Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

jeffgeerling.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 258 posts

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

#91

Post by mprev »

gambiting wrote: post #82
mprev wrote: post #27

If you can get high speed, low latency, affordable internet access another way then Starlink probably isn't for you. We've just moved to a place where our only other option was a £400 a month leased line delivering synchronous 100Mbps. For less than a quarter of that, Starlink gives us roughly 120-150Mbps down, around 7Mbps up, and pings around the 30 ms mark. Upload is slow but workable for now. It's easy to complai…

>> 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 from home.

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

#92

Post by mhitza »

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…

> 15 GB (2 days of non-streaming usage for me)

I needed to run mostly on LTE tethered connectivity for a couple of months, and 30 GB a month of data was more than enough for my daily development process, and background youtube music mixes (at lower bitrates).

Unless you're rebuilding containers/redownloading dependecies daily, 15 GB of data should be pretty reasonable.

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

#93

Post by AtlasBarfed »

I've had starlink for probably a year and a half now. It has steadily improved, gotten more reliable, and is more able to avoid trees (I alas am not in an open plain).

I used to have 10 seconds of blockage every 5 minutes.

Now I get some blockage every... 5 hours?

I also have a 5G modem appliance that I used to use for stuff like Zoom. It actually is LESS reliable than the Starlink now.

Do I do massive bandwidth downloads or serve websites? No. I am the typical consumer usage.

Is the expense worth giving the finger to the cable company? Oh yes.

If I got around to getting rooftop solar and storage or a backup generator, then I'd be protected from a grid failure. That appeals to me, but then again going off-grid is an obsession of the typical aging male techie in America. I think it's the new "going republican when you were liberal young": instead you go pseudo-libertarian.

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

#94

Post by stickfigure »

ncallaway wrote: post #51
NDizzle wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had no idea they launched a v2. I wonder why they would regress so much. The obvious answer is cost... but they have to know how much people want good internet service in remote areas, right? I'll pay for it and I know I'm not the only one.

As mentioned in the article, though, how much could the added cost of an Ethernet connector be? That can’t increase the BOM that much, right?

Taking a wild guess here:

Standard PoE+ is 30w, and even the newest PoH maxes out at 90w. The new hardware draws more than that, so Starlink made up their own PoEish standard with proprietary cable/connectors. The $20 dongle is probably a custom PoE adapter. The good thing about this setup is you only need a single cable run up to your roof.

Adding an RJ45 jack directly to dishy might actually complicate the construction. For one thing, it's a weatherproofing issue. But now you have two ethernet ports and need a switch, which needs software management. It's not just a few pennies on the BOM.

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

#95

Post by NDizzle »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #79
NDizzle wrote: post #11

I've had Starlink in Rural AR for 10 months now. I have it currently set to "failover only" on my Ubiquiti device, as it's snowing sideways and there is a tremendous (read: 30%) amount of packet loss at the moment. I don't yet know how to do automatic failover due to packet loss on a UBNT device, but that's what I'm looking up this afternoon. Anyways - I have 3 ISPs, with two of them being LTE. One is the unlimited A…

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

On the following page it shows an IPv4 address with IPv6 "Not detected". I have ipv6 enabled on my edgerouter.

https://whatismyipaddress.com/

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

#96

Post by somehnguy »

geerlingguy wrote: post #29
sschueller wrote: post #16

I don't understand why cable connections are so bad when there is DOCSIS 3.1. Is it that the cable provider just has such a limited link on their end that people are getting speeds sub 100mbit? Are they vastly over provisioning their networks?

In my case, Spectrum has decided that they want a flashy "gigabit tier", so they provision everything as download bandwidth (940 Mbps), and then only assign 35 Mbps upload. I'd pay extra for business class service, but it doesn't even help, it's the same speed just with some more guarantees and a stable IP.

This is why when I found out Fios was available in my area I immediately called. I paid for the highest consumer tier of Spectrum available in my area but the upload speeds were still capped to awful levels (20mbit, at max). I'm not actually getting the symmetrical 1gb/s I pay for with Fios either, but it is worlds better than anything Spectrum would offer me.

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

#97

Post by anarazel »

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'.…

That's within the feasible distance for a point to point wireless bridge. If geography permits - which is not that likely. Not cheap, but might be better than alternatives.

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

#98

Post by ShakataGaNai »

anarazel wrote: post #97
geerlingguy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'.…

That's within the feasible distance for a point to point wireless bridge. If geography permits - which is not that likely. Not cheap, but might be better than alternatives.

If my handy online calculators are working correctly, 70km distant would require a 300+ ft tall tower on each side for that P2P bridge. Just to deal with the curvature of the earth and not counting for anything else that might be in the way.

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

#99

Post by iptrans »

geerlingguy wrote: post #18
adventured wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because it's not. The cost isn't $240 by necessity. They're knowingly overpaying for Internet access (they have multiple connections, they're not even using Starlink for example). I'm paying $34 / month in a small city in the middle of nowhere for 200mbps in the US.

$140/month to get the most upload bandwidth possible at my house (35 Mbps through Spectrum). Then $99/month for Starlink (for now, at least). Meanwhile a few blocks away a friend has 500 Mbps symmetric access for $50/month.

Time to build a wireless link to your friend :)

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

#100

Post by 6d6b73 »

reportingsjr wrote: post #89
hanklazard wrote: post #33

“Then there are other people reading who think he's the commensurate con-man” Does anyone actually think this about Elon? Think what you will about the guy’s persona, but it seems undeniable that he is doing big things in the world (and outside of it).

There are definitely a lot of people who think this. Go on twitter and search for "TSLAQ". There are people deluding themselves that Tesla isn't actually shipping the number of cars they claim. Maybe 7+ years ago you could try to make that claim and not be a laughing stock, but it's very odd at this point.

Tesla constantly lies about its numbers. Even this week there was news from Australia, about inflated number.
Post reply on HN