13 ms·

There are six internet links on my office on wheels—seven when Starlink arrives

397 points by ghuntley 5y ago

turtlebits 5y ago
Are there any solutions for dealing with xfinity hotspots which are in range to join, but may not have internet access? I'd like to leverage the open access (as a Comcast subscriber), but I stopped auto joining the networks as sometimes with 2-3 bars of signal, there is no internet. I already have a Pi connected to 5G phone and it would be great to be able to utilitize the hotspot as well.
- AlexGizis 5y ago
  Actually Speedify on your phone is pretty good for that. If the hotspot doesn't work, it fails over to the LTE automatically so the bad hotspots never knock you offline.
koeng 5y ago
Does anyone know when starlink is going to be available for RVs or campers? I'd love to bring the internet while I camp around California, but right now there are range restrictions.
- bayindirh 5y ago
  I guess the geofencing is for balancing loads. When there's ample bandwidth, coverage and maybe handoff support, they may remove the limitations.
- Pasorrijer 5y ago
  They've submitted a proposal to the FCC, but I haven't heard anything further. As a boat owner... I'm with you!
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  It’s in beta now. Set mine up. If it works the way it does now when the masses join you are going to really like it. Anecdotes in another comment here.
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Indeed there are range restrictions with Starlink. What I did was order Starlink to the nearest post office to a place that has a unique intersection of lovely camping grounds that doesn't have internet access. The idea is to rotate between them. Use https://sebsebmc.github.io/starlink-coverage/index.html https://sebsebmc.github.io/starlink-coverage/index.html to calculate how big your cell is and then intersect with your camping guide :)
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    That site has seen no 2021 updates. I suspect it hasn't been updated with new orbits, cell maps or satellites.
    - sebsebmc 5y ago
      Hi, yeah I created that and haven't updated it in a long time. You can pull the github repo and run it yourself to get a new map but there are some issues that have cropped up since that have prevented me from being able to update the site myself.
      - londons_explore 5y ago
        I guess it's all stars now if updated anyway, so not super interesting.
        sebsebmc 5y ago
        I did manage to run the simulation in May and surprisingly the data appeared to indicate less stars but higher average coverage time (by a few minutes). I didn't push this update because it wasn't much of a change from the current map, but I probably should have since that is interesting in itself.
  - sebsebmc 5y ago
    I will note that the cells that I have rendering on the site there are for performance and download size reasons, and were never meant to correspond to any geographical restrictions that Starlink has put in place.
- casi18 5y ago
  They have been sending out surveys recently, seems like they are working out pricing and mounts for RVs. https://old.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/prgrbb/starlink_rvs_just_completed_the_survey/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/prgrbb/starlink_r...
  - ghuntley 5y ago
    Yo, SpaceX/Starlink employees. Hook me _up_ please
peytoncasper 5y ago
Never knew Speedify was a thing. What a great idea and I’m sure something that is standard in industrial applications or LTE routers.
- nathanyz 5y ago
  Makes Multipath TCP actually usable in the real world. Great product that not enough people know about.
- donkarma 5y ago
  I just stumbled onto Speedify a few minutes before I noticed this article surprisingly. I wanted to try it but unfortunately it doesn't take crypto and has no free trial
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    That's a shame. They used to have a free trial with a data cap which I used intermittently while traveling for years before converting to a paying customer a year ago. Maybe they looked at their numbers amd couldn't didn't see the free tier paying for itself in conversions, but it did convert me.
    - AlexGizis 5y ago
      We still have the 2GB per month free tier with no registration. It's available everywhere but Linux... unfortunately, without us doing anything really creepy (which we won't do), it was just too common for Linux users to trick us into endlessly starting the 2GB over. I think there was a script for automating it making the rounds on some sites.
      - shkkmo 5y ago
        Huh, I looked but didn't see anything on your pricing pages about the free tier, just the 30 day free trial.
        5y ago
berdon 5y ago
The title is confusing if you think of hyperlinks first.
- ghuntley 5y ago
  hah indeed it is :/
SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
I set up a and will be using StarLink in an RV on the weekends. Pro Tip: go somewhere strange if you want to get into the beta. It’s surprisingly good. I don’t think I have any special anecdotes except that I’m getting 85Mpbs up and a 35ms ping to speedtest.net. Initially the connection wasn’t reliable, but it apparently needs to be set up for a few hours before it “locks in”.
- 101008 5y ago
  Wow. I am in the middle of a big city and I have 50Mbps down and 11 down and you have that speed in the middle of nowhere... the future sounds amazing.
  - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
    Tell me about it. My 1Gbps docsis3 has an upload of 35Mpbs because of 1980s cable tv frequency choice reasons. I’m slightly impressed with StarLink and slightly annoyed at my main ISP. This is on the edge of nowhere, but still cool. The only other option I had here was dialup or if I wanted to pay outrageous rates, I could get a .5-1Mbps T1 only because there is a ranger station not too far off that put one in and I can access some of the trunk hardware a few miles away.
  - elif 5y ago
    latency will go still down significantly as v2 and v3 join the constellation with laser interlinks. For long connections, they will be theoretically faster than fiber due to geographical constraints on straight lines and routing.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  Side notes: The more I thought about it. In case anyone is interested: - The setup is stupid easy. Place dish outside, plug in. That's about all. - It's weird having a dish that points straight up, used to them all pointing south (hemisphere dependent of course) - The router box (thing?) is a bad design. Stupid little triangle that tips over all the time. Seems cheap. - Shipped with no wifi encryption. I thought that was weird. I bet this changes to for real release. - Got a few "outside your home area" messages without moving. Errors. - It is good for streaming or websites, but currently I have it on the ground and it seems like it loses connection fairly often. I'll put in up on a poll now that I know... - The dish is heated. GOOD. I was worried about this with the amount of snow it's going to get. I don't really geek out over these things. It's good. It's exactly what it should be I think. We'll see how it lasts the winter. I expect the reception to get better when it's mounted, but it'll be interesting to see how white-out snow effects the performance.
mothsonasloth 5y ago
Doesn't the author know that Starlink is limited to a specific location that the subscription address is at (+/- 25miles)? https://sebsebmc.github.io/starlink-coverage/index.html https://sebsebmc.github.io/starlink-coverage/index.html
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Answered here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28593949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28593949
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- briffle 5y ago
  They have said those restrictions are part of the beta, and going away soon.
  - Ancapistani 5y ago
    Got a source for that? When I last looked into it, their site said it was a technical limitation and that there were no plans for creating a truly mobile receiver.
    - hkchad 5y ago
      As with most things elon it was in a tweet, https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22388378/elon-musk-starlink-satellite-internet-service-moving-vehicles-trucks-2021 https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22388378/elon-musk-starli...
- _moof 5y ago
  Eagle-eyed observers have noticed Starlink antennas on SpaceX's drone ships. So mobile capability is definitely already implemented, it's just not publicly available yet. (Edit: And evidently some regular users are already beta-testing it too.)
LurkingPenguin 5y ago
Couldn't help but notice the link to the author's Twitch account, which has the description "I live a minimalist lifestyle..." Amazing what passes for a minimalist lifestyle these days!
- ghuntley 5y ago
  I have a single bowl, fork and knife. Everything that I own has a purpose or it gets chucked. There really isn't much space in a 7m long van.
  - lucideer 5y ago
    Given the size of cutlery, coupled with the fact that multiple bowls will fit inside eachother, is this overcompensation for an extreme maximalist lifestyle on the electronics side?
    - wrycoder 5y ago
      Physical misanthropy FTW
      - lucideer 5y ago
        Well there's nothing necessarily wrong with maximalism per se, it's just the misrepresenting was a bit odd
  - LurkingPenguin 5y ago
    > I have a single bowl, fork and knife. And soon 7 (!!!) internet links! Anyway, I just find it interesting how individuals (including myself) describe themselves and rationalize their descriptions.
    - MayeulC 5y ago
      That's cognitive dissonance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance It's normal to a point :)
pgrote 5y ago
When Windows NT released ISDN bonding it seemed magical. It was short lived magic as DSL came along. lol I had no idea bonding was still a thing.
- randomswede 5y ago
  I did actually prototype multi-link PPP over multiple GRE tunnels as a way of bonding multiple links, with (some level of) redundancy, with the intention of offering that as a product at the ISP I worked. The idea was, basically "up to four ADSL links, possibly from multiple providers, each used as a member of the MPPP bundle, then dial-up of some sort as last resort". Also tested ADSL as a bond/fallback for a leased line, around then. Ah, the days...
