Starlink

[BigBlue1]

you pay 130 dollars a month for dsl?

I paid $92/mo for "5" Mb/s DSL when we moved to our rural home. And by "5", they meant 1.5-3. Sometimes rural folks have few options.

 

[LittleBill21]

I am rural, but luckly am literally the last house in my area that can get comcast.

 

[JethroB]

Interesting map, a narrow swath across upstate NY in the wait list area.
I've had mine for several months now and while the service is much better then what I had it's not as spectacular
as most post that it is.
And my location is in the wait listed area.

The nearest active cell is about 15 miles north of me according to the map, 40 miles or more E, S, and W. Starlink service is pretty good as is the wireless signal in my steel barn 120 feet away using the supplied router. Still pleased after 3 months.

 

[bdhsfz6]

Interesting map, a narrow swath across upstate NY in the wait list area.
I've had mine for several months now and while the service is much better then what I had it's not as spectacular
as most post that it is.
And my location is in the wait listed area.

I'm also shown in the wait area on the map, about 40 miles east of the nearest active cell, but I've had Starlink service for a month now. I suspect the map is out of date.

 

[BigBlue1]

I'm also shown in the wait area on the map, about 40 miles east of the nearest active cell, but I've had Starlink service for a month now. I suspect the map is out of date.

Well, it may/must have had availability when you were offered service there. The fact that no more availability is present for new customers isn't surprising.

 

[plowhog]

The new "portability" option comes with a catch. The 100MB-200MB advertised speed is only guaranteed at your service location. If you sign up for portability, you take your chances on speed as you move away from your service location.

I've taken Starlink from NV to CA a few times now. It has worked correctly every time, even though I don't have "portability" and this was before it was offered. And I can vouch that the speed is slower away from my assigned location. I haven't examined it a lot but the few times I did it was about 30MB-40MB. Still way faster than my other alternative in CA.

I still don't understand the purpose or function of the hexagon cells. Now that I have moved Starlink out of my hexagon (100 mi away) a few times and had it work, it raised some new questions. As does the "portability" option.

Still much to learn.

 

[newbury]

<snip> People with the rectangular dish have it fairly easy... Just go up on the roof, disconnect the cable and then have a second cable to use when portable.

Just go up on the roof, can be difficult or impossible for some people.

 

[BigBlue1]

Just go up on the roof, can be difficult or impossible for some people.

Well, sure. But if your dish doesn't have a removable cable it's a whole different level of difficult. I'm assuming someone who can safely install their dish on their roof can safely retrieve it.

Everyone's dish sits outside somewhere and the cable is routed inside. Regardless of roof, pole, or sitting on a picnic table, retrieving the dish itself is far easier than removing a cable that has been properly secured to a building and routed through one or more walls. That's my point.

 

[Fallon]

My dish showed up yesterday. Of course just as I was heading out of town for a couple weeks. Setup was trivial as an IT professional. Easy enough my mom could have handled it.

I set it on the fire pit on the back deck & it had signal by the time I got around to connecting to the WiFi & doing setup stuff a few minutes later. Speeds seemed as advertised. Under 100ms pings 100-200 megabit down a couple dozen up. WiFi wasn't great, but I left the router outside & was testing from my phone several rooms away. Should be plenty fine when I properly mount the dish & router.

My account has the option for roaminig for $25/mo. Will probably add that for our RVing stuff in a few months.

Will have to see how fast & stable it is longterm when we get home. But initial impressions are good.

 

[cqaigy2]

Just go up on the roof, can be difficult or impossible for some people.

Buy a second unit.

 

[LittleBill21]

Buy a second unit.

pretty much. I can climb my roof, I would not be doing it just to pull a dish down.

 

[Hilbilly]

Buy a second unit.

With all the people waiting for their first unit, I doubt a second unit would come quickly. If you could get one would you also be required to pay the full monthly service fee instead of the mobility fee?

 

[plowhog]

Starlink "caught me" using the system outside my service address.

Oddly, it never caught me when I was away. But when I returned to my service address and fired it up, I got a message ... bitching ... about not be in the assigned location. Even though, I once again was at home base.

The system would not "wake up" and provide any service. I added the portability option, and it still didn't change. But I left it alone (and rebooted it) and eventually it was back to normal.

However, I am frequently getting an error regarding "Starlink has detected you are using a non-Starlink wifi router. Please only use the Starlink wifi router." I have been using a Netgear r9000 router (using ethernet cable) with Starlink wifi turned off. It has been problematic enough that, for now, I reset to factory config and am only using the dishy, the Starlink wifi router, and cable. Seems pretty primitive that it ******* if I want to integrate another device into the network?

 

[ponytug]

I'm sorry to hear that it is giving you grief. Have you contacted support?

