Update December 2023: Use this link when signing up to Starlink to get one month free: www.starlink.com/?referral=RC... Easy to set up, not too expensive, way faster than 4G.
I forgot to mention that SSH connections get dropped quite regularly with this, which did not happen with the terrestrial connection. Perhaps this is due to handing off the connection to a different satellite? I've never seen it happen while I'm actually using the terminal, but if I leave one open for a few hours it will almost always get dropped. Probably not a big deal for most people though.
@@rjung_ch NZ$160. The hardware should work anywhere, but I'm not sure if it's unlocked to do so. The fact that it is checking the GPS location means they could in theory disable it at will, which makes sense because otherwise anyone who got hold of this box can just start using it - there was no login or credentials required during setup. They also sell a plan called "mobile" or something like that aimed at RV users, which presumably does not care about GPS location.
@@vatterger With the old 4G connection I could keep an SSH terminal open for a week or more, on the same servers so I'm doubtful it's that type of issue. We have ClientAliveInterval set to 300 and ClientAliveCountMax is 3, which should allow 900 seconds for a connection to be re-established. Maybe some relevant info here: www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/umz1o6/constant_ssh_problems/ www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/v8igsz/ssh_over_starlink_was_frustrating_then_totally/
The fact that they removed the ethernet port from the base means the possible reliability is just straight up so much worse now, even ignoring the sat link quality. It's mind blowing how they thought "nah who needs that".
I'd just plug in a WIFI repeater next to the router which can do WIFI -> Ethernet and run a cable from there to your PC. Edit: I read that there is a dongle for the Starlink router that has Ethernet ports.
Can use raspberry pi and get things over ethernet cable and then wifi close to starlink, or the ethernet port directly: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gBd7QmzPRGs.html
Ohh too many comments from me on this one! But just wanted to chime in that "stop sell" simply means they can't sell any more services on that tower to any customers because the tower is over-subscribed.
Chris - I got the router box and just brought a cable from the Starlink router through into where I wanted it and bunged a decent WiFi access point on that. You can use your own router as well
With your video's help (big thanks!), I got my Starlink going in less than 5 minutes just now ... wow! For NZD$199 per month I got Starlink RV which allows me to take it anywhere including my holiday house. Yes the NZD$160 is locked to one location they say. I went from 0.1mbps Upload to 8 to 16mbps immediately upon plugging it in and Download is off the charts ... wow! I have the Ethernet extension too - to wall ports around my home. I'm not a heavy user, just a farmer. I'll see how it goes. Cheers, Shane M (North Otago)
Definitely recommend getting the ethernet adapter. That goes for any internet, really. No matter what hardships you need to endure to get those cables run, ethernet is always going to be worth it.
I was considering Starlink as I live up in the hills here in spain about 15km from the nearest town, my internet using ADSL was between 2.5 and 3.5 megas. Just when I was about to pull the plug and get starlink I got a phone call from my ISP saying that fibre optics was now available at a lesser price than ADSL so I jumped on it, 600megas for the first month then up to 1gb symmetrical, Wow its fast, only trouble is I had to buy a gigabyte switch as my old one was only 10/100 and the wifi adapters in my pc's was also slow. Really pleased with the speed after living almost in the dark for years and after 3 months never had a dropout.
We got our star link a little while ago. Its absolutely amazing, bar the router. Its the best option for our internet as it would be around $10,000 aud to get wired internet where we are. Australia problems I guess.
Hey Chris; I do quite a bit of networking work for businesses and the connectivity/speed comes down to the specs and the quality of the wifi chipsets/antennas used. Antenna placement and tuning is also part of this. Imacs from 2012-2013 are still testing better than some of the brand new pc laptops I'm installing for clients. Mind you these (probably yours too) wifi cards are 802.11n, not even AC or AX. Seeing your Imac testing is exactly what I run into on a daily basis with older equipment. For Win/Linux desktops Intel wifi cards with external antennas makes a huge difference fyi.
Try to turn off 5GHz wifi on the Starlink router and/or the PC and run on 2.4GHz. Your top speed will be lower, but you'll get better range and fewer dropped packets.
Slightly off topic here, would this also apply for wifi connections within a house hold? If I'm over 10m from my router and using wifi, should I upgrade to an intel card? (currently using a Qualcomm Atheros AR9287 Wireless Network Adapter). Many thanks.
@@glenharris5728 I'm finding this isn't the case anymore with new wifi6 APs+clients. I suspect the antennas are now better tuned around the 5ghz band as apposed to before when 5ghz was shoehorned onto 2.4ghz antennas
@@poobertop 2 things here; Cost/reward and compatibility. Network card upgrades are trickier with laptops, they are more expensive and they can run into driver problems. Desktops almost a no brainer. I think AR9287 is an older 802.11n chipset, so the answer is yes a modern card will absolutely bump up the speed/coverage but you gotta do your homework.
