Starlink (Generation 2) testing

[GotNoRice]

My Starlink arrived this morning. I wanted to make this thread to catalog my experiences with the new rectangular antenna and router, and testing the service overall. I'm currently on Mediacom Cable, with speeds about 330/25. It's decent, but it's very expensive (more than 2x Starlink) because it's a business plan, which is the only way to get unlimited data with this ISP. They also wouldn't run Coax to my house so I have my Cablemodem sitting in a little shack 300+ft from my house, with Cat6a running the rest of the way. I got Starlink because it would be nice to cut the monthly cost and get rid of the less than ideal arrangement with the Cablemodem. But it will need to be fast and reliable otherwise it doesn't matter how cheap it is. Time to find out.

Package arrived shipped from Southern California.




The Antenna is actually a lot smaller than I thought it would be.


And the WiFi router, which also acts as a power supply for the Antenna.


Only two cables connect to the router, the power cable, and the cable to the Antenna. No Ethernet port on this version of the router There is an Ethernet adapter, which I ordered at the same time as the kit, but it has not even shipped yet, so WiFi only for now apparently.


The port is some odd port that looks like a slightly larger micro-USB connector. You can see the water-proofing on the plug. I don't believe Starlink encourages you to set the router up outside but it seems pretty rugged in that respect. The built-in 90 degree angle at the very end makes it almost impossible to push that end of the cable through a pre-drilled hole, which is rather annoying.


And here it is on the little stand. The stand doesn't seem as stable as I thought it would be. I'm thinking I will probably have to use tent spikes or something to stop it from being knocked over in the wind. We'll see. We are on the top of a hill with a perfect unobstructed view of the northern sky. Zero obstructions according to the app.


It took about 10 minutes to boot up. The antenna adjusted itself automatically. I completed the setup using the starlink app on my phone, which also allows me to control the very limited settings on the router.

Trying to find out what WAN IP it gave me was more challenging than it should have been, because the configuration options with this router are so limited. It doesn't even tell you what the WAN IP is until you open up the Debug Data and scroll down and find the entry for "ipv4WanAddress". My heart sank when I saw that it had given me a 100.78.x.x CGNAT IP Address.........

I've run my own webserver from my own home internet for over 15 years and it's come in handy countless times and saved me from ever having to deal with trash services like photobucket, etc. I'm sort of screwed in that respect if I don't have a public IP to work with. I knew that many were getting CGNAT IPs but starting in November or so there began to be reports of users having actual public IPs assigned to them. I had my fingers crossed, but now I know... I'm still holding out some tiny hope that maybe when I get the ethernet adapter and put the starlink router into bypass mode so I can use my own router, perhaps that will somehow allow me to get a public IP. I'm really hoping that the whole CGNAT nonsense just goes away as the service matures.

Despite being stuck on WiFi for now, I decided to start running some tests anyway. Speeds are variable, and seem to fluctuate between 150-300Mbps on the download, and 12-25Mbps on the Upload.


The Latency is pretty amazing compared to what I was expecting. For most sites, the latency is actually lower than what I was getting via Cable, sometimes by quite a bit. The two main Starlink ground stations for Northern California aren't really that far from me. That might help with the latency. The connection is very consistent and I have not been having any significant interruptions.


Downloading a Windows 11 ISO gives a better picture of the way the speed fluctuates. With my Cable connection it would just be pegged at 330Mbps.


Well so far my experience has been pretty good. I'm really happy with the speeds, latency, and reliability that I am seeing so far. Not having an Ethernet port is annoying but as long as the Ethernet adapter actually arrives and works as advertised, it shouldn't matter. The whole CGNAT thing is really the only thing that is giving me some pause. I look forward to doing some gaming and more real-world activities to test for lag as numbers don't always tell the whole story.

 

[hity645]

Nice write up. I'd be curious about weather related issues, such as storms and general cloud coverage. When I deployed one of these for our beta at my previous company we attached the antenna to a mast (kit purchased separately). We saw momentary disconnects due to high weather and typically only long enough for our backup connection to turn on and then switch back over. The area is so remote however that barring that, the performance was phenomenal and they kept it in place as the primary connection.