I think that Starlink wants their router to do the nameserving (DHCP), or be cut out of the loop entirely. (Starlink router shutdown option, which requires a factory reboot to turn back on)

Did you have your router running a different subnet to Starlink? Have you considers just moving the house network to a different address space than the Starlink router or McFlatFace?

All the best,

Peter

 

[plowhog]

I will double check these numbers, but I believe the Starlink router uses 10.0.0.1 by default. And its DHCP serves up 10.0.0.x addresses. I have not tried to change that, and am not sure you even can?

My Netgear router is 192.168.1.1. I prefer to use that address for a router since (in the future) it will sync up to all my home devices which already use 192.168.1.x addresses. (Except for testing of a few components with Netgear/starlink, all my home devices still connect to my old network.)

I have tested three devices connecting to the Netgear router, then onto Starlink. Phone, tablet, TV. Mostly testing streaming video. Either direct to a TV (using wireless), or first to my phone then screen casting to TV (also using wireless.) Most of the time it works, but then, at times, the error message about using a "non-Starlink wifi router" pops up seemingly randomly.

I will add the Netgear router back in today, and see if the error message returns. If it does, I can always reset to factory config again. I have not yet opened up any service ticket with Starlink.

 

[LouNY]

I'm using an older Netgear router attached to the dongle from Starlink.
I've had no warning messages, the Starlink WFI is active as well as the Netgear R6220 WFI.
I have connected to each of them at different times with different devices.
Speed test when going through the Starlink are higher then through the Netgear.
Actual performance I don't see any difference most of the time.
The Netgear seems to max out around 80 MPS while the Starlink can be 200 but is usually around 100-120 MBS.
One thing that really irritates me is that because the ground station that my system is using must be in NYC
all these website that try and locate you try assigning me to stores in NYC or NJ and I have to change the stores to my location.

 

[ponytug]

If it were me, I would try moving the Netgear to 192.168.N.0/24 (where N>=2). The 10.0.0.X address(es) seem to be reserved for the dish. My Starlink router came with its address at 192.168.1.X, so I moved the house off of that, and things have been fine since. I have read over on Reddit that the Starlink router is limited to 127 addresses in the 192.168.1.n (192.168.1.0/12) network, but I haven't seen anything official.

All the best,

Peter

 

[LittleBill21]

I will double check these numbers, but I believe the Starlink router uses 10.0.0.1 by default. And its DHCP serves up 10.0.0.x addresses. I have not tried to change that, and am not sure you even can?

My Netgear router is 192.168.1.1. I prefer to use that address for a router since (in the future) it will sync up to all my home devices which already use 192.168.1.x addresses. (Except for testing of a few components with Netgear/starlink, all my home devices still connect to my old network.)

I have tested three devices connecting to the Netgear router, then onto Starlink. Phone, tablet, TV. Mostly testing streaming video. Either direct to a TV (using wireless), or first to my phone then screen casting to TV (also using wireless.) Most of the time it works, but then, at times, the error message about using a "non-Starlink wifi router" pops up seemingly randomly.

I will add the Netgear router back in today, and see if the error message returns. If it does, I can always reset to factory config again. I have not yet opened up any service ticket with Starlink.

if your plugged into the wan or internet port on the netgear, the starlink router doesn't know the netgear subnet, due to nat. if you have it plugged into one of the switch ports, that could cause a issue.

 

[BigBlue1]

Starlink "caught me" using the system outside my service address.

Oddly, it never caught me when I was away. But when I returned to my service address and fired it up, I got a message ... bitching ... about not be in the assigned location. Even though, I once again was at home base.

The system would not "wake up" and provide any service. I added the portability option, and it still didn't change. But I left it alone (and rebooted it) and eventually it was back to normal.

However, I am frequently getting an error regarding "Starlink has detected you are using a non-Starlink wifi router. Please only use the Starlink wifi router." I have been using a Netgear r9000 router (using ethernet cable) with Starlink wifi turned off. It has been problematic enough that, for now, I reset to factory config and am only using the dishy, the Starlink wifi router, and cable. Seems pretty primitive that it ******* if I want to integrate another device into the network?

That doesn't make much sense. A big selling point of the Starlink system is that you can use the included router or replace it (via simple removal if you have the round dish system or putting router in bypass mode for the rectangular system) and use your own router. Tons of people do this. I've never heard of that error message you listed before and I pay pretty close attention to Starlink.

As a side note, even if you did have to leave the Starlink router in place you can connect another router or mesh system to it and use that as your primary wifi network. Works fine. And for the vast majority of use cases the double NAT situation isn't an issue.

 

[BigBlue1]

I will double check these numbers, but I believe the Starlink router uses 10.0.0.1 by default. And its DHCP serves up 10.0.0.x addresses. I have not tried to change that, and am not sure you even can?

Devices I connect to my Starlink system, via wifi or direct ethernet, get 192.168.0.x IPs. Never seen a 10.x address in my system.