How does Starlink compare to a WISP like lightwire?

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Theman843

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#296388 13-Jun-2022 13:45

I have a lightwire connection in the Waikato and I’m reasonably happy with it, I get speeds of around 50mbps down 5mbps up. The only major complaint I have about it is the inability to have a decent gaming experience with it because the ping times are just too inconsistent. I pay $155pm for an unlimited plan which is basically the same as starlink, after the cost of the dish.

The main question I have is, would I have a better experience with starlink?

BlueOwl

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#2926089 13-Jun-2022 14:47

Starlink would be approx twice as fast on download and upload, but ping times probably worse.

At the moment, over Starlink I get 120mbps down, 22mbps up and 90ms pings via Ookla speedtest to Prodigi Auckland. Ping times can be very variable because the distance to the fast-moving satellites and back are always changing.

So probably not worth changing for gaming.

raytaylor

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#2926168 13-Jun-2022 18:42

I am not a gamer myself but one of our staff did some monitoring of his connection a few months ago.
There was some big delays whenever it changed satelite. That staffmember liked to play in a particular game that bans people who disconnect often mid-game. I forget what its called but it was one of those popular shoot-em-up games.

They got to the pre-warning stage before getting banned regarding their poor connection.

We have also had a couple of gamers switch back to fixed wireless from starlink because we can often beat fixed line ping times.

As for lightwire - I would suggest talking to them and see if they have any way of monitoring your tcp packet acknowledgements and watching for latency in those. They might be able to see if there is a problem with your connection or a backhaul.

Also it would be wise to confirm you dont use any mesh wifi system or 5ghz wifi inside the house as 5ghz wifi will often interfere with the rooftop dish.

Ray Taylor

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Theman843

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#2926185 13-Jun-2022 19:42

raytaylor:
I am not a gamer myself but one of our staff did some monitoring of his connection a few months ago.
There was some big delays whenever it changed satelite. That staffmember liked to play in a particular game that bans people who disconnect often mid-game. I forget what its called but it was one of those popular shoot-em-up games.

They got to the pre-warning stage before getting banned regarding their poor connection.

We have also had a couple of gamers switch back to fixed wireless from starlink because we can often beat fixed line ping times.

As for lightwire - I would suggest talking to them and see if they have any way of monitoring your tcp packet acknowledgements and watching for latency in those. They might be able to see if there is a problem with your connection or a backhaul.

Also it would be wise to confirm you dont use any mesh wifi system or 5ghz wifi inside the house as 5ghz wifi will often interfere with the rooftop dish.

Wow that last part is good to know, i do actually have a wifi mesh system with 5ghz. About to see if its any different after i turn it off.

xpd

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#2926294 14-Jun-2022 08:24

raytaylor:

hat staffmember liked to play in a particular game that bans people who disconnect often mid-game. I forget what its called but it was one of those popular shoot-em-up games.

They got to the pre-warning stage before getting banned regarding their poor connection.

Sounds like that'll be Overwatch....

A gamer friend of mine is moving to Starlink (or his wife is wanting to), I warned him about ping times but his SWMBO didnt care and was fed up with not being able to have more than one device doing anything online without killing the others connections (rural 3-4mbps ADSL FTW).

So to keep the peace in his household, hes giving up online gaming :)

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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raytaylor

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#2926298 14-Jun-2022 08:42

Theman843:

Wow that last part is good to know, i do actually have a wifi mesh system with 5ghz. About to see if its any different after i turn it off.

Lightwire can do a remote scan from the dish to see if the 5ghz wifi or inter-mesh linking is on the same channel as the rooftop dish. Unfortunatley many mesh systems just use auto channel out of the box. And if the wifi system is on auto channel mode, the interference situation can change randomly.
Its really unhelpful with new fancy routers using up 80mhz wide channels that cover large parts of the 5ghz band.

We say to customers if they use a 20mhz wide channel and stay on channel 36/40/44 then there will never be any problems but lightwire could confirm if that works for them too.

Ray Taylor

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1101

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#2930283 16-Jun-2022 10:50

How good a fit is Starlink for a Business ?
To replace rural Wireless Internet (no fibre available )

Obviously no Static Ip (I assume)
Any other snags or issues ?
Can the business still use their Existing Firewall / router . Will it be double NAT ?
Will hardware VPN's (router based) still pass though ?

cheers

nztim

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#2930285 16-Jun-2022 10:53

1101:Can the business still use their Existing Firewall / router . Will it be double NAT ?

Its double NAT anyway as all starlink connections use CG-NAT but you can replace the starlink router, it just means you can't use their mobile App

Any views expressed on these forums are my own and don't necessarily reflect those of my employer.

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BlueOwl

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#2930307 16-Jun-2022 11:45

1101:

How good a fit is Starlink for a Business ?
To replace rural Wireless Internet (no fibre available )

Obviously no Static Ip (I assume)
Any other snags or issues ?
Can the business still use their Existing Firewall / router . Will it be double NAT ?
Will hardware VPN's (router based) still pass though ?

cheers

I believe a static IP is available under the Starlink Business Subscription option ($$), it may be available for residential plans in the future as an optional add-on.

You can use you own firewall/router (I do), yes it's CGNAT - your router interface will be given an address in the 100.64.0.0/10 range using DHCP. You can still use the app to monitor your Starlink stats when using your own router, but it depends on how you can configure your router. Mine required the 192.168.100.0/24 subnet to be configured statically on the same link as the DHCP, some routers won't do that.

Site-to-site VPNs should be OK with a static public IP, I can't confirm that myself.

nztim

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#2930310 16-Jun-2022 11:59

BlueOwl:

Site-to-site VPNs should be OK with a static public IP, I can't confirm that myself.

Site to Site is fine as long as one end is public static, IKEv2 works through a single layer of NAT (router in front of CG-NAT), two layers and it gets unreliable due to ESP Procotol 50, udp 4500 solves this if both endpoints support it

IKEv2 Site to Site allows you to use Firewall IDs or user@fqdn instead of IP address perfect for one end been dynamic/behind CG-NAT

Any views expressed on these forums are my own and don't necessarily reflect those of my employer.