Starlink

[lincmercguy]

I use verizon home internet (cellular - basically a dedicated hotspot); lucky for me there's a consistent 2 bars out of 4 signal at home.

The home Internet service adds $35/month to the mobile phone bill and gets me 300-400Mbps downloads with 30-40ms ping times
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I had cell based before Starlink st my old place. I was close to the tower, so I always got good signal. However the backhaul for the tower wasn't sufficient and I would only get 15-20 down. Same for a cell phone when I could get 50-60 on other towers (4G)

 

[dfkrug]

I use verizon home internet (cellular - basically a dedicated hotspot); lucky for me there's a consistent 2 bars out of 4 signal at home.

The home Internet service adds $35/month to the mobile phone bill and gets me 300-400Mbps downloads with 30-40ms ping times

wow, that's impressive. You must be pretty close to the tower to get 2-bar 5G.

I had 1-bar 3/4G VZ home internet for a short time a few years ago and I got less than 1Mbps for $100 a month. I normally have 28Mbps with copper from Frontier for $85/mo. FTR brought fiber to the mountains where I am but skipped a few of us, without saying why. They sell 500Mbps for $30/mo thru fiber.

 

[ning]

wow, that's impressive. You must be pretty close to the tower to get 2-bar 5G.

I had 1-bar 3/4G VZ home internet for a short time a few years ago and I got less than 1Mbps for $100 a month. I normally have 28Mbps with copper from Frontier for $85/mo. FTR brought fiber to the mountains where I am but skipped a few of us, without saying why. They sell 500Mbps for $30/mo thru fiber.

You'd think, but Network Cell Info app says I'm at -109dB signal, which isn't particularly good, though it gets worse than that in the house (and speeds drop commensurately).

 

[NoTrespassing]

Speeds are usually above 100 Mbps on Starlink when speed testing. When downloading game updates speeds vary between 30 and 120. Can it be server traffic slowing down the data?

 

[Hughman]

I was able to connect to somebody's starlink hotspot in Death Valley last week. By default they are wide open with no password. Pretty good internet connection in the middle of nowhere. We were able to stream movies to our laptop. Not sure who to thank.

 

[grsthegreat]

I was able to connect to somebody's starlink hotspot in Death Valley last week. By default they are wide open with no password. Pretty good internet connection in the middle of nowhere. We were able to stream movies to our laptop. Not sure who to thank.

My 3rd generation starlink modem is set to route traffic thru to my existing wifi mesh network. I did this so i could have option of 3 separate levels of wifi. I have a guest wifi that cant access my home network, i have an IoT network for things like garage door openers and yolink hub, and the more secure home network.

All 3 are password protected.

Starlink modem only has 1 level, not even a guest network.

 

[BigBlue1]

Speeds are usually above 100 Mbps on Starlink when speed testing. When downloading game updates speeds vary between 30 and 120. Can it be server traffic slowing down the data?

Sure. A speed test is usually a client-to-server connection over a very favorable server endpoint so that the network itself can be the bottleneck and be accurately tested. Anything else you access on the Internet is subject to many other types of performance and restrictions that would cause network transfer speeds to be lower than your actual network pipe is capable of. Could be a busy server, could be congested network on the server side, could be a bandwidth cap on their per-client network connections plus many other possible things.

 

[JRH02]

Ya know, after memories of WildBlue, DishNet and Hughes Gen(barf) I don't even bother with speed tests. Every once in a while I growl at time-outs or something of the like and its never StarLink but my laptop with yet another update. It's easy to prove because we have no cell signal at home so everything is VOIP. Just grab the phone to prove it.

Love or hate Musk, he made life in the middle of nowhere much better. And safer.

 

[dmccarty]

Speeds are usually above 100 Mbps on Starlink when speed testing. When downloading game updates speeds vary between 30 and 120. Can it be server traffic slowing down the data?

Yes.

At work, I have a VM that I remotely login too. The VM is connected to the very fast company network. The same sized file, download from a server to the VM, can take anywhere from seconds to an hour. The difference in download speed can be the server running the VM, the network, and/or the server with the file.

Once upon a time, I had a WiFi network and an old 10mbps Ethernet connection at work. There were times when the much theoretically faster WiFi network was slower downloading files than the much theoretically slower Ethernet connection. In that case, at certain times of the day, the WiFi network was just saturated with traffic.

 

[plowhog]

Has anyone tried the $10/mo Starlink plan yet?