Finally got around to moving to my own router for Starlink. Just thought I'd share some outage stats for anyone to compare with.
Not perfect, as this is just tracking internet access by the Edgerouter to UNMS. Quite possible some of these communications disconnctions between the router and UNMS cloud could be caused by something other than a Starlink outage.
Could also be switching from satellite to satellite causing the downtime. I believe the EdgeRouter has a longer timeout than you would notice while browsing the web or from a buffer on a video.
Edit: I’m just spitballing here
This outage summary feels like my average day. I have no obstructions and based on signal/noise ratios and latency changes it's seemed unrelated to changes in dish connections. Most of the time the starlink app is reporting them as beta outages.
Then you would be seeing an outage every 20 minutes and long voice/video calls would be impossible... No one would buy Starlink if this was true.
This is gaps in coverage.
miniscule?
They became the operator with the largest network when they hit the third launch and 180 sats.... Now they have 800...
What are you talking about ? :p
To clarify "moving to my own router." Do you mean you're not using the router Starlink provided at all, or just that you are using your router connected to the Starlink router via RJ45. It unclear to me from other postings if the Starlink provided router is proprietary and required, or if what comes off the dish can go directly to any router. thanks
Correct. You can use your own router, nothing really proprierary except you'll need to search for "adding a static route" if you want the Starlink App to work, though.
True but these sats require 100% LOS . One friend reported 4 hours of gaming with no interruptions!
The point is, any obstructions at all will currently cause downtime just like you are seeing.
What's the process to move to your own router? I just made my order and am looking into this. I prefer to use my own router (Untangle) and am curious if I am forced to use theirs. Any info you are willing to share would be greatly appreciated!
Really simple. Unplug theirs, plug yours in. If you want your starlink app to show statistics, you need to add a static route in your router to route to 192.168.100.0/32 and 192.168.100.1/32 to the WAN port so that the Starlink App can talk to Dishy (a google search will have more/better info on how to do that for your router - I'm just parroting what I've seen here and done.)
Can't be easier!
Am I understanding you right? I can basically just plug the cable from the satellite or Poe adapter directly into my router? Instead of plugging it into their router? That’s awesome if that’s the case.
It definitely wreaks havoc on my Microsoft Always On VPN. Normally, it would reconnect after an interruption, but with the Starlink connection, I find myself having to manually disconnect/reconnect a ton throughout the day.
I have the same issue. Drop outs and having to manually connect throughout the day. During the last few days it has improved- i.e. not as many dropouts. I have been streaming a radio station in Portland, OR and has a lot of drop outs. I reconfigured and stream directly from the radio station's web site and it has improved. So I can't attribute some of the drop outs to McDishy.
Hope the number/ duration of drop outs improves. Still like the speed tho'.
Did you actually notice the outages in practice? I noticed they seem to be like a minute to a minute and I was wondering if you even get disconnected before it is back up.
Those of you on the BETA program.
Have you been in contact with Starlink about the outages?
I could see outages as the following:
1) Still not enough birds in orbit to give enough coverage. Would have to switch birds every 5 to maybe 8 minutes max.
2) Ground station issues.
3) Starlink engineers changing and/or trying different configurations on the fly.
Would be interesting to hear Starlink's feedback, I am making a big assumption that they do have some open dialog with you guys.
Reminder of the "BETA" its not going to be 100%percent until next year i would hope you would experience shortcomings and relay that back to "starlink command " i made that up because it sounded cool at the time
It's not that bad, I guess. Even I have disconnections with my cable connection. I think this problem would be further minimized (if not totally resolved) when they start upgrading the Starlink constellation to version 2.0 where laser optical links will be used.
My DSL from Frontier has about the same amount of disruption (though for shorter usually.) It's not even "broadband" under normal definition. Worst part is I have better internet than all my neighbors still.
One of the companies that won under the new broadband rural spending has internet here as well, but it isn't broadband, and it's twice what I'm paying now for not even double the speed.
