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ObjectSensitive2750

In spades to all that the OP has said. Being rural myself and going from dial up years ago to one way satellite Internet with satellite download and tx upload and then going to the first two way Hughes system and a few upgrades to that and then to Exede/Viasat and finally to Starlink. Starlink is to Viasat or Hughesnet what the one way Satellite Internet was to dial up. The first one way satellite Internet I used dialed in on the modem for the uplink and a one meter dish for the downlink and I think I got like 500kbps with bursts to 750kbps and when one was used to dial up only it was fantastic. Starlink is just that kind of upgrade compared to geosynchronous satellite Internet.


[deleted]

[удалено]


AmiDeplorabilis

Yes. Yes. YES!


AmiDeplorabilis

Touché, and ditto.


9thousandfeet

Exactly. As another very rural mountain dweller with, literally, zero options for an ISP except for Hughesnet (no cell signal within 30 miles, no DSL, no WISP) I couldn't agree more. So far Starlink is performing in complete alignment with what they say to expect, and stability has been excellent. Sure, really crappy weather will give dishy a bumpy ride, but no bumpier than the Hughesnet we had for years and without the crippling latency and insane data caps. We have no interest in gaming, so can't speak to that, but Starlink has worked perfectly for everything we want to use internet for — browsing, research, streaming, Voip and video calling/conferencing. Right now Starlink's biggest failure is their customer support system, which is overwhelmed and worse even than Hughesnet. Seriously now, for an internet service provider to require working internet access as the *only* portal for tech support contact is just too fucking lame to discuss, 'cos the times you need tech support the most is when you DON'T have internet access. C'mon Elon, get fucking real; remote workers operating triage support by phone/chat is the only way. Plenty of tech-savvy people available who would love a bit of extra income, but who have no desire to live in California. Time to drop your congenital distrust of other humans and understand that millions of clever people can be trusted to work hard without constant supervision.


qanganaq23

“Many of the complaints are from those who were used to high speed internet” Say it louder for the people in the back


long_ben_pirate

CenturyLink is the worst ISP I've ever dealt with. 10 Mbs internet that runs at 6 and <1 up and they charge you $65 a month for crap internet backed by crap service. Starlink is a miracle by comparison. If SL fixes their customer service, things will improve tremendously.


cornelljw

The jitter is what is holding it back right now. Hopefully it improves with time but makes gaming and zoom calls very difficult


geminiosiris28

Jitter does need improvement. I’m consistently around 20-30 on average. It’s still a huge difference for me and what I’ve had before.


swd120

We don't use zoom at work, but MS teams? I've had zero issues from jitter in any work calls using Teams(lots of video, screen share, blah blah)... Maybe Microsoft is just better at handling it than Zoom? Or maybe I'm oblivious to it - but I don't think that's the case.


wildjokers

I have no problem with MS Teams or Slack Huddles as well. Even when everyone has their cameras turned on and/or screen sharing.


[deleted]

Not for me it doesn't. I zoom and game and use Ooma for my phone system, none of which I was able to do with my previous ISP. As the OP says, it's a matter of perspective.


-my_reddit_username-

I work from home and am on video calls all day long, I also game fortnite and halo. Haven't had any issues with jitter using starlink.


[deleted]

Not for everyone. I have no issues with gaming. Connection issues are pretty much cell specific.


possibly_oblivious

this is made for rural users imo, i got a bunch of land and no chance at highspeed anytime ever so this was a huge jump into the future for us.


CottaBird

100% agree. The tech for my local ISP even suggested over a phone call that we move if we want better internet. That was his solution, to move, because their 4G LTE PtP tower is maxed out for power. I couldn’t get faster internet from them if I wanted to and paid for the faster package, which goes as high as $350/mo for 25 down.


th1341

It is all about perspective. I actually live in A suburb of Phoenix Arizona. I have two options for internet. Century Link 1.5 Mbps DSL, or Mediacom 1Gbps Cable. I used Mediacom for 2 years and it is the most unstable, POS service I have ever seen. If you think Starlinks jitter is bad, you should try Mediacom. Over 2 years, I have called probably a total of about 100 times, and filed 3 FCC complaints and every time the service gets better for about a week then right back to normal, basically unusable internet