Tepix 5y ago
OK, i get what he's doing and it's cool, however i then stumbled over this: > Yes, this setup is overkill but having functioning internet is especially important when going camping with young kids. No, it's not. 100% no.
- anotherBreeder 5y ago
  Are you surprised by the entitlement of parents? I used to be, but no longer.
- ghuntley 5y ago
  It is for my family. It may not be for yours. When they reach the age where they have their own cellphones / social media media then it's different. Freshly popped popcorn from the microwave + salt + butter and introducing kiddos to "the dish" movie after _they have been to the actual dish_ is A+ and highly recommend.
  - est31 5y ago
    You don't internet for that. The movie is available on DVD as well as Blu-Ray.
    - ghuntley 5y ago
      Answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28593998 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28593998
      - mixmastamyk 5y ago
        The more modern answer would be to download ahead of time.
        ghuntley 5y ago
        That assumes I'm departing from a house? This is my house.
rektide 5y ago
Still using a Alfa AWUS036ACH for a wireless connection: 802.11ac wave1 from 2015. There's simply nothing better available, in 6 years of intervening time. This world would be so so much more awesome if there were some really really good USB wifi adapters. This is yet another further leap, but I also think of all the guides to turning the RPi into an access point, via usb adapters: it starts out working fairly well, but the hardware either has hard maximum client limits or just fails to work well once you get to half a dozen devices. Even if you have something like PCIe or M.2 expandability, options are still extremely limited, & availability is incredibly poor.
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Alfa AWUS036ACH is a slapping good WiFi adapter. It's mounted in my roof and I run a 10m USB extension cable from the roof to the network rack.
  - rektide 5y ago
    I'm a huge fan of Alfa gear, for a long time. They do an amazingly good job. AWUS036ACH is one of Alfa's most up to date USB cards. It is, however based off an RTL8812AU chipset[1], which is 8 years old now[2]. I'd love at least to have a good client chipset & equipment that supports WiFi6 that has good RF performance. I still think the market is overly structured & segmented. No one makes AP-class chips for USB, but to be honest I really think they could & should & that it'd be exceptionally useful & good. But no one dares to threaten the AP market like that. Thankfully in wifi, RF engineering & antennas count for a huge amount. You still have great gear. But it does hurt me to see what seems like rampant tech-stagnation & neglect, of such a vital, interesting, basic part of modern communication technology: our wireless systems. [1] https://wikidevi.wi-cat.ru/ALFA_Network_AWUS036ACH https://wikidevi.wi-cat.ru/ALFA_Network_AWUS036ACH [2] https://github.com/lwfinger/rtl8812au#purpose https://github.com/lwfinger/rtl8812au#purpose
m0ngr31 5y ago
This is a pretty impressive setup. Recently I lived in an RV for a year and my setup was much more janky than this... Basically consisted of a gl.inet router that I plugged in a old Moto X4. This allowed me to get wifi from whichever campsite we stayed at (always garbage) and then I would pay for 100GB from Cricket and T-Mobile. I would swap sims when I would run out of data about half way through the month. Then I discovered I could get unlimited data on Cricket with a regular phone plan if I changed the TTL on the router. Ended up being the most stable option for the last few months.
- cloudify 5y ago
  that’s quite interesting, do you mind elaborating on your last sentence? How does that work?
  - walterbell 5y ago
    With some carriers, it can bypass tethering quotas, appearing as if usage is originating from the "phone".
  - m0ngr31 5y ago
    I setup a firewall rule in openwrt that said anything coming over USB needed to set the TTL to 65 so it looked like the data was coming from the phone itself and not from the tether. IIRC, on the plan I was using on Cricket, I would get unlimited data + 15GB of tether. This just byapssed that limit. I think they can almost figure it out because if I tried to tether without the TTL trick, data wouldn't work. So I'm guessing it still counted the data I was using against some kind of cap?
    - thrashh 5y ago
      On Android, there are apps that you can install that do this for you. I used to use them a lot when I was traveling with my laptop a few years ago and it always worked great.
      - 5y ago
wjamesg 5y ago
This is cool
davb 5y ago
OT/meta, but I love those handwritten style diagrams. If the author notices this, I'd be interested to know how he made them.
- dislick 5y ago
  I think they've been made with https://excalidraw.com https://excalidraw.com
  - ghuntley 5y ago
    They are indeed. https://excalidraw.com/#json=4810888066367488,n9qcxzAN-ynr7kbIn7ac0A https://excalidraw.com/#json=4810888066367488,n9qcxzAN-ynr7k...
- Ancapistani 5y ago
  You’d probably like the style of the diagrams created by Julia Evans, then: https://jvns.ca/ https://jvns.ca/ I’ve followed her blog for years at this point mostly because I enjoy her diagrams and pretty much always learn something from the way she presents information.
f3lds 5y ago
Running all of that separate network equipment seems particularly power hungry when not plugged into a campsite. I wonder why the author didn't consider a Peplink router which can handle redundant cellular/wifi connections out of the box. That's how I recreate a setup akin to this while I'm on the road in a single device. Not to say this isn't awesome as is and I'd love an excuse to install a full Ubiquiti stack in my own camper!
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Oh, this _seriously_ chews power. I need to do a blogpost up about the eletrical system that makes it all possible. Leave your digits at https://ghuntley.com/newsletter https://ghuntley.com/newsletter to be notified when it ships. I looked into teltonika (ie https://teltonika-networks.com/product/rut950/ https://teltonika-networks.com/product/rut950/ ) but stopped because the modems are Cat4 (similar story with Microtik).
  - Integer 5y ago
    FYI, Teltonika RUTX14 has CAT12.
    - ghuntley 5y ago
      Cheers. If anyone at Teltonika wants to send me a RUTX14 I'd love to try it out.
  - conk 5y ago
    Why did you opt for a UDM-Pro instead of virtualizing the router on exsi? It would save space and power over running another appliance.
  - fouric 5y ago
    Care to give us a sneak peak - say, what your typical power draw is like? :) I'm particularly interested in this topic because I've been thinking about power a lot after the Texas blackouts (considering building a bike generator so I can have power in case of a disaster like that one).
chinathrow 5y ago
I remember channel bonding from my ISDN times and it made sense since both channels led to the same ISP over the same ISDN card/phone line. How does channel bonding work across multiple ISPs/NICs? Edit: This seem to be it: https://speedify.com/blog/featured/speedify-protocol-mptcp-difference/ https://speedify.com/blog/featured/speedify-protocol-mptcp-d... "The way Speedify used to work is it opened one TCP socket over each Internet connection it used - e.g. one TCP socket over Wi-Fi / cellular / wired Ethernet / etc. With the new protocol, Speedify opens up multiple sockets over each connection (for example 8) - 8 over Wi-Fi / cellular / wired Ethernet / etc." That seems a bit wasteful towards the server destinations.
- phh 5y ago
  The 8 sockets are opened only towards speedify "VPN" server. Once you're out of speedify network, you only have one standard TCP connection, so destination server only sees one connection as expected.
  - chinathrow 5y ago
    Thanks for the clarification, I didn't know that Speedify also tunnels every packet through their servers first but it makes now sense to me.
wyldfire 5y ago
Geoff: some of the photographs have blur spots to conceal something you don't want to be public. Just an FYI that malicious attackers could bypass this blur in some cases by starting with a generated version of the 'before' content and blurring it and iterating different inputs until it matches your blurred photo. This matters for things like a document with an account number or some other secret. It may not matter much for your network adapters (mac addresses, maybe?). Just a heads up.
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Thanks wyldfire; the photos that are blurred are the identifiers of my RIPE atlas nodes. It's not a big issue if they become public knowledge. Fully aware of attack vectors related to image bluring.
- rozularen 5y ago
  would adding a black stripe over instead be better?
  - vxNsr 5y ago
    I think so. If you don’t like the way that looks aesthetically, I’ve overlaid the text with a white background and more text and blurred that, so you get the same blurred effect but you’re blurring nothing important.
  - DoctorOW 5y ago
    Yes, making sure that the file format you picked doesn't support layers (or at least that those layers are flattened) that mistake bit the New York Times a while ago.
- vxNsr 5y ago
  Oh I always thought the attack vector was reverse engineering the blur algorithm, interesting that there’s another method.
  - yathern 5y ago
mercurywells 5y ago
Geoff, how do you handle washing your car, especially when you get the Starlink dish on it?
- ghuntley 5y ago
  I have a collapsable ladder which is used to clean the panels. There is absolutely no space on the roof left for Dishy and mounting it up there would cast shadows on the solar system (which is circa 3 * 350w house solar panels). For dishy, it's going to be a matter of running a ethernet cable out the van during the day. https://i.imgur.com/WeKOofK.jpg https://i.imgur.com/WeKOofK.jpg
adadchggg 5y ago
I love ads disguised as content.
- alphabettsy 5y ago
  Where’s the ad?
  - cantreadiguess 5y ago
    Uh the entire thing? It’s all an ad for the author. Look at me. Use my software. Watch my twitch stream. Hire me.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - thrashh 5y ago
