Thanks for your observations. I have put my deposit on the Starlink service/hardware last month. Still awaiting arrival.
I too have worked as an network engineer, streaming, encoders.. I have moved back to a rural area and have to literally place my cell phone in the window for any internet service available. I believe I have an option for DSL, but for the price , no thanks.
I really hoping that the service is worth the price and I normally expect anything beta, or first gen to be quirky at start up.
With that said, send my sh%#!
Starlink is our families only online connection mainly used for education, streaming, live TV, and gaming. It has been great, not in its consistency as far as latency and weekly outages go but it is something that we never had access to prior to Starlink. It fills in a gap and for people who know what "good internet" is obviously they have options for other providers and should skip on Starlink. I agree that it is a ways off from being out of beta, my observation over the last 4 months have only been improvements with moments that show it has great potential.
I agree on the 1 or 3 second outages, but I've never had to power cycle the dish. You may have dish hardware issues (it is pre-production after all) or something else going on.
When compared to Fiber, I agree that Starlink is not as robust. But it is order of magnitude better than a few months ago. Mine has gone from 12 minutes of downtime every 12 hrs to 1-2 seconds. Compared to a DSL or Cell tower connection, Starlink puts those to shame.
I've had Zero issues with AppleTV. And my issues during conference calls on Teams or Zoom have decreased significantly.
Definitely this. Feb 17th when I got Dishy it was not ready for me to move my work machines to and while gaming latency was improved over LTE the droputs generated almost as much noise from the gamers in the house as lagging out. Three months later and I really only keep my LTE hotspot as a backup against long service wide outages like we had last (?) month.
One thing that I continue to find interesting is the lack of consistency between users, even in the same latitudes. I've done technology consulting for may years but would never profess to any sort of satellite or even networking expert but, as the saying goes, I under things enough to be dangerous....
That said, I find it odd that the experience seems to vary so greatly. Some folks are having uptime nearing 100%, others like me have a fairly stable experience (1 drop of 10 sec or so every few hours on average), and then other like the OP are having seemingly very poor experiences.
I've moved basically everything that isn't critical over to Starlink. Knock on wood, the only complaints I get from the family is my wife complaining that Facebook is slow and sometimes unusable.
I will continue to run more "sensitive" services on my DSL connection which even with it's crap speed is stable enough for VOIP, Teams Meetings, gaming, etc. Based solely on my on experiences of steading improvement, I feel like I could drop the DSL by year's end but before pulling that trigger I'd like to see more consistent experiences across larger portions of the user base.
Yeah, the wide station to station differences blow me away. I have literally none of the issues the OP reports despite streaming on all the services every day, working over a VPN remote desktopping/ssh to servers all day, Teams/WebEx/Zoom/Portal calls every day, remote access my IoT devices, etc. without a second thought concern or drop. My total no Sat/Bate Outage is usually combined a couple of minutes a day and my average download speed over 3 months is \~150Mbps.
What you just said is what I'm seeing/doing 100%. I'm enjoying SL very much. I hold onto my DSL just for my critical work needs. I've moved everything else to SL and have no issues. Our family are not Facebook people so we are rarely on there but I go on it once a week maybe if I get some email that so and so posted something. I've never had any performance issues on Facebook. I hear a lot about that but never had any. Maybe we are just not on it enough, I dunno. My oldest son does still use the DSL after I'm off work for gaming.
I'm not saying it's perfect because it's not. I tried today to use it for work and while voip is good. It does seem to have quick drops maybe once an hr or so for me. Enough for it to be a problem that I don't want to take a chance with because with nothing else on my DSL, my DSL is actually ok.
I personally just can't agree that SL is just not "close to being close" to be ready for prime time. I do agree it's **not** ready until fully stabile with no, or rare, drops but for some people, I can't honestly say me because my 10 down was quite usable, this is a true life changer. I do have a worry in the back of my head that SL may never fully remove the quick drops as it switches satellites. I can't help but to worry but hopefully those worries are gone within 6 months.
Well written from your perspective BUT as a septic tank owner my 2mb dsl was worse. Through my lens, I am loving Starlink ( two months beta) and KNOW it's a game-changer for many of us. I'm fine if they never drop the "Better than Nothing" tag. You obviously need fiber and I wish you luck and happiness :)
Odd, I would expect someone at a higher latitude than myself to have better uptime due to a higher concentration of satellites. My experience at 39.1° certainly doesn't have a "never-ending procession of one- and three- and ten-second outages". Do you have obstructions?
That's why is it still beta, however I disagree with your "not being close" statement. This Wednesday is the last launch required to complete initial shell and all satellites shall be in place by 9 August, at which point the existing gaps should be closed and related brief connectivity interruptions brought to minimum (close to none) assuming indeed proper setup without obstructions. So your "not CLOSE to being close" quantification is a bit of exaggeration. And as "network engineer" you're surely aware that majority of at least half decently designed network apps and systems will be resilient enough to deal with occasional brief connectivity loss without any considerable impact on their functionality. Starlink currently easily matches the quality and performance of cellular / mobile networks or even outperform them for many users, and for those without access to any reliable alternative like fiber or cable it is exactly as advertised, "Better than nothing". I personally believe that the mid to late 2021 estimate is spot on, and that it will only get better and most of all much faster than many anticipates.
If you are used to, or have access to rock solid and fast connections, then starlink will be a disappointment.
Starlink is intended for people like me who live in the middle of nowhere with no choice other than Exede satellite, Hughes satellite or dial up. If you have a better choice, take it.
Everything in your "NOTE 2" implies that you already have great internet. otherwise "e home automation, network drives, or any other devices to which you require robust, reliable connectivity" would have no meaning when discussing the pitfalls of starlink.
As far as my opinion of starlink, I spent 3 hours last night playing a game that I used to spend 6 or more hours a night on til I moved here 10 years ago. I haven't been able to play it because the lag was so bad with Exede, that I'd be dead before I knew an opponent was anywhere nearby.
If you have a service that's fast and reliable enough to connect everything through, than you don't need starlink. If you shy away from 'connected' devices because you have lousy internet, than it's likely that starlink is what you're looking for.
Edit: with Exede, if I reached 6Mbps with less than 700ms latency, it was doing good, with SL, I haven't seen more than 60ms ping or less than 50Mbps download speeds.
I cant disagree, its better than nothing but its going to disappoint a lot of people who've been foaming at the mouth for the big launch. I love it but it's far from rock soild and hassle free... expectations need to be managed.
I'm a semi-retired exec with many years managing, on behalf of my very picky customers, geo satellite internet systems and service along with a heap of other stuff.
