how starlink works (highly technical)

[pianotuna]

Hi all,

Quite a piece of engineering:

https://youtu.be/qs2QcycggWU

[2oldman]

shipped, got it today.

Pretty simple setup but takes longer than I expected. You can't just plug it in.. you have to have the app. Got some 'not connected' errors and then searching for GPS. Pretty cool how the antenna moves by itself.

The antenna is on the ground and pointing directly at a bush about 8' high, but so far no problem with that. I'm in NM and the antenna wants to point north.

Speed is good, connection solid, so far pretty slick.

[LittleBill]

2oldman wrote:
I just ordered this for RVs. I'll let you know when it ships. Supposed to be 'no waiting'.

what's there to know? there is a 40k person facebook group dedicated to rv starlink, it works, when there are no obstructions...

[2oldman]

I just ordered this for RVs. I'll let you know when it ships. Supposed to be 'no waiting'.

[Retired_JSO]

My neighbor, north Georgia Mountains, has it with a rectangular dish. He had to wait over a year for his equipment to arrive. He’s says he gets 125mbps while my ground cable gets at best 25. He also says he has not experienced an outage while he and his bride both work from home.

[2oldman]

Gdetrailer wrote:
You can now put your head back into the sand and ignore reality.

Ok. Speaking of putting one's head in the sand, give me a lecture on climate change.

[valhalla360]

pianotuna wrote:

valhalla360 wrote:


I wouldn't be too worried about speeds. Even if the 100-300MB speeds are severely degraded in real life, it's still comparable or better than the 10-15MB you get with a 4G cell phone in good coverage areas (assuming the cell company doesn't throttle you for using too much data).

My cell phone from Sasktel does up to 85 mb down and 40 up. My Bell cell phone does 25 down and 15 up.

However, at supper time that changes due to congestion at the tower which is 400 feet from me. Then neither phone is what I'd call fast. However I can watch netflix with either phone when they are throttled. Sasktel throttle is 2 ms and Bell is 0.54 ms.

Wow, that's good. When I do speed tests, it's often in the 1-10mb range. When I use too much and they throttle, it's down around 0.5mb. While it works, there is often buffering or we have to reduce the video quality to make it work.

So if they are offering 100-300mb...even if it throttles back by 90%, that's still 10-30mb, which is plenty for us to have a couple of videos streaming simultaneous (we usually don't do that).

[pianotuna]

valhalla360 wrote:


I wouldn't be too worried about speeds. Even if the 100-300MB speeds are severely degraded in real life, it's still comparable or better than the 10-15MB you get with a 4G cell phone in good coverage areas (assuming the cell company doesn't throttle you for using too much data).

My cell phone from Sasktel does up to 85 mb down and 40 up. My Bell cell phone does 25 down and 15 up.

However, at supper time that changes due to congestion at the tower which is 400 feet from me. Then neither phone is what I'd call fast. However I can watch netflix with either phone when they are throttled. Sasktel throttle is 2 ms and Bell is 0.54 ms.

[valhalla360]

2oldman wrote:
Phased-array antennas are amazing.

I'm camped near someone who has it, loves it. He did caution me that the view of the sky must be unobstructed, and even trees beside your rig can be an issue.

I'm ordering the RV version this week. No waiting for delivery right now. I'll be dumping Directv (getting too hard to aim the dish and I rarely watch it), and cutting my cell phone data plan WAY back.

Thanks Elon. I love new technology.

We've seen lots of them the last 2-3 months traveling around and people seem happy with them.

Our plan is very similar to yours (get the system and scale the cell phones way back).

Only difference is dragging our feet a bit as we will be heading overseas for the winter in a month and then up in Alaska next summer. Overseas, we will be in apartments with wifi or in cell coverage areas, so no need and from the online coverage maps, I can find, once you get north of around Edmonton, coverage largely ends (which makes sense, since they would presumably want to cover high population areas first because there are more customers).

I wouldn't be too worried about speeds. Even if the 100-300MB speeds are severely degraded in real life, it's still comparable or better than the 10-15MB you get with a 4G cell phone in good coverage areas (assuming the cell company doesn't throttle you for using too much data).

[Gdetrailer]

2oldman wrote:

Gdetrailer wrote:
Yeah, you may need to dial back your expectations, a lot.