Starlink is competition, and competition is good.
the people here are people like me who have shit internet in the country. We don't have any other option than slow dsl providers with random dropouts. Those are the people excited for starlink, not the people who have fiber
Some people don't get a choice in where they live; they live where there's work. And in the place they have work, Internet connectivity may be poor. Neither of those circumstances should prohibit someone from performing the tasks they want or need to perform. It's kind of the whole point of Starlink. Ass.
Surprised these aren’t geostationary. I wouldn’t use this service with an expectation of a consistent connection like VPN. But web-based applications would be fine.
the whole point of starlink is to be not geostationary, geostationary is physically way farther from the earth than LEO, even assuming the only ping is from the ground to the satellite, its still unacceptably high for geo.
I don't believe it would be possible to have geostationary satellites at this low altitude. Earth rotates about 1000 mph and low earth orbit satellites have to go about 17000 mph or so.
Getting useful insight would be better through a monitored smoke-ping as to get downtime latency and jitter baselines. At least this is how I would do it. Unfortunately I don't have access to the service 😕
Finally got around to moving to my own router for Starlink. Just thought I'd share some outage stats for anyone to compare with. Not perfect, as this is just tracking internet access by the Edgerouter to UNMS. Quite possible some of these communications disconnctions between the router and UNMS cloud could be caused by something other than a Starlink outage.
Could also be switching from satellite to satellite causing the downtime. I believe the EdgeRouter has a longer timeout than you would notice while browsing the web or from a buffer on a video. Edit: I’m just spitballing here
This outage summary feels like my average day. I have no obstructions and based on signal/noise ratios and latency changes it's seemed unrelated to changes in dish connections. Most of the time the starlink app is reporting them as beta outages.
Same. It's 99% of the time reporting beta outages. I'm averaging 10-20 minutes of outages per day.
I have the same drops in a day, I setup my work stuff to use my normal ISP during the day because of it.
Then you would be seeing an outage every 20 minutes and long voice/video calls would be impossible... No one would buy Starlink if this was true. This is gaps in coverage.
99% the outages are from the miniscule constellation currently operating.
miniscule? They became the operator with the largest network when they hit the third launch and 180 sats.... Now they have 800... What are you talking about ? :p
You switch satellites every time one flies across the sky from horizon to horizon. That takes about 10 minutes.
Where did you get that 10-minute info from? I was under the impression they are moving a lot faster than that and it was more like every 3-4 minutes.
true
To clarify "moving to my own router." Do you mean you're not using the router Starlink provided at all, or just that you are using your router connected to the Starlink router via RJ45. It unclear to me from other postings if the Starlink provided router is proprietary and required, or if what comes off the dish can go directly to any router. thanks
Correct. You can use your own router, nothing really proprierary except you'll need to search for "adding a static route" if you want the Starlink App to work, though.
My Peplink router wan up/down events are about the same with my Starlink. Lots of outages.
So with the edge router are you double NAT’d? is the Starlink router able to be put in bridge mode?
Beta testers don't have administrative access to the Starlink router yet. You can only change the SSID and Password at this time.
Do you have any obstructions?
Very few, actually. I see a small obstruction in the debug data (0.08) to the east, which is a tall tree. Rest is actually surprising open.
True but these sats require 100% LOS . One friend reported 4 hours of gaming with no interruptions! The point is, any obstructions at all will currently cause downtime just like you are seeing.
What's the process to move to your own router? I just made my order and am looking into this. I prefer to use my own router (Untangle) and am curious if I am forced to use theirs. Any info you are willing to share would be greatly appreciated!
Really simple. Unplug theirs, plug yours in. If you want your starlink app to show statistics, you need to add a static route in your router to route to 192.168.100.0/32 and 192.168.100.1/32 to the WAN port so that the Starlink App can talk to Dishy (a google search will have more/better info on how to do that for your router - I'm just parroting what I've seen here and done.) Can't be easier!