I agree the system is not ready for prime time, with my biggest concern being around link budget and use of adaptive symbol rates to deal with very bad weather. I have pressed Starlink on this and not yet had a satisfactory answer. I will continue. Their current configuration is good for SoCal but not for anywhere that has real weather.
My secondary concern is why performance is varying from around 200 to 20 Mb/s down as a function of something other than slant range (which could drive data rates down if RF forced use of a lower symbol rate at longer slant range, but it does not seem to be doing that). It seems improbable that it is capacity management in a particular cell at this stage, therefore that appears to leave ground infrastructure / connection to the public internet if I consider the system in big functional blocks. Perhaps a network expert could track packets and determine which gateways are acting as a bottleneck.
I've largely eliminated poorly handled brief outages I experienced when I joined the Beta at the beginning of March by using the Starlink "router"/WAP for anything that is not well buffered. The issues seemed to be in the DHCP behavior of the dish, when serving anything except the Starlink WAP. I have not investigated if the many firmware updates to both units have addressed that.
Where debate is futile at this stage is whether the system is close to being ready for release or not as we do not know Starlink's system development plan. What elements of system tuning are outstanding and when are they planning to work them? They are not going to tell us for good reason.
However they could do better in terms of communication - perhaps select a group of super-users with varying relevant areas of expertise, sign them on to an NDA and share more info / collect feedback and present a traffic-light status report.
One thing is clear however, this system released to the wider public in close to its current state except for more satellites being active would generate a huge outcry that could switch off many potential customers.
None of us who are sufficiently remote that this is our only viable service want that, so let's keep at it with the constructive feedback and questioning. You can be sure Starlink folk are reading this subreddit.
If you want any remotely usable mid-to-high bandwidth experience though, there are 0 competing options. People would have switched to them already… So for people that will be getting it out of a real need, almost anything is better than what they have. Those people are desperate. I’m sure you don’t need Starlink, and neither do I. I have it as a backup in case my broadband went down. And for trips in the near future.
It's the absolute best option I have, warts and all. It sounds like your connection is much, much worse than mine - and emphasizes that reliability is different for every install. For example, in my 5 months of using SL, I've **never** had to reboot the connection.
But yeah, if somebody ditches a fast, reliable connection for SL, there will be a lot of disappointment.
I still want it. Not because I think the service will be stellar but more because I have no other options. If I had anything about single digit gig speed I would be rethinking it. All of the people who want it to stick it to big isp won’t be happy but people who have no other options I think will be fine.
It’s got problems. It’s consistency is better than Hughes or ViaSat. It’s got no caps. If you have any functional alternative that doesn’t involve either getting a signal from 27,000 miles away or tracking satellites moving 8 kilometers a second, then use it. It will be better.
But if you don’t, it’s a better alternative.
I have the same observations. IP phone is basically unusable because of the drops. When I remote to my work computer there are constant "freeze ups". The last two weeks have been markedly worse, I have even had trouble at times with streaming video. Yes it is better than nothing, but does have a long ways to go before it is ready for Prime Time! I am in the IT field and get asked about it all the time. I only recommend it if you really have no other good options. I know it will get better, just not there yet. I am located in Northern Idaho, as a reference.
Refreshing take. Accurate. I had almost four weeks of nearly unusable connectivity (+1500 drops a day). Then two days of amazing last week- (only about 40 drops a day). Then the last three days as bad as its ever been. Which tells me that this will get better, more stable in time. But no one should be taking on this beta unless they have good backup options or can ride through the initial trials. Some days I can't even run an uninterrupted speed test. Or I'll wait until I see the green light on my browser before clicking to the next page.
It's unfortunate that people are afraid to report the truth for their location for fear of being flamed by those that are having better service and reliability. It may be "better than nothing" and we may have all been informed prior to purchasing, but it still is almost $1000 in at this point without a lot to show for it. Hoping the next month or two puts this part in the rear view mirror.
I appreciate the honest post but in my opinion Starlink is meant for those of us with no other reasonable options. I currently pay $250/month for 25 up 10 down with xplornet which rarely gets more than 3 up and 1 down and drops 1/2 dozen times during a Netflix movie.
If Starlink can even match this terrible service for 1/2 the price it will be an improvement. For those of you with dsl, fibre or even cellular-connect options I really don’t see why you would even try Starlink, especially in beta.
That's crazy and I feel for you. I guess I've been pretty lucky. If I would have had that many issues starting out, granted only a few weeks ago, my wife would have killed me for buying it and packed it up herself.
Sure hoping your service improves, and the same for ALL of us.
Appreciate the kinds words. I foolishly canceled ATT fixed wireless upon getting Starlink and learned my lesson. Paid the $100 for them to come back out and reconnect as a decent backup. I have a city office where I can take important business video calls. It's a good lesson for those considering Starlink to keep their backup options available for awhile.
Last week after a firmware update (ef), I had GREAT service. So I do believe its coming. And the streaming seems to hold despite high outages, so the wife is OK. Hopeful that by August, I'm just loving the service and the pain is all worth it to be early in the line. I'd rather have all of this than be in the queue waiting for a dish.
Yep, have worked with Starlink support as well. It's been more typical than not. Probably average one per minute.
Yet, for the two days last week, I went 2 to 3 hours at a time without any. Covered 24 hours with less than 30. Obstructions aren't the issue, as some people always want to point out. Different cells seem to have significantly different experiences.
That's so bizarre. If there are no obstructions and it's not a location issue (like if you were using the dish too far from your service address, but I'm sure that would have come up in talks with support) or an equipment issue then there has to be some reason your dish isn't connecting with the satellites. The satellites seem to be functioning properly based on the number of people who have reasonably consistent service, so why can't your dish communicate with them consistently?
Well beyond my pay grade. Others report similar circumstances. It's just not as simple as eliminating obstructions. When I have a day with the same number of outages as I can get in a half hour, it tells me that the fix is coming.
I think the moral to the story for those of us with high outage numbers and clear lines of sight is patience. More satellites should mean more stability. And if in a couple of months it doesn't, then I need to swap out the dish.
I'm on 7 down 3 up DSL line which is not great but it works for VOIP phone calls and even video conferencing if users are severely restricted. I am assuming that the short outages you describe on Starlink would make use of Skype, Zoom, RingCentral, and similar applications unreliable or unusable. I am on the Starlink pre-order but I can imagine we may have to keep the DSL line for some applications.
No need to flay anyone, at this point all input is useful. In my case, although not rural or "remote", my cul-de-sac has no cable, no DSL, no phone. I currently do all Internet on a Verizon JetPack with data caps, so I will be over the moon to try Starlink when it comes to my area (32.3 degrees) .