Chris put the dish on the computer side of the house so you can put the router next to the computers..... Christine said you can get a adaptor to plug directly into desktop it seems to help me versus the wifi link
Ditch the WiFi for everything you can and hardwire your network to all devices you don't move anywhere. Buy the ethernet adapter and the system will be far more stable with fewer fluctuations. If you cant run ethernet everywhere the next best thing is a gigabit power line adapter kit with the ethernet adapter to get it where you need it. I had to use ethernet to 2 indoor access points and one outdoor AP to cover every area of my house and property and it has been working well with full speed pretty much everywhere.
When I checked the transfer speeds using the Starlink app (a few weeks ago) I thought there was the option to test the speed of either the router to internet or the connected device to the internet. So you could do both tests to see how much your wifi connection was bottle necking the link.
I think the lesson to be learned here is that if you want faster internet, aim a camera at your device :p In all seriousness though, there's certainly some black magic and voodoo going on when it comes to internet speed. I have a 4g router which typically gets me around 30Mbps upload, yet my phone (using its own 4g connection) gets closer to 100Mbps. Both my router and phone are using the same service provider, so the logical conclusion is the difference in speed is due to different hardware. Maybe the phone has a better antenna? Who knows. Either way, I use my phone 4g for almost everything these days, don't really know why I'm still paying for a router tbh lol
Hey. What wifi variation you using ? 802.11 n 802.11AX AC A G etc. Also are you using 2.4ghz or 5ghz? About how far away is your access point? Is it going through trees or metal? (I've been listening while doing other things so if you've shown that am sorry.
Also to add your little external antenna looks like one of those cheap 2.4ghz external antennas. Which would explain why your only getting 15-20mb with it. While those connect at 150mb 802.11n it's never able to run at full duplex or even half duplex. Like 1/8th to 1/4 from my experience.
Since you live in the southern hemisphere, more satellites will be toward south vs. north. This is do to orbital mechanics, as satellites move across latitudes, spending least time near equator, and more time at highest latitudes.Wikipedia 'Starlink' lists number of satellites in each orbital inclination. The 3 dots at 28:50 are (top-bottom) are Earth, Sun, and Mars at opening of a travel window between Earth and Mars. Alignment occurs approx every 2 years. Circles are planet orbits, and the transfer orbit (or the path of a 4 wheel vehicle that has traveled the furthest distance in human history). Guessing speeds may be related to which 802.11 protocol of the family being used. (a,b,f,g,n, etc) Turning off some devices, could help the overall WiFi RF environment (depending on mix of protocols you have active). I won't pretend to explain more than I know, but a search like "802.11 speeds protocol nuggets" should point you in the right direction.
Right, I actually noticed that when I made a 24 hour timelapse of GPS movement ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-172XLA3Ms0E.html I guess since there is less population to service at the poles, they never actually go below (or above) a certain latitude.
@@iforce2d this actually results In worse performance at far northern (or southern) latitudes because the triangulation geometry is worse. There is also the issue of having terrain blocking the sky in the south. Up here on Svalbard GPS reception is also affected by being under the polar cusp of the magnetosphere. Not that this really matters for non precision measurements.
you can use a "DishyPowa" and your own router then hardwire devices and/or grab some used enterprise grade access points (I recommend Aruba as there are no subscriptions required) the iPhone is getting better speeds as it has a modern wifi controller in it same as the SL router (and fyi the "lights" on it are not lights just the earth and mars orbits around the sun)
I guess the fluctuation in internet speed might bei related to satelites moving in and out of focus of the dish. Kinda sad that the router does not have a wired ethernet port. But all in all starlink is quite interessting to play with.
Yes, probably something like that. When uploading this video I noticed the speed going up and down all over the place too. The speed test just catches a random snapshot of that.
I didn't realise your mobile phone situation was so sad. Here near Launceston, Tasmania we are on fibre to the premises at 100Mbs solid and the mobile tower is line of sight a kilometre away which the modem falls back to if there's a fibre broadband failure. I feel for you Chris.
Make sure your router is set to 2.4ghz. If its set to 5ghz you will see this drop in signal. 5ghz is very line of sight. 2.4ghz has a nicer time of passing through walls and such.