 

[vegeta535]

I just checked out Starlink and surprising I don't have it available in Baltimore. Say late 2022 as estimate. I am perfectly happy with my fiber but it is a good to have more options. The ping is seriously impressive.

 

[bigstusexy]

Thanks for the write up! I'll keep following this.

I think the CGNAT issue isn't going to go away unless they switch to IPV6.

 

[GotNoRice]

I think the CGNAT issue isn't going to go away unless they switch to IPV6.

Yeah we'll see. There are already reports from some people that have got a real public IP, i'm just not sure what the determining factor is or if it's just random.

I just finished repurposing an old laptop with a broken screen to be a dedicated web server. I'm going to set it up at a family member's house who has Comcast, and then I can manage the server remotely. Since everything else about the service is great so far, I guess that will allow me to work around the CGNAT issue for now. I'm still waiting for the Ethernet adapter to ship, until then all I can really do is maintain my Starlink internet as a parallel network for testing purposes.

 

[bigstusexy]

I don't think the ethernet adapter is going to change how the public side works. I'm thinking that most of the difference on what people are getting is probably going to be where they hit down links - but I've done zero looking into starlink as I live in pretty populated areas and hoping to always have fiber.

 

[Nobu]

I don't think the ethernet adapter is going to change how the public side works. I'm thinking that most of the difference on what people are getting is probably going to be where they hit down links - but I've done zero looking into starlink as I live in pretty populated areas and hoping to always have fiber.

Yeah, the local hub is probably what assigns IPs. If they haven't assigned a range of public IP addresses to that hub yet, then they're stuck using the private range and (hopefully?) NAT.

 

[cdoublejj]

i this kit requires you to use their crappy router though form what i heard. i hope bridge mode is out by the time my area gets Star Link.

I guessing you're not a fan for dynamic DNS via sync application of some sort?

 

[FlawleZ]

Latency looks A LOT better than I would expect. Thanks for sharing!

 

[longblock454]

I read somewhere that the 1st gen power consumption was around 100 watts 24-7, how does this generation compare?

 

[GotNoRice]

i this kit requires you to use their crappy router though form what i heard. i hope bridge mode is out by the time my area gets Star Link.

The issue is that there is no Ethernet port. The Starkink router has a bypass mode, that turns off the WiFi and allows you to use your own router, but it only works with the optional ethernet adapter (which you have to purchase separately). You can't hook up your own router via WiFi unless you want to double-NAT (which would actually be triple-NAT if you get a CGNAT IP from Starlink).

I guessing you're not a fan for dynamic DNS via sync application of some sort?

I've never had a need for Dynamic DNS because I have a real domain and just plug my public IP in there instead. In practice, most ISPs will give you the same WAN IP for long periods of time, especially if your router is on 24/7 and always renewing the same lease from the DHCP server. I'm not sure what you mean by "sync application", but even if there is a service that would somehow let me host my web server from behind a CGNAT IP, the entire reason I host my own web server is so that I don't have to rely on 3rd party services.

Are there any wall mount kits or similar for the dish?

They sell all sorts of mounts in the Starlink shop.

 

[cdoublejj]

The issue is that there is no Ethernet port. The Starkink router has a bypass mode, that turns off the WiFi and allows you to use your own router, but it only works with the optional ethernet adapter (which you have to purchase separately). You can't hook up your own router via WiFi unless you want to double-NAT (which would actually be triple-NAT if you get a CGNAT IP from Starlink).



I've never had a need for Dynamic DNS because I have a real domain and just plug my public IP in there instead. In practice, most ISPs will give you the same WAN IP for long periods of time, especially if your router is on 24/7 and always renewing the same lease from the DHCP server. I'm not sure what you mean by "sync application", but even if there is a service that would somehow let me host my web server from behind a CGNAT IP, the entire reason I host my own web server is so that I don't have to rely on 3rd party services.