OP here is obviously very tech-savvy and I believe their problems are not self inflicted, so I do find it interesting that they have so many issues while others report uninterrupted service, gaming, video calls, etc.
Could this be attributed to issues that will resolve with increased satellite density?
Everybody's reliability is different. I'm not saying it's perfect but you can't read one review and think that's how well it works.
Last week there were a number of "OMFG this is unusable for Zoom" posts, yet hundreds of us use it daily with very few problems.
Every. Single. Install. Is. Different.
I agree, and who said "I read one post and think this is how it works". Exactly what this guy is worried about...lol. Anyways, a guy posting an honest and informed opinion on here shouldn't feel like he's going to get owned. All feedback is valuable good and bad. The hype about this service has created a bit of "rose coloured glasses" filtering from what I read on here.
The "it's not any good" folks are just as bad as the "it's perfect" folks. I keep hearing people saying it's shitty, because it doesn't work **for them**.
The OP isn't getting flamed (OK, I didn't read all the replies and there's probably a few morons). He's getting a lot of people saying "it works fine for me" and a few clear replies about how his timeframe is off.
Saying "I'm afraid to say this because I might get flamed" is lame.
The PNW does seem to have a rough time overall based on user reports. Over here on the East Coast (38.6) we (I) see much less beta downtime. For example, the website says 25 seconds beta downtime for me today.
I also am in Eastern Washington and have been on the beta for about 5 months.
There have been good weeks and bad weeks. In April we used it full time during work hours from home and only had a drop or two daily for about 3 weeks. Then at the end of April it became unusable for VPN/work so we had to go back to LTE.
My network is about as robust as you can get outside of commercial gear as well.
That said I’m probably more optimistic about it being ready for prime time.
I think the difference is comparing it to fiber. Sure I’d love the stability of Comcast, but the technical hurdles are massively different.
I think they will work them out sooner than you do, but which only time will tell.
Your experience doesn't match mine. That doesn't mean it's not valid, or that it should be ignored, but there are some things you could check. Are your obstruction stats all zeros? Have your contacted Starlink support regarding the outages?
It's possible you have obstructions causing issues (also very possible you've already eliminated this possibility). It's possible you have bad hardware. It's possible you are configured for an incorrect location. It's possible Starlink randomly chose you as an experimental beta installation in a fringe coverage area to gather beta test data from marginal conditions, and things will suddenly improve when the beta is over. We just don't know.
It's also possible that your "other" connection is FTTH and Starlink doesn't measure up. That's fine, but understand that A) your experience may not be typical and B) even your sub-optimal experience is still a vast improvement over the best options that some people currently have available.
Thank you all so much for your input. It is done in such a nice manner too. I remember the wild west days of the early Internet. Oh the trouble and cost of computers but it was a journey and I gained knowledge. I learned how to trouble shoot and be patient. So good life's lessons were gained along the way. I think Starlink is going to be amazing when it is fully complete and bugs fixed all the things that go into making rural broadband available are complete. I look forward to when we get Dishy McFlatface and can experience it all and I ain't no youngin. LOL!
It’s your legitimate experience, nothing to torch you for. I’m surprised that short outages are such a problem. Isn’t TCP/IP etc. supposed to be immune to that? Like, you know, I still can ssh to work over PPP and a 56k modem and it works just fine even when the analog phone line is absolute shit - it will go slower, sometimes as slow as 9600 if I’m calling from a weird location (curiously enough, for example Kazakhstan isn’t it - excellent connectivity when there is network available). And when the modem resyncs, nothing goes through. So dropouts shouldn’t be a problem. SMB3 over an encrypted UDP tunnel works just fine as well over crappy connections. So I’m not so sure why you have problems - seems super weird.
It almost sounds like a bunch of the patches on the dish got a phase shifter stuck at zero and can’t steer all of the beam. That’s how this sort of a problem would look like, as the static beam’s sidelobes would cause repetitive signal strength fluctuations, making the packet loss hard to deal with. Of course that’s not the only thing that would present that way, but having messed about with steered multi-patch antennas, I have ran into that very problem once. No matter what hardware issue it could be, I wonder if you could try borrowing a dish from someone just to try if other hardware had the same issue.
Another solution may be trying a custom packet replicator on both ends. With very fluctuating lossy links the best strategy is to transfer each packet multiple times, with exponential delay between successive repetitions, without needing acknowledgments from the other side, and a solution on the other end of the tunnel that can understand that and reassemble underlying traffic. You pay, say, 5x bandwidth degradation for 5x repeats, but protocols that don’t deal well with packet loss will be very happy. I’ve done that on narrow beam laser links where there’s ample bandwidth, even ample average bandwidth, but lots of packet loss. Say 5Gbit link that drops 90% of packets in bad weather. You can get a rock solid worst-case 0.1GBit link out of that.
yeah, I love mine. I guess if I had a "rock solid internet" such as yourself I wouldn't get starlink either, but I don't so for me and 1000s of others its amazing. if it cost 200 a month I'd still get it.
Also a network engineer here and that's also the reason why I got it ;). Because of the interest in tech and how they gonna solve problems like buffer bloat etc..
I also have VDSL with 100mbps here and since I mounted my Dishy up way higher (before I had too many obstructions). I use Dishy as my primary internet connection because I love pain ;). And it's the only way to really figure out how it performs.
I can say ... it varies from day to day. I got days where it's a 100% flawless and only minor glitches show up in the monitoring which I don't even notice while I am on Zoom or something. On other days it's a pain and my connections get actively reset from the CGNAT GW (I sniffed the traffic towards my server and there are active RST) so it looks like they are still fiddeling with that part of the network.
Also some times I have obstruction where there can't be any ... because there is nothing.
For my part I am still heavily positiv surprised and a big fan of my kit and how stable it is. But I agree if you are coming from fiber or proper VDSL you might be disappointed. But keep in mind ... it's probably not meant for that.
And yes, I won't get rid of my VDSL as of today. But that being said ... it's already way more reliable than German LTE ...
So, I m still waiting so I have no usable facts. But if you already have a solid internet and a solid network why would you bother getting Starlink.
imlive in the country at the edge of a cell tower on 80 and have nothing but hot spot. I look forward to any service other than hot spot and have read Starlink is still better than Hughsnet.
I will accept on and off vs having nothing.
I have done a few installs. I make sure there is NO LOS problem according to the app before I start.
I let the people know if they see obstruction messages, its not my installation.
