Starlink Internet

[its55]

Does anyone here use Starlink internet service? Wondering how it works for you.

[unluky]

Me too - my neighbor has been on the list for over a year and JUST got his "It's your turn!" email on Tuesday. I can't wait to see how it works for him. We are in a rural area and 20-25 is about the best we can get beamed in from a local tower. We're happy to have that, but looking for a better option.

I have a farm with a house on it about 1.5 hours away with crappy internet too. It just recently got into the area it can use the new T-Mobile 5G so I signed up. I am impressed so far. No contracts, no limits, no caps - all in with taxes and equipment is $50 even. When I first hooked it up I was getting 450-500 constantly, but now it is more in the 200-250 range - which is MORE than enough. I would have been thrilled with 50 honestly. If my house gets into range - I'll switch in a heartbeat. Might be worth a look if you are in their area.

[zx10guy]

Interested too as I can't get T-Mobile Home Internet. I can't even get DSL. Only options are Mediacrap (Mediacom), cellular Internet via hotspot, or satellite (Hughes). None of the current options are good. Over the past two days, I got notification from my smart thermostat (Honeywell) of network outages. These outages lasted at times a couple of hours and were multiple throughout the day. In addition, the jerks there are packet shaping some of my traffic usage. I'd love to get off of Mediacrap but have no real alternatives.

[its55]

I don't think you'll get better than T-Mobile with Startlink, and Starlink costs much more. In fact, reading about your T-Mobile service I may sign up for that!!

Originally Posted by unluky

Me too - my neighbor has been on the list for over a year and JUST got his "It's your turn!" email on Tuesday. I can't wait to see how it works for him. We are in a rural area and 20-25 is about the best we can get beamed in from a local tower. We're happy to have that, but looking for a better option.

I have a farm with a house on it about 1.5 hours away with crappy internet too. It just recently got into the area it can use the new T-Mobile 5G so I signed up. I am impressed so far. No contracts, no limits, no caps - all in with taxes and equipment is $50 even. When I first hooked it up I was getting 450-500 constantly, but now it is more in the 200-250 range - which is MORE than enough. I would have been thrilled with 50 honestly. If my house gets into range - I'll switch in a heartbeat. Might be worth a look if you are in their area.

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by zx10guy

Interested too as I can't get T-Mobile Home Internet. I can't even get DSL. Only options are Mediacrap (Mediacom), cellular Internet via hotspot, or satellite (Hughes). None of the current options are good. Over the past two days, I got notification from my smart thermostat (Honeywell) of network outages. These outages lasted at times a couple of hours and were multiple throughout the day. In addition, the jerks there are packet shaping some of my traffic usage. I'd love to get off of Mediacrap but have no real alternatives.

Our Mediacrap connection was going south almost every night for a while. It always started around 7:30-8PM and got worse as the evening went on. They sent a tech out during the day, when there is never a problem, to check the signal at the house. Of course it was fine. But the tech told me Verizon was no longer supporting DOCSIS 3.0 modems, so maybe that was my issue. I had a DOCSIS 3.0 modem, so I bought a new DOCSIS 3.1 modem. It came up fine and seemed to be okay until a couple nights later when the problem started again. I checked with Verizon again and they said since I had a strong signal reading and have a new modem, it must be the coax cable between the outside and my modem. I asked them to explain how a coax cable only goes bad at a certain hour most nights and they had no answer.

Over the next week I saw two Mediacrap vehicles at houses near mine and figured I wasn't the only one having issues. They must have done something to fix it because we've had no issues for a week or two now.

The only other provider in this area is Consolidated Communications and their DSL, which is even slower than Mediacrap's service.

[vreihen16]

Originally Posted by M_Six

Over the next week I saw two Mediacrap vehicles at houses near mine and figured I wasn't the only one having issues. They must have done something to fix it because we've had no issues for a week or two now.

Our cable company uses some sort of neighborhood amplifier gadget on the poles that inherently seems to have either a thermal or water ingress problems in its design. You could almost set your watch by the predictable times/weather when the signal would fade. The home service crew and line crews are two different contractors, and it takes a lot of complaining to get a line crew dispatched to change that gadget out every few years.

Anyway, it sounds like they swapped your neighborhood one out to fix everyone's problems.....

