Data Caps Starlink

So far RV service not affected. I'm seeing a lot of these little white antennas in my travels.

Got the notification and went and looked at my traffic statistics on my home router (FIOS). With two adults working from home, two kids watching loads of videos/gaming, and I host some gaming servers like Minecraft, we burned around 100GB last week. It sounds like someone would need to be a huge data hog to reach the point they get de-prioritized. From a quality of service standpoint, it essentially moves the user temporarily from permanent to RV service. I have run two Starlink antennas side by side, one permanent and one RV, my experience was that both were very useable (not as good as fiber but better than cellular data). On average, the RV unit tested out at about 1/2 the download bandwidth and about 2/3 the upload bandwidth of a permanent Starlink installation.

ProjectMon wrote:
Got the notification and went and looked at my traffic statistics on my home router (FIOS). With two adults working from home, two kids watching loads of videos/gaming, and I host some gaming servers like Minecraft, we burned around 100GB last week. It sounds like someone would need to be a huge data hog to reach the point they get de-prioritized. From a quality of service standpoint, it essentially moves the user temporarily from permanent to RV service. I have run two Starlink antennas side by side, one permanent and one RV, my experience was that both were very useable (not as good as fiber but better than cellular data). On average, the RV unit tested out at about 1/2 the download bandwidth and about 2/3 the upload bandwidth of a permanent Starlink installation.

My kids managed to use >100GB in one day, this week, the last week we've used 378GB risk and that wasn't a particularly big week, during the pandemic I think our highest month was 3.5TB. We're fortunate enough to have uncapped cable, but I'm sure once it's just the wife and I on the road the Starlink speeds will be fine, just need enough to stream one show or do one video conference.

A lot of landline ISPs have caps at a similar level.

Unless you are a real data hog, it's a non-issue. If you are running 3-4 TVs at 4k resolution 10-12hr per day, sure, you will blow thru the data cap but with a little common sense, you shouldn't.

Keep in mind, you may want to look at using it smart. Cloud backups can be set for late night (which doesn't count toward the limit). Also, add on devices like firestick, may keep running if you simply turn off the monitor but leave the stick on and running.

afidel wrote:

My kids managed to use >100GB in one day, this week, the last week we've used 378GB risk and that wasn't a particularly big week, during the pandemic I think our highest month was 3.5TB. We're fortunate enough to have uncapped cable, but I'm sure once it's just the wife and I on the road the Starlink speeds will be fine, just need enough to stream one show or do one video conference.

That is truly an amazing amount of data! I used to build large chunks of the Internet and huge data centers and you are passing more data than some of the data centers used... Your home usage is definitely not the use case for Starlink! Any chance you have looked at your traffic flows to make sure that is all you and not someone who has hacked some of your machines?

ProjectMon wrote:

afidel wrote:

My kids managed to use >100GB in one day, this week, the last week we've used 378GB risk and that wasn't a particularly big week, during the pandemic I think our highest month was 3.5TB. We're fortunate enough to have uncapped cable, but I'm sure once it's just the wife and I on the road the Starlink speeds will be fine, just need enough to stream one show or do one video conference.

That is truly an amazing amount of data! I used to build large chunks of the Internet and huge data centers and you are passing more data than some of the data centers used... Your home usage is definitely not the use case for Starlink! Any chance you have looked at your traffic flows to make sure that is all you and not someone who has hacked some of your machines?

Yup, I know where the data is going, my router has breakdowns by protocol and destination and it's all legitimate traffic. Game updates, twitch streaming, etc.

Monthly data allowance of 1TB sounds more than enough for most subscribers.

I've never exceeding even close to 500GB in a month. Even-though, my wireless plan has no data caps.

I'm a single user. The most I ever have used is 120 gb in one month. I use 2 cell phones, one with Bell (50 gigs, then throttled to 0.54) and one with Sasktel (30 gigs, then throttled to 2 m/s)

Speed on Bell is 25 m/s down; in late afternoon that drops to 6.5 down and 8.2 up.

Speed on Sasktel is as much as 90 m/s down; currently 21 m/s and 10 up.


I find that on 2 m/s I can do pretty much anything I want. Even on the 0.54 I can watch netflix.

84/4 today.

I see that Starlink mobile rates are up again. Now $135/month. I suspect that this will be an ongoing trend.