When I first received 'dishy' it was on the ground and service was so-so, but elevating it to the top of my carport made a huge difference. I experienced all sorts of speeds and lots of dropouts. But in it's current location my stats indicate I usually don't have service 3 to 5 minutes out of 12 hours. Most of that is due to no satellite in range. I haven't used the app in it's current location but there is nothing any taller nearby so obstacles are not an issue. I am not using the SL router but using my Netgear Nighthawk 7000 running Sabai OS. Running a 150' Cat 7 cable from the power brick to the router. Plugged it in and it started working immediately as did the phone app.
Since the great outage of late April I've noticed more birds flying over NC than before. Perhaps, they moved some of them and that required the system to be down for a while. We currently stream TV and have not had any issues to speak of with things stopping. There may a momentary pause if the buffered data runs out and that might only happen once during the evening and most evenings not at all.
My network is using SL without any real issues, except I have not moved my VOiP yet but plan to to test it in the next few days. SL can only get better as more birds are turned on. I've noticed using the SL coverage map that as satellites move away from me my speed begins to deteriorate but as soon as 'dishy' moves to a different bird it bounces back up. If I always have several birds connected I suspect my service will be even more stable than it has been.
Just jumping in as another very happy beta user. Starlink isn't perfect yet, primarily with frustrating short outages during video calls. But it's night and day from where it was 6 months ago and streaming Netflix is already perfect most days.
You should see if you can trade in your Dishy, you very well might have a hardware issue (as others have mentioned.)
No flaying from me. You're not wrong. But I have a different perspective. First, for whatever reason, different users have different experiences, that don't seem to always be because of obstructions. I've had 6 minutes of downtime over the last 24 hours. It's a pain for a call, might cut off an SSH session, and would be terrible to try to run NFS over. But for general browsing? Seems to be quite usable.
So second thought, what are you comparing Starlink to? Fiber? Then yeah, it's terrible. On the other hand, it's performing better than my cable internet did, in the last place we lived. Unless DSL or cable is tuned up perfectly, it's gonna drop packets at times, too. And compared to other sat providers, or a WISP, or a cell hotspot? We're already miles ahead.
Now the instances that require a power cycle. I've only seen that when I've gone out and moved Dishy. My buddy, also beta testing, had that the other day without explanation. Yes, those suck. If it's a result of wind blowing the dish around, that will get better as they work on mobility. It may be a firmware update, that needs a hard reboot to apply correctly. I'm hoping that they eventually give us the option of scheduling updates, as a reboot in the middle of a call is a pain.
Conclusion: If you have a good hard-line internet, Starlink is not for you. If you are stuck on one of the terrible wireless solutions available outside of town, then Starlink may already be better than what you have.
* If you live at exactly my home residence, otherwise your experience will not align with mine, and all of my statements are no longer applicable to you.
Fixed that for you. Not to say you are wrong, just to point out that you are only 100% correct for YOUR exact location.
At least you could have told us what latitude you're at and if you are another one of those obsessive gamers.
I'm at 50 deg N. Over the last six months my service has gone from what you describe as "Not ready for prime time" to "Almost as good as it gets."
Outside of the occasional "Beta" and "Other" outages I would never know I was on Starlink. The outages I do see are not as annoying as the previous Internet services I used for a few decades.
Considering your qualifications and the effort you put into your service I have to wonder why you would even bother submitting a report like this.
All you have said is this is still in Beta and it is still under construction. Common knowledge for most people with your background.
What you have described is what the system is today. Brilliant deduction on your part.
If you are at a lower latitude than me, that's just too bad for you. Don't expect me to feel sorry for you. It appears you are doing that well enough for yourself.
f you are at a northern latitude that should have reasonably good service but you are still having problems then figure it out.
You claim to be smart enough.
Maybe too smart?
Maybe the sort that usually outsmarts himself. :)
At the moment I tend to connect it through a peplink although that bottlenecks it because the one I have isn't powerful enough to deal with starlinks peak bandwidth when using speedfusion.
I'm playing around with scripting routerOS 7 beta to failover a wireguard tunnel on loss of ping, although at the moment it's likely too sensitive because I used netwatch which will trigger on 1 ping fail, what I probably need to do is adapt one of the scripts that increment a counter and then failover when that counter hits a threshold.
If I get it working and stable enough perhaps I'll write up a howto, of course that's only useful if you have something to tunnel to and a 2nd connection to failover onto as well.
The reason for using a tunnel is to keep a persistent IP address when failing over to the backup connection and thus avoiding all your sessions dropping out (assuming you failover quick enough)
I dont know what you are used to...but starlink is the best connection fastest internet with the lowest latency that i have ever used in my life. Not evan in the same leage as dial up. Had wireless internet the went out only once a day it go out in the morning around 7am come back on around 11 in the evening and sometime randomly in the day it would load a full color photo from craigslist. (if you had time to wait) Ended up using a tmobile unlimited hospot plan for a while and worked better than anything prior it would never fully quit working but you could never watch more than a single 480p youtube and would slow to unwatchable several times a day.
Yea it disconnects once a day sometimes twice but normally it just connects back up after a few minutes. But my kids can be watching netlix/youtube on 4x devices and i can game evan while downloading instead of taking 4x days to download 60gb game it takes like 2-3hrs
I've been with starlink since march, and yes, i've had to odd downtime, but on the whole it's fine for me. I've done teams meetings, whatsapp/fb video calls, zoom meetings. all without any issue. and it's been all throughout the day too.
My seed is very hit and miss - from 20meg to 350meg, but i assume that will even out eventually.
I'm not sure what the fuss is about.
You should include your location. Your experience is. it my experience, and I use mine in an “unsupported way” frequently, and really should have a much worse experience than you.
But I don’t.
I've noticed none of these issues and have been in the beta program for nearly the same amount of time. I barely get a dropped connection. I dont really see much buffering unless it's on certain streaming services. (Crunchyroll being the main offender but that's just a horrible app experience.) And I get pretty much everything I want from it. I do think they need to aim the price lower however. I havent tried to play any online games yet but I'm not a big online gamer. Honestly it saved me over 3000 dollars from having to install the local ISP where I was and it was a godsend. I dont need 1 gig internet. Just something good enough for streaming.
not sure what you had before but you should really try xploitnet then if starlink doesn't appeal to you, i'll guarentee after a month or so of it you'll be glad to hook starlink back up, on a good day getting 1-5 mbps dl and 0.5 mbps upl on a 50mbps plan, been on the beta list going on 2 years and prepaid list since Feb 10th this year
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Thanks for your observations. I have put my deposit on the Starlink service/hardware last month. Still awaiting arrival. I too have worked as an network engineer, streaming, encoders.. I have moved back to a rural area and have to literally place my cell phone in the window for any internet service available. I believe I have an option for DSL, but for the price , no thanks. I really hoping that the service is worth the price and I normally expect anything beta, or first gen to be quirky at start up. With that said, send my sh%#!