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by vreihen16

Our cable company uses some sort of neighborhood amplifier gadget on the poles that inherently seems to have either a thermal or water ingress problems in its design. You could almost set your watch by the predictable times/weather when the signal would fade. The home service crew and line crews are two different contractors, and it takes a lot of complaining to get a line crew dispatched to change that gadget out every few years.

Anyway, it sounds like they swapped your neighborhood one out to fix everyone's problems.....

That's what I'm hoping.

[MyZ4Coupe]

My neighbour has had Starlink for over a year now and he has been very happy with it. He is quite particular when it comes to connectivity so if he is happy it must be very good. He mentioned that their tech support was superb as well on the one ocaision he had to open a ticket. I have heard many similar stories through work but only know about this one case first hand.

[spazzyfry123]

Coworker of mine just got his equipment in and seems happy with it so far.

What are the specs/prices? We've been considering a move for some time now, but internet is a must for work.

[unluky]

Originally Posted by spazzyfry123

Coworker of mine just got his equipment in and seems happy with it so far.

What are the specs/prices? We've been considering a move for some time now, but internet is a must for work.

I think it is around $100 per month - plus like $500 for the equipment for Starlink? I hate to pay that much as I don't need that much. But when you hate people and like in the sticks - it's the price we pay!

T-Mobile is still adding towers, so I'll keep my finger cross I can get it at home while I wait and see how the Starlink works out for my neighbor once it arrives.

[dreamingat30fps]

Originally Posted by spazzyfry123

Coworker of mine just got his equipment in and seems happy with it so far.

What are the specs/prices? We've been considering a move for some time now, but internet is a must for work.

I looked into starlink when we were buying our house in NC as many of the houses we looked at were in areas with little to no options for internet. I even signed up to be alerted when it was available in my area and I don’t recall ever hearing anything from them. Luckily the house we ended up with is close enough to town that we can get cable internet for a decent price. I believe starlink is $99/mo plus like $500 for the equipment. I also read somewhere they are planning to release a “premium” version for more $$.

[zx10guy]

Originally Posted by M_Six

Our Mediacrap connection was going south almost every night for a while. It always started around 7:30-8PM and got worse as the evening went on. They sent a tech out during the day, when there is never a problem, to check the signal at the house. Of course it was fine. But the tech told me Verizon was no longer supporting DOCSIS 3.0 modems, so maybe that was my issue. I had a DOCSIS 3.0 modem, so I bought a new DOCSIS 3.1 modem. It came up fine and seemed to be okay until a couple nights later when the problem started again. I checked with Verizon again and they said since I had a strong signal reading and have a new modem, it must be the coax cable between the outside and my modem. I asked them to explain how a coax cable only goes bad at a certain hour most nights and they had no answer.

Over the next week I saw two Mediacrap vehicles at houses near mine and figured I wasn't the only one having issues. They must have done something to fix it because we've had no issues for a week or two now.

The only other provider in this area is Consolidated Communications and their DSL, which is even slower than Mediacrap's service.

I had an issue with their service when performance was literally down to a crawl. Only regular HTTP/web surfing was ok. Streaming....forget it. And it was affecting the VPN sessions I was trying to get established. I finally broke down and called Mediacrap. The rep looked at the stats for my circuit and immediately acknowledged there was a problem. A tech was scheduled without me fighting for it.

Tech shows up and sees a problem with the inline TV block. It was full of water and junk. He didn't have one on the truck to replace it and just wired my line into the distro box. He explained the TV block was to prevent me from enjoying basic TV service without paying for it. He said he's going to trust that I won't take advantage of it. The removal of the block improved the signal and noise situation but there was still a problem. After further troubleshooting, the RG6 cable that the builder's sub put in was bad. Don't know how an RG6 cable can just go bad after working for years. Fortunately, the builder's sub was smart and had a second RG6 cable pulled from the outside DMARC to the structured wiring cabinet. So it was just a matter of the tech terminating the ends of the second run and connecting it in. That fixed the problem.

One time the drop out in service was so bad one month, that I complained to Mediacrap and they didn't even put up a fight with giving me a full month's credit.

I don't know what Mediacrap is telling you about the DOCSIS 3.0 modem. I'm using a Surfboard SB6121 which is a DOCSIS 3.0 modem without issue. I only have the basic level of service though. I have a DOCSIS 3.1 modem for my primary home with Comcast because I have their Gig service.

