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sossie07

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#283951 22-Mar-2021 11:01
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We are in South Canterbury, and I have just setup our Starlink this morning.

 

I work from home, and have a 4G, and a Wifi link from the local Wireless ISP. The WISP connection is good, but I don't have line of site from my house, so we have another wifi bridge up the thill where I have installed the ISP's AP. The WISP connection all runs on a solar power setup so although the WISP is good, the power is a bit unreliable if we have a couple of weeks of bad weather (which is my fault). The 4G is awful and I can't wait to cancel it.

 

Because I work from home I can't afford to be without internet, so I'll drop the 4G, and keep the WISP link and Starlink. I have a Fortigate FW setup with SDWan to manage the failover.

 

Here are the comparisons from this morning (screenshot attached):

 

Starlink 

 

Bandwidth down/up:150/100 Mbit/s

 

Packet loss: between 0-14%   (this varies, the app on my phone says there are times when it can't see a satellite, you can see the gap in the screen shot, so hopefully this will improve)

 

Jitter to 8.8.8.8:    1.14ms

 

Latency to 8.8.8.8   67ms

 

 

 

WISP:

 

Bandwith down/up:  30/20 Mbit/s

 

Packet loss: 0%

 

Jittter to 8.8.8.8  0.9ms

 

Latency to 8.8.8.8   43ms

 

 

 

Conclusion:

 

For me, 20-30Mbits bandwidth from the WISP is heaps,  I want low latency, low loss, and low jitter (which the WISP provides but not as good as fibre).

 

Starlink will be good for bulk downloads (e.g. streaming TV), but I think for kids gaming, and voip they may prefer the WISP link for the lower latency and packet loss.

 

If I only needed a single internet provider I probably would have been better of spending the $700 on improving my solar setup and just keeping the local WISP (or if I had line of site to my house the WISP link would be the best option), but for us its nice to have two good links now which are diverse, and heaps of bandwidth.

 

 

 


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xpd

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  #2678308 22-Mar-2021 11:14
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As more Starlink's hit the orbit, the packet loss etc should drop.

 

I don't have a need for it myself, but will be recommending a friend keep an eye on things as his current internet is crap and cant get decent mobile coverage etc.

 

 





       Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

 

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OzoneNZ
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  #2678504 22-Mar-2021 15:22
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Awesome to see some stats from an NZ user, very keen for Starlink to start dispatching orders further north

 

My parents house is in a very similar situation with a 30/10 WISP connection and no direct line-of-sight, waiting on Starlink since 30/10 is the maximum available from the WISP


freespace
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  #2729110 15-Jun-2021 13:47
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Hi sossie07,

 

Thanks for the details provided. Can you please give an update on how you are finding Starlink broadband now you are nearly three months in?

 

 

 

Looking at Starlink as a replacement for existing Satellite broadband due to huge latency and pack loss with the existing service.  Starlink would be the only broadband so interested to know how often you see gaps in coverage!

 

 

 

Thanks,

 

Ross




gzt

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  #2729134 15-Jun-2021 14:46
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< 70ms is still very usable for zoom etc. It's not uncommon for even a crappy wifi router to add that much in less than ideal conditions. A Geosync satellite is 10x worse than StarLink LEO :  )


l43a2
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  #2729135 15-Jun-2021 14:52
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remembering that all Starlink traffic is gatewaying in AU still? so latency should drop in time as well






sbiddle
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  #2729325 15-Jun-2021 20:23
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It would be interesting to see some more real world stats. I've heard anecdotal reports of it becoming a lot better in NZ (ie only loss of signal and dropouts a few times per day now) but that's only going to improve with more satellites.

 

 


Oblivian
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  #2729362 15-Jun-2021 21:26
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Few more kiwi users and speedtest/details here https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=49&topicid=281278&page_no=20 


 
 
 

Move to New Zealand's best fibre broadband service (affiliate link). Note that to use Quic Broadband you must be comfortable with configuring your own router.

gzt

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  #2730421 17-Jun-2021 22:27
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Is there any site giving a reliability or signal estimate based on location?

Oblivian
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  #2730427 17-Jun-2021 22:43
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gzt: Is there any site giving a reliability or signal estimate based on location?

 

Only user created ones like mentioned in other thread I linked.

 

https://starlink.sx/ 

 

If you want to see if your area is covered. Download the starlink app. It has some AR features.

 


Basically. It's sky based. If you can see the sky, you get full signal. But micr-outtages are possible when there is bad overlap/edge of FoV


hio77
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  #2730444 18-Jun-2021 00:28
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Interesting to hear you are doing fortigate sdwan to balance these.

That's a fairly recent option in the fortigate world, but extremely good potential for this sort of use case.

How'd the forti like the nat on the starlink? I assume its direct rather than via the starlink router?

Is your sdwan only running work traffic as split tunnel or routing all traffic to a dc?


Being in the south island, which termination station are you hitting to uplink to the Internet?




#include <std_disclaimer>

 

Any comments made are personal opinion and do not reflect directly on the position my current or past employers may have.

 

 


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