Starlink, Part 2 – bad weather? speeds? data caps? FAQ's answered!

we have a good six seven inches of snow but   the dishy is looking okay   (music) hi folks welcome back this is part two of my  starlink videos had a great response to the last   video if you haven't seen it yet check it out the  link up here in this video i'm going to cover all   the frequently asked questions that people asked  in the 2000 plus comments that i've got on the   last video we've had the starlink for about five  weeks now it's been performing well on the whole   speeds are still really good the short outages  have decreased a little bit what we're still   seeing 15 second or so outages every so often and  we're still seeing once in a while a longer outage   in the middle of the night first things first i  did not cut this tree to put the starlink dish   here tons of people have asked about data caps  and right now in the public beta there are no data   caps this is unlimited internet another really  common question was how does the starlink do   during bad weather in clouds like we have today  or in rain or in snow i took some footage of me   out here in the heavy rain and it was working  fine i'll put some of that footage in here this past week we got about seven inches of  snow in six hours and the dish kept itself   clear it actually generates enough heat that it  was completely melted and i've got some footage of   that i was out here at night while it was snowing  yeah we had about six inches seven inches almost   of snow in the past few hours and this dish  is clear it has melted itself if we look at   everything else around here we are we have a good  six seven inches of snow but the dishy is looking   okay i tried to film some speed tests out here  just now but it's a little too much in in this   weather so i'm gonna go inside real quick  and get on the computer and record a couple   of speed tests in there i'll put them right here  all right so here's the download test this one's   pretty good ping 24 milliseconds uh downloading  at 155 160 152 average uploading here in the 20s   and see how it tapers off a little bit after it  first starts so it's going to average 15 megabits   per second on the upload and then the next one  this was later in the night you can see that the   ping speed was a bit worse almost twice as bad 49  milliseconds again this is later in the night 48   milliseconds on the ping but again the download is  up in the 150s upload is 20 so still not that bad   and this is all during the snowstorm keep in mind  i'm in the pacific northwest and so it was snowing   here and it was only about 27 degrees fahrenheit  the dishy itself was staying about 54 degrees   fahrenheit and i've got some ir footage that i  took and some temperature probe with fluke meter   that i took and i'll put that in here as well  but yeah what you have to remember about this   is this is communicating with a low earth  orbit satellite so it's only trying to go   about 340 miles whereas other satellite-based  internets they're trying to go all the way to   geostationary satellites so they're trying to  beam the signal and receive a signal from 22   000 miles away this one's only trying to beam it  340 miles away so i can see where the other ones   would be much more affected by weather the speed  on the starlink varies quite a bit sometimes it's   maybe 60 megabits per second 70  megabits per second on the download   other times it's 170 megabits on the download  but it does seem to be averaging maybe in the   90 to 100 nowadays and i know that they might have  turned on about 120 satellites since the last time   i did a video it's been four weeks or so and so  that makes sense that they might have brought   another two loads two payloads they're launching  about 60 satellites at a time it makes sense that   they would bring two more payloads online in  the four weeks it's been a lot of people asking   about speeds starlink has stated that they're  targeting 50 to 150 megabits per second on this   public beta they're targeting uh 20 to 40  milliseconds of latency i have seen speeds right   in there and i've seen download speeds faster  than that at times 160 170 megabits per second   i've seen the latencies average right in there  about 30 30 milliseconds now they are saying   that they are planning on getting the latencies  down to like 16 to 19 milliseconds by the end of   summer 2021. i'll put a link to that at the end of  this video the upload speeds have been averaging   about 16 megabits per second i was seeing 20 or  a little bit more at times it seems like when you   first start uploading a file it'll upload faster  maybe 24 megabits per second but then it sort of   if you do it for any length of time it will  throttle back down to about 16 15 megabits   per second seems to average about 16. other people  have asked about gaming i'm not a gamer so i don't   know what latencies you need but i will say  that like i've said before that the latencies   are 30 milliseconds or so maybe a little bit  less i'm not sure how that would work with   gaming i guess it depends on the game but  the fast.com speed test that's built into the   starlink app shows the latency to certain servers  and i'll put a little sample of that up here   i think a bigger problem for gamers would be the  unknown uh frequency of these 15 second outages   like you could be playing a game and then in  the middle of it it just drops out for 10 to   15 seconds and i can see where that would be a  bummer in your game starlink all along has said   that you know we will see those outages during the  beta period as they bring more satellites online   as they bring more ground stations online those  outages will go away and it seems like they've   become those little outages have become slightly  less already in the past four weeks so i i do   believe that they will deliver on that some folks  had asked some more technical questions about   nat and vpn there was an announcement about nat  and i will put that here keep in mind you can use   your own router connected to the starlink system  you don't have to use the starlink wi-fi router a   couple of people on my last video commented with a  link to a particular website and i'll put a little   sample of it here and this actually shows the  satellites in real time how they are covering the   earth and if you zoom in on the sort of 44 or 45  degrees north to 52 or 53 degrees north that band   that starlink is offering the beta surface you'll  see that it's got quite heavy coverage twice now   i have been able to correlate an outage at our  place and then quickly get on that map and look   and see that there's three satellite circles  coverage circles and i'm in the middle of   an empty space so the satellite circles are moving  and oh yep that's why i have an outage because i'm   in that 15 second little triangle between three  circles of coverage and that's why it's out   starlink has called this the better than nothing  beta and it absolutely is that especially if you   have nothing else available i had a lot of people  that commented on the last video saying oh well i   can get verizon or you know fiber to my house