[zx10guy]

My concern with Starlink is how it performs with latency sensitive communications. I'm running a dedicated site to site VPN tunnel and I'm concerned about the round trip time between the my location to the bird and back down to the receiving ground station before a packet even gets dropped onto the Internet.

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by zx10guy

I don't know what Mediacrap is telling you about the DOCSIS 3.0 modem. I'm using a Surfboard SB6121 which is a DOCSIS 3.0 modem without issue. I only have the basic level of service though. I have a DOCSIS 3.1 modem for my primary home with Comcast because I have their Gig service.

I tend to doubt they scrapped DOCSIS 3.0 support without notifying customers, but who knows. The modem was quite old anyway, so I figured it was time for a new one. The old modem was acting flaky and then it wouldn't connect at all, so it was probably going bad.

[TiMSport]

On an interesting side note. I can just see Elon Musk somehow becoming a hero to Ukraine. He probably views it as just another challenge to overcome. It seems Ukraine is requesting Musk's help with the Starlink service.


Ukrainian First Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov tweeted to Musk Saturday, " while you try to colonize Mars — Russia try to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space — Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people! We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations and to address sane Russians to stand."

Musk responded to Federov, who's also digital transformation minister, "Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route."

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by TiMSport

On an interesting side note. I can just see Elon Musk somehow becoming a hero to Ukraine. He probably views it as just another challenge to overcome. It seems Ukraine is requesting Musk's help with the Starlink service.


Ukrainian First Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov tweeted to Musk Saturday, " while you try to colonize Mars — Russia try to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space — Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people! We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations and to address sane Russians to stand."

Musk responded to Federov, who's also digital transformation minister, "Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route."

More power to him if he can pull this off. But time is short. You're talking about getting a shit ton of equipment into a country at war and setting it up while keeping Russian hackers out of it. And if/when the Russians control the country, they now have all that Starlink gear. Lots to consider here.

[zx10guy]

To follow on to the sub discussion on Mediacrap....I received this email a couple of days ago in reference to the lousy/unstable Internet service I experienced from them recently:

"This week, we experienced intermittent network issues that resulted in your internet service going offline multiple times over the course of a three-day period. The issue was ultimately traced back to a new back-up power generator that was being installed by the building owner of an internet hub facility where we exchange web traffic with other internet service providers in Atlanta, GA. The testing of the new generator was causing electrical surging that would intermittently knock our network equipment offline.

We sincerely apologize for not discovering the cause of this issue sooner and plan to provide you a credit equal to three full days of internet service on your next billing statement for any inconvenience we may have caused. We have already taken steps to prevent this type of situation in the future.

Once again, we are very sorry for this disruption in service."

Basic 101 for any person with half a brain that does this stuff for a living. Where the hell are the in rack/in row UPS'? If those were in place, none of the power issues they blame from the generator testing would have affected your equipment. I bet the other ISPs in that co-lo have in rack/in row UPS'. That email further solidifies the total incompetence of that company. Not to mention, there should have been alerts generated had they used proper PDUs in the racks. Those things would have sent alerts notifying there was a power issue. Even if notifications were not received by any NMS they should be running, the fact that none of the equipment would be reporting or able to be polled by the NMS should have sent red flags to the staff to investigate.

The rank incompetence displayed by that email is just mind blowing.

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by zx10guy

To follow on to the sub discussion on Mediacrap....I received this email a couple of days ago in reference to the lousy/unstable Internet service I experienced from them recently:

"This week, we experienced intermittent network issues that resulted in your internet service going offline multiple times over the course of a three-day period. The issue was ultimately traced back to a new back-up power generator that was being installed by the building owner of an internet hub facility where we exchange web traffic with other internet service providers in Atlanta, GA. The testing of the new generator was causing electrical surging that would intermittently knock our network equipment offline.

We sincerely apologize for not discovering the cause of this issue sooner and plan to provide you a credit equal to three full days of internet service on your next billing statement for any inconvenience we may have caused. We have already taken steps to prevent this type of situation in the future.

Once again, we are very sorry for this disruption in service."

Basic 101 for any person with half a brain that does this stuff for a living. Where the hell are the in rack/in row UPS'? If those were in place, none of the power issues they blame from the generator testing would have affected your equipment. I bet the other ISPs in that co-lo have in rack/in row UPS'. That email further solidifies the total incompetence of that company. Not to mention, there should have been alerts generated had they used proper PDUs in the racks. Those things would have sent alerts notifying there was a power issue. Even if notifications were not received by any NMS they should be running, the fact that none of the equipment would be reporting or able to be polled by the NMS should have sent red flags to the staff to investigate.