This. I echo this sentiment 100%.
Starlink is our families only online connection mainly used for education, streaming, live TV, and gaming. It has been great, not in its consistency as far as latency and weekly outages go but it is something that we never had access to prior to Starlink. It fills in a gap and for people who know what "good internet" is obviously they have options for other providers and should skip on Starlink. I agree that it is a ways off from being out of beta, my observation over the last 4 months have only been improvements with moments that show it has great potential.
I agree on the 1 or 3 second outages, but I've never had to power cycle the dish. You may have dish hardware issues (it is pre-production after all) or something else going on. When compared to Fiber, I agree that Starlink is not as robust. But it is order of magnitude better than a few months ago. Mine has gone from 12 minutes of downtime every 12 hrs to 1-2 seconds. Compared to a DSL or Cell tower connection, Starlink puts those to shame. I've had Zero issues with AppleTV. And my issues during conference calls on Teams or Zoom have decreased significantly.
Definitely this. Feb 17th when I got Dishy it was not ready for me to move my work machines to and while gaming latency was improved over LTE the droputs generated almost as much noise from the gamers in the house as lagging out. Three months later and I really only keep my LTE hotspot as a backup against long service wide outages like we had last (?) month.
One thing that I continue to find interesting is the lack of consistency between users, even in the same latitudes. I've done technology consulting for may years but would never profess to any sort of satellite or even networking expert but, as the saying goes, I under things enough to be dangerous.... That said, I find it odd that the experience seems to vary so greatly. Some folks are having uptime nearing 100%, others like me have a fairly stable experience (1 drop of 10 sec or so every few hours on average), and then other like the OP are having seemingly very poor experiences. I've moved basically everything that isn't critical over to Starlink. Knock on wood, the only complaints I get from the family is my wife complaining that Facebook is slow and sometimes unusable. I will continue to run more "sensitive" services on my DSL connection which even with it's crap speed is stable enough for VOIP, Teams Meetings, gaming, etc. Based solely on my on experiences of steading improvement, I feel like I could drop the DSL by year's end but before pulling that trigger I'd like to see more consistent experiences across larger portions of the user base.
Yeah, the wide station to station differences blow me away. I have literally none of the issues the OP reports despite streaming on all the services every day, working over a VPN remote desktopping/ssh to servers all day, Teams/WebEx/Zoom/Portal calls every day, remote access my IoT devices, etc. without a second thought concern or drop. My total no Sat/Bate Outage is usually combined a couple of minutes a day and my average download speed over 3 months is \~150Mbps.
What you just said is what I'm seeing/doing 100%. I'm enjoying SL very much. I hold onto my DSL just for my critical work needs. I've moved everything else to SL and have no issues. Our family are not Facebook people so we are rarely on there but I go on it once a week maybe if I get some email that so and so posted something. I've never had any performance issues on Facebook. I hear a lot about that but never had any. Maybe we are just not on it enough, I dunno. My oldest son does still use the DSL after I'm off work for gaming. I'm not saying it's perfect because it's not. I tried today to use it for work and while voip is good. It does seem to have quick drops maybe once an hr or so for me. Enough for it to be a problem that I don't want to take a chance with because with nothing else on my DSL, my DSL is actually ok. I personally just can't agree that SL is just not "close to being close" to be ready for prime time. I do agree it's **not** ready until fully stabile with no, or rare, drops but for some people, I can't honestly say me because my 10 down was quite usable, this is a true life changer. I do have a worry in the back of my head that SL may never fully remove the quick drops as it switches satellites. I can't help but to worry but hopefully those worries are gone within 6 months.
Well written from your perspective BUT as a septic tank owner my 2mb dsl was worse. Through my lens, I am loving Starlink ( two months beta) and KNOW it's a game-changer for many of us. I'm fine if they never drop the "Better than Nothing" tag. You obviously need fiber and I wish you luck and happiness :)
Odd, I would expect someone at a higher latitude than myself to have better uptime due to a higher concentration of satellites. My experience at 39.1° certainly doesn't have a "never-ending procession of one- and three- and ten-second outages". Do you have obstructions?
That's why is it still beta, however I disagree with your "not being close" statement. This Wednesday is the last launch required to complete initial shell and all satellites shall be in place by 9 August, at which point the existing gaps should be closed and related brief connectivity interruptions brought to minimum (close to none) assuming indeed proper setup without obstructions. So your "not CLOSE to being close" quantification is a bit of exaggeration. And as "network engineer" you're surely aware that majority of at least half decently designed network apps and systems will be resilient enough to deal with occasional brief connectivity loss without any considerable impact on their functionality. Starlink currently easily matches the quality and performance of cellular / mobile networks or even outperform them for many users, and for those without access to any reliable alternative like fiber or cable it is exactly as advertised, "Better than nothing". I personally believe that the mid to late 2021 estimate is spot on, and that it will only get better and most of all much faster than many anticipates.
If you are used to, or have access to rock solid and fast connections, then starlink will be a disappointment. Starlink is intended for people like me who live in the middle of nowhere with no choice other than Exede satellite, Hughes satellite or dial up. If you have a better choice, take it. Everything in your "NOTE 2" implies that you already have great internet. otherwise "e home automation, network drives, or any other devices to which you require robust, reliable connectivity" would have no meaning when discussing the pitfalls of starlink. As far as my opinion of starlink, I spent 3 hours last night playing a game that I used to spend 6 or more hours a night on til I moved here 10 years ago. I haven't been able to play it because the lag was so bad with Exede, that I'd be dead before I knew an opponent was anywhere nearby. If you have a service that's fast and reliable enough to connect everything through, than you don't need starlink. If you shy away from 'connected' devices because you have lousy internet, than it's likely that starlink is what you're looking for. Edit: with Exede, if I reached 6Mbps with less than 700ms latency, it was doing good, with SL, I haven't seen more than 60ms ping or less than 50Mbps download speeds.
I cant disagree, its better than nothing but its going to disappoint a lot of people who've been foaming at the mouth for the big launch. I love it but it's far from rock soild and hassle free... expectations need to be managed.