Your first link contains posts from years ago. New satellites are going up all the time.

It's not hard to find negative comments on anything on the internet, especially from you. I'll take my chances.

:R

The SECOND link, however is very recent(August 23, 2022) unless you are living under a rock or putting your fingers in your ears while yelling "LA LA LA LA"..

I read both sides of the coin, not the "pie in the sky dreams" or what tickles your ears..

While there many "happy" folks who do not care that they lose speed or connectivity, there are many very unhappy folks once they spent nearly $1K for hardware only to find the service has been oversold in places and the speed drops into the abyss and those folks do care.

A lot of marketing double speak has gone into Starlink to get folks emotions to ignore "the man behind the curtain".

FCC has pulled back the curtain and revoked the broadband expansion grant once they discovered the truth.. That is very telling and you should take note of that.

Installing and operating tens of thousands of satellite is not a cheap affair, neither is all the ground stations required to keep those birds in flight.

Star link has already abandoned the current idea of tens of thousands of satellites as they have obviously figured out that their "pie in the sky" dreams are unobtainable as you scale the thing up to cover the entire world..

So they are now developing a much larger second generation satellite which has much larger antennas which will require fewer birds in the air and to make this change more cost effective to build and roll out they have partnered with T Mobil.

HERE

By the way that article is from Aug 25, 2022 so it is "current" as you like..

If you look closely that whole thing is all made of "theoretical" type statements.. In the computer industry that is called "vaporware"..

An article dated Aug26, 2022..

HERE

"But launching Coverage Above and Beyond will require going above and beyond those already-launched Starlinks. T-Mobile’s service will need the larger second-generation Starlinks that SpaceX plans to start launching on both Falcon 9 and the upcoming Starship."

You can now put your head back into the sand and ignore reality.

[2oldman]

Gdetrailer wrote:
Yeah, you may need to dial back your expectations, a lot.

Your first link contains posts from years ago. New satellites are going up all the time.

It's not hard to find negative comments on anything on the internet, especially from you. I'll take my chances.

[Gdetrailer]

2oldman wrote:
Phased-array antennas are amazing.

I'm camped near someone who has it, loves it. He did caution me that the view of the sky must be unobstructed, and even trees beside your rig can be an issue.

I'm ordering the RV version this week. No waiting for delivery right now. I'll be dumping Directv (getting too hard to aim the dish and I rarely watch it), and cutting my cell phone data plan WAY back.

Thanks Elon. I love new technology.

Yeah, you may need to dial back your expectations, a lot.

See HERE

Starlink also lost the FCC RDOF grant citing that "Starlink tech has capacity limits, may not deliver required speed"

Already a lot of rumbling on other forums about Starlinks service degrading due to oversubscribing..

RV service is also "deprioritized"..

"They really need to stop selling RV service. If you pay (140$?) for service generally you expect the service to be pretty good. In some places it is. But they keep selling it in cells beyond max capacity and the service is degrading quickly. And even though it is deprioritized, it clearly is negatively impacting regular home users as well. "

Starlink knows they are in deep trouble and can't dig their way out of it, so now they are offering a "new" service tier in oversold areas called "Best Effort".. Basically any new customers will pay the same price but will also be "deprioritized" during high congestion..

See HERE

"The company is allowing some pre-order customers to receive Starlink even though their cell area is at capacity. The catch? Expect downgraded internet speeds."

Not to mention Starlink is now rolling out soft data caps for France, hit your cap and get depriortized speeds.. Fair chance that will end up being rolled out everywhere.

From what I have been reading, if you need technical help, you will get much faster response by posting on Reddit instead of contacting Starlink..

No free lunches in the world..

[pianotuna]

2oldman,

I would wait a year myself.

[2oldman]

Phased-array antennas are amazing.

I'm camped near someone who has it, loves it. He did caution me that the view of the sky must be unobstructed, and even trees beside your rig can be an issue.

I'm ordering the RV version this week. No waiting for delivery right now. I'll be dumping Directv (getting too hard to aim the dish and I rarely watch it), and cutting my cell phone data plan WAY back.

Thanks Elon. I love new technology.

[Lwiddis]

I’m very hopeful it will work as designed.