Starlink

[BigBlue1]

Than why can’t bigblue1 stream movies. That’s the man reason I want fast internet. Here I’m waiting to hear how soon we can get fiber. I checked into Verizon lte and it’s not available in my area. Strange since we’re not far from the tower.

It's not that I can't stream them. They play fine, with no buffering or disruption. It's just that the video quality seems lower.

Rob

 

[Jchonline]

Starlink was delivered to us this weeK in CO. Ill be setting it up soon.

 

[BigBlue1]

I did find that my speeds were better connected directly to the Starlink router than either with Starlink-->Deco or just Deco system direct. I'd never experienced a speed difference between my Deco and the Netgear Nighthawk LTE modem I used as my primary for years prior.

I did a Deco firmware update and changed some QoS settings and now my speeds are more in line.

Rob

 

[ponytug]

There is zero control of the Starlink router but the good thing is that you don't have to use it. You can just plug the Starlink controller's (i.e. the 'modem') into your own router. I'm trying mine that way today to see how it works.

I did find that my speeds were better connected directly to the Starlink router than either with Starlink-->Deco or just Deco system direct. I'd never experienced a speed difference between my Deco and the Netgear Nighthawk LTE modem I used as my primary for years prior.

Rob

I think it boils down to where the bottleneck is/was in your system. If the LTE link/modem was the slow piece, it wouldn't matter how it was connected. Your experience suggests to me that the Starlink router may be a little underpowered in terms of throughput and latency relative to the actual downlink.

As an example, we have DSL, and had a rash of issues last year (bad electronics and wires on AT&T side compounded by an unstable modem (provided by AT&T). Eventually they got the line issues sorted out, (four months or so) and our service was still terrible compared to what they had provided six months earlier. Eventually a very senior technician offered up an opinion that the provided DSL modem was notoriously unstable, and suggested that we purchase a NetGear D7000v2 modem-router. Well, they aren't manufactured any more, and when they were a fraction (a high fraction?) seem to have been manufactured with some rather large intolerance to heat. So I bought a couple of used ones off of eBay. I ended up adding heat sinks and fans plural to it, and it now runs for days, but while it is running, it has between an eighth and a tenth of the ping times of the default modem (12ms vs 140ms to the first AT&T router that answers a ping). The low latency makes the low speed so much more usable. With that running, I realized how slow all of our range extenders were, and ripped them out for a better network at the end of the day. That's why I was curious what your experience was with the Deco mesh network. Sorry for the long digression.

All the best,

Peter

 

[BigBlue1]

My Deco setup has been fantastic, overall. Was a game changer for getting high quality wifi throughout my spread out home. I'd never noticed a speed difference between router setups (I have several) before, but yesterday connecting Deco to Starlink exposed something. Now that I made the QoS change and applied new firmware (which also rebooted the system) my speeds through Deco are just as good as with the Starlink router direct. Happy days. I'll have to see if this makes the video streaming quality better too. Not much time for TV these days though since it's finally nice weather and I have a ton of projects going on.

Rob

 

[Fixastuff]

A better word would be "creepy".

Orwell was wrong, it's not government big brotherism we need to worry about, looks like Space-X is just as bad as Facebook, Apple, Google and the rest of big tech. Who knows what other content you're accessing that they're monitoring.

All the ISPs that I know of will send a letter of warning, then terminate service for illegal content downloading...that's one of the reason VPN s exist.

 

[BigBlue1]

It's not that I can't stream them. They play fine, with no buffering or disruption. It's just that the video quality seems lower.

Rob

I think I figured out my video streaming issue last night. Looks like it is more a problem with YoutubeTV's algorithm to decide which resolution to use for 'automatic best resolution'. When I manually set it to 1080p then shows look just fine, like they always used to. I also played some Netflix and that plays in 4k just fine. I was playing around and found out how to turn on debug stats in YoutubeTV and in the Fire TV stick itself, which helped identify the issue. Turns out that the network connection and playback buffering is just fine and very healthy.

I now have the Starlink dish permanently mounted on the roof too, as of early last week. I used their mount system that allows it to be flashed under the existing shingles for a hopefully well-sealed setup.

Now, the only remaining quirk of Starlink is just the infrequent (once or twice a day) minor service disruption that is likely due to expected beta downtime.Getting happier with this system by the day and I'm about ready to ditch my old DSL connection, which was formerly my backup ISP.

Rob

 

[Fixastuff]

Phone hotspot on left vs starlink on right.

 

[TractorGuy]

Viasat asks FCC to halt Starlink launches while it seeks court ruling - SpaceNews

Satellite operator Viasat is asking the FCC to stop SpaceX from launching more Starlink satellites as it heads to court to compel a thorough environmental review of the rapidly growing megaconstellation.

spacenews.com

 

[plowhog]

Apologies if this was already asked-- has anyone tried using windows remote desktop, GoToMyPC, or any of those sorts of programs with Starlink?

I ask because most of those remote access products won't work on HughesNet satellite due to their double layer NAT arrangement. Because of this, I had to change to TeamViewer ($$) for remote access.

Before changing, I tried numerous DynDns products with HughesNet. Either they didn't work at all, or I could not successfully connect to the remote location even if I knew the IP of the remote location. All because of the double layer NAT used by Hughes.