    For Speedify
  - bob778 5y ago
    It's an ad for Speedify with referral links and marketing events linked in it?
parhamn 5y ago
Is it generally accepted that these wavelengths and devices that operate them are safe around humans? Should I feel concerned at all having so many large antennas and amplifiers and what not near me? I never really stopped to ask this of my phone either, I guess.
- astrea 5y ago
  This section of the EM spectrum is non-ionizing. So unlike, say, X-rays, you won't get cancer as the waves aren't strong enough to strip an electron off an atom and therefore change your DNA. However, they will heat your cells to some degree (since 2.5GHz is the same freq as a microwave). This can cause cataracts over long exposure to high enough power as your eyes can't regulate heat.
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    > you won't get cancer Hold on: heating up part of the human body that are not capable of dissipating heat efficiently can increase cancer risk as well.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  Generally accepted by who? You can find some people who are concerned about this stuff. 5G truthers and all that. But nobody in the evidence-based medicine community.
  - parhamn 5y ago
    > But nobody in the evidence-based medicine community. Yup, exactly. Was wondering if there was any data in the evidence medicine based community to be concerned about. Sounds like there isn't.
    - goodpoint 5y ago
      On the contrary, there's plenty of literature indicating a range of effects on lab rats and so on: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=microwave+exposure https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=microwave+exposur... This is not to say that low power microwave exposure is worse than exposure to pollution, unhealthy food, risks of car accident. But it would be incorrect to say that microwave transmissions are free from risks.
DanAtC 5y ago
I'm interested in which NUC has 8 Ethernet ports.
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Aliexpress is the place to start your quest. Look for "pfsense routers".
- m0dest 5y ago
  At these throughput levels, you can also use a separate USB3 NICs for each port without any issues.
londons_explore 5y ago
Can this setup migrate a video call from one link to another without a lost frame or glitch? So far, nearly every redundant link I've found seems to lead to bugs and glitches all round when failover actually happens.
- AlexGizis 5y ago
  Alex from Speedify here. Yes, we make a multi-path VPN tunnel, so that calls can be shifted from one link to another without glitches (apps see the same IP address the whole time). To make this work, we do some smart things like retransmit packets that were just sent on the failed link, on the still-working link since they were likely to have been lost.
- m0dest 5y ago
  I can attest that Speedify in redundant mode will handle a link failure in the middle of a Zoom call without a single lost packet or other impact. This isn't failover, though, this is redundancy; it's like having a 1 disk fail in a RAID1. (I have a similar setup to the OP, but using an array of M.2 4G/5G modem cards connected to external antennas.)
nickthemagicman 5y ago
This is inspiring. As a Van life person myself without much money. Any guidance you could give on the most bang for your buck way to get internet? Just a hotspot?
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Go for the backpack route (in the blogpost). Speedify + iPad (or Phone) with LTE + Hotspot.
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    Awesome! Did not know about the Nighthawks! Those are frickin sweet! Thanks.
- turtlebits 5y ago
  I would recommend EasyTether on an Android phone. It bypasses hotspot specific data limits. I use a Pi running Easytether connected to a 5G phone, with a travel wifi router connected to the Pi over ethernet. Runs my off-grid internet + security cameras.
H8crilA 5y ago
How does the "redundant" mode work? You cannot just double TCP packets as within that protocol it's a sign of congestion, it will drastically reduce the throughput. Does this include VPN-ing through some service that can understand duplicates and clean them up?
- jmuguy 5y ago
  Maybe it determines whatever route is faster when talking to a specific host for the first time, or every so often, and then sticks to that route for that specific host?
  - sgtnoodle 5y ago
    All the connections are likely being used to talk to the same speedify server. Only once the packets make it to that server do they get forwarded to the destination.
- stefan_ 5y ago
  As someone mentioned you can round-robin connections, but then you don't get failover (without interruption, anyway). What I think most of these solutions do is use MPTCP or a custom homebrew protocol to a server that then holds the actual TCP connection you want. So a slightly more complicated VPN. There is an open source project for this: https://www.openmptcprouter.com/ https://www.openmptcprouter.com/
  - thrashh 5y ago
    OP is using a commercial VPN that does this. There’s more than one choice in the space.
    - hcarrega 5y ago
      wich one??
      - thrashh 5y ago
anfractuosity 5y ago
Would it be possible to achieve something like Speedify yourself by routing traffic from your multiple interfaces to/from a VPS using Linux?
- goodpoint 5y ago
  Yes, it's very possible. Also you can simply use multiple uplinks without VPS and it provides better latency. The drawback is that you can't failover/balance protocols that use only one connection. Mosh and browsing work well tho.
uKVZe85V 5y ago
On top of this plethora of technology and various providers, doesn't bonding all links to a single solution provider (Speedify) create a single point of failure? From https://speedify.com/features/ https://speedify.com/features/ > What kinds of servers do you have? > We use a combination of dedicated and virtual servers, depending on location and scalability needs. All of our servers have at least 1 Gbps network access and are optimized for bandwidth intensive usage such as live streaming, video conferencing or online gaming. Let's assume the best case, where Speedify implements this as swarms of redundant servers, so that even if some servers or datacenters are down it may continue to work. I could not find in the article any mention of disabling Speedify and falling back to using a single provider, or a local bonding solution like described on https://wiki.debian.org/Bonding https://wiki.debian.org/Bonding . Isn't speedify still a "single point of failure", in the sense that any incident with Speedify (e.g. accounting glitch of any kind) may cause the whole contraption to fall like a house of cards?
- ghuntley 5y ago
  The UniFi Dream Machine Pro has a backup WAN link. I plug my backpack nighthawk LTE router into it when it is not in my backpack. If speedify fails, it falls over automatically.
- dmurray 5y ago
  Having a single point of failure here might be OK, if Speedify is so much more reliable than the other solutions (4G wireless in potentially remote areas). Though yeah, I'd like to see an option to failover to a single provider, because it's conceptually so easy to add.
- IshKebab 5y ago
  If you're trying to get internet in a van in rural Australia, the chances of Speedify going down are completely insignificant compared to more basic things like not having phone signal.
  - ghuntley 5y ago
    Yes: 1. https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2020-05-01/rural-residents-unable-to-use-covidsafe-app/12202772 https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2020-05-01/rural-residents... 2. https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/05/telstra-sms-over-wifi-launch/ https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/05/telstra-sms-over-wifi-lau... 3. https://www.itnews.com.au/news/experts-call-for-rethink-of-covidsafe-app-568265 https://www.itnews.com.au/news/experts-call-for-rethink-of-c...
secondcoming 5y ago
That Nokia 5G router looks great. I'd like to replace my Huawei router with it but it seems they cannot be bought easily; 'Contact Sales'... why???
- mdasen 5y ago
  T-Mobile US is using it for their home internet service. With the global supply chain and chips issues, it's been hard for T-Mobile to get enough of them. It seems likely that at this point Nokia might just be doing enterprise sales because of this. If you can't produce enough of them for a customer like T-Mobile US, why would you try selling one to a single end-user? T-Mobile US won't require support, won't be doing returns because they don't like it, won't need an individual shipment, etc. Given that T-Mobile US can't get the supply of these that they need, I'd guess that Nokia is making as many as they can for corporate customers and they don't want to deal with individuals at the moment. https://www.nokia.com/networks/products/fastmile-5g-gateways/ https://www.nokia.com/networks/products/fastmile-5g-gateways... In fact, their website indicates that they're customizing the device with differing specs for different customers with options like an LCD touchscreen and differing antenna designs.
ComputerGuru 5y ago
Kind of off-topic, but I really don’t like the use of “handwritten” fonts (as popularized by XKCD where it does work) for technical drawings. It’s hard to read without zooming in (especially on mobile) and it takes longer to grok for things that your brain can’t just deduce (eg technical terms, model numbers, random devices, etc) the way it can with natural text.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  I think the main issue is that they're not handwritten. Handwriting isn't just about having uneven shapes of the letters; it's about the kerning, and the spacing, and the layout, that all helps make it clear despite the uneven shapes of the letters.
rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
What is their carbon footprint? What % of the energy consumed (for Internet but also driving) comes from the solar panel vs ICE? It's nice to live in the nature, but is it ruining it?
- ghuntley 5y ago
  It's all solar.
  - Kayou 5y ago
    Sure enough for the power consumption of the modems, but I don't think the 5G networks are solar powered in Australia. Using multiple networks at the same time will use more power than using only one.