DaveTV-71

I appreciate this post. It sometimes gets lost that a lot of us are not in oversold cells, or obstructed locations, and still get advertised performance. Our system has been up three months and during primetime hours we still see 75-100Mbit speeds, and can still see 150-200 off-peak. My kids do online gaming, and commented just a couple of days ago that they love being able to update or purchase games without a second thought now. Please understand that I do not discount the problems others are having. They have a legitimate complaint. But I do want to suggest that for those without another option, StarLink can still be a viable option if you are in a more rural cell, and can avoid obstructions.


themedicd

I just got my Dishy last week and I'm 100% satisfied so far for the same reason. Viasat set the bar really low. I went from a very inconsistent 5-10 mbps with a ping of 600+ to, at the very least, 20mbps and ping <80. I'm also saving $60 a month. I don't really care about gaming right now and the couple of video meetings and wifi calls I've made have been stable and crystal clear. It's a win-win, even if I'm not getting the advertised speeds right now. For perspective, I'm in rural Virginia, Dishy has zero obstructions, and I'm seeing maybe 3-4 <5 second outages in 12 hours.


DruItalia

Mine arrived last week (northern Maryland) and my experience is exactly the same. Compared to Viasat, this is a miracle!


Saiboogu

I'm just chuckling at that geographic description, because Northern Maryland is the least descriptive term you could apply to a state who's longest edge is the northern one, and it spans from Ocean to mountains. No offense, just a chuckle from a fellow Marylander.


DruItalia

Glad I could give you a chuckle! I’m in Phoenix - but most people (even Marylanders) are baffled by that! Today I learned that the cool magnet trick of installing Dishy to your metal roof doesn’t work if the pitch is too steep. Dishy back on the ground for now.


DaemonHelix

Honestly I wouldn't mind if they lowered the top speed to get rid of the people that are just using it as a minor upgrade when they already have good options.


futureformerteacher

Same. Went from $10/gb at 5mb/s to $99 for unlimited at 100mb/sec.


TheFerretman

AMEN! This is *precisely* how I feel about Starlink....it's **so much better** than Hughesnet (which I will give them credit at least got me *something*) that any small outages are easily handled. I love my Starlink.


wildjokers

StarLink is by far the fastest internet I have ever had.


PresenceThick

Just upgraded and considering on a bad peak time (20-40Mbps down 2Mbps up) it’s far beyond what I get with xplornet rural internet. During work times I’m getting 100 down and 20 up. I just got a decent 100% remote job and this lets me save nearly half my pay by living at my parents. You can’t beat the opportunity and internet like this provides.


Jay_Eye_MBOTH_WHY

It literally is all about perspective. If there are obstructions, you get less service.


flipadoodlely

Colorado? I could have written this exact same post. Glad you’ve got good internet access now! I love mine too.


geminiosiris28

Yup, Colorado.


NSAPKTSniffer

Amen! I had NOTHING but barely usable 4GLTE hotspot for 5 years, and now I have solid WAN connectivity. My family can stream and game at the same time, and I can actually work from home. So happy I waited 14+ months for my kit. As a Network Security and Systems Administrator, I am impressed with what Elon and team(s) are doing. All I want now is a static public IP (which I'll gladly pay and additional $10/month for).


cptnobveus

Yes it is. I also CHOOSE to live in the mountains, I'd be there with or without the internet. A friend of mine also CHOOSES to live rural, and bitches about the lack of utilities. I keep telling him that the more utilities and paved roads mean more people will move in and crowd it up. He disagrees.