They sell all sorts of mounts in the Starlink shop.

then that doesn't sound like real bridge mode to me. as my modem-router in bridge mode acts as a modem. :-( maybe i'll be able to pay more for the older kit in a few months. if it's aviable. i'd rather deal with a permantley attached cable lol

i also have a domain name and provider also gives me me dynamic IP, i just made provisions in my router to sync it up. there is a chance if the IP changes between sync intervals that it will fail to resolve for 5 or 15 minutes.

you rely on a 3rd party service to host your domain unless you run your own ICANN services and claim your own domain through ICANN. i use Gahndi and i use one of the free dynamic IP services. all you have to do is constantly report your current IP to back to domain name host. i have mine set to to every 5 or 15 minutes. it is setup in the router. HOWEVER you don't have to do that you can even run a app on one of your PCs that reports your current IP back. i did that for a while before i built an untangle router. i do something similar at home with my dd-wrt router.

 

[GotNoRice]

then that doesn't sound like real bridge mode to me. as my modem-router in bridge mode acts as a modem. :-( maybe i'll be able to pay more for the older kit in a few months. if it's aviable. i'd rather deal with a permantley attached cable lol

I do believe that it does act like a modem when Bypass mode is enabled. The adapter actually goes between the Starlink router and the antenna. In Bypass mode, the WAN IP is given directly to the WAN interface of your router, and the Starlink router isn't doing anything at that point. That's the same as what you would get when plugging your router into a Cablemodem, etc. You can't completely remove the Starlink router because it also acts as a PoE power supply for the antenna and the connection is proprietary.

i also have a domain name and provider also gives me me dynamic IP, i just made provisions in my router to sync it up. there is a chance if the IP changes between sync intervals that it will fail to resolve for 5 or 15 minutes.

On Mediacom my IP has changed, on average, less than once per year, and that almost always corresponds with a specific event like a power outage, etc. So it's predictable, and trivial to just update the IP manually when it does happen. We'll see if Starlink is similar, if I ever get a public IP at all.

you rely on a 3rd party service to host your domain unless you run your own ICANN services and claim your own domain through ICANN.

I don't know that paying a domain registrar a small fee once per year just to point my domain to my WAN IP counts as "hosting". I just don't want to pay for 3rd party web hosting (as in, paying someone else to use their web server), or cloud computing services when I can do it using my own equipment and internet connection instead.

 

[Nicklebon]

I've never had a need for Dynamic DNS because I have a real domain and just plug my public IP in there instead. In practice, most ISPs will give you the same WAN IP for long periods of time, especially if your router is on 24/7 and always renewing the same lease from the DHCP server. I'm not sure what you mean by "sync application", but even if there is a service that would somehow let me host my web server from behind a CGNAT IP, the entire reason I host my own web server is so that I don't have to rely on 3rd party services.

Can't promise it would work but ... Setup a 4 to 6 tunnel with Hurricane Electric. This would get you a publicly routable /56 or even a /48 IPv6 block. Put your webserver on an IPv6 address with corresponding dns.

 

[cdoublejj]

st don't want to pay for 3rd party web hosting (as in, paying someone else to use their web server), or cloud computing services when I can do it using my own equipment and internet connection instead.

yeah i self host too. not web server yet. the dynamic IP is free, there are a few services that are free. My ISP changes IP upon modem IP upon modem reboot.

sounds like pointing a fan on the router/modem/poe adapter might be a good idea. i like those little arctic cooling USB fans and the AC infinity 120v AC fans too.

 

[GotNoRice]

It took 3 extra weeks but the Ethernet Adapter finally showed up. It's pretty unremarkable and goes between the antenna and the Starlink router, which makes sense since that's literally the only port on the entire router aside from the power.





It was nice to get the whole house switched over finally. Using the ethernet adapter didn't change anything as far as what type of IP I got. Still CGNAT for now.

 

[GotNoRice]

No data cap issues so far.

 

[TheToE!]

It took 3 extra weeks but the Ethernet Adapter finally showed up. It's pretty unremarkable and goes between the antenna and the Starlink router, which makes sense since that's literally the only port on the entire router aside from the power.