The rank incompetence displayed by that email is just mind blowing.

How many of their customers had to go through the useless power cycling of their modems and routers because of this? Mediacrap always wants to blame the end user for poor internet service.

[zx10guy]

Originally Posted by M_Six

How many of their customers had to go through the useless power cycling of their modems and routers because of this? Mediacrap always wants to blame the end user for poor internet service.

In addition, I'd love to see their routing topology. Why their routers didn't automatically re-route and "self heal" from these outages is beyond me. That's the function of running BGP. I understand if these where momentary blips where there isn't enough time for the routers to perform a convergence in the route tables. But these outages per what I was seeing from the outage emails I got from my smart thermostat were an hour to two hours in length.

This is just an epic fail on all counts.

[vreihen16]

Originally Posted by zx10guy

Where the hell are the in rack/in row UPS'? If those were in place, none of the power issues they blame from the generator testing would have affected your equipment.

I can state with authority that rack-mounted APC Smart-UPS dual conversion or switched transfer UPS units do not like dirty/shaky generator power. They keep flapping back to battery power on every minor ripple, and ultimately deplete their batteries because they won't steadily recharge from the generator feed. One of our buildings at work had a 15K generator dedicated to keeping the phone PBX running, connected to 6K of APC UPS. Upgrading to a 25K generator made the UPS units more tolerant of the generator power, but they still flap at times. Edge closets all over the grounds have similar problems on generator power. I've read online a general rule of thumb for APC UPS units is to size the generator at 3x the capacity of the UPS, but my experience is that 4x is still not perfect.

For my own house, I went with two Eaton UPS units. They are happy on our 6.5K portable generator, which has the ugliest power output imaginable. I have a tiny home-grade APC unit on my weather station, and it also flaps its transfer relay every 5-10 seconds whenever the generator is running. The stuff to power the weather station via PoE is on my project bench, to rid my house of that APC scourge.....

[zx10guy]

Originally Posted by vreihen16

I can state with authority that rack-mounted APC Smart-UPS dual conversion or switched transfer UPS units do not like dirty/shaky generator power. They keep flapping back to battery power on every minor ripple, and ultimately deplete their batteries because they won't steadily recharge from the generator feed. One of our buildings at work had a 15K generator dedicated to keeping the phone PBX running, connected to 6K of APC UPS. Upgrading to a 25K generator made the UPS units more tolerant of the generator power, but they still flap at times. Edge closets all over the grounds have similar problems on generator power. I've read online a general rule of thumb for APC UPS units is to size the generator at 3x the capacity of the UPS, but my experience is that 4x is still not perfect.

For my own house, I went with two Eaton UPS units. They are happy on our 6.5K portable generator, which has the ugliest power output imaginable. I have a tiny home-grade APC unit on my weather station, and it also flaps its transfer relay every 5-10 seconds whenever the generator is running. The stuff to power the weather station via PoE is on my project bench, to rid my house of that APC scourge.....

Their NOC should have seen these issues and taken corrective action if their systems are being properly monitored. So still an epic fail on all counts with their incompetence.

I had an overvoltage situation where the power company was sending 180V on each phase feeding my neighborhood. This lasted for hours. I have a Vertiv GXT4 6.5kVA UPS feeding my main rack in my basement and a GXT4 1500VA feeding the 24U wall rack. Both of these did their job when they saw the overvoltage situation and went on battery power. Had I ran an NMS at the time, I would have seen the alerts of the power issues.

I also have a Generac 20kW backup generator for my home. My UPS' have had no problems running off of that generator properly.

[vreihen16]

Originally Posted by zx10guy

In addition, I'd love to see their routing topology. Why their routers didn't automatically re-route and "self heal" from these outages is beyond me. That's the function of running BGP.

Do you think that they have a second path? In these parts back in the day, Time Warner's backbone would swamp their alternate paths when their primary path had issues.

Mediacom's corporate HQ is located a few towns away from me, despite not having a single franchise agreement anywhere in the region. I see them advertising for network engineering jobs locally on occasion, and strangely I do not know anyone who works for them.....