why  would i pay a hundred dollars you know saying that   this is expensive well yeah this is expensive  but if your alternative is hughes net or vsat   or any of the other sort of geostationary  satellite based systems this is actually   not that expensive for what you get if you can  get fiber to your house that you're living in a   totally different place than where we're living  and you have more availability but to me it   doesn't matter what fiber costs it doesn't matter  what dsl costs it doesn't matter what a cell phone   hot spotting cost because i don't have any of  that available to me but this is available to   me and so that's why we're trying this i should  also point out that yeah the costs in the us   are 4.99 for the hardware and 99 a month for the  service our neighbors just across in canada their   prices are 650 canadian for the hardware and 130  canadian for the service per month there has been   an update to the starlink app and now if you try  to check for obstructions in the northern sky   instead of it showing a big circular view of  about 100 degree dome that you need to see it   actually is truncated and kind of curved along  the horizon and i'll show a clip of it here   what it means for us is that these trees that are  on our horizon are actually not really as much of   a problem anymore they're outside of the zone and  i think that might be in part to more satellites   being up they don't it doesn't have to sort of see  ones that are lower on the horizon there's more   uh higher overhead i'm not really sure what that  means but it is something that showed up in the   starlink app in the middle of december 2020. a lot  of people have asked how to get on the beta list   well there was a link in the description  of the last video i'll put the link in this   video as well in the description but  basically you just go on starlink.com   and you have to type in your postal code right  now december of 2020 it's only available in north   america in northern u.s or southern canada in a  certain band i did hear that that was updated to   45 degrees north to 53 degrees north but again  there's only certain cells within that band   that are available and i'll put a link at the  end of this video to a starlink launch video   where the engineer talks about those particular  cells a lot of people mention that you know once   all these satellites are up it's going to ruin  the night sky i think it's important to note   that all the starlink satellites that have  been launched since september 2020 have had   sun shades installed so once the satellites  are in place and the sun shades are deployed   those satellites should not be visible with the  naked eye from the from the ground the first   couple of hundred starlink satellites that were  deployed did not have sun shades and those ones   are visible but at least 60 of those have been  retired and have been burned up in the atmosphere   some folks had asked to see what the setup  looks like so i'm going to stow this dish   you can do that with the app you can make it stow  itself so it orients vertically and that's the   way that it ships and then i'll power it on and  you'll see it orient and look for the satellites so what do i like about starlink and what don't  i like i really like the speed the download speed   and the upload speed and latency all that when it  is running is really good what i don't like is the   short outages the 10 to 15 second outages that you  don't know when they're gonna happen it certainly   affects if you're trying to do any sort of video  call conference call facetime any zoom anything   like that it'll just cut out and wait and wait and  then depending on the software if it's microsoft   teams it seems to just drop it if it's zoom or  facetime it seems to hold it and wait it'll come   back because usually the starlink service will  come back before the software drops you another   thing i really don't like is sometimes when the  starlink is disconnected from the satellites   the router turns off so it doesn't so much  turn off but the wi-fi of the router turns   off so if you're monitoring it and you just  see your wi-fi go away from your laptop or your   your phone or whatever it's like why does the why  does a router turn off and i imagine it's because   remotely they are rebooting the router and they're  probably updating software or firmware on the   router and then rebooting it and those outages  tend to be a little bit longer like maybe they're   30 45 seconds sometimes you'll see a whole minute  or so and uh you know where what happened to my   internet and you look in and it's not there at  all the the wi-fi network is not there and then   it will come back on and that's just  disconcerting and it's kind of a pain   so just as i believe in building community here  in person i also believe in building community   on youtube and so i want to give a shout out to  a youtube channel that i really like which is   called foghorn station i'll put a link right here  if any of you are looking for relaxation or just   sounds to listen to if you live in the city or  you live somewhere and you want to dream about   living on the homestead or being in the woods  check out foghorn station she's got videos of   just what it sounds like in the woods or just uh  rain on it on a tin roof and really interesting   stuff so check it out if you have any questions at  all about starlink or other rural internet options   or homestead wi-fi i'll be doing a  couple of videos on that really soon   if you have any questions or comments please  leave them below and don't forget to like   subscribe and turn on notifications if you do  thank you everybody and we'll see you next time i did not cut this tree to  put the starlink antenna here   i had stated that in the description of the last  video this is south in this direction we had cut   a bunch of trees to get sunlight in here to our  homestead and this stump just happened to be in   the right spot to get the northern view that the  starlink needs so that's why i put it here keep   in mind we're in the pacific northwest so trees  grow really well here is what we do well here   and trees are a renewable resource especially  here and so we've planted trees in other spots   we're not going to feel the loss of this  one tree nor are we going to feel the loss   of these other trees that we took for sunlight  plus i have a sawmill i have lots of ways we're   going to use all this lumber this is not going  to be wasted thanks everybody i appreciate it you

Channel: Normstead

Views: 153,079

Keywords: starlink, spacex, elon musk, satellite, internet, service, low, earth, orbit, isp, homesteading, rural, beta, tripod, dish, dishy, router, test, setup, speedtest, speed, installation, price, mbps, unboxing, kit, better than nothing, upload, download, trial, phased array, homestead, normstead, streaming, gaming, latency, satelite, sattelite, space-x, wifi, country, last mile, tesla, install, speed test, snow, heater, rain, clouds, NAT, VPN, data, cap, unlimited data, caps, cost, connectivity

Id: a7WMIvfgyfk

Length: 14min 9sec (849 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 13 2021