View attachment 433902

View attachment 433903

It was nice to get the whole house switched over finally. Using the ethernet adapter didn't change anything as far as what type of IP I got. Still CGNAT for now.

I set one of these up for a client friday. I was temped to cut off the router end of the cable and crimp an end on then just plug it into her PoE switch. But she wanted to order the adapter. I wonder if it would work or does the dish have to uplink to the SL router?

 

[GotNoRice]

I set one of these up for a client friday. I was temped to cut off the router end of the cable and crimp an end on then just plug it into her PoE switch. But she wanted to order the adapter. I wonder if it would work or does the dish have to uplink to the SL router?

There are those who have done it.

One slight catch is that the Starlink Antenna can use more power than most common PoE switches can provide. The antenna even has built-in heating elements to melt snow or ice that forms on the surface, etc, which uses quite a bit of power. Those who have done it successfully used custom PoE power supplies that can supply more power.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/sb4dei/homebrew_poeethernet_adapter_for_rectangle/

 

[GotNoRice]

I've noticed some odd quirks since getting the service.

There is something seriously odd going on with the IP Geolocation information. A handful of days ago all of a sudden Hulu is insisting on giving me local channels for the Seattle area (I'm in Northern California). Same thing for websites and apps that give weather information, etc based on your IP location. And in fact it shows my hostname now as "customer.sea3.mc.starlinkisp.net", with "sea" referring to Seattle I assume. Internet connectivity overall has not been impacted, but Hulu has. Hulu has such Nazi policies when it comes to trying to prevent "abuse" of their service that it seems happy to believe the geolocation info as gospel.

I also noticed that when I went to a certain Wikipedia page, it gave me a notice saying someone with my public IP had made an edit but didn't provide proof so the edit was removed. I certainly didn't make any Wikipedia edits, so I assume this was someone else also stuck on CGNAT and sharing the same public IP as me. The chance of me just randomly stumbling on a Wikipedia page that had been edited by someone with my same IP seems like it should be extremely remote, so that does make me wonder just how many people are sharing the same IP address under this CGNAT setup... Possibly hundreds or even thousands?

I'm also noticing that Starlink is less friendly to heavy torrenting overall. This seems at least partially due to the highly variable speeds compared to a terrestrial connection. When you have your download maxed out with torrents and the speed tanks (due to normal variability), it causes everything to grind to a halt and I will get some brief ping timeouts. When I was still on Cable, pings would increase once my download was maxed out but not as much and I would rarely ever get full timeouts. I would liken it to the difference between a freeway that is traveling slowly but consistently compared to a freeway that is experiencing stop-and-go traffic. It's not a huge issue but I do get some buffering when I stream while torrenting, and I generally now have to quit my torrent client when I game online, whereas when I was on Cable I didn't usually have to do that.

 

[Nobu]

I've noticed some odd quirks since getting the service.

There is something seriously odd going on with the IP Geolocation information. A handful of days ago all of a sudden Hulu is insisting on giving me local channels for the Seattle area (I'm in Northern California). Same thing for websites and apps that give weather information, etc based on your IP location. And in fact it shows my hostname now as "customer.sea3.mc.starlinkisp.net", with "sea" referring to Seattle I assume. Internet connectivity overall has not been impacted, but Hulu has. Hulu has such Nazi policies when it comes to trying to prevent "abuse" of their service that it seems happy to believe the geolocation info as gospel.

I also noticed that when I went to a certain Wikipedia page, it gave me a notice saying someone with my public IP had made an edit but didn't provide proof so the edit was removed. I certainly didn't make any Wikipedia edits, so I assume this was someone else also stuck on CGNAT and sharing the same public IP as me. The chance of me just randomly stumbling on a Wikipedia page that had been edited by someone with my same IP seems like it should be extremely remote, so that does make me wonder just how many people are sharing the same IP address under this CGNAT setup... Possibly hundreds or even thousands?