TeamViewer ($$) differs because it always maintains a connection from each end to the middle layer (which I believe is their own servers.) So you don't need to "get through" HughesNet's backend-- TeamViewer solves that by always staying connected to itself. But, it isn't free to do that.

 

[BigBlue1]

Can you use some type of VPN to avoid the issues you mention? I connect to my employer over VPN through Starlink and the help desk can remote into my computer just fine. A VPN between you and the other end of your connection may eliminate the NAT situation.

Rob

 

[plowhog]

Can you use some type of VPN to avoid the issues you mention?

I considered a VPN solution but to be accessible it must be always-on. And if it is always-on it is consuming bandwidth, which is metered and limited on a satellite system like HughesNet. So I would be using some amount of my monthly data allowance 100% of the time even if I only occasionally connected remotely.

Back when I researched VPN systems, I had a difficult time determining their underlying technology-- i.e. did the VPN client just reach out to it's server at a specific IP address? If so, that would fail under the unique HughesNet arrangement. Under HughesNet, you can know the IP of the remote location and still not be able to get there.

Only a VPN where each side connected to the middle would work. I believe that might be sort of an odd beast in the VPN world. Just like HughesNet is something of an odd beast itself.

 

[Fixastuff]

I considered a VPN solution but to be accessible it must be always-on. And if it is always-on it is consuming bandwidth, which is metered and limited on a satellite system like HughesNet. So I would be using some amount of my monthly data allowance 100% of the time even if I only occasionally connected remotely.

Back when I researched VPN systems, I had a difficult time determining their underlying technology-- i.e. did the VPN client just reach out to it's server at a specific IP address? If so, that would fail under the unique HughesNet arrangement. Under HughesNet, you can know the IP of the remote location and still not be able to get there.

Only a VPN where each side connected to the middle would work. I believe that might be sort of an odd beast in the VPN world. Just like HughesNet is something of an odd beast itself.

I have no idea what your talking about but the VPN: Private Internet Access (PIA) worked for me when I had viasat and hugesnet (they were crap btw).

 

[plowhog]

I have no idea what your talking about but the VPN: Private Internet Access (PIA) worked for me ...

Then you probably won't be able to help. ViaSat and HughesNet are different systems. Many remote access programs work with Viasat (Exede.) Not so with HughesNet.

My inquiry is what is possible, now, using Starlink.

BTW, here was a response to someone trying to remotely view a camera with HughesNet:

Re: Remote access of security cameras - REVISITED​

Basically, this is not possible on Gen5 as it currently stands. Configuring the IPv4 inbound port forwards required for a conventional DVR (Hikvision, etc.) will not work due to the CGN layer added to the Gen5 network. Your router's "public" IP is not a public Internet routable IP address.

Hughes does assign a public, routable, IPv6 block to your LAN, but it changes so often that it's useless. Dynamic DNS infrastructure for IPv6 isn't really much of a thing because customer issued IPv6 blocks aren't supposed to change. We're kind of in a pickle until (if ever) Hughes prevents the customer IPv6 blocks from changing.

 

[Fixastuff]

Then you probably won't be able to help. ViaSat and HughesNet are different systems. Many remote access programs work with Viasat (Exede.) Not so with HughesNet.

My inquiry is what is possible, now, using Starlink.

I have had and used it with HugesNet and Viasat and Starlink. It worked for my purposes but they are different that yours so I may be wrong.

 

[plowhog]

I have had and used it with HugesNet and Viasat and Starlink. It worked for my purposes but they are different that yours so I may be wrong.

I suspect maybe two things could have been different. Their Gen 5 system works differently from earlier versions. And their business accounts do permit static IP addresses. However, upgrading to a business account is more costly than using TeamViewer.

Anyway, I ordered Starlink long ago and am looking forward to faster speeds no matter .. anything else. Just hoping the remote access won't be difficult as it is now.

 

[BigBlue1]

Perhaps check out the Starlink section on Reddit. Lots more likely to have someone who can answer the question than here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/n26mcs

Rob

 

[plowhog]

Perhaps check out the Starlink section on Reddit.

I will look at that.

And fixastuff just mentioned he is successfully running his similar product right now on Starlink, so that is helpful as well.

 

[dmccarty]

Now to make it affordable....

$100 a month is affordable to us. We are paying $90 for a cell based internet service AND another $50-75 from CenturyStink.

The irony is that we kept the cell service and CenturyStink to make sure the cell service works, and it does, but we found having the back up, even with the slow DSL, worth keeping, and we might keep DSL, even after Starlink arrives. We would much rather keep the cell solution so we might have to find a cheaper provider.

Later,
Dan

 

[ponytug]

$100 a month is affordable to us. We are paying $90 for a cell based internet service AND another $50-75 from CenturyStink.

The irony is that we kept the cell service and CenturyStink to make sure the cell service works, and it does, but we found having the back up, even with the slow DSL, worth keeping, and we might keep DSL, even after Starlink arrives. We would much rather keep the cell solution so we might have to find a cheaper provider.

Later,
Dan

Given that Starlink is new, and space based, I plan on keeping a redundant service. I would recommend that anyone experiencing dropouts on Starlink consider a router with redundancy to seamless shift data to whatever link is up, to help ride through any glitches.

With our DSL provider, they are no longer offering dsl, so if we cancel we can never reconsider.


All the best,

Peter