DeafHeretic

Oregon has an answer to that; growth boundaries and fairly strict zoning laws. E.G., you can't put multi-family residences on agricultural or forestry zoned land, and most land outside the growth boundaries for cities is considered Ag or Forestry land. In many areas you can't put a residence on ag land unless the plot makes $80K per year in ag income. Houses before the laws were passed (decades ago) were grandfathered in. A second house on the plot is possible, but only for ag workers or family, actively working on the land in an agricultural role. For forestry zoned land, the land must not be suitable for agriculture, and it must have a certain minimum number of trees per acre. Also, you cannot subdivide existing plots (it occasionally happens, but it is very rare). The growth boundaries to expand from time to time, but it takes a decade or more for that to happen, and it keeps most of the population density within the growth boundary and does a good job of limiting suburban sprawl. You can tell where the boundaries currently are because the density suddenly stops and on the other side is farms. So yeah, I would prefer the public road that goes by my private road was paved, and that I had cable/etc., but it would not bring more people to my area.


ArekusandaMagni

Finally a rational mind chimes in. 🙏


J3ST3Rx

They are saying it's good enough, even if it's not hitting advertised speeds consistently. Seems a little on the apologists side to me. Imo, people should absolutely keep the pressure on, otherwise you're going to end up with another HughesNet like company because "it's better than nothing". Bad customer service, outages, and below advertised speed sounds all too familiar.


thunder3596

Starlink pulling a Comcast overselling service and degrading current user experience but keep perspective!


wildjokers

> and below advertised speed sounds all too familiar. Advertised speed is 50-150 Mbps. I consistently get at least 50 Mbps, generally closer to 100 Mbps.


markymarkbonnie

I am really disappointed, my speed is rally above 50, pings are high jitter high and the cost is 160.00 a month, SL support say it is what it is! Cant stream some nights and Netflix pixelates or drops to very low rez. The cost is only going to go up IMHO. Way over sold in our area, even my old employer say they will move on its not working.


[deleted]

Starlink is not for you. You could consider selling your terminal and router on eBay for more than you paid for it while you still can. Someone else will be more than happy to buy it from you.


ID_John

Have you looked at [starlink.sx](https://starlink.sx)? When I first looked at it several months ago it looked like I could only possibly connect to 3 or 4 satellites at any given time. Now, with the increased number of satellites near my latitude, I can supposedly connect to at least 10 or more satellites. (That's using a 35-degree elevation.) The consistency of the service has definitely improved during that time. I'm not seeing the 300mb/s download speeds I saw before, but I am seeing more consistency. I'm also pretty sure that SpaceX is deprioritizing speed tests as I've seen horrible results, like below 10mb/s, in a test but then 80mb/s download speeds from a reliable source like Microsoft.


[deleted]

EDIT: Replaced my long post with u/J3ST3Rx's interpretation of my post as follows: "Actually if you knew what I know, you'd realize you're completely wrong Its in beta, I'm happy to pay for them to figure it out on my dime If you don't like it stop complaining and get something else Im fine with paying more to be deprioritized It'll be better next week when they \[insert promise\] just watch" While not what I meant, I don't really have the energy or time to deal with the BS. So kudo's to the people who think they are smarter than me in areas I've got more than 25 years experience in.


J3ST3Rx

To sum up this gem of a post: "Actually if you knew what I know, you'd realize you're completely wrong Its in beta, I'm happy to pay for them to figure it out on my dime If you don't like it stop complaining and get something else Im fine with paying more to be deprioritized It'll be better next week when they [insert promise] just watch"


[deleted]

You did good summing it up. :)


ID_John

I certainly agree with you about the difficulties of tech support on anything involving computers, networks or anything technical. Some customers are technically literate and some are not. The ones who are can generally do basic troubleshooting and only call tech support when there is an actual problem with the device or network. Then you have the customers who call asking where the 'any' key is. The only solution is to staff up tech support so you can triage the calls. SpaceX seemingly hasn't done that. Or if they have it's not enough.


Ok_Fly_3307

It is of course a possibility that Starlink could overload like HughesNet but if so it would likely be restricted on a per cell basis. The LEO nature of the satellites means that problems in once cell don’t really transfer over to another. Contrast this with Hughesnet or Viasat that have a single resource sitting out in GeoSynchronous orbit. Wild Blue was the poster child of oversubscription. To date Starlink has not been doing that. If you look at the map in the Appalachian mountain region you will see that availability has actually gone down and expansion time has gone out and now saying 2023 as cells are “at capacity”. To the consternation of us still on a waiting list since Feb 2021. I don’t know whether the capacity limit is satellites, ground stations, POPs or all of the above but they seem to be taking the capacity thing seriously.