2.4 or 5Ghz? Can you extend your WiFi antenna cord or Starlink modem/router so they are closer together or try a bit of CAT5/6 and ethernet, obvious I know but I thought I'd say it. I was thinking of ditching my landline/NBN system for Starlink but now I'm not so sure. Don't replace your laptop with a Dell XPS 15 with the "killer" WiFi card, sitting side by side with my desktop, an ancient i5 HP, I get 97.87Mbs (HP) to 4.03Mbs.
Any updates ? We're rural nz and just put our order in for starlink. Lots of people have been talking about speed drops? Have you experimented with wifi extenders? I get about 25mb up to 50 at best on spark 4g rural. Thought about getting an ethernet cable attachment for your daily driver pc?
To be honest I haven't even thought much about it since I set it up. It just works and my stress and cursing about internet is a thing of the past. I can watch three RU-vid videos at the same time in 1080p where previously I could barely watch one at 480p.
I thought about Starlink when my vdsl connection seemed to be getting worse by the month but ended up settling with 4g. Latency is an issue for me but games are playable and speeds are way better.
It seems there is actually two ethernet ports in that single proprietary connection, the second can be accessed a dongle.. Check out oleg kutkov's blogpost reverse engineering the dongle for gen3
@iforce2d I currently use Lightwire for internet, do you know if starlink is a improvement? And was Lightwire a option for you rather then Starlink? With a special on atm I'm considering changing
That depends entirely on what speed you would get from Lightwire I suppose. The speeds I showed in the video have improved slightly since then. Now getting 45Mbps on the desktop computer that was about 25 in the video. Starlink is a little pricey but it's nice to never be cursing at my computer because of slow internet anymore. I never even think about it these days tbh.
Your fluctuations will be down to the Router WiFi and not the Starlink to Router, I'd only bother testing it with a LAN connection if you want reliable figures, I know WiFi is handy/easy but it's just awful compared to a physical connection specially when there's walls, windows, doors, cables, lights, switches and all those interfering electrical items between you and the router.
There is no LAN connection on the router unfortunately. I don't get why the local wifi would fluctuate more than a system that is tracking multiple moving satellites across the sky...?
Great video man, have been looking into starlink. We used to be on lightwire, and pulled 25/40mbps down and quite solid but ping times weren't the best. On 4g wireless now and best is 50mbps down but often drops to 20 or lower with minimum 60+ ping, more often sits at 120/200 trying to game gaming. Kids hate it. Any idea what ping starlink sits at against OCE game servers? Rural Waikato will never see fibre sadly
Somebody else asked me about ping a while ago and I had no idea, but just now I realized there are websites that can check without needing to install any game. CoD Warzone Australia: 50 - 90 LoL OCE: 50 - 80 Fortnite OCE: 50 - 80, spikes to 150 PUBG OCE: 60 - 80 WoWarcraft US: 2 - 6 (broken?) Apex Sydney: 70 - 100, spikes to 250 DotA2 OCE: 60 - 90 CSGO OCE: 70 - 90 Let me know if anything specific and where I can check it.
@@iforce2d Thanks heaps for that. I went through and checked against your results. Most servers I'm sitting at 70/80 ping. Not sure if I can justify the $160 a month for starlink :/
This might be an odd question but i'd love to know if you get any problems gaming and livestreaming? A friend of mine is thinking of getting starlink in NZ due to no access to fibre... any random drops in signal or speeds? Also is there any ping fluctuation while gaming? Thanks if you do get around to answering this. It seems the speeds should be more then good enough from this video...
I have not tried either streaming or gaming, or even video call, so I'm probably not the person to ask about that. The upload is typically a lot slower than download, if that makes any difference. Just did a quick test now on my desktop PC, getting 20 down and 5.5 up. Ping does not seem to fluctuate much, but I also haven't been watching it often. 36ms to trademe.co.nz just now, 148ms to a Singapore server, 337ms to a New York server. Times look consistent but only after watching for a minute or two. That's about all I can help with.
@@iforce2d Thanks so much for the information mate. Just curious as the person is an avid gamer/streams and im having trouble finding reviews by someone who would stress the load to that extent... thanks again.
*Important warning* Do not leave dishy turned off for extended periods, if the firmware becomes too outdated dishy cannot connect to the satellites and thus cannot update the firmware, this effectively bricks the entire unit. There is no way to recover from this, Starlink will just tell you to buy a new one (at the full price, not the discounted price). The three dots on the front of the router are just a stylized picture of an orbital alignment, people thinking they're status lights is a common thing, the only light is that one on the bottom. Also your WiFi speed issue between desktop and iMac is probably a result of antenna orientation and thus polarization. Try with your antenna horizontally angled, the router only has one antenna horizontally angled unlike most modern routers with multiple antennas in different orientations. You may also want to experiment with laying the router flat on it's face or one side. The strangely good performance of the iPhone is really weird, maybe it's some WiFi 6 AX vs 5 AC thing but that doesn't explain it at 100 mbps. Can only guess the iPhone does some weird caching thing to fool the Google speed test? (several companies have done that in the past) Maybe try several different speed test services on the iPhone. No clue why they didn't just put an Ethernet port on the thing.