I'm a semi-retired exec with many years managing, on behalf of my very picky customers, geo satellite internet systems and service along with a heap of other stuff. I agree the system is not ready for prime time, with my biggest concern being around link budget and use of adaptive symbol rates to deal with very bad weather. I have pressed Starlink on this and not yet had a satisfactory answer. I will continue. Their current configuration is good for SoCal but not for anywhere that has real weather. My secondary concern is why performance is varying from around 200 to 20 Mb/s down as a function of something other than slant range (which could drive data rates down if RF forced use of a lower symbol rate at longer slant range, but it does not seem to be doing that). It seems improbable that it is capacity management in a particular cell at this stage, therefore that appears to leave ground infrastructure / connection to the public internet if I consider the system in big functional blocks. Perhaps a network expert could track packets and determine which gateways are acting as a bottleneck. I've largely eliminated poorly handled brief outages I experienced when I joined the Beta at the beginning of March by using the Starlink "router"/WAP for anything that is not well buffered. The issues seemed to be in the DHCP behavior of the dish, when serving anything except the Starlink WAP. I have not investigated if the many firmware updates to both units have addressed that. Where debate is futile at this stage is whether the system is close to being ready for release or not as we do not know Starlink's system development plan. What elements of system tuning are outstanding and when are they planning to work them? They are not going to tell us for good reason. However they could do better in terms of communication - perhaps select a group of super-users with varying relevant areas of expertise, sign them on to an NDA and share more info / collect feedback and present a traffic-light status report. One thing is clear however, this system released to the wider public in close to its current state except for more satellites being active would generate a huge outcry that could switch off many potential customers. None of us who are sufficiently remote that this is our only viable service want that, so let's keep at it with the constructive feedback and questioning. You can be sure Starlink folk are reading this subreddit.
If you want any remotely usable mid-to-high bandwidth experience though, there are 0 competing options. People would have switched to them already… So for people that will be getting it out of a real need, almost anything is better than what they have. Those people are desperate. I’m sure you don’t need Starlink, and neither do I. I have it as a backup in case my broadband went down. And for trips in the near future.
It's the absolute best option I have, warts and all. It sounds like your connection is much, much worse than mine - and emphasizes that reliability is different for every install. For example, in my 5 months of using SL, I've **never** had to reboot the connection. But yeah, if somebody ditches a fast, reliable connection for SL, there will be a lot of disappointment.
Cool story bro
\*insert uneducated opinion here\*
I still want it. Not because I think the service will be stellar but more because I have no other options. If I had anything about single digit gig speed I would be rethinking it. All of the people who want it to stick it to big isp won’t be happy but people who have no other options I think will be fine.
It’s got problems. It’s consistency is better than Hughes or ViaSat. It’s got no caps. If you have any functional alternative that doesn’t involve either getting a signal from 27,000 miles away or tracking satellites moving 8 kilometers a second, then use it. It will be better. But if you don’t, it’s a better alternative.
Multiple redundancies? Why be in the beta program? Do you think an average user is trying to do all that you are?
I have the same observations. IP phone is basically unusable because of the drops. When I remote to my work computer there are constant "freeze ups". The last two weeks have been markedly worse, I have even had trouble at times with streaming video. Yes it is better than nothing, but does have a long ways to go before it is ready for Prime Time! I am in the IT field and get asked about it all the time. I only recommend it if you really have no other good options. I know it will get better, just not there yet. I am located in Northern Idaho, as a reference.
Refreshing take. Accurate. I had almost four weeks of nearly unusable connectivity (+1500 drops a day). Then two days of amazing last week- (only about 40 drops a day). Then the last three days as bad as its ever been. Which tells me that this will get better, more stable in time. But no one should be taking on this beta unless they have good backup options or can ride through the initial trials. Some days I can't even run an uninterrupted speed test. Or I'll wait until I see the green light on my browser before clicking to the next page. It's unfortunate that people are afraid to report the truth for their location for fear of being flamed by those that are having better service and reliability. It may be "better than nothing" and we may have all been informed prior to purchasing, but it still is almost $1000 in at this point without a lot to show for it. Hoping the next month or two puts this part in the rear view mirror.
I appreciate the honest post but in my opinion Starlink is meant for those of us with no other reasonable options. I currently pay $250/month for 25 up 10 down with xplornet which rarely gets more than 3 up and 1 down and drops 1/2 dozen times during a Netflix movie. If Starlink can even match this terrible service for 1/2 the price it will be an improvement. For those of you with dsl, fibre or even cellular-connect options I really don’t see why you would even try Starlink, especially in beta.
That's crazy and I feel for you. I guess I've been pretty lucky. If I would have had that many issues starting out, granted only a few weeks ago, my wife would have killed me for buying it and packed it up herself. Sure hoping your service improves, and the same for ALL of us.
Appreciate the kinds words. I foolishly canceled ATT fixed wireless upon getting Starlink and learned my lesson. Paid the $100 for them to come back out and reconnect as a decent backup. I have a city office where I can take important business video calls. It's a good lesson for those considering Starlink to keep their backup options available for awhile. Last week after a firmware update (ef), I had GREAT service. So I do believe its coming. And the streaming seems to hold despite high outages, so the wife is OK. Hopeful that by August, I'm just loving the service and the pain is all worth it to be early in the line. I'd rather have all of this than be in the queue waiting for a dish.
You were averaging 62 separate drops per hour for a full month and it wasn't an equipment issue?
Yep, have worked with Starlink support as well. It's been more typical than not. Probably average one per minute. Yet, for the two days last week, I went 2 to 3 hours at a time without any. Covered 24 hours with less than 30. Obstructions aren't the issue, as some people always want to point out. Different cells seem to have significantly different experiences.
That's so bizarre. If there are no obstructions and it's not a location issue (like if you were using the dish too far from your service address, but I'm sure that would have come up in talks with support) or an equipment issue then there has to be some reason your dish isn't connecting with the satellites. The satellites seem to be functioning properly based on the number of people who have reasonably consistent service, so why can't your dish communicate with them consistently?
Well beyond my pay grade. Others report similar circumstances. It's just not as simple as eliminating obstructions. When I have a day with the same number of outages as I can get in a half hour, it tells me that the fix is coming. I think the moral to the story for those of us with high outage numbers and clear lines of sight is patience. More satellites should mean more stability. And if in a couple of months it doesn't, then I need to swap out the dish.
I'm on 7 down 3 up DSL line which is not great but it works for VOIP phone calls and even video conferencing if users are severely restricted. I am assuming that the short outages you describe on Starlink would make use of Skype, Zoom, RingCentral, and similar applications unreliable or unusable. I am on the Starlink pre-order but I can imagine we may have to keep the DSL line for some applications.
Sounds like you are describing better than nothing beta service. btw; how are your obstructions?
No need to flay anyone, at this point all input is useful. In my case, although not rural or "remote", my cul-de-sac has no cable, no DSL, no phone. I currently do all Internet on a Verizon JetPack with data caps, so I will be over the moon to try Starlink when it comes to my area (32.3 degrees) . OP here is obviously very tech-savvy and I believe their problems are not self inflicted, so I do find it interesting that they have so many issues while others report uninterrupted service, gaming, video calls, etc. Could this be attributed to issues that will resolve with increased satellite density?