I'm also noticing that Starlink is less friendly to heavy torrenting overall. This seems at least partially due to the highly variable speeds compared to a terrestrial connection. When you have your download maxed out with torrents and the speed tanks (due to normal variability), it causes everything to grind to a halt and I will get some brief ping timeouts. When I was still on Cable, pings would increase once my download was maxed out but not as much and I would rarely ever get full timeouts. I would liken it to the difference between a freeway that is traveling slowly but consistently compared to a freeway that is experiencing stop-and-go traffic. It's not a huge issue but I do get some buffering when I stream while torrenting, and I generally now have to quit my torrent client when I game online, whereas when I was on Cable I didn't usually have to do that.

I always had my downloads and uploads throttled in the torrent app for that reason. In my case, I think it was cox I had, and everything suffered if I didn't throttle the torrents.

Iirc, the uplink was the major issue. if you saturate the uplink, then it can't negotiate more data to download, so everything crawls until it's free.

 

[TheToE!]

There are those who have done it.

One slight catch is that the Starlink Antenna can use more power than most common PoE switches can provide. The antenna even has built-in heating elements to melt snow or ice that forms on the surface, etc, which uses quite a bit of power. Those who have done it successfully used custom PoE power supplies that can supply more power.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/sb4dei/homebrew_poeethernet_adapter_for_rectangle/

Thanks for the heads up!

 

[GotNoRice]

I always had my downloads and uploads throttled in the torrent app for that reason. In my case, I think it was cox I had, and everything suffered if I didn't throttle the torrents.

I used to do something similar with the Traffic Shaper in pfSense. But that only really worked because my speeds with cable were consistent, so it was easy to set a cap / throttle 5% or so below my max download and upload speed. With Starlink download speeds can vary from over 300Mbps to under 100Mbps. With these constant peaks and valleys in speed, I'd have to cap my speeds very low to avoid the "valleys", and I'd miss out on all the extra bandwidth during the peaks. I assume the variability will decrease as more and more satellites join the constellation, or at least that's what I'm hoping.

 

[Liver]

The ethernet adapter. Where can I order that? I can not find where to do so.

 

[Dameon]

The ethernet adapter. Where can I order that? I can not find where to do so.

From the Starlink website...

https://shop.starlink.com/products/us-consumer-ethernet-adapter-gen2

My estimated wait was 2 months, but actually got it within 2 weeks.

 

[Liver]

From the Starlink website...

https://shop.starlink.com/products/us-consumer-ethernet-adapter-gen2

My estimated wait was 2 months, but actually got it within 2 weeks.

Thanks for the link.

Do I have to own a dish before I can order stuff?

Specifically I need the ethernet adapter and I’ll need a longer cable.

 

[Dameon]

Thanks for the link.

Do I have to own a dish before I can order stuff?

Specifically I need the ethernet adapter and I’ll need a longer cable.

I don't think you need a dish to order other things, might you might need a current account and I don't think you can get that until you pay for the dish. You don't pay for the dish until it's "ready to ship".

Post back here with your results. I'd be curious.

 

[GotNoRice]

I believe that the shop is setup to only offer you accessories that work with the dish that you have. If you have the round dish (which is what new customers outside of the US still get), then you will not have the option to buy the ethernet adapter because it's not needed. If you are inside the US and have the rectangular dish then it will list the ethernet adapter in the shop. I'm not sure that you have any option to buy accessories before you buy your dish.

 

[Liver]

Found it. Crap. Have to have the dish on my account prior to having access to the goodies.

 

[cdoublejj]

and they are back ordered

 

[TheToE!]

My client's having issues with hers. I suspect it's the shitty router thats supplied. She's waiting on the ethernet adapter. Internet will just die out of no where even though the light on bottome is solid.

 

[GotNoRice]

My client's having issues with hers. I suspect it's the shitty router thats supplied. She's waiting on the ethernet adapter. Internet will just die out of no where even though the light on bottome is solid.

The router that is supplied is not particularly advanced, and does not have many user-adjustable options, but it's not bad to the point where it would cause internet dropouts. I'd say it's much more likely that something is blocking the Starlink antenna's field of view. Most underestimate the sort of things that can block the field of view. Even something like a thin telephone pole can cause dropouts. The Starlink antenna points to the north and even things relatively low on the horizon in that direction can block the signal.