    - Reason077 5y ago
      Does a 5G/4G tower consume more energy when one extra device is connected to it (for redundancy), but not actually transferring data? The answer might be yes, but it'd be very marginal.
  - Freestyler_3 5y ago
    How much WP you got on there? edit: just read you got 3*350wp While that is plenty for your computer and routing, do you have any other electrical devices on board? You have a tour of the vans inside?
    - ghuntley 5y ago
      Tour of the final kitout is coming; leave your digits at https://ghuntley.com/newsletter https://ghuntley.com/newsletter Fridge, Freezer, Electric Blanket, Electric Hotwater, 12v Oven, Microwave, Instapot, Telephony Kit (blog post), Gaming Computer and Xbox.
bvm 5y ago
I have tried Speedify (not with such an impressive setup) on multiple 4g connections (different towers, different providers) and didn't see much, or indeed any, throughput bump. So I sort of gave up, because ~20mbps is surprisingly livable-with. I would definitely be interested in trying again, especially with a starlink + 4g + crap-uk-rural-adsl. I did also once have to manage one of those Mushroom bonding things and....never again, please.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  My use case was multiplexing poor wifi in central american hostels with poor cellular data to get a single stable connection. I never tried to get faster speeds but only to improve connection stability by reducing packet loss.
  - bvm 5y ago
    did it work well for you?
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      It did, I was able to get sufficiently stable connections to do work calls when neither connection was reliable enough alone.
creamynebula 5y ago
The most powerful magic number.
ComputerGuru 5y ago
In the USA, Starlink requires registration against a particular set of satellites visible to a fixed/bounded area - you can’t just take the modem and satellite with you and move to another location (and especially not use them while moving continuously). Is that not the case in Australia?
- shkkmo 5y ago
  This seems a bit inaccurately stated. The registration is tied a a particular geographic cell over which a large number of different satellites will pass. Starlink has added the ability to change your address if the cell of your new address has available capacity. You do need some sort of internet access to submit that address change.
  - Ancapistani 5y ago
    IIRC, you have to call them and they stress that it’s not something that they will support doing multiple times in series. It’s for moving to a new address, not working as a nomad.
barbazoo 5y ago
Impressive setup. As someone who has lived in a van for a little bit, I'd be terrified of that van getting stolen or even just equipment getting stolen off the roof, especially in cities. I wouldn't want to leave the van much.
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Theft is indeed a concern. It's not something I talk publically about but if you look closely at the header image you'll see some clues about one of the mitigations. Footage is backed up offsite.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
r0m4n0 5y ago
Just to share my own setup, I've been living in a van for the past year. I develop mostly via SSH and RDP so I found that any connection was important and total bandwidth wasn't the highest priority. Also in the US, way better coverage of 4g. Because of that invested fully in 4g and not at all in 5g. * 11 in 1 Panorama External Antenna (LG-IN2447) around $500. 4 internal cradlepoint antennas, see photo below. In retrospect would not have invested so heavily in wifi antennas and bought more 4g. I also added a little antenna lifter to make sure it has line of site of all cell towers, I wanted it to be the highest point on my sprinter van roof. * Cradlepoint IBR1700 1200M-B around $900 on ebay. Runs on 12 volt, a ton of antenna ports has 1 internal modem that supports big US carriers, came with an additional modem that does the same for carrier aggregation. A bunch of different ways to configure the router to aggregate links, mostly I switch back and forth manually, I found that if there was an issue it would be obvious and I could just switch the link. Cradlepoint software wouldn't handle issues and signal strength that well. Honestly one carrier has been plenty good for me though and between ATT and Verizon, I only have issues in the national parks where there are cell dead zones. * Verizon and ATT 4g cell plans. I added 1 line on my family plan for Verizon and the same with a friends family plan with ATT for $20 a month each. Took some phone calls into support to get it to work but after some escalations in the support chain I have unlimited 4g data. Total bill is around $50 a month. * Still room to add more sim cards and more antennas. It honestly works great though, get 20-150 mbps basically everywhere. Photo of my antenna and cradlepoint router/modem: https://imgur.com/a/MOdJkT8 https://imgur.com/a/MOdJkT8
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Nice, thanks for sharing. Since you mentioned SSH - make sure you use MOSH. If using an iPad https://blink.sh/ https://blink.sh/ is an absolute gem.
- tristor 5y ago
  That sounds really similar to the setup I made for my parent's RV. Cradlepoint devices are really fantastic for what they do. If you set it up correctly, you can also use it to bridge WiFi, so all the devices internally only ever connect to the WiFi from the Cradlepoint and when you can you can park near a public WiFi hotspot and bridge it. This can often be faster or more reliable than 4G, depending on your location, or in their case if you pay for RV park premium WiFi. We found that Verizon had very good coverage of 4G/LTE, especially in areas that were unlikely to be covered by other providers. AT&T was a good backup. T-Mobile was not, even though it was cheaper, coverage off the Interstate or in sparser populated areas was pretty bad. We also found how much throughput was needed to handle my dad's work remotely and set an upward limit on throughput on the Cradlepoint so we would overwhelm any WiFi networks we used as a courtesy to others, which ended up being around 10Mbps. Honestly, if you could just get 10Mbps nationwide without interruption, I think it would make a huge difference in the possibilities of remote work and rural technology. Love the photos, we also used the IBR1700. I set it up with NetCloud though with an active license from Cradlepoint (and bought new) so I could help my parents remotely administrate it while they were traveling. Have you tried satellite internet with the rooftop dishes that have electronically controlled seeking / adjustments? It was another thing we considered but hadn't done yet, but once Starlink becomes more widely available would be worth a consideration.
xpe 5y ago
Tip: blurring photos of sensitive information is a bad idea: https://dheera.net/posts/20140725-why-you-should-never-use-pixelation/ https://dheera.net/posts/20140725-why-you-should-never-use-p... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8078747 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8078747
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Answered at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28594133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28594133
Reason077 5y ago
Interesting that he places Starlink above the 5G link in "network priority". I would think that 5G would usually offer better speeds and ping times than Starlink in areas where it's available.
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Starlink would be used when camping; 5G doesn't work in scenarios like [1] this and is only useful when hanging around cities as the range of 5G is very poor. [1] https://ghuntley.com/content/images/size/w1600/2021/02/Photo_6554005_DJI_405_jpg_6288768_0_202121019728_photo_original-PANO.jpg https://ghuntley.com/content/images/size/w1600/2021/02/Photo...
  - ezfe 5y ago
    The point of the priority system is that it isn't based on what you're doing ("camping") but instead on the actual network conditions. If Starlink is ranked above 5G, then it'll never fall back to 5G. 5G should be ranked above Starlink, and then when camping and there's no 5G it doesn't matter the ranking.
    - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
      Starlink is still geofenced to 25 miles IIRC, so his setup should fall back to other options when he leaves that area. I'm still not sure if it makes sense to rank starlink above 5G, though.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- sgtnoodle 5y ago
  If Starlink gets their lasers working, it may be better than 5G in some areas, since it depends on the backhaul.
ajvs 5y ago
Speedify is very intriguing. Does anybody know of an open-source alternative?
- mattmatt 5y ago
  This is what you’re looking for- https://www.openmptcprouter.com/ https://www.openmptcprouter.com/
yunohn 5y ago
Pretty interesting setup! What is the added benefit of having 3 different 4G connections? My understanding is that most of these networks would overlap.
- cjrp 5y ago
  Seems like it's win-win; if coverage overlaps then the connections are bonded and you get 3* 4G lines, and if you only have coverage on some of the networks that's still a usable connection.
- etherael 5y ago
  Those specific three have their own dedicated spectrum and don't overlap in Australia. There are many other MVNOs there that just resell that spectrum under a different brand name with sometimes better deals, but those three are the "upstream".
- m0dest 5y ago
  You choose 3 separate providers so that they don't have overlapping spectrum. I've used 2 modems on the same provider, but with each modem locked to a different LTE band. This way, if the provider has one nearby tower on band 1 and another tower on band 2, you can use both of them. (Note: If you're going to do this, make sure that you understand LTE carrier aggregation and have confirmed that the 2 bands are not being offered as a CA combination.)
hall0ween 5y ago
I try to avoid cynicism in comments, but here it's tough. Tech bros bringing work out to campsites is shite.
- wheybags 5y ago
  He lives in the van, he's not just holidaying...
  - hervature 5y ago
