Soldato
Hutchison Whampoa Limited had spent £25-30 billion on Three U.K. by the time it launched with approximately 65% coverage by population on 03/03/2003. Their 3G licence alone cost £4.6 Billion.
Starlink - anyone using it?
- Thread starter Dirk Diggler
- Start date
Hutchison Whampoa Limited had spent £25-30 billion on Three U.K. by the time it launched with approximately 65% coverage by population on 03/03/2003. Their 3G licence alone cost £4.6 Billion.
Yeah, Starlink dramatically lowers cost both to build and operate. The truly global coverage, coupled with the huge increase (and normalisation) of remote working could be a real game changer for many. Why live in a half million pound terrace in Reading, when you could have a house (and boat) on the Azores?
Soldato
Been great seeing each deployment and people's installs, alas being in the Greater London suburbia there's no great need to join the party any time soon.
Going back to that point - I was messing about with my 4G setup today... I found a roughly 18 inch by 18 inch spot in my bedroom where my upload speed doubles! :s on the stock antenna even beating fancy external higher gain ones in what should be a better spot outside.
Probably get a bit faster later on as downstream is always a little slower at this time of day.
Signal propagation is just weird.
I'm still amazed at getting anything close to those speeds given the conditions and amazed how well this TP-Link MR6400 holds up vs ostensibly much better devices - albeit it probably wouldn't do so well in other circumstances.
Soldato
Nice increase.
Do you want me to post you my B818-263 to test out? Being cat 19 and with decent antenna's it might get you double that speed.
Nice increase.
Do you want me to post you my B818-263 to test out? Being cat 19 and with decent antenna's it might get you double that speed.
Appreciate the offer but doubt it would improve on things here. Due to people working from home here with the current situation we had it looked at professionally last year and a Mikrotik LHG installed but nothing really does better than my MR6400 weirdly.
Soldato
Was that only the Cat 6 version though? Were you getting any CA at all on it while active?
The offer stands if you want to have a play one weekend it is just sat in its box doing nothing, it'll only cost you the postage back .
Was that only the Cat 6 version though? Were you getting any CA at all on it while active?
The offer stands if you want to have a play one weekend it is just sat in its box doing nothing, it'll only cost you the postage back .
Wasn't really involved with it as it was for other people living here who work from home but they tested with a range of kit and seemed to think it was the best option.
I don't have a login even for the admin so no idea on what carrier aggregation setup is running if any.
I'll grab a speedtest from it later to compare when other people aren't on the connection.
I have a 4G setup with a decent external antenna, solid 60Mbps DL... at 1am, but typically under 10 during the afternoon. My issue isn't the link budget / propagation, it's capacity as I expect there are quite a few people using it due to awful BT around here.
Yeah I've seen drops as low as 8/2 at peak times when something big is on (world cup, etc.) - but fortunately pretty rare - most of the time it is around 30/10 or dead of night I've seen it around 40. Seems moving the router a bit has increased my upload speed to more in line with the Mikrotik which was something I was putting down to it being higher cat, etc.
First world problems and all but when you have multiple people working from home a single BT FTTC connection which does 30 down 5-6 up just doesn't cut it - quite painful from when we lived in town and had full speed fibre.
First world problems and all but when you have multiple people working from home a single BT FTTC connection which does 30 down 5-6 up just doesn't cut it - quite painful from when we lived in town and had full speed fibre.
This is nuts considering the conditions for signal here:
Obviously only get those speeds at night - but it generally does 30 down during the day. Weird how this small spot has way better signal than everything else around and it isn't even what should be a good spot as it is behind 2 walls.
Not sure what is going on with the other connection (Mikrotik) - I have no ability to see activity on it so someone else may be using it - usually around 30 down 20 up.:
EDIT: Re-ran Mikrotik test with everyone else disconnected:
EDIT2: Apparently the access point used to connect to the Mikrotik setup is currently not working properly limiting speeds and is going to be replaced soon.
Crazy that this tiny spot in the house lets my MR6400 get those speeds - even if it is the dead of night - and that it took 2 years to find it :| (not sure what the Mikrotik would do in comparison in the same spot).
For comparison the FTTC https://www.speedtest.net/result/11105273479.png - hence why we are looking at Starlink as an addition.
Obviously only get those speeds at night - but it generally does 30 down during the day. Weird how this small spot has way better signal than everything else around and it isn't even what should be a good spot as it is behind 2 walls.
EDIT: Re-ran Mikrotik test with everyone else disconnected:
EDIT2: Apparently the access point used to connect to the Mikrotik setup is currently not working properly limiting speeds and is going to be replaced soon.
Crazy that this tiny spot in the house lets my MR6400 get those speeds - even if it is the dead of night - and that it took 2 years to find it :| (not sure what the Mikrotik would do in comparison in the same spot).
For comparison the FTTC https://www.speedtest.net/result/11105273479.png - hence why we are looking at Starlink as an addition.
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Soldato
That's not bad for an MR6400.
Seems like a good solution if you need the bandwidth, those FTTC speeds aren't amazing.
Have you thought about adding a second FTTC line?
You will generally get better signals at night. The lack of sunshine to heat up the air and ground means that you tend to get better/calmer atmospheric conditions, so signal propagation tends to go further.
There are professional industry network planning tools that will model the area with mapping and clutter data, and will tell you where your signals should be strong, but you've got such a small and weird sweet spot I can almost guarantee it's a combination of factors too small to have data on. It will be not just the line of sight and surrounding features, it will be weird things like the church roof you mentioned, signals being reflected off other buildings and inside your building, weird atmospheric layers that tend to happen because of the way the land dips on the other side of a hill near a lake, etc. There will be reasons it works so well in one spot, but finding them out isn't usually worth the effort. That's just the way it is sometimes.
Yeah that isn't the surprising bit - it was finding a small spot which basically doubled my speeds - I didn't think it was possible to even get close to 60+Mbit even at night here - my neighbours are having a good day if they get 5!
It took me 2 years to find this spot and all hah (even assuming it existed all the time we've lived here) - I went around extensively measuring signal - I was kind of dismissive of this corner of my bedroom as on the face of it it should be a bad spot.
There is some complication with it - dunno details myself. It is a very odd setup around here but probably not an unusual story for a rural area.
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Bah not really Starlink related though makes it more attractive - but been moved from EE to Vodafone on my Virgin Media 4G - dropped from usually at least 30/10 during the day, often 20 up even during the day and that 60/30 or so at night to:
https://www.speedtest.net/result/11330347332.png
Not impressed - gonna have to cancel and get an EE sim.
https://www.speedtest.net/result/11330347332.png
Not impressed - gonna have to cancel and get an EE sim.
Soldato
Is EE the best signal in your area?
Yeah - the Vodafone mast is down in the valley the opposite side of the house to the EE mast and about 500m further away than the EE one which while blocked from line of sight is on top of a hill above us.
Sadly still no firm date on Starlink here though it should be within the next couple of months or so.
Soldato
Starlink is probably worth it if you really struggle tbh, worth the wait.
Is your EE mast not shared with Three? They have a mast sharing agreement in place, might be worth looking at a cheap SIM only from Smarty to test it, unless you know someone else with a Three SIM.