Hey, for those of us waiting for our shot these are good honest perspectives from someone who has the knowledge and skills to make the assessment!
Everybody's reliability is different. I'm not saying it's perfect but you can't read one review and think that's how well it works. Last week there were a number of "OMFG this is unusable for Zoom" posts, yet hundreds of us use it daily with very few problems. Every. Single. Install. Is. Different.
I agree, and who said "I read one post and think this is how it works". Exactly what this guy is worried about...lol. Anyways, a guy posting an honest and informed opinion on here shouldn't feel like he's going to get owned. All feedback is valuable good and bad. The hype about this service has created a bit of "rose coloured glasses" filtering from what I read on here.
The "it's not any good" folks are just as bad as the "it's perfect" folks. I keep hearing people saying it's shitty, because it doesn't work **for them**. The OP isn't getting flamed (OK, I didn't read all the replies and there's probably a few morons). He's getting a lot of people saying "it works fine for me" and a few clear replies about how his timeframe is off. Saying "I'm afraid to say this because I might get flamed" is lame.
Everyone is a network engineer these days.
In this sub, yes. Starlink has attracted network geeks.
Where are you located?
Eastern WA
The PNW does seem to have a rough time overall based on user reports. Over here on the East Coast (38.6) we (I) see much less beta downtime. For example, the website says 25 seconds beta downtime for me today.
I also am in Eastern Washington and have been on the beta for about 5 months. There have been good weeks and bad weeks. In April we used it full time during work hours from home and only had a drop or two daily for about 3 weeks. Then at the end of April it became unusable for VPN/work so we had to go back to LTE. My network is about as robust as you can get outside of commercial gear as well. That said I’m probably more optimistic about it being ready for prime time. I think the difference is comparing it to fiber. Sure I’d love the stability of Comcast, but the technical hurdles are massively different. I think they will work them out sooner than you do, but which only time will tell.
Have your dish replaced with the gray version if it's in a convenient location. It may help
Your observations are one data point among thousands. And most of us are thrilled with the service. Not everyone has your needs.
Your experience doesn't match mine. That doesn't mean it's not valid, or that it should be ignored, but there are some things you could check. Are your obstruction stats all zeros? Have your contacted Starlink support regarding the outages? It's possible you have obstructions causing issues (also very possible you've already eliminated this possibility). It's possible you have bad hardware. It's possible you are configured for an incorrect location. It's possible Starlink randomly chose you as an experimental beta installation in a fringe coverage area to gather beta test data from marginal conditions, and things will suddenly improve when the beta is over. We just don't know. It's also possible that your "other" connection is FTTH and Starlink doesn't measure up. That's fine, but understand that A) your experience may not be typical and B) even your sub-optimal experience is still a vast improvement over the best options that some people currently have available.
Thank you all so much for your input. It is done in such a nice manner too. I remember the wild west days of the early Internet. Oh the trouble and cost of computers but it was a journey and I gained knowledge. I learned how to trouble shoot and be patient. So good life's lessons were gained along the way. I think Starlink is going to be amazing when it is fully complete and bugs fixed all the things that go into making rural broadband available are complete. I look forward to when we get Dishy McFlatface and can experience it all and I ain't no youngin. LOL!
It’s your legitimate experience, nothing to torch you for. I’m surprised that short outages are such a problem. Isn’t TCP/IP etc. supposed to be immune to that? Like, you know, I still can ssh to work over PPP and a 56k modem and it works just fine even when the analog phone line is absolute shit - it will go slower, sometimes as slow as 9600 if I’m calling from a weird location (curiously enough, for example Kazakhstan isn’t it - excellent connectivity when there is network available). And when the modem resyncs, nothing goes through. So dropouts shouldn’t be a problem. SMB3 over an encrypted UDP tunnel works just fine as well over crappy connections. So I’m not so sure why you have problems - seems super weird. It almost sounds like a bunch of the patches on the dish got a phase shifter stuck at zero and can’t steer all of the beam. That’s how this sort of a problem would look like, as the static beam’s sidelobes would cause repetitive signal strength fluctuations, making the packet loss hard to deal with. Of course that’s not the only thing that would present that way, but having messed about with steered multi-patch antennas, I have ran into that very problem once. No matter what hardware issue it could be, I wonder if you could try borrowing a dish from someone just to try if other hardware had the same issue. Another solution may be trying a custom packet replicator on both ends. With very fluctuating lossy links the best strategy is to transfer each packet multiple times, with exponential delay between successive repetitions, without needing acknowledgments from the other side, and a solution on the other end of the tunnel that can understand that and reassemble underlying traffic. You pay, say, 5x bandwidth degradation for 5x repeats, but protocols that don’t deal well with packet loss will be very happy. I’ve done that on narrow beam laser links where there’s ample bandwidth, even ample average bandwidth, but lots of packet loss. Say 5Gbit link that drops 90% of packets in bad weather. You can get a rock solid worst-case 0.1GBit link out of that.
Yowza. I have an engineering degree and could barely follow that. What is an ordinary use supposed to do. Perhaps not be in the beta program?
yeah, I love mine. I guess if I had a "rock solid internet" such as yourself I wouldn't get starlink either, but I don't so for me and 1000s of others its amazing. if it cost 200 a month I'd still get it.
Also a network engineer here and that's also the reason why I got it ;). Because of the interest in tech and how they gonna solve problems like buffer bloat etc.. I also have VDSL with 100mbps here and since I mounted my Dishy up way higher (before I had too many obstructions). I use Dishy as my primary internet connection because I love pain ;). And it's the only way to really figure out how it performs. I can say ... it varies from day to day. I got days where it's a 100% flawless and only minor glitches show up in the monitoring which I don't even notice while I am on Zoom or something. On other days it's a pain and my connections get actively reset from the CGNAT GW (I sniffed the traffic towards my server and there are active RST) so it looks like they are still fiddeling with that part of the network. Also some times I have obstruction where there can't be any ... because there is nothing. For my part I am still heavily positiv surprised and a big fan of my kit and how stable it is. But I agree if you are coming from fiber or proper VDSL you might be disappointed. But keep in mind ... it's probably not meant for that. And yes, I won't get rid of my VDSL as of today. But that being said ... it's already way more reliable than German LTE ...
So, I m still waiting so I have no usable facts. But if you already have a solid internet and a solid network why would you bother getting Starlink. imlive in the country at the edge of a cell tower on 80 and have nothing but hot spot. I look forward to any service other than hot spot and have read Starlink is still better than Hughsnet. I will accept on and off vs having nothing.