    I believe OP's gripe is precisely this. Most people go to the wilderness to escape technology/work. There is a reason why we don't run fiber optic lines and electricity to every park and it isn't because of cost.
  - hall0ween 5y ago
    https://ghuntley.com/a-new-chapter/ https://ghuntley.com/a-new-chapter/ I can't read the post, but it seems the author seeks to work from forests . Also doubtful the appeal of living in a van is working from a city. It's not difficult to have a minimalist lifestyle from an apartment in the city. I sense the author felt a void in their life and decided to experiment w/ a van. And odds on favor is it will be temporary as it is not addressing the root cause.
    - ghuntley 5y ago
      More insights at https://ghuntley.com/how-long/ https://ghuntley.com/how-long/
- Taylor_OD 5y ago
  Does your enjoyment of the campsite require everyone to be enjoying it the same way you are? Why do you care if some person is coding away while your walk by their campsite?
  - hall0ween 5y ago
    It bothers me because this behavior is an outcropping of consumerism. Author came from town/city that was not good enough. Thus author wanted more* **. And I say more b/c author continues to have many of the comforts of a residence. Other than lack of community community/roots, which is probably one reason author decided to take up a van in the first place. And no, not everyone must enjoy things the same way as me. But not recognizing the sources of ones behavior does，along w/ bringing consumerism & the city mindset to a place w/o it. *These opinions paint in broad strokes and are debatable，and have a good chance of poorly describing the OP. But this van life is a trend, some people see it on social media / blogs & proceed to replicate it, indeed messing with wilderness. **Thinking about the word more and author's post...six internet links not being enough, evidence in favor of consumerism.
chrisbroadfoot 5y ago
> In the future, I intend to sell internet access via the UniFi Captive Portal I'm pretty sure Telstra, Optus, Vodafone disallow reselling.
etherael 5y ago
It has been my dream for decades to do exactly this on a sailboat at sea. With providers like Starlink it might be finally getting close to time to pull the trigger.
- megablast 5y ago
  Are you going to be working when at sea?? That’s not easy. I work when anchored. Just use my phone hotspot. And a couple of SIM cards.
  - etherael 5y ago
    That's the plan, but I'm not sure how realistic it is. In a traditional monohull with no special tricks, looks like it would be basically impossible. In a catamaran though, seems like it depends on sea conditions. And then there are a whole load of other ways that I've researched that seem promising (SWATH hulls, active gyro stabilizers like seakeeper, submarines even but then you have tethers and buoys for surface connectivity to get around the opacity of water when it comes to radio waves). Problem is one can theorycraft forever on this stuff and until you have a platform to actually test on, it's all mental masturbation and I'm aware of that.
sgtnoodle 5y ago
You may see a material improvement in wifi usability if you can figure out a way to use an Intel or Qualcomm wifi chipset over the Alfa, aka Realtek chipset. You probably need an M.2 slot somewhere though. Not every wifi radio is made the same. In particular, they seem to cope with the ambiguity of received packet collisions differently, and Realtek and Mediatek receivers don't do as well.
sparcpile 5y ago
For the wireless connections listed (Telstra, Opus, and Vodaphone), I do wonder how much of this are on the same physical tower and network. Certain parts of this multi-home connection would be running off the same physical network due to how wireless providers provision out their towers. They will share physical space on a tower and even an underlying fiber run out to the local POP. This may be a situation of someone being too clever by half.
- rozenmd 5y ago
  In Australia - Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone maintain their own independent mobile networks & equipment (Telstra having the most coverage in rural areas). If the author used 3 MVNOs from the same network, then it'd be silly.
  - DavidVoid 5y ago
    Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone might share the same physical tower though (while using different antennas and RRUs). But that's only an issue if there are severe interference issues there (on all the bands the author is connecting to) or if the tower itself suffers some catastrophic damage.
- jjeaff 5y ago
  As long as the bottleneck isn't the fiber coming into the tower, then I don't see the issue. It could easily be that one company's equipment is over provisioned and overloaded while the other is fine.
tibbydudeza 5y ago
A bit of overkill ???. I have backup LTE dongle if my fibre conks out but it happened a few times last year - we had 2 hourly power cuts so the CPE device would send a DHCP request when it rebooted. The local POP DHCP server then got flooded with DHCP requests so no connectivity but it was addressed by the provider - also added a battery to CPE as well.
- spiffytech 5y ago
  The article is about living out of a camper van, where fiber isn't an option. I lived and worked remotely out of an RV in 2012. There's really no such thing as overkill when you can't have a hardline internet connection but need internet to do your job. Though Starlink may change that. When I was doing it, I had a T-Mobile unlimited cell plan, a Verizon hotspot, and I'd go into town to find wifi. It still wasn't enough to feel like I could count on internet being there. While travelling, it's easy to not have quality cell signal (or any signal). "Unlimited" plans never mean "you're allowed to push 90GB/mo through this". Public wifi is hard to track down, has highly variable quality, and you're always working in Starbucks instead of at your desk with your equipment. If you have to stay at an RV park, the costs are astronomical enough that you save money by parking out of town, where the cell signal is worse. Satellite offerings are extremely expensive (pre-Starlink, at least), and don't work if you can't get clear line-of-sight to the satellite. If I'd been making more money at the time, I absolutely would have invested more in my internet access. And it sounds like today this stuff has more-numerous and better-documented solutions than when I was doing it. It was easily worth the trouble to live that way for a while.
  - tibbydudeza 5y ago
    Point taken.
kingforaday 5y ago
I have been using the following for the last six (6) months in the USA and it has been "just okay": - Pepwave Max Transit Duo Cat12 - Poynting 7 in 1 Omnidirectional Antenna Allows two active cellular connections, but has four (4) sim slots (2 are reserved for hot standby). I have them filled with 2 T-Mobile (100GB/month plan), 1 ATT (50GB/month plan), and 1 Verizon (50GB/month plan). Along side that, I have a T-Mobile Inseego 5G M2000 Hotspot with a 100GB/month plan). This sometimes gets better performance than the externally mounted antenna and Pepwave Cellular connections. The pep wave does allow the use of Wireless-WAN, so I connect to the hotspot from the Pepwave's WWAN and can then have three active bonded connections. This is being used in a travel trailer as I tour the country with my family. The result is just okay meaning it doesn't blow me away, but it does work. Everywhere I have been so far, I have been able to get connected, largely without doing a thing, and get to work.
IronWolve 5y ago
While I'm waiting in queue for my starlink since last year, I went and got a mofi with directional antennas and a 12 foot pool. Its not fast at the rural cabin, but I can stream 480p yt, and ssh. And its always on. I have a grandfathered unlimited wireless account, so I just ordered a another sim card. The mofi changes the network settings so data looks like a phone not a tethered device. I bought a 4g router, they have 5G but its 2x the cost, but seems to cover all the bands, and does channel aggregation. https://mofinetwork.com/ https://mofinetwork.com/
noduerme 5y ago
I lived and worked remotely from a van in Australia for a year... in 2008. It was pretty different back then. We kitted the van out with a solar panel and batteries. There was some 3G service available near roads, and something like CDMA a little more widely. But at times we'd end up driving miles of dirt track to try to find high ground to pick up a signal. My gf would hold the 3G receiver up and look for signal. During one of these treks, trying to turn around on a narrow dirt track way outside of Tenant Creek, the side of the road collapsed like a sand dome under one wheel of the van and we began listing to the side. I had to hold it up with my shoulder so the whole van wouldn't fall over on its side. My gf got out, causing it to tip even more, and started throwing herself against the back of it, while I tried to rock it out of the ditch. It was at this point that I noticed that what I had thought was a tree branch (odd, since there were no trees around), was actually a 4-5 foot long black snake that was moving rather quickly toward us up the road. I guess that gave us the adrenaline burst we needed, because we miraculously heaved the van free and jumped inside just in time. I started it and unceremoniously drove right over the snake. Another funny story... One night camping off a road, not in a campsite, we heard a ruckus outside the van where we had our table and cooking stuff set up under a tarp. It was pitch black out. We kept a katana under the platform bed for protection. So I opened the rear door and jumped out in my boxers and sandals, holding this sword, and found myself looking at a large kangaroo that was rifling through our cookware. I got back in the van and said, forget it, I'm not fighting that thing... we'll just have to clean it up in the morning.
megablast 5y ago
I live on a boat in Australia. Just use my phone hotspot. Only a few places along the coast where I anchor have bad network. I just move.
fy20 5y ago
Does anyone have any suggestions for good data plans to be used throughout the EU? In my country I can get unlimited 5G for a pretty good price (€25/mo), but if I go to another country the datacap is only 15GB. I guess pre-pay is an option, but having to get a new SIM in every country sounds like a lot of hassle.