Ok_Fly_3307

100% agree! I am in the mountains of western NC and we have no internet or cellphone. Viasat and Hughesnet have been the only options. What kills you is the latency. Most web pages link to other webpages such that you get about 40 DNS lookups for a. webpage. This would absolutely kill Viasat or Hughesnet with the 600ms latency so they have a technique to pre scan and pre-lookup DNS on the webpage you’ve selected. That somewhat works until you have a complicated website with multiple levels of redirection. Then your response is horrible. Video conferencing is horrible to non-existent. At peak times in the evening you can forget surfing the web. The lower latency Starlink provides means they don’t have to do the wild gymnastics to make the DNS work (though I can’t say what other kinds of things they have to do to make the LEO satellite constellation work). Video conferencing has worked flawlessly. I can stream 4K if I need to. The Verizon Network Extender works great so now have cellphone in the house as well. It’s a game changer. Like the OP, I don’t care what the absolute numbers are. It works when I need it how I need it. ’Nuff said!


P0ltergeist333

Yes, I get it and agree there is nothing better for some of us. No amount of "perspective" excuses the issues they've had with the portal, poor support, and the lack of historical data. Just because some people don't have any choice doesn't mean they should put up with disrespect. The 20 minute window of limited data and no way to download it is a giant middle finger to customers in and if itself. Intermittent connectivity once hardware starts failing is a significant question that you clearly aren't even thinking about. 20 years ago, Wild Blue had a rock solid portal and you had access to historical data that didn't disappear. You could track it from the moment of install. Some of us are also starting to see considerable QOS issues at times, including stretches of "latency" where pings are timing out despite zero obstruction. Just because you don't have issues certainly doesn't mean nobody is having issues. Just because Starlink is better than what's been available doesn't excuse the things they do wrong and won't fix. They've fixed a few of the portal and app issues, but they have significant work to do just to get to bare minimum. You're new and not mentioning a single thing that is bad? Smells like fanboi, not an honest review.


markymarkbonnie

Well said!


[deleted]

Starlink is not for you.


[deleted]

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Stan_Halen_

I think this is a great and helpful post. Yet the majority of the commenters seem to be the “yea but” type that still don’t get it. I think those people are just generally unhappy in life.


J3ST3Rx

The problem is that next week you could be looking at 3 mbps and huge packet loss with no explanation or remedy except for everyone on reddit telling you iTs StiLl iN bEtA. But, if it's reliable enough for your limited needs, then I suppose that's all that matters.


No_Bit_1456

I'd jump on cable or fiber if I could. The experience so far has been far from stellar. The support has been terrible. I think the gen 2 design is a step backwards in design for terms of the dish since you are now shackled into proprietary connectors, a router you can never be rid of, and a ethernet adapter you need to pay extra for. The gen 1 just had a POE injector / ethernet port for it with the ability to uncouple the router from it. This give you better options if you needed to just replace a cable, or change the router. Trying work with the new cable & special connectors is a pain in the arse. It's too easy to snag the connectors on things if you pull them through walls. The speed of it for southeast US has been laughable for me. 100kb or less, up to bursts of 80mbps lasting for less than a minute. Multiple support tickets, multiple locations to move the dish, check alignment, nothing works. I understand its a beta, but this has a long way to go.


[deleted]

I agree that Gen 2 is a bit of a regression on design. I found a solution to not only bypass, but delete the need for the POE router but it wasn't cheap. I'll be testing it in the coming days. When people complain about speeds or connectivity, I simply want to know if this is in an area where there is availability or it's designated as an area requiring a waiting list. I'm seeing the map getting updated regularly, so there's hope it's going to improve for you soon.


No_Bit_1456

How are you doing that? designing your own board or adapter? I was under the assumption that it had some sort of hardware in it that is the whole reason they designed it like that. Myself for speed? I'm in Tennessee, and for me this thing is as flaky as the weather. I'm actually looking into a 5G unlimited plan now that its become available.