Thanks for the tip about firmware. As mentioned in the video I did try horizontal angle on that desktop antenna, if anything vertical was slightly better. Yeah it wouldn't surprise me at all if Apple was bull-shitting about the speed somehow. When I first got that phone I was amazed at how I could put it anywhere in the house and still have one bar of mobile network reception, in places where my Android phones get nothing. I was happy because that meant I could put my simcard in the iPhone and have it at my desk to work with, instead of needing to leave it on the kitchen windowsill. Then after a couple of weeks of suspiciously missed texts and calls.... it dawned on me that the reception bar display was just a bunch of bullshit. Apple was also fined for slowing down older phones to prolong battery life a few years ago.
@@iforce2d Oops missed that mention of orientation. Next troubleshooting step for the WiFi I would suggest is to check the frequency, as the router seems to broadcast 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz with the same SSID the client OS has to support automatic switching between the two, some systems will not recognize this and only connect to 2.4 GHz due to better RSSI and you'll be limited to 2.4 GHz speeds and won't get the advantages of n/ac/ax. Also a chance the router has DFS enabled on 5 GHz which can prevent older clients that don't support it from connecting as well as if it's not configured to the correct region it may be outside of the allowed 5 GHz bands for NZ. It's also feasible the iPhone's presence is forcing the router to prioritize the 5 GHz band for ax and causing issues for older ac devices. Would suggest enabling the 'separate 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks' option in the app and maybe turning off the iPhone. Either way WiFi is always a pain, getting the Ethernet dongle is probably the best way to go, if only it wasn't so expensive and out of stock... That story is exactly why I don't own any Apple products, and to a similar extent I find Tesla and its subsidiaries promise big and then lie profusely, really disappoints me how much companies benefit from just flat out lying, often without any repercussions.
Thanks for the tip about separate networks. I hadn't seen that because I'd never logged in, didn't realize the original email I got when ordering would set up the password. With separate networks the only change is that the iMac can now get up to 140Mbps on 5GHz, everything else is pretty much the same. At least it's a bit clearer what's going on though, because some devices don't even see the 5GHz network. That story is a drop in the ocean when it comes to my intense loathing of Apple. Mostly their annoying OS's and sub-standard software, but also the walled garden approach to everything, the planned obsolescence, the bull-shitting and gaslighting, the cult like following, oh and let's not forget the mind-blowing prices. I literally cannot go 5 minutes using anything Apple without getting pissed off at some stupid 'feature', restriction or inadequacy that I never have to deal with anywhere else. And that's just as an end-user, it's an order of magnitude worse as a developer. When the original iPhone became big I was all starry-eyed about making it big in the App Store, so I was working with XCode etc for a while but eventually couldn't stand it anymore. I completely washed my hands of any Apple development in 2014, or at least intended to. Unfortunately my job now requires me to be making an iOS app which is the absolute pinnacle of annoyance, but at least I'm not paying for the devices. There are also now things like Flutter to let me develop on Linux/Android and preserve my sanity. Sadly the iMac I did pay for, because I wanted to test the sbusmixer 'relayServer' on MacOS and the UI in Safari. At least it was cheap but I soon found out why. The upgrade to Catalina brought in new disk drivers that were optimized for SSD drives that were appearing in newer models, but wouldn't you know it those drivers also cripple spinning platter drives. Aw shucks what a shame, you'll have to buy a new Mac, says Apple and their mindless acolytes dutifully rush out and do so. It was practically unusable, and there is no way to downgrade the OS so I had to spend another $120 on an external SSD drive which is still rather slow (over USB) but does at least keep my blood pressure below boiling. After that I wanted to use TestFlight for distributing iOS apps to testers, which set off a cascade of requirements dependencies that always ends in needing to buy new hardware to keep up with the versions, funny that. Fortunately a lot of this is just bullshit and there are some very smart nerds out there who can figure out a way around it. I was eventually able to install the 'not supported' BigSur on this old iMac, a lot of hoops to jump through but it works just fine. Unfortunately now Apple has started making their own processors so this kind of side-stepping their bullshit might be limited in future.
ok first of all, I addmit that I watched your vid while designing some planes stuff so I might have missed something and second I dont know what starr liks atena has to offer buuuuuut... there must be some sort of ethernet port, something like CAT5 or so... cant you just put it into a switch and conect that to some acces points and or directly conect it to your devices?