397 points by ghuntley 5y ago

Are there any solutions for dealing with xfinity hotspots which are in range to join, but may not have internet access? I'd like to leverage the open access (as a Comcast subscriber), but I stopped auto joining the networks as sometimes with 2-3 bars of signal, there is no internet. I already have a Pi connected to 5G phone and it would be great to be able to utilitize the hotspot as well.

AlexGizis 5y ago
Actually Speedify on your phone is pretty good for that. If the hotspot doesn't work, it fails over to the LTE automatically so the bad hotspots never knock you offline.

koeng 5y ago

Does anyone know when starlink is going to be available for RVs or campers? I'd love to bring the internet while I camp around California, but right now there are range restrictions.

bayindirh 5y ago
I guess the geofencing is for balancing loads. When there's ample bandwidth, coverage and maybe handoff support, they may remove the limitations.
Pasorrijer 5y ago
They've submitted a proposal to the FCC, but I haven't heard anything further. As a boat owner... I'm with you!
SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
It’s in beta now. Set mine up. If it works the way it does now when the masses join you are going to really like it. Anecdotes in another comment here.
ghuntley 5y ago
Indeed there are range restrictions with Starlink. What I did was order Starlink to the nearest post office to a place that has a unique intersection of lovely camping grounds that doesn't have internet access. The idea is to rotate between them. Use https://sebsebmc.github.io/starlink-coverage/index.html https://sebsebmc.github.io/starlink-coverage/index.html to calculate how big your cell is and then intersect with your camping guide :)
- londons_explore 5y ago
  That site has seen no 2021 updates. I suspect it hasn't been updated with new orbits, cell maps or satellites.
  - sebsebmc 5y ago
    Hi, yeah I created that and haven't updated it in a long time. You can pull the github repo and run it yourself to get a new map but there are some issues that have cropped up since that have prevented me from being able to update the site myself.
    - londons_explore 5y ago
      I guess it's all stars now if updated anyway, so not super interesting.
      - sebsebmc 5y ago
        I did manage to run the simulation in May and surprisingly the data appeared to indicate less stars but higher average coverage time (by a few minutes). I didn't push this update because it wasn't much of a change from the current map, but I probably should have since that is interesting in itself.
- sebsebmc 5y ago
  I will note that the cells that I have rendering on the site there are for performance and download size reasons, and were never meant to correspond to any geographical restrictions that Starlink has put in place.
casi18 5y ago
They have been sending out surveys recently, seems like they are working out pricing and mounts for RVs. https://old.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/prgrbb/starlink_rvs_just_completed_the_survey/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/prgrbb/starlink_r...
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Yo, SpaceX/Starlink employees. Hook me _up_ please

peytoncasper 5y ago

Never knew Speedify was a thing. What a great idea and I’m sure something that is standard in industrial applications or LTE routers.

nathanyz 5y ago
Makes Multipath TCP actually usable in the real world. Great product that not enough people know about.
donkarma 5y ago
I just stumbled onto Speedify a few minutes before I noticed this article surprisingly. I wanted to try it but unfortunately it doesn't take crypto and has no free trial
- shkkmo 5y ago
  That's a shame. They used to have a free trial with a data cap which I used intermittently while traveling for years before converting to a paying customer a year ago. Maybe they looked at their numbers amd couldn't didn't see the free tier paying for itself in conversions, but it did convert me.
  - AlexGizis 5y ago
    We still have the 2GB per month free tier with no registration. It's available everywhere but Linux... unfortunately, without us doing anything really creepy (which we won't do), it was just too common for Linux users to trick us into endlessly starting the 2GB over. I think there was a script for automating it making the rounds on some sites.
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      Huh, I looked but didn't see anything on your pricing pages about the free tier, just the 30 day free trial.
      - 5y ago

berdon 5y ago

The title is confusing if you think of hyperlinks first.

ghuntley 5y ago
hah indeed it is :/

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago

I set up a and will be using StarLink in an RV on the weekends. Pro Tip: go somewhere strange if you want to get into the beta. It’s surprisingly good. I don’t think I have any special anecdotes except that I’m getting 85Mpbs up and a 35ms ping to speedtest.net. Initially the connection wasn’t reliable, but it apparently needs to be set up for a few hours before it “locks in”.

101008 5y ago
Wow. I am in the middle of a big city and I have 50Mbps down and 11 down and you have that speed in the middle of nowhere... the future sounds amazing.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  Tell me about it. My 1Gbps docsis3 has an upload of 35Mpbs because of 1980s cable tv frequency choice reasons. I’m slightly impressed with StarLink and slightly annoyed at my main ISP. This is on the edge of nowhere, but still cool. The only other option I had here was dialup or if I wanted to pay outrageous rates, I could get a .5-1Mbps T1 only because there is a ranger station not too far off that put one in and I can access some of the trunk hardware a few miles away.
- elif 5y ago
  latency will go still down significantly as v2 and v3 join the constellation with laser interlinks. For long connections, they will be theoretically faster than fiber due to geographical constraints on straight lines and routing.
SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
Side notes: The more I thought about it. In case anyone is interested: - The setup is stupid easy. Place dish outside, plug in. That's about all. - It's weird having a dish that points straight up, used to them all pointing south (hemisphere dependent of course) - The router box (thing?) is a bad design. Stupid little triangle that tips over all the time. Seems cheap. - Shipped with no wifi encryption. I thought that was weird. I bet this changes to for real release. - Got a few "outside your home area" messages without moving. Errors. - It is good for streaming or websites, but currently I have it on the ground and it seems like it loses connection fairly often. I'll put in up on a poll now that I know... - The dish is heated. GOOD. I was worried about this with the amount of snow it's going to get. I don't really geek out over these things. It's good. It's exactly what it should be I think. We'll see how it lasts the winter. I expect the reception to get better when it's mounted, but it'll be interesting to see how white-out snow effects the performance.

mothsonasloth 5y ago

Doesn't the author know that Starlink is limited to a specific location that the subscription address is at (+/- 25miles)? https://sebsebmc.github.io/starlink-coverage/index.html https://sebsebmc.github.io/starlink-coverage/index.html

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ghuntley 5y ago
Answered here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28593949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28593949
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
briffle 5y ago
They have said those restrictions are part of the beta, and going away soon.
- Ancapistani 5y ago
  Got a source for that? When I last looked into it, their site said it was a technical limitation and that there were no plans for creating a truly mobile receiver.
  - hkchad 5y ago
    As with most things elon it was in a tweet, https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22388378/elon-musk-starlink-satellite-internet-service-moving-vehicles-trucks-2021 https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/16/22388378/elon-musk-starli...
_moof 5y ago
Eagle-eyed observers have noticed Starlink antennas on SpaceX's drone ships. So mobile capability is definitely already implemented, it's just not publicly available yet. (Edit: And evidently some regular users are already beta-testing it too.)

LurkingPenguin 5y ago

Couldn't help but notice the link to the author's Twitch account, which has the description "I live a minimalist lifestyle..." Amazing what passes for a minimalist lifestyle these days!

ghuntley 5y ago
I have a single bowl, fork and knife. Everything that I own has a purpose or it gets chucked. There really isn't much space in a 7m long van.
- lucideer 5y ago
  Given the size of cutlery, coupled with the fact that multiple bowls will fit inside eachother, is this overcompensation for an extreme maximalist lifestyle on the electronics side?
  - wrycoder 5y ago
    Physical misanthropy FTW
    - lucideer 5y ago
      Well there's nothing necessarily wrong with maximalism per se, it's just the misrepresenting was a bit odd
- LurkingPenguin 5y ago
  > I have a single bowl, fork and knife. And soon 7 (!!!) internet links! Anyway, I just find it interesting how individuals (including myself) describe themselves and rationalize their descriptions.
  - MayeulC 5y ago
    That's cognitive dissonance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance It's normal to a point :)

pgrote 5y ago

When Windows NT released ISDN bonding it seemed magical. It was short lived magic as DSL came along. lol I had no idea bonding was still a thing.

randomswede 5y ago
I did actually prototype multi-link PPP over multiple GRE tunnels as a way of bonding multiple links, with (some level of) redundancy, with the intention of offering that as a product at the ISP I worked. The idea was, basically "up to four ADSL links, possibly from multiple providers, each used as a member of the MPPP bundle, then dial-up of some sort as last resort". Also tested ADSL as a bond/fallback for a leased line, around then. Ah, the days...

