me VDSL. To put it in context, my PC isn't on 24 hrs a day but it's almost certainly drawing at least 250W for the 9 or 10 hours it is on. It's just a cost of working fr…

> almost certainly drawing at least 250W

You should throw a meter on it and actually check. My recent-ish Ryzen 2600 desktop, 1070 GPU, and 27" monitor use <100W when not doing something like intense gaming. Even then, under intense gaming its often between 300-500W of usage. YMMV, obviously.

Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)

#148

Post by TinkersW »

AcerbicZero wrote: post #125

I ran our satellite internet service out of Iraq when I was deployed there* - I think it was HughesNet or Bently Walker. It was one of the only ways to get unfiltered open source internet at the time, which was a requirement for our mission, and a nice bonus for us in general. Compared to no internet, satellite internet is pretty good. Compared to anything else? Take anything else. *To be fair this was also like, 10…

Ya I helped switch someone from Hughes to the v2 Starlink, it is night and day difference, and actually costs less(Hughes was like $140 for the shittiest internet imaginable)

Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)

#149

Post by sidewndr46 »

iptrans wrote: post #104
BlueTemplar wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CGNAT ?!? Huh, I would have expected Starlink to be IPv6 only...

The Internet does not work without IPv4. It’s either CGNAT or ponying up $60 per IPv4 address.

This an interesting aspect to me because it means even the lowest quality, poorest run, failing infrastructure ISP has nearly liquid assets of about $30 million USD if they have half a million customers.

That's a staggering amount of money & it isn't locked up in assets like real estate.

Re: I took down my Starlink dish (but haven't cancelled)

#150

Post by thinkcontext »

geerlingguy wrote: post #12
fastaguy88 wrote: post #3

I get it. If you already have internet, then Starlink is not for you. There are lots of questionable design choices (particularly in version 2), it's picky about placement, etc. etc. But if your other choice is HughesNet or its competitors, that throttles you after 15 GB (2 days of non-streaming usage for me), or 50 GB, the Starlink "shortcomings" are irrelevant. With Starlink, if you can get it, and if you can site…

My biggest gripe is the fact I can't transfer it to my cousin, who lives on a farm with 300 Kbps DSL, 70 miles away. Back when preorders started, it wasn't obvious how slow Starlink would be to expand, and it also wasn't obvious transfers wouldn't be a supported feature for many months. Even so, my cousin also signed up in hopes to get Starlink, and 11 months later her date was moved from 'late 2021' to 'late 2022'.…

> My biggest gripe is the fact I can't transfer it to my cousin

This seems like a gripe very particular to you and not generally relevant.

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