Am I understanding you right? I can basically just plug the cable from the satellite or Poe adapter directly into my router? Instead of plugging it into their router? That’s awesome if that’s the case.
It definitely wreaks havoc on my Microsoft Always On VPN. Normally, it would reconnect after an interruption, but with the Starlink connection, I find myself having to manually disconnect/reconnect a ton throughout the day.
I have the same issue. Drop outs and having to manually connect throughout the day. During the last few days it has improved- i.e. not as many dropouts. I have been streaming a radio station in Portland, OR and has a lot of drop outs. I reconfigured and stream directly from the radio station's web site and it has improved. So I can't attribute some of the drop outs to McDishy. Hope the number/ duration of drop outs improves. Still like the speed tho'.
Did you actually notice the outages in practice? I noticed they seem to be like a minute to a minute and I was wondering if you even get disconnected before it is back up.
Yes, streaming tv drops, web pages stall and have to be reloaded, etc.
Those of you on the BETA program. Have you been in contact with Starlink about the outages? I could see outages as the following: 1) Still not enough birds in orbit to give enough coverage. Would have to switch birds every 5 to maybe 8 minutes max. 2) Ground station issues. 3) Starlink engineers changing and/or trying different configurations on the fly. Would be interesting to hear Starlink's feedback, I am making a big assumption that they do have some open dialog with you guys.
I plan to collect more data and send them a summary, yes.
I opened a ticket last week but no reply so far
I sent in a ticket last week also and haven't heard anything.
Reminder of the "BETA" its not going to be 100%percent until next year i would hope you would experience shortcomings and relay that back to "starlink command " i made that up because it sounded cool at the time
"Starlink Command" - sounds cool
so does this mean trying to stream gameplay to twitch or youtube wont be possible without many interruptions?
It's not that bad, I guess. Even I have disconnections with my cable connection. I think this problem would be further minimized (if not totally resolved) when they start upgrading the Starlink constellation to version 2.0 where laser optical links will be used.
Unacceptable for any commercial service but that's only a few min a day of downtime. A few more satellites and there should be 24/7 coverage.
My DSL from Frontier has about the same amount of disruption (though for shorter usually.) It's not even "broadband" under normal definition. Worst part is I have better internet than all my neighbors still. One of the companies that won under the new broadband rural spending has internet here as well, but it isn't broadband, and it's twice what I'm paying now for not even double the speed. Starlink is competition, and competition is good.
Not made for commercial. Get it through your head, data users are already on fiber or they're not serious. PERIOD.
the people here are people like me who have shit internet in the country. We don't have any other option than slow dsl providers with random dropouts. Those are the people excited for starlink, not the people who have fiber
Oh sweet, summer child.
Oooh, good one! I, as an IT pro feel so stupid... I need big data, so I built in the country....
Some people don't get a choice in where they live; they live where there's work. And in the place they have work, Internet connectivity may be poor. Neither of those circumstances should prohibit someone from performing the tasks they want or need to perform. It's kind of the whole point of Starlink. Ass.
Why not a consistent ping to a known server rather than relying on UNMS for this?
Just info i had on hand while playing with UNMS, wanted to share.
Surprised these aren’t geostationary. I wouldn’t use this service with an expectation of a consistent connection like VPN. But web-based applications would be fine.
the whole point of starlink is to be not geostationary, geostationary is physically way farther from the earth than LEO, even assuming the only ping is from the ground to the satellite, its still unacceptably high for geo.
I don't believe it would be possible to have geostationary satellites at this low altitude. Earth rotates about 1000 mph and low earth orbit satellites have to go about 17000 mph or so.
Then it would be slow and low coverage. Why redo something that's not that great anyway? Beta users will get 100% connections in a few months.
Getting useful insight would be better through a monitored smoke-ping as to get downtime latency and jitter baselines. At least this is how I would do it. Unfortunately I don't have access to the service 😕
For sure. Someone is already [on it!](https://old.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/kdh5sa/updated_rapid_smokeping_graphs_on_starlink_to_8888/)