Tepix 5y ago

OK, i get what he's doing and it's cool, however i then stumbled over this: > Yes, this setup is overkill but having functioning internet is especially important when going camping with young kids. No, it's not. 100% no.

anotherBreeder 5y ago
Are you surprised by the entitlement of parents? I used to be, but no longer.
ghuntley 5y ago
It is for my family. It may not be for yours. When they reach the age where they have their own cellphones / social media media then it's different. Freshly popped popcorn from the microwave + salt + butter and introducing kiddos to "the dish" movie after _they have been to the actual dish_ is A+ and highly recommend.
- est31 5y ago
  You don't internet for that. The movie is available on DVD as well as Blu-Ray.
  - ghuntley 5y ago
    Answered here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28593998 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28593998
    - mixmastamyk 5y ago
      The more modern answer would be to download ahead of time.
      - ghuntley 5y ago
        That assumes I'm departing from a house? This is my house.

rektide 5y ago

Still using a Alfa AWUS036ACH for a wireless connection: 802.11ac wave1 from 2015. There's simply nothing better available, in 6 years of intervening time. This world would be so so much more awesome if there were some really really good USB wifi adapters. This is yet another further leap, but I also think of all the guides to turning the RPi into an access point, via usb adapters: it starts out working fairly well, but the hardware either has hard maximum client limits or just fails to work well once you get to half a dozen devices. Even if you have something like PCIe or M.2 expandability, options are still extremely limited, & availability is incredibly poor.

ghuntley 5y ago
Alfa AWUS036ACH is a slapping good WiFi adapter. It's mounted in my roof and I run a 10m USB extension cable from the roof to the network rack.
- rektide 5y ago
  I'm a huge fan of Alfa gear, for a long time. They do an amazingly good job. AWUS036ACH is one of Alfa's most up to date USB cards. It is, however based off an RTL8812AU chipset[1], which is 8 years old now[2]. I'd love at least to have a good client chipset & equipment that supports WiFi6 that has good RF performance. I still think the market is overly structured & segmented. No one makes AP-class chips for USB, but to be honest I really think they could & should & that it'd be exceptionally useful & good. But no one dares to threaten the AP market like that. Thankfully in wifi, RF engineering & antennas count for a huge amount. You still have great gear. But it does hurt me to see what seems like rampant tech-stagnation & neglect, of such a vital, interesting, basic part of modern communication technology: our wireless systems. [1] https://wikidevi.wi-cat.ru/ALFA_Network_AWUS036ACH https://wikidevi.wi-cat.ru/ALFA_Network_AWUS036ACH [2] https://github.com/lwfinger/rtl8812au#purpose https://github.com/lwfinger/rtl8812au#purpose

m0ngr31 5y ago

This is a pretty impressive setup. Recently I lived in an RV for a year and my setup was much more janky than this... Basically consisted of a gl.inet router that I plugged in a old Moto X4. This allowed me to get wifi from whichever campsite we stayed at (always garbage) and then I would pay for 100GB from Cricket and T-Mobile. I would swap sims when I would run out of data about half way through the month. Then I discovered I could get unlimited data on Cricket with a regular phone plan if I changed the TTL on the router. Ended up being the most stable option for the last few months.

cloudify 5y ago
that’s quite interesting, do you mind elaborating on your last sentence? How does that work?
- walterbell 5y ago
  With some carriers, it can bypass tethering quotas, appearing as if usage is originating from the "phone".
- m0ngr31 5y ago
  I setup a firewall rule in openwrt that said anything coming over USB needed to set the TTL to 65 so it looked like the data was coming from the phone itself and not from the tether. IIRC, on the plan I was using on Cricket, I would get unlimited data + 15GB of tether. This just byapssed that limit. I think they can almost figure it out because if I tried to tether without the TTL trick, data wouldn't work. So I'm guessing it still counted the data I was using against some kind of cap?
  - thrashh 5y ago
    On Android, there are apps that you can install that do this for you. I used to use them a lot when I was traveling with my laptop a few years ago and it always worked great.
    - 5y ago

wjamesg 5y ago

This is cool

davb 5y ago

OT/meta, but I love those handwritten style diagrams. If the author notices this, I'd be interested to know how he made them.

dislick 5y ago
I think they've been made with https://excalidraw.com https://excalidraw.com
- ghuntley 5y ago
  They are indeed. https://excalidraw.com/#json=4810888066367488,n9qcxzAN-ynr7kbIn7ac0A https://excalidraw.com/#json=4810888066367488,n9qcxzAN-ynr7k...
Ancapistani 5y ago
You’d probably like the style of the diagrams created by Julia Evans, then: https://jvns.ca/ https://jvns.ca/ I’ve followed her blog for years at this point mostly because I enjoy her diagrams and pretty much always learn something from the way she presents information.

f3lds 5y ago

Running all of that separate network equipment seems particularly power hungry when not plugged into a campsite. I wonder why the author didn't consider a Peplink router which can handle redundant cellular/wifi connections out of the box. That's how I recreate a setup akin to this while I'm on the road in a single device. Not to say this isn't awesome as is and I'd love an excuse to install a full Ubiquiti stack in my own camper!

ghuntley 5y ago
Oh, this _seriously_ chews power. I need to do a blogpost up about the eletrical system that makes it all possible. Leave your digits at https://ghuntley.com/newsletter https://ghuntley.com/newsletter to be notified when it ships. I looked into teltonika (ie https://teltonika-networks.com/product/rut950/ https://teltonika-networks.com/product/rut950/ ) but stopped because the modems are Cat4 (similar story with Microtik).
- Integer 5y ago
  FYI, Teltonika RUTX14 has CAT12.
  - ghuntley 5y ago
    Cheers. If anyone at Teltonika wants to send me a RUTX14 I'd love to try it out.
- conk 5y ago
  Why did you opt for a UDM-Pro instead of virtualizing the router on exsi? It would save space and power over running another appliance.
- fouric 5y ago
  Care to give us a sneak peak - say, what your typical power draw is like? :) I'm particularly interested in this topic because I've been thinking about power a lot after the Texas blackouts (considering building a bike generator so I can have power in case of a disaster like that one).

chinathrow 5y ago

I remember channel bonding from my ISDN times and it made sense since both channels led to the same ISP over the same ISDN card/phone line. How does channel bonding work across multiple ISPs/NICs? Edit: This seem to be it: https://speedify.com/blog/featured/speedify-protocol-mptcp-difference/ https://speedify.com/blog/featured/speedify-protocol-mptcp-d... "The way Speedify used to work is it opened one TCP socket over each Internet connection it used - e.g. one TCP socket over Wi-Fi / cellular / wired Ethernet / etc. With the new protocol, Speedify opens up multiple sockets over each connection (for example 8) - 8 over Wi-Fi / cellular / wired Ethernet / etc." That seems a bit wasteful towards the server destinations.

phh 5y ago
The 8 sockets are opened only towards speedify "VPN" server. Once you're out of speedify network, you only have one standard TCP connection, so destination server only sees one connection as expected.
- chinathrow 5y ago
  Thanks for the clarification, I didn't know that Speedify also tunnels every packet through their servers first but it makes now sense to me.

wyldfire 5y ago

Geoff: some of the photographs have blur spots to conceal something you don't want to be public. Just an FYI that malicious attackers could bypass this blur in some cases by starting with a generated version of the 'before' content and blurring it and iterating different inputs until it matches your blurred photo. This matters for things like a document with an account number or some other secret. It may not matter much for your network adapters (mac addresses, maybe?). Just a heads up.

ghuntley 5y ago
Thanks wyldfire; the photos that are blurred are the identifiers of my RIPE atlas nodes. It's not a big issue if they become public knowledge. Fully aware of attack vectors related to image bluring.
rozularen 5y ago
would adding a black stripe over instead be better?
- vxNsr 5y ago
  I think so. If you don’t like the way that looks aesthetically, I’ve overlaid the text with a white background and more text and blurred that, so you get the same blurred effect but you’re blurring nothing important.
- DoctorOW 5y ago
  Yes, making sure that the file format you picked doesn't support layers (or at least that those layers are flattened) that mistake bit the New York Times a while ago.
vxNsr 5y ago
Oh I always thought the attack vector was reverse engineering the blur algorithm, interesting that there’s another method.
- yathern 5y ago

mercurywells 5y ago

Geoff, how do you handle washing your car, especially when you get the Starlink dish on it?

ghuntley 5y ago
I have a collapsable ladder which is used to clean the panels. There is absolutely no space on the roof left for Dishy and mounting it up there would cast shadows on the solar system (which is circa 3 * 350w house solar panels). For dishy, it's going to be a matter of running a ethernet cable out the van during the day. https://i.imgur.com/WeKOofK.jpg https://i.imgur.com/WeKOofK.jpg

adadchggg 5y ago

I love ads disguised as content.

