Anyone using Starlink?

[MatthewL]

Anyone using Starlink either at work or at home?

 

Whats your feedback on it?

 

Good speeds? Reliable? Any caps on useage?

 

Are you using your own router with it or their supplied?

 

Also interested to hear from anyone using the Portability or RV side of things.

[PaddyNewman]

Yes, using at home as my primary internet connection.

 

Feedback - Aside from having to set it up on my own up a ladder, drill holes through my house and having a rather large cable coiled up in my room, its great. Was delivered quickly. Its been pretty reliable, few basic outages. I get a disconnect from my VPN maybe once a week currently but its a minor blip. I have it because my ADSL is like 15Mb down and 1Mb up, which is pants for more than some TV streaming and general browsing. I game a lot and downloading 100GB on 15Mb is going to take till my 40th birthday.

I think its a worthwhile investment for me, would cost £15k to install fibre to here, which is 14 years of Starlink. I won't be here more than 7-10 years, so works out.

 

Speeds - Mmm depends. Last night when I was sorting some stuff I did a test and got 190Mbps down and 30Mbps up with 34ms unloaded / 95ms loaded. I routinely see 200+ down and ~30 up. I had a very brief spot where I was hitting 300, but I presume that is just them testing capacity.

 

Router - Using theirs, wifi only. I really don't want to pay for the adapter. There is no port forwarding stuff anyway, my 'Starlink' wifi is my work PC and my personal PC. That is it. Everything else uses the ADSL so its not too stressed or anything like that. I have no desire to install another router in the way, frankly the power draw of the dish is enough to make me cry, adding another item to the wifes list of 'why is the electricity bill x' isn't a wise move. It uses, right now, 97W of draw, when it was snowing/real icy, -2 here, it was at 101W.

 

If I moved to another rural home, I'd grab it again if 35/67Mb wasn't available via copper. If I could get a reliable 50Mb, I would scrap it as my primary. Been a godsend though when my ADSL went out, similarly, the ADSL sorted me out when Starlink had its worldwide outage.

[MatthewL]

Thanks for sharing that with me. What is this adapter you refer to?

 

Do you get a true external IP address or is it CGNAT?

[PaddyNewman]

Adapter is for Ethernet, they don't offer as part of the router. It is yet another add-on at £40 or something.

 

All CGNAT, terrible if you want to use TeamViewer, I get a 'this is business use' warning, but switch to ADSL and I am perfectly fine to connect.

 

I don't host anything internally, so its not a problem for me. Obviously if you aim to game, CGNAT and ModerateNAT status go hand in hand.

[MatthewL]

Thanks for that, interesting to note, its not clear in what I've read online so far.

[PaddyNewman]

Always welcome to take a look/test it if you are anywhere near Lincolnshire, its a pretty simple concept though

 

Right now I am showing 245Mbps down, I can definitely hit that constantly when testing through Steam. My current IP is 145.224.67.x and according to my monitor, that changed about 3am, no reboots, but I do have an outage listed for about 2 seconds around that time both on monitor and the Starlink app, 1 delayed ping, 2201ms so presumably thats when it flipped.

 

I imagine given the size of the Starlink range, and the amount of UK subscribers, theres a fair few of us using that IP currently, the breakout is in Heathrow, this map is pretty cool too, starlink.sx, very resource intensive though.

[MatthewL]

I'm at the top of the county, drop me a PM where abouts are you? Curious to have a look and test out, see if its suitable for something I am planning.

[DalekSec]

I'm at the top of the county, drop me a PM where abouts are you? Curious to have a look and test out, see if its suitable for something I am planning.

 

According to their website they have a 30 day full refund guarantee, so could order one to test and send it back

[PaddyNewman]

I'm at the top of the county, drop me a PM where abouts are you? Curious to have a look and test out, see if its suitable for something I am planning.

 

My address is public on the net somewhere, but I am near Boston, just north of it.

 

What are you planning? Might be able to advise?

[MatthewL]

I'll be in touch in the new year. I'm up the other end of the A16.

 

Got a few ideas but depends on other things happening.

[Davit2005]

Saw this the other day concerning data caps and the limits set once hit for business users.

 

[timbo343]

Starlink came to my mind for some of our primary schools who have to wait 18 months for OpenReach to install fibre in the ground costing around £25k for each school or have to wait until 2024 / 25 for OpenReach to start planning a route.

 

Some of our Primary Schools struggle to get 20Mb down and 10mb up just like @MatthewL and his ADSL connection, but these primary schools are on FTTC and have been sold the connection as UP TO 80mb down and UP TO 20mb up!

 

Issues have come about now we are pushing server backups to cloud and backups are taking forever to do a full backup.

 

@Davit2005 thanks for the video, the data caps probably won't work for Schools - 1Tb a month data cap - some of my schools would blow this out the park for cloud backup in one night - ah, this only applies between 7am and 11pm.

 

Edited March 13, 2023 by timbo343

[msi_school]

I have one in East Yorkshire and it is very much ok, but it's only ok. I would still order the fibre.

[timbo343]

I have one in East Yorkshire and it is very much ok, but it's only ok. I would still order the fibre.

 

Of course, fibre over anything. I even considered a 4G connection.

[MatthewL]

With good 4G/5G coverage now that would be my option but know there are plenty of little spots just where you want to be Starlink would be best and/or only option.

 

I would always go for a wired connection over anything, when I was looking as I would be travelling/middle of no where a wired connection isn't an option.

[Wave9_Lee]

Starlink came to my mind for some of our primary schools who have to wait 18 months for OpenReach to install fibre in the ground costing around £25k for each school or have to wait until 2024 / 25 for OpenReach to start planning a route.

 

Some of our Primary Schools struggle to get 20Mb down and 10mb up just like @MatthewL and his ADSL connection, but these primary schools are on FTTC and have been sold the connection as UP TO 80mb down and UP TO 20mb up!

 

Issues have come about now we are pushing server backups to cloud and backups are taking forever to do a full backup.

 

@Davit2005 thanks for the video, the data caps probably won't work for Schools - 1Tb a month data cap - some of my schools would blow this out the park for cloud backup in one night - ah, this only applies between 7am and 11pm.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]68311[/ATTACH]

 

Worth checking alt-nets in your area to see if they cover. This is a useful tool; https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/broadband-map#6/51.414/-0.641/

Also double check what you're expecting to actually receive speedwise here; https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL/AddressHome - you should be getting within 10% of whatever this checker says. If not, raise a fault.

Make sure any on-site speedtests you do are direct from the router, and ideally, out of hours - could be a LAN issues..

Also, if in dire straits, you could take another fttc connection and load-balance. We've found this useful for lots of schools.

5G is getting more traction - you can postcode check all major networks on line

Finally the DFE funded fibre project should be coming around again shortly, you may be lucky!

 

cheers

[Chclark]

We are looking at it as one option as a backup line as we only have access to one fibre provider currently in our area so options are starlink, 4g/5g connection, wireless internet provider.

[lwatson213]

I’m quite interested in the potential for users requiring Starlink as either main or backup lines. We at Schools Broadband are starting to look into what is feasible and what is not, but it would be good to understand end-user requirements for Starlink when nothing else is feasibly possible.