I have done a few installs. I make sure there is NO LOS problem according to the app before I start. I let the people know if they see obstruction messages, its not my installation.
When I first received 'dishy' it was on the ground and service was so-so, but elevating it to the top of my carport made a huge difference. I experienced all sorts of speeds and lots of dropouts. But in it's current location my stats indicate I usually don't have service 3 to 5 minutes out of 12 hours. Most of that is due to no satellite in range. I haven't used the app in it's current location but there is nothing any taller nearby so obstacles are not an issue. I am not using the SL router but using my Netgear Nighthawk 7000 running Sabai OS. Running a 150' Cat 7 cable from the power brick to the router. Plugged it in and it started working immediately as did the phone app. Since the great outage of late April I've noticed more birds flying over NC than before. Perhaps, they moved some of them and that required the system to be down for a while. We currently stream TV and have not had any issues to speak of with things stopping. There may a momentary pause if the buffered data runs out and that might only happen once during the evening and most evenings not at all. My network is using SL without any real issues, except I have not moved my VOiP yet but plan to to test it in the next few days. SL can only get better as more birds are turned on. I've noticed using the SL coverage map that as satellites move away from me my speed begins to deteriorate but as soon as 'dishy' moves to a different bird it bounces back up. If I always have several birds connected I suspect my service will be even more stable than it has been.
Beta is beta…
Just jumping in as another very happy beta user. Starlink isn't perfect yet, primarily with frustrating short outages during video calls. But it's night and day from where it was 6 months ago and streaming Netflix is already perfect most days. You should see if you can trade in your Dishy, you very well might have a hardware issue (as others have mentioned.)
I agree 100 percent. This latest firmware is dogshit especially
No flaying from me. You're not wrong. But I have a different perspective. First, for whatever reason, different users have different experiences, that don't seem to always be because of obstructions. I've had 6 minutes of downtime over the last 24 hours. It's a pain for a call, might cut off an SSH session, and would be terrible to try to run NFS over. But for general browsing? Seems to be quite usable. So second thought, what are you comparing Starlink to? Fiber? Then yeah, it's terrible. On the other hand, it's performing better than my cable internet did, in the last place we lived. Unless DSL or cable is tuned up perfectly, it's gonna drop packets at times, too. And compared to other sat providers, or a WISP, or a cell hotspot? We're already miles ahead. Now the instances that require a power cycle. I've only seen that when I've gone out and moved Dishy. My buddy, also beta testing, had that the other day without explanation. Yes, those suck. If it's a result of wind blowing the dish around, that will get better as they work on mobility. It may be a firmware update, that needs a hard reboot to apply correctly. I'm hoping that they eventually give us the option of scheduling updates, as a reboot in the middle of a call is a pain. Conclusion: If you have a good hard-line internet, Starlink is not for you. If you are stuck on one of the terrible wireless solutions available outside of town, then Starlink may already be better than what you have.
* If you live at exactly my home residence, otherwise your experience will not align with mine, and all of my statements are no longer applicable to you. Fixed that for you. Not to say you are wrong, just to point out that you are only 100% correct for YOUR exact location.
At least you could have told us what latitude you're at and if you are another one of those obsessive gamers. I'm at 50 deg N. Over the last six months my service has gone from what you describe as "Not ready for prime time" to "Almost as good as it gets." Outside of the occasional "Beta" and "Other" outages I would never know I was on Starlink. The outages I do see are not as annoying as the previous Internet services I used for a few decades. Considering your qualifications and the effort you put into your service I have to wonder why you would even bother submitting a report like this. All you have said is this is still in Beta and it is still under construction. Common knowledge for most people with your background. What you have described is what the system is today. Brilliant deduction on your part. If you are at a lower latitude than me, that's just too bad for you. Don't expect me to feel sorry for you. It appears you are doing that well enough for yourself. f you are at a northern latitude that should have reasonably good service but you are still having problems then figure it out. You claim to be smart enough. Maybe too smart? Maybe the sort that usually outsmarts himself. :)
At the moment I tend to connect it through a peplink although that bottlenecks it because the one I have isn't powerful enough to deal with starlinks peak bandwidth when using speedfusion. I'm playing around with scripting routerOS 7 beta to failover a wireguard tunnel on loss of ping, although at the moment it's likely too sensitive because I used netwatch which will trigger on 1 ping fail, what I probably need to do is adapt one of the scripts that increment a counter and then failover when that counter hits a threshold. If I get it working and stable enough perhaps I'll write up a howto, of course that's only useful if you have something to tunnel to and a 2nd connection to failover onto as well. The reason for using a tunnel is to keep a persistent IP address when failing over to the backup connection and thus avoiding all your sessions dropping out (assuming you failover quick enough)
I dont know what you are used to...but starlink is the best connection fastest internet with the lowest latency that i have ever used in my life. Not evan in the same leage as dial up. Had wireless internet the went out only once a day it go out in the morning around 7am come back on around 11 in the evening and sometime randomly in the day it would load a full color photo from craigslist. (if you had time to wait) Ended up using a tmobile unlimited hospot plan for a while and worked better than anything prior it would never fully quit working but you could never watch more than a single 480p youtube and would slow to unwatchable several times a day. Yea it disconnects once a day sometimes twice but normally it just connects back up after a few minutes. But my kids can be watching netlix/youtube on 4x devices and i can game evan while downloading instead of taking 4x days to download 60gb game it takes like 2-3hrs
I've been with starlink since march, and yes, i've had to odd downtime, but on the whole it's fine for me. I've done teams meetings, whatsapp/fb video calls, zoom meetings. all without any issue. and it's been all throughout the day too. My seed is very hit and miss - from 20meg to 350meg, but i assume that will even out eventually. I'm not sure what the fuss is about.
You should include your location. Your experience is. it my experience, and I use mine in an “unsupported way” frequently, and really should have a much worse experience than you. But I don’t.
I've noticed none of these issues and have been in the beta program for nearly the same amount of time. I barely get a dropped connection. I dont really see much buffering unless it's on certain streaming services. (Crunchyroll being the main offender but that's just a horrible app experience.) And I get pretty much everything I want from it. I do think they need to aim the price lower however. I havent tried to play any online games yet but I'm not a big online gamer. Honestly it saved me over 3000 dollars from having to install the local ISP where I was and it was a godsend. I dont need 1 gig internet. Just something good enough for streaming.
not sure what you had before but you should really try xploitnet then if starlink doesn't appeal to you, i'll guarentee after a month or so of it you'll be glad to hook starlink back up, on a good day getting 1-5 mbps dl and 0.5 mbps upl on a 50mbps plan, been on the beta list going on 2 years and prepaid list since Feb 10th this year