alphabettsy 5y ago
Where’s the ad?
- cantreadiguess 5y ago
  Uh the entire thing? It’s all an ad for the author. Look at me. Use my software. Watch my twitch stream. Hire me.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- thrashh 5y ago
  For Speedify
- bob778 5y ago
  It's an ad for Speedify with referral links and marketing events linked in it?

parhamn 5y ago

Is it generally accepted that these wavelengths and devices that operate them are safe around humans? Should I feel concerned at all having so many large antennas and amplifiers and what not near me? I never really stopped to ask this of my phone either, I guess.

astrea 5y ago
This section of the EM spectrum is non-ionizing. So unlike, say, X-rays, you won't get cancer as the waves aren't strong enough to strip an electron off an atom and therefore change your DNA. However, they will heat your cells to some degree (since 2.5GHz is the same freq as a microwave). This can cause cataracts over long exposure to high enough power as your eyes can't regulate heat.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  > you won't get cancer Hold on: heating up part of the human body that are not capable of dissipating heat efficiently can increase cancer risk as well.
asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
Generally accepted by who? You can find some people who are concerned about this stuff. 5G truthers and all that. But nobody in the evidence-based medicine community.
- parhamn 5y ago
  > But nobody in the evidence-based medicine community. Yup, exactly. Was wondering if there was any data in the evidence medicine based community to be concerned about. Sounds like there isn't.
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    On the contrary, there's plenty of literature indicating a range of effects on lab rats and so on: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=microwave+exposure https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=microwave+exposur... This is not to say that low power microwave exposure is worse than exposure to pollution, unhealthy food, risks of car accident. But it would be incorrect to say that microwave transmissions are free from risks.

DanAtC 5y ago

I'm interested in which NUC has 8 Ethernet ports.

ghuntley 5y ago
Aliexpress is the place to start your quest. Look for "pfsense routers".
m0dest 5y ago
At these throughput levels, you can also use a separate USB3 NICs for each port without any issues.

londons_explore 5y ago

Can this setup migrate a video call from one link to another without a lost frame or glitch? So far, nearly every redundant link I've found seems to lead to bugs and glitches all round when failover actually happens.

AlexGizis 5y ago
Alex from Speedify here. Yes, we make a multi-path VPN tunnel, so that calls can be shifted from one link to another without glitches (apps see the same IP address the whole time). To make this work, we do some smart things like retransmit packets that were just sent on the failed link, on the still-working link since they were likely to have been lost.
m0dest 5y ago
I can attest that Speedify in redundant mode will handle a link failure in the middle of a Zoom call without a single lost packet or other impact. This isn't failover, though, this is redundancy; it's like having a 1 disk fail in a RAID1. (I have a similar setup to the OP, but using an array of M.2 4G/5G modem cards connected to external antennas.)

nickthemagicman 5y ago

This is inspiring. As a Van life person myself without much money. Any guidance you could give on the most bang for your buck way to get internet? Just a hotspot?

ghuntley 5y ago
Go for the backpack route (in the blogpost). Speedify + iPad (or Phone) with LTE + Hotspot.
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  Awesome! Did not know about the Nighthawks! Those are frickin sweet! Thanks.
turtlebits 5y ago
I would recommend EasyTether on an Android phone. It bypasses hotspot specific data limits. I use a Pi running Easytether connected to a 5G phone, with a travel wifi router connected to the Pi over ethernet. Runs my off-grid internet + security cameras.

H8crilA 5y ago

How does the "redundant" mode work? You cannot just double TCP packets as within that protocol it's a sign of congestion, it will drastically reduce the throughput. Does this include VPN-ing through some service that can understand duplicates and clean them up?

jmuguy 5y ago
Maybe it determines whatever route is faster when talking to a specific host for the first time, or every so often, and then sticks to that route for that specific host?
- sgtnoodle 5y ago
  All the connections are likely being used to talk to the same speedify server. Only once the packets make it to that server do they get forwarded to the destination.
stefan_ 5y ago
As someone mentioned you can round-robin connections, but then you don't get failover (without interruption, anyway). What I think most of these solutions do is use MPTCP or a custom homebrew protocol to a server that then holds the actual TCP connection you want. So a slightly more complicated VPN. There is an open source project for this: https://www.openmptcprouter.com/ https://www.openmptcprouter.com/
- thrashh 5y ago
  OP is using a commercial VPN that does this. There’s more than one choice in the space.
  - hcarrega 5y ago
    wich one??
    - thrashh 5y ago

anfractuosity 5y ago

Would it be possible to achieve something like Speedify yourself by routing traffic from your multiple interfaces to/from a VPS using Linux?

goodpoint 5y ago
Yes, it's very possible. Also you can simply use multiple uplinks without VPS and it provides better latency. The drawback is that you can't failover/balance protocols that use only one connection. Mosh and browsing work well tho.

uKVZe85V 5y ago

On top of this plethora of technology and various providers, doesn't bonding all links to a single solution provider (Speedify) create a single point of failure? From https://speedify.com/features/ https://speedify.com/features/ > What kinds of servers do you have? > We use a combination of dedicated and virtual servers, depending on location and scalability needs. All of our servers have at least 1 Gbps network access and are optimized for bandwidth intensive usage such as live streaming, video conferencing or online gaming. Let's assume the best case, where Speedify implements this as swarms of redundant servers, so that even if some servers or datacenters are down it may continue to work. I could not find in the article any mention of disabling Speedify and falling back to using a single provider, or a local bonding solution like described on https://wiki.debian.org/Bonding https://wiki.debian.org/Bonding . Isn't speedify still a "single point of failure", in the sense that any incident with Speedify (e.g. accounting glitch of any kind) may cause the whole contraption to fall like a house of cards?

ghuntley 5y ago
The UniFi Dream Machine Pro has a backup WAN link. I plug my backpack nighthawk LTE router into it when it is not in my backpack. If speedify fails, it falls over automatically.
dmurray 5y ago
Having a single point of failure here might be OK, if Speedify is so much more reliable than the other solutions (4G wireless in potentially remote areas). Though yeah, I'd like to see an option to failover to a single provider, because it's conceptually so easy to add.
IshKebab 5y ago
If you're trying to get internet in a van in rural Australia, the chances of Speedify going down are completely insignificant compared to more basic things like not having phone signal.
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Yes: 1. https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2020-05-01/rural-residents-unable-to-use-covidsafe-app/12202772 https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2020-05-01/rural-residents... 2. https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/05/telstra-sms-over-wifi-launch/ https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/05/telstra-sms-over-wifi-lau... 3. https://www.itnews.com.au/news/experts-call-for-rethink-of-covidsafe-app-568265 https://www.itnews.com.au/news/experts-call-for-rethink-of-c...

secondcoming 5y ago

That Nokia 5G router looks great. I'd like to replace my Huawei router with it but it seems they cannot be bought easily; 'Contact Sales'... why???

mdasen 5y ago
T-Mobile US is using it for their home internet service. With the global supply chain and chips issues, it's been hard for T-Mobile to get enough of them. It seems likely that at this point Nokia might just be doing enterprise sales because of this. If you can't produce enough of them for a customer like T-Mobile US, why would you try selling one to a single end-user? T-Mobile US won't require support, won't be doing returns because they don't like it, won't need an individual shipment, etc. Given that T-Mobile US can't get the supply of these that they need, I'd guess that Nokia is making as many as they can for corporate customers and they don't want to deal with individuals at the moment. https://www.nokia.com/networks/products/fastmile-5g-gateways/ https://www.nokia.com/networks/products/fastmile-5g-gateways... In fact, their website indicates that they're customizing the device with differing specs for different customers with options like an LCD touchscreen and differing antenna designs.

ComputerGuru 5y ago

Kind of off-topic, but I really don’t like the use of “handwritten” fonts (as popularized by XKCD where it does work) for technical drawings. It’s hard to read without zooming in (especially on mobile) and it takes longer to grok for things that your brain can’t just deduce (eg technical terms, model numbers, random devices, etc) the way it can with natural text.

wizzwizz4 5y ago
I think the main issue is that they're not handwritten. Handwriting isn't just about having uneven shapes of the letters; it's about the kerning, and the spacing, and the layout, that all helps make it clear despite the uneven shapes of the letters.

rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago

What is their carbon footprint? What % of the energy consumed (for Internet but also driving) comes from the solar panel vs ICE? It's nice to live in the nature, but is it ruining it?

ghuntley 5y ago
It's all solar.
- Kayou 5y ago
  Sure enough for the power consumption of the modems, but I don't think the 5G networks are solar powered in Australia. Using multiple networks at the same time will use more power than using only one.
  - Reason077 5y ago
    Does a 5G/4G tower consume more energy when one extra device is connected to it (for redundancy), but not actually transferring data? The answer