If you use the Starlink app while connected to the Starlink wifi router, it will show you if you have a clear field of view, and if not, it will show you where in the field of view the blockage is located. It will also show you any outages that have occurred during the past 12 hours.

 

[Liver]

I need Starlink, like 5 years ago. Apparently I’m on the list for this year.

Last night I was frustrated enough with internet access that I seriously considered paying for the business plan.

 

[BravO)))]

Just ordered myself. Two weeks to ship. Moving to a new place, and att is the only thing available... With the cable isp being less than 3 miles away. I have att dsl at the place I am moving from, and I would rather cut down a bunch of trees, rather than use att for internet again. 50 dollars for 10mb in 2022 lol. With all those billions of dollars they could have used on infrastructure, instead the tax payer will be footing the bill for the upgrades... Fuck att. I will gladly pay 110 to not use them.

 

[BravO)))]

Since ATT is the only thing available, I got an itch to see what they would offer at the place I am moving. Less than 5 miles away, if I went ATT instead of starlink, I would go from 10mb for 45$ to 5mb at 55$. LULZ.

 

[ultimatebob]

I also got a Starlink V2 dish, mostly because I was curious about how well the service works. I've been averaging speeds of 150 Mb/s download and 25 Mb/s upload during the day, and speeds of 50 Mb/s download and 10 Mb/s upload during the evening.

I also noticed that the service is VERY fussy about obstructions. If you have as much as a twig obstructing your view of the northern sky, you WILL have intermittent outages. I was able to fix this issue by putting the dish on top of my roof, but even then I still experience outages during heavy rainstorms.

 

[GotNoRice]

So I wanted to update this thread. Unfortunately the service has suffered from a slow degradation over time since I made this thread. The biggest change has been during peak hours.

Speeds used to be fairly consistent throughout the day. Now, during the evenings the service will slow down to nearly DSL speeds. On Sunday evening it got all the way down to 15Mbps on the download. Ironically, the upload actually tested faster than the download at that point. The upload speeds do not seem to be affected as much or nearly at all during peak hours.

Average latency has gone up a little (+10-20ms) bit but is still good overall. I still get better average latency on Starlink than Cable. Unfortunately with speeds slowing down so much during "peak hours", it's way too easy to clog up your connection which obviously causes latency to spike.

Reliability has gone down. One of the first things I tested after I set it up was gaming via hours-long gaming sessions of World of Warcraft (which is the game I play the most these days). WoW is more forgiving when it comes to lag compared to a first person shooter but you can still feel it. When I made this thread, gaming was not an issue. Maybe once per hour I might have felt a slight bit of lag that would pass after a second or two. It amounted to a minor annoyance but nothing that prevented me from playing the game. It's still possible to play online using Starlink but it feels like much more of a liability now. Lag spikes now seem more frequent, seem to last longer, and occasionally are even severe enough to disconnect me from the game. It's still okay *most* of the time.

Last night we got our first big storm in a long time. Starlink had already proven to be reliable during moderately-heavy rain and light hail. But last night we had a combo of VERY heavy rain, some small hail, and thunderstorms. The closest lightning bolt that we saw was still probably a few miles or more away but either the lightning or the heavy rain was enough to knock out the Starlink service for 5+ minutes, on at least two separate occasions. On one of those occasions it also knocked out our DISH TV service so it was a pretty significant storm. That was actually the first time I've had a significant weather-related outage since we got the service. We only get storms like that a few times per year so it's not a big deal but it was still annoying as our Cable service didn't skip a beat during that entire time. I dislike the idea of my internet being at the mercy of the weather.

