Starlink

mksj said:
FYI, I just installed the Starlink system, pretty straight forward providing you have a clears view of the sky. You can check your location with a phone app that they have. I previously had ATT wired internet which was pretty slow at 6-8 Mbps, with the Starlink I am closer to 100 Mbps with an average latency of around 50ms. I do not expect them to pull fiber into were we live, speaking to the ATT tech the business model doesn't support it. My main reason for switching is with ATT the monthly bill for their internet/Direct TV package just keeps going up and the TV channel content is horrendous considering how much you pay. Almost all the channels are infomercials and the few regular TV channels also bombard you with advertisements. So pretty much plan to stream everything going forward, will see how that goes. Will have to see how it does in rain storms/bad weather, but given that the DirectTV satellite also goes down in heavy rainstorms it can't be any worse. I consider a reasonable investment, and they have a 30 day refund policy from the date that the dish is delivered. I put in my order for the Starlink about Dec. 2021, so about an 8 month wait.
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I have been using Starlink since March. I have found Starlink does drop service for a few minutes during heavy rain, but not for extended periods. It can also drop out for half a minute or so between satellites occasionally. There may be a difference in coverage between our regions so let us know what you experience
 
Just as a follow-up on my recent Starlink install, it has been about a week since I installed the system and so far it has been very reliable and download speeds are about 10X higher then my previous wired ATT service. I have am using their Ethernet adapter to hard wire my house service, but most of my computers are running wireless and I am getting WiFi speeds of 60 Mbps at around 100' feet away and 100-120 Mbps if in the same room as the router. I may add a mesh network, but the speed limitations are more with the external sites as opposed download speed of the dish. No rain yet to see how that effects the signal (my previous satellite TV service would go down with heavy rain), but there have been no outages or downtime in the last week. The Starlink router WiFi should be at least 3-4' above the floor for better reception. I am planning on adding a VOIP for the home phones, then I will cut the cord with ATT. In my previous house I had fiber/cable and you can get much faster download rates, but overall I am very happy with the Starlink dish network. A bit pricey, but will still be far less then what I pay for the ATT package l had previously. Since I am more rural, there is little chance that fiber/cable will ever be put in as everything is underground. I plan on using streaming services for TV, and internet I mostly use for my consulting work.

A few things on the install, I opted to mount my dish to one of my chimney's. I purchased their ground pole mount which is two 4' sections, and used the upper section with some antenna pole mounts that I got from Amazon. If you need it higher you can add the second 4' section. The poles are setup to lock into the dish mount, so just made life easier. They have other types of roof mounts available. The plug at the end of the removable 75' dish cable requires a 1.5" hole through the any walls as the plug end is quite large. I have stucco and wood, so used a masonry hole cutter on the outer wall. I did not buy their masonry routing kit, I turned my own wall plugs on my lathe so saved a few $. The Starlink router WiFi gets quite warm so needs some air circulation. The dishes do have a heater built in which may help if you live where you have snow in the winter, I turned mine off as there is little chance of snow where I live.
 
My wife wanted to go with Starlink because our service is mediocre, and she does a lot of stuff that pushes the limits of our service. For what ever reason she was being told we would have to install a tower for the dish because of the trees. This seems weird to me as we have a clear view of the sky to the south which is what most satellite services require but we do have tall redwood trees on the north and east sides of the house.

At least for now, I guess we will have to stick with the local provider and their phoneline based system.
 
The location of the satellites that the dish will target varies, Starlink has a phone app to scan the skies and gives you a general area in the sky/direction that the dish would be set at. When I used the app on the ground it said I would have spotty reception, on the roof it was fine. As far as I can tell once the dish scans and locks on to an area in the sky it remains fixed in that position. Starlink has a 30 day return policy from the day you receive it for a full refund for any reason (I assume you would pay shipping back). So you can try it in different locations and if it doesn't work to your satisfaction then return it. The time savings due to the higher connect speed for me was significant vs. my previous wired connection, and there are no data caps at least for now. I also had constant outages with ATT wired, sometimes for days.
 
The starlink satellites move quite quickly overhead, and rapidly switch between satellites. Here is an interesting starlink satellite tracker: https://starlink.sx/
There are several others. It appears that the dish physically orientates itself to one general location and then uses phased array technology to rapidly track the current communications satellites. Having done some phased array radar work a few decades back, I'd be fascinated with knowing more about the technology inside the dishes, it appears to be quite complex, with several concurrent communications channels used. It appears from the satellite tracking/switching schemes that it is using one primary satellite for communications but has standby channels to several of the local satellites. Satellite switching appears to occur with an interval of as little as 5-10 seconds. That's a lot of compute power to handle all of the message routing.
 
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I’m the OP on this thread and just wanted to give a quick update. After living in our home for 30yrs we finally have decent internet. I was on the Starlink waitlist for 1.5yrs when I found out they were putting fiber internet on our road (thanks Joe). We have had it for about a month now and It’s fantastic! I’m getting 350mbps down and 11 up for $55/mo, can’t beat it. I’m kind of glad that I’m not dealing with Elon given the current events.
 
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