# Starlink Internet



## MNwr786

Anyone here signed up for starlink? Just ordered our kit yesterday. I signed up for beta testing two months ago and finally got an email. Cant wait for it to arrive! Would be interesting to hear from other users, I currently do not know any....


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## NorthernRedneck

Let us know how it turns out. We're rural. But only 15 minutes from the city and our only available internet is 2-3 mbps download speed. Just a step sideways from dial-up and kicks out often.


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## XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq

I signed up for the beta but haven't got the email yet.  I'll get it whenever they let me.


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## MNwr786

NorthernRedneck said:


> Let us know how it turns out. We're rural. But only 15 minutes from the city and our only available internet is 2-3 mbps download speed. Just a step sideways from dial-up and kicks out often.


I definitely will. Just got a tracking number so it shouldn't be too long.


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## bczoom

I have good internet so won't be changing.  My fascination with Starlink is watching the satellites once they've been launched.
I was outside one night and spotted a "Starlink Skytrain".  I wasn't aware of Starlink at the time so seeing this was a bit startling until I found out what it was.

Here's a video of what it looks like in the sky.  There's also some web sites where you give it your approximate location and they'll tell you when one of these will be flying overhead.


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## MNwr786

It is definitely a sight to see. Ive seen the trains several times myself. They slowly spread apart as they get themselves into alignment. Each batch of 60 eventually becomes evenly spaced around the planet


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## XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq

Got my beta invite today.  Ordered it.  I'm hoping it lives up to it's promises.  

Looks like they are launching more satellites soon too.


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## MNwr786

So far, I'm VERY happy with mine and the customer support is very personal and informative (real people who care and understand their jobs). I average 70Mbps down maybe higher, but it has been as high as 200 and as low as 35 for brief periods.


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## norscaner

MNwr786 said:


> So far, I'm VERY happy with mine and the customer support is very personal and informative (real people who care and understand their jobs). I average 70Mbps down maybe higher, but it has been as high as 200 and as low as 35 for brief periods.


Really curious...do weather conditions cause it to slow down?


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## XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq

Apparently it generates enough heat to melt small amounts of snow off the dish but if there is a lot of snow you might have to clear it off.  I suspect heavy cloud cover has to slow it down a bit.  Mine should show up in the next day or two.


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## norscaner

XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq said:


> Apparently it generates enough heat to melt small amounts of snow off the dish but if there is a lot of snow you might have to clear it off.  I suspect heavy cloud cover has to slow it down a bit.  Mine should show up in the next day or two.


Thanks...keep us posted as my daughter is living in an area with no signal and really needs to jump onboard.


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## NorthernRedneck

We've been seriously considering it as we're a step sideways from dial-up where we live. Start up cost and monthly rates are more costly though.


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## Melensdad

Just curious about the cost per month and the reliability during poor weather.

I’m on a wide area WiFi system.  Download speeds are 7-10 Mbps, upload 1 - 1.5Mbps. no speed demon but good enough for us to stream movies and browse internet simultaneously.  We don’t have kids in the house doing anything that requires more.  

Cost is $60/month.

But it works even when we have satellite TV outages due to rain and snow.  If Starlink goes out when snow collects on the dish or ebbed big rain/thunderstorms roll through I  would not be interested in extra speed.


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## XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq

$600 one time equipment fee and $99/month after that.


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## MNwr786

And so far it works great in the snow. It slows down a tiny bit but still plenty fast


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## norscaner

Melensdad said:


> Just curious about the cost per month and the reliability during poor weather.
> 
> I’m on a wide area WiFi system.  Download speeds are 7-10 Mbps, upload 1 - 1.5Mbps. no speed demon but good enough for us to stream movies and browse internet simultaneously.  We don’t have kids in the house doing anything that requires more.
> 
> Cost is $60/month.
> 
> But it works even when we have satellite TV outages due to rain and snow.  If Starlink goes out when snow collects on the dish or ebbed big rain/thunderstorms roll through I  would not be interested in extra speed.


This was my thought exactly. We are in the same boat as you. Speeds are the same and kids grown up.


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## Melensdad

Well quite honestly I'll save my cash for something else.  

Starlink's $600 upfront and $1200/year seems like a pretty steep price tag to watch cat videos on youtube.

Seems like I have a heck of a bargain with my provider.

My internet speeds are plenty fast FOR MY PERSONAL NEEDS.  My outages are not weather related.  My service, when there is an outage, is local and very responsive.  Perhaps if I was still working I might need more speed.  But even when we had our daughter in the house, finishing her law school work and taking her Bar Exam we had enough bandwidth and speed.

I will admit that there are times when I try to send huge files (snowcat manuals, etc) that my system chokes.  But I don't send those out too often and I frequently just hit the send button just before I go to bed and let the system clog over night.


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## XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq

I need fast internet for work and I have teenagers ... so I'll pretty much pay anything for faster internet.

Although now I have four ISP's - based on testing for the next month or two if things go well with starlink then I hope to cut that back to two.


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## tiredretired

That is a steep price for less than 10mb/s download speed.  However if it was my only option for internet, I guess I would sign up.  I have no need to ditch Xfinity for the time being.  Fast, dependable and decent customer service and their wall outlet plug in wifi extenders work awesome.


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## XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq

Finally got it all installed.  It was a bit of project due to the fact that it needs a northern view.  I probably will fall a few 100 ft fir trees that are in it's way if the speeds seem impacted.  I have it on a 15 foot pole but could possible just mount it on my roof - but that is 50 feet up with a steep pitch and I hate going up there.

Currently I'm getting between 30-110 Mbps down - it seems to average between 60 - 80 Mbps down.  Uploads could be better - they are between 2-7 Mbps.  I certainly notice that browsing seems a lot snappier.

It will be interesting to see if it improves in the next few months.


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## Billio

NorthernRedneck said:


> Let us know how it turns out. We're rural. But only 15 minutes from the city and our only available internet is 2-3 mbps download speed. Just a step sideways from dial-up and kicks out often.


Just got mine in England. We are rural. Normally get 15 download and 1.5 upload. Starlink gives me standard 85 download and 15 upload.


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## NorthernRedneck

We finally broke down and ordered starlink after trying to homeschool 6 children on crappy internet speeds that can't support one person on a video call let alone 6 kids doing online schooling. Here's our internet speed with our local provider. Don't get too excited. It's 6am. As soon as people start waking up and going online, it often drops to 1-2 mbps download speed and often cuts out. Video chat is next to impossible. For the kids to homeschool during the lockdown, we had to get the schools to provide us with two tablets that had data plans and act as a wifi hub. Two kids on each and two on our internet. 





Here's the speed with starlink. Lightening fast. No more connection issues. 




We had put our names on the list back in April of last year and we're told we would get it by the end of 2022. In October, we got another update saying that it wouldn't be until the end of 2023. A few weeks ago we got a notice saying that it was being shipped. Our oldest son is kind of a technology geek. We didn't tell him that we finally got the shipment notice. Actually quite the opposite. We told him we decided to cancel our request. So when it finally arrived, we had him answer the door. Lol.


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## NorthernRedneck

So far we're impressed with starlink. We can watch stuff on demand now on our satellite as it uses a wifi connection to download. Before, we couldn't even think of doing that on our old internet. Even things like uploading pictures here. Before, I would be waiting for minutes for a picture to upload and quite often it would time out. Now, as soon as I click upload, the picture is there. 

I couldn't even play the simplest of games on my phone as it would lag and disconnect often.


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## XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq

Working reliably for me too.  The only thing that causes issues are really thick downpours and white out snow storms.  Fortunately, they don't happen that often.


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## NorthernRedneck

We just had it sitting out on the corner of the deck to test it before installing it permanently. Today we set out to mount it permanently on a post and platform I built yesterday. That's when the choice words began. First, we have a 4x4" opening in the basement foundation to allow for cables to be run into the house. The gaps are filled with spray foam so I had to feed the cable through from the basement to the outside. We fed it through and to the dish which we had already mounted onto the post. When I went to connect the cable to the dish, it would not go into the port. We tried and cursed and tried some more. I was just about ready to give up then tried one last time and it slipped into the socket. We were then able to finish installing it outside and run the cable to the router and plug it in. It's all working now.


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## fritzed

I needed to login for a VPN tunnel to work.  Starlink kept crashing.  The other thing was the router they sent me was wifi only on a short range, wouldn't do much of the house.  Another problem was the IP address wouldn't work with my switch, don't know why I decided when the VPN tunnel wouldn't stay up, the Starlink wasn't worth the trouble keeping.  As soon as I notified them I was sending it back, they charged me $110 for the first month rent.  It had arrived 10 days earlier.  Not even the first 30day trial period wasn't even up, not close!  Other than that, I would have kept the unit.


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## XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq

I use several different VPN's over Starlink and haven't had any real trouble with them.


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## fritzed

I drive down the road everyday and haven't had a car accident


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## tommu56

Keep an eye out this could disrupt your Starlink service at some time in the future.
He has about 3 other videos on starlink service.


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## NorthernRedneck

We're still happy with our starlink. That being said, we switched as after 3 years of being on very slow internet speeds with our local provider as they kept promising high speed but weren't doing much about it. They finally are laying high speed fiber lines in this whole area for high speed.


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## prop

anyone know how long portability lasts at a new location and if speeds drop?


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## MNwr786

Here are a few screenshots from starlinks webpage.  The map suggests that your speed might drop in the low capacity (wait list) areas.  If you are in an area of normal availability and that particular cell isn't being maxed out with fixed primary users, I doubt yours would be any slower.  However, I have not yet used the portability option, so I cannot say for sure.  In my experience, starlink doesnt unreasonably throttle anyone unless they absolutely need to.  The average TV addict streaming paramount plus on a roku (my GF) burns between 20-30GB a day (and thats with the quality set to 720, not 1080).  If you have 2 or 3 tv's streaming all day, you will hit your 1TB a month limit in a couple weeks, but if you are like me and use less than half of that the whole month, I doubt you will be throttled at all, even when portable.  They understand people game and watch TV, so unless that is your daily ambition, I wouldnt worry about it.


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## tommu56

follow J christina's play list for starlink on youtube it might help you out


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