I strongly believe that the speed issues are simply due to the number of subscribers vs the number of satellites. You have Starlink being setup on cruise ships now, etc. They offer mobile / RV service that is not dependent on any particular cell being full or not. So a lot of people signed up for mobile RV service, just to actually use it at their house, in a cell that is already full. Starlink also decided to offer "Best Effort" service which basically allows new customers to subscribe in cells that are already full, with the caveat that they will supposedly get throttled during peak hours before their normal customers do. Meanwhile on the other end you have companies (such as DISH) slowing down new Starlink satellite deployment by taking Starlink to court over things such as frequency allocation, etc. Other companies (and government agencies) creating baseless lawsuits and regulatory hurdles related to SpaceX's new "Starship" rocket, which will be required to deploy the next generation of Starlink satellites.

So, I'm not really sure where to go from here. If the service had been this bad during the trial period, I probably would have boxed it up and sent it back. As I mentioned in my first post, we already have Cable Internet also. We are on an expensive business plan (over twice as expensive as Starlink) as that was the only way to get unlimited data. We ended up kind of screwing ourselves because no one remembered that we were on a multi-year contract for our Cable service that doesn't end until early next year. So instead of canceling our Cable service like we had planned, we've been stuck paying for both (for now). That might have actually been a blessing in disguise as I'm not really sure if Starlink is going to work for us anymore. But Starlink is also very much an evolving product. Having seen how good it was before, and knowing that Starlink / SpaceX is just waiting to be able to use Starship to deploy much more capable satelites, I think it's a real possibility that it will get better again. But Internet is so important, it kind of sucks to be the guinea pig.

 

[dbwillis]

I have a customer in Vermont thats at the end of the road/line for DSL and gets 10 down/3 up for speeds, finally was able to convince the owner to try Starlink!

 

[Eulogy]

GotNoRice - nice timing on your update.
My family is planning on buying a house that currently doesn't have cable available. Comcast wants nearly $100k to run it there. I convinced them of a plan that'll bring it down to about $11k (basically, have them install to a shed on the corner of the property, then I'll run buried fiber to my rack in the shop from that shed). In the meantime, I signed up for the Starlink waitlist, since it said service would be available in 2023, well after we plan on buying the property etc. The idea being to use Starlink as a bridge til I have time and real desire to build the shed and run the fiber (and take away the rush need to do it right when we move there, being that I WFH).
Well, despite it not yet being 2023, I got an email that it is available now. So I went ahead and placed the order tonight. I get to bang on it for 30 days, and can get a full refund if it doesn't work out. I'm going to run a dual-WAN setup, and during work time kill the cable internet to see if starlink as-is right now will even work out.
From what I've read, average downloads have dropped into the ~70Mbps range and uploads are now ~7Mbps. That's teetering on the edge of being adequate for my work, mostly the upload. 5Mbps up is my cutoff, and even that will be a bit painful for moving local dev builds around.
As long as it hits those speeds during work hours, then I should be fine. And as I said, it's basically just a bridge to let me be a little lazy for a few months, so only temporary pain. I don't much online game, so I'm not worried about that.
Definitely curious how your experience goes over the next bit, and, I'll certainly post about mine once the hardware shows up and I set things up.

FWIW, Starlink can easily use Falcon-9s to lift their payloads up, with the "modified Gen2" (Gen 1.5?) sats. I think it's a little disingenuous for SpaceX to blame all their woes on external factors, most of which they've had ample time and control over and simply dropped the ball.

 

[GotNoRice]

From what I've read, average downloads have dropped into the ~70Mbps range and uploads are now ~7Mbps. That's teetering on the edge of being adequate for my work, mostly the upload. 5Mbps up is my cutoff, and even that will be a bit painful for moving local dev builds around.

For me, upload has been pretty consistent at 15Mbps+. It often peaks at 40Mbps or more briefly before settling down to ~15. Slowdowns during peak hours seem to mainly affect download speeds.

One good thing I've found is that if I'm downloading a torrent with hundreds or thousands of seeds, I will get speeds that are much faster than what I get during a speed test. Maybe all those simultaneous connections are brute-forcing more bandwidth? Not really sure. Speeds also increase quite a bit during off-peak hours, especially during the middle of the night. So if you were downloading a huge file or something, at least you can still get good speeds at those times.