starlink beta testing (Sandpoint: house, live, military)

[Shaner]

I got my invite yesterday! Wont be able to use it as I am in town with TDS, but I can forward it to you guys if you want to try it!

[Mister Torgue]

Originally Posted by Shaner

I got my invite yesterday! Wont be able to use it as I am in town with TDS, but I can forward it to you guys if you want to try it!

I recommended my brother in Anchorage to submit to be a beta tester. Surely Musk would love to see someone from AK try it out. Hah.

Too bad I could test it down here in hot sticky boring Texas.

[Cnynrat]

Originally Posted by nm9stheham

FWIW.... The increases in speed are due to:
- More frequency bands being used
- More satellites
- More efficient use of the capacity by creating more paths from the ground terminal gateways to each user
- How is the lower orbit link advantage is used? It could be 'spent' for a faster data technology, or for a cheaper user terminal, or a combination of both.

More satellites is a byproduct of low earth orbit systems. In low earth orbit any one satellite can only be seen from a small area of the earth. In contrast, a satellite in geosynchronous orbit can be seen by about 1/3 of the earth, excepting at high latitudes where they can not be seen at all. So, the large number of satellites isn't done for speed, it's actually an additional complexity that's required to address the main issue with apparent speed in geosynchronous systems.

Geosynchronous satellites orbit at 23,000 miles above the equator. Even at the speed of light that adds a measurable round trip delay to every data exchange with the Internet. What often isn't readily apparent to the user is that much of what you do on line involves several, or sometimes many exchanges of data, and each of those round trip delays tend to add up quickly. In communications engineering we call that characteristic latency. The primary apparent speed advantage of these low earth orbit systems is their lower latency since satellites are only hundreds of miles away instead of 23,000.

Originally Posted by nm9stheham

The receivers, transmitter, and the ground station and user antennas per se look to be existing technology. The on-line info does not make sense to me.... motorized tracking antennas have been mentioned, but for a consumer priced device, that would not seem to be very durable or reliable. (But hey, those folks know a lot about electric motors!)

LEO systems must use a steered antenna of some sort. From any point on earth geosynchronous satellites are in a fixed location, so you can point the antenna once and be done with it. Your DirecTV/Dish/HughesNet/DishNet/ViaSat systems all work this way. LEO systems use many satellites that are typically in polar orbits, meaning they are arranged in orbits that pass over the north and south poles. Each of those orbits will have a number of satellites in that orbital plane. In Starlink's phase one there are 72 polar orbital planes, with 22 satellites in each orbit. From any location on earth satellites will transit overhead from horizon to horizon, so you need an antenna that can track a satellite as it flies overhead, and then move back to the horizon to pick up the next satellite as it comes over the horizon.

In the long run an electronically steered antenna (vs. mechanically steered, what you called motorized) will be the best solution to this challenge, but they tend to be costly. IMO, getting this cost down to consumer levels is a critical challenge of making these systems successful. The company I worked for before I retired was working with a Starlink competitor (OneWeb) on that problem. OneWeb has already entered phase 2 of what I call the Satellite Business Model, which to to go into bankruptcy so you can write off the huge capital costs of building these systems.

Originally Posted by nm9stheham

What seems new is the interlinking of satellites. What does that linking do? Just control or actual user data?? IDK

While Starlink originally contemplated inter-satellite links using lasers, I believe they have forgone that approach for their first generation. The inter-satellite links are primarily for user data, although they would also be used for satellite control. When your data reaches the satellite there has to be a path back to the ground and from there a connection to the Internet. One way to do that is to have a network of ground earth stations that are always in view of every satellite. The other, more complex way to do that is to pass your data from satellite to satellite until it reaches a satellite that is in view of a ground earth station. Satellite to satellite links have been contemplated for these sorts of systems for some time, but I'm not aware that anyone has done it successfully yet. I've been away from the industry for a while though, so it's possible there is a constellation up there with inter-satellite links.

Without having inter-satellite links they need to have quite a large number of ground earth stations, one of which is located in the Selle Valley north east of Sandpoint, and has become the subject of quite a bit of local hysteria and controversy. The advantage of the Selle Valley location is it sits on top of Fat Beam's high speed fiber connection to the Internet. I understand that Starlink plans to add the inter-satellite links in future generations of their satellites.

Dave

[Romefxr]

Originally Posted by Shaner

I got my invite yesterday! Wont be able to use it as I am in town with TDS, but I can forward it to you guys if you want to try it!

I live in Sagle and would be willing to try it. I am on the list waiting to be picked as well.
please let me know if you want to forward it to us.

[Dangerous-Boy]

looks cool but what if the chinese or russians shoot the satellite out

[Cnynrat]

Starlink has about 900 satellites in orbit, and they are headed towards about 1,400 in phase 1. I don't know enough about their system design, but in principle they should be able to have some resiliency to losing a satellite or two. Yes, it might affect performance, but the entire network shouldn't be off the air as a result.

OTOH, people looking at Starlink will most likely have HughesNet/DishNet/ViaSat as alternatives, and they are all dependent on just a small number of satellites. Should they lose a satellite for whatever reason their system wide performance will suffer greatly since a significant percentage of their traffic from about 1/3 of their coverage area is being handled by each satellite.

The other degree of resiliency that Starlink has is they have a lot of practice at launching a lot of satellites, so if they do lose a satellite they will be much faster to get a replacement in orbit. The geosynchronous guys usually take years to build a satellite and secure a launch slot.

BTW, the Chinese are much more likely to target our GPS system (they have their own version), our spy satellites, and dedicated military comms satellites.

Dave

[Shaner]

Originally Posted by Romefxr

I live in Sagle and would be willing to try it. I am on the list waiting to be picked as well.
please let me know if you want to forward it to us.

Sure, shoot me a pm!

Originally Posted by Dangerous-Boy

looks cool but what if the chinese or russians shoot the satellite out

Seriously...?

[Mister Torgue]

Question to anyone here using it during the beta. How is the VPN performance? In theory it should handle is just fine with the low ping, but it’s tech and you never know. Haha.

[Romefxr]

Hi, just want to have a update with anyone on the beta test plus or minus. also anyone know when it will go live to the public?

[snowave]

I got one, and installed about a week ago and live near McCall. Several other in my community also got the invite around the same time. I put my email request in about 2 months ago.

1. You can't share the invite. To my knowledge, they service is locked in to your address. Same reason that those traveling have said it won't work outside a few mile radius from your home. That may change in the future, but not now.

2. Super easy to install. took about 20 min. comes with 100 ft POE cable. dish is light and pretty small. Need view to the north, and for me.. at about 53 degrees (i am at 45 degrees)

3. I'm generally averaging speeds of 50 to 150 mbps down.. and 15-50 up. Just as advertised.

4. Starlink informed us they are moving satellites around over the next couple months, so there may be short outages and reduced speeds. It should only get better after that.

5. Some periodic slow latency at times, but generally not too bad.

6. Zoom calls and Facetime, and to a lesser extent streaming has had some hiccups... as the connection is a little unstable. Again, willing to assume that this is due to the satellite positioning and tinkering with the system.After all, it is still in beta, mode.

7. Dish has a low wattage heater, that melts snow off it.. that works great. Has also worked great in heavy snowfall the other day, as well as thick clouds.

let me know if you have any other questions! Overall, we are very happy with it so far.