The problem does not seem to be the satellite connection but the WiFi connection. Why don't you put the WiFi router in your house near where you need internet most and put the outside antenna somewhere else, perhaps on the roof?
The “STINKY” bit was odd to us as well. We created a secure network name/password and could see it being broadcast on available networks. However, 12 hours later, that name disappeared and all we could find was an unsecured network called “Starlink.” Still can’t determine why this is happening.
If the power goes on and off quickly it will cause a factory reset, this is by design but a little annoying when you have a lot of power cuts. Maybe this happened for yours.
I thought all farms in NZ had fiber connected, back in 2006-2010 and it was that 1 guy who wanted everybody to have actual internet so they "DIY"ed fiber all over NZ.. why don't you have fiber mate? Yeah, there is even a NANOG talk about it RU-vid video "Building a nationwide carrier for less than $1M: War stories & lessons learned"
Yeah, the wind blows the satellites and changes their speed so you get frequency shifts right? Looks like a UPS might be useful for you. Can you setup the work iPhone as a hotspot for the Starlink WiFi? Be interesting to see if that improves speed inside the house. What are you running on the iMac? (I'm using Linux Mint Cinnamon on mine - not bad. 4 channels of sound seem to be crosswired - e.g. left front is right rear for example)
I’d suggest to get an Ethernet connection to the dish router. no need to make an already spotty downlink even worse by using shitty wifi for the last meters.
Definitely get the Ethernet dongle. I got one and it was a huge improvement. Also allowed me to feed the Ethernet into a switch and physically wire in any device that had Ethernet ability. This leaves all the wifi bandwidth for the devices that only have wifi. Basically desktop pc and streaming devices on ethernet leaving the wifi for mobile phones and iPads. Much better.
Also by getting the Ethernet adaptor for it you can put a much better WiFi router on the Ethernet port so you can maximise the WiFi throughput and distance. In my experience WiFi is a connection of last resort, if you can use Ethernet then it will not be the network connection between device and Starlink that is the bottleneck. Also getting the Starlink antenna up high so that there is less blocking it's view down to the horizon will help as it can hold onto a satellite connection longer and reduce the chances of dropouts. It will also mean it can see more satellites at any given time. Also as more Starlink satellites are put into orbit the better the coverage should get. It will also be interesting to see the effect the laser inter-satellite connection will have once Elon gets it working. No more relying on a local down-link station and it's connected infrastructure. With the inter-satellite communications the data shouldn't be down-linked until it gets to the nearest ground station to the destination.
@@jaseastroboy9240 IF they ever get the optical inter-satellite links working (and that's a BIG IF that depends on a lot of things, the v2 satellites, a new launch vehicle which isn't ready, etc etc), I'm pretty sure they will be sending the data down to the ground at the first site that has bandwidth, not to "the one closest to the destination". Terrestrial fiber will always have way more bandwidth available than any of the intersatellite links will, so best to get it down and into a fiber cable as soon as possible. In the US, starlink already has capacity issues, the connections are MUCH slower now that they have more customers, and they have a pretty widespread and comprehensive network of ground stations. Because they are at (or over) capacity, they're limiting the number of new terminals available, and people are on waiting lists for years before they can even get equipment. As with every Elon venture, it's over-promised and under-delivered.
Don't use the google speed test. My results vary also and I have google fiber. Sometimes I get less than 100 Mbps on wifi, and sometimes I get 300 Mbps.
Btw this is the most advanced satellite system in the world everyone one on earth is at least 5 years behind others decades behind 😂. Spacex is by far the most advanced space entity in the world.
I get faster speeds with my T-mobile cell phone network and a PEPWAVE 4 Watt Router. With a mint mobile / $15.00 per month G5 simm card I get 865MBS speeds. Starlink is way late to the party.
When you pay 30% more for broccoli and yoghurt at the supermarket than you did two years ago, is that because you 'fucked up'? It's a near certainty that prices will go up in future, do you think when I bought this that I expected the monthly cost to be $159 forever? smh... but this is beside the point right now because I'm still paying the same $159 I always have and I cannot find any information about the price going up. If you look at Starlink's website it's actually the opposite, because they are offering the hardware for $199 at the moment instead of the usual $1000 or so. Maybe you got mixed up with the hardware cost and the monthly cost, in which case could it be you that fucked up?
Ohh too many comments from me on this one! But just wanted to chime in that "stop sell" simply means they can't sell any more services on that tower to any customers because the tower is over-subscribed.