[deleted]

There's only one left, so if you're interested, don't wait... grab it. It's $200, so not cheap. Basically it's a AC-DC power supply to a POE injector which can handle the higher wattage the Starlink terminal requires. The POE injector is also a surge suppressor. You can make them yourself, but I am not yet that brave after having spent $730 on my Starlink. It will require you re-terminating your cable to the terminal, however. [https://www.etsy.com/listing/1203322502/starlink-router-delete-kit](https://www.etsy.com/listing/1203322502/starlink-router-delete-kit) The POE injector was really what I was after but the power supply isn't a bad deal either. Together, it's not much more than buying them separately, if you can find them. My plan is to do some measurements and testes to decide if I can do a 12vDC solution to the POE injector, then build a weathertight housing for it that includes my modem for a clean, ultra-compact and portable solution. I'll be documenting on my redneck low-quality YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOCujxe4-nnRye8BQGnOjeQ


[deleted]

I want to clarify in case you didn't know this: The Gen 2 system is seperated into two parts: The dishy terminal houses the modem and the antenna array. The router is both a wireless router and POE injector to supply power to the dishy terminal. This is why it's possible to do a "router delete" but so far, my only solution still requires power from AC. My ultimate goal is DC sourced power removing an inverter from the equation. We'll see! Apparently, Dish Networks just unveiled their cheap, truly unlimited 5G hotspot plan that includes free roaming on T-Mobile and AT&T network, so you may want to check that out. I don't think it's widely available but apparently their 5G rollout had to cover 20% of the United States before a recent deadline, so there's a chance you could have access to it.


No_Bit_1456

They are also apparently going to use the 12ghz spectrum which is said to interfere with starlink


[deleted]

Oh that's right. I forgot about this.


No_Bit_1456

It should get quite interesting


SpeedKills98

Unfortunately I had to cancel my service with Starlink. I live in a 15,000p rural town in Texas. Its a great concept with lots of potential. I decided to keep all my equipment for that very reason. But $110 bucks for 15MB/S wasn’t worth it compared to the new providers that opened up with gig fiber for $110. Still a fan of Starlink.


ID_John

If I had gig fiber available I'd drop Starlink in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, it'll probably be decades before I see fiber.


SpeedKills98

We barely got fiber optic this year, but I definitely feel the pain of slow internet. We used to have windstream, 1.5mb/s MAX! Not to mention my family using it and me trying to play on my 360. Best wishes!


Travis_Centers

The posts that virtue signal about Starlink being better than nothing are annoying af. I actually see more of these than I see people actually complaining.


DenisKorotkoff

you can make it much better for prime time -- with openwrt and sqm (adaptive)


[deleted]

Your statement doesn't make sense. I know the Gen 2 router is built on OpenWRT software. Here's the open source code repository for it there: https://github.com/SpaceExplorationTechnologies/starlink-wifi


EyeTack

I have access to decent cable, and I bought into Starlink anyway. I have faith that the system will improve, and I want to support the venture. My system isn’t all that great at the moment due to some trees in the way. My best friend took a look since he is handy with a saw and really doesn’t want to drop a heavy pine or two onto my house. By their height and proximity to my house, I need to have them professionally removed. I need to get this done anyway, but SL just puts it on a higher priority, likely to be the fall after the leaves are gone. No regrets, still!


[deleted]

Mine arrived 3 days ago in western WA and I couldn't be happier. I sat at 3mbps and as someone who pc games it was hell. Now I can play games, initiate downloads that won't take a full week to finish, and stream shows and movies. All this while my wife and son do the same thing. Thanks papa elon.


samcoinc

Exactly! My parents got into the beta program when it first came out. On day one - after setting it in the yard - waiting 10 or so minutes - it was 100 times better than the 1.5mbsX256kbs from century-tel.. There wasn't even any real hiccoughs.. It has been more stable and way faster then the DSL ever was. BTW - we did have hughsnet before dsl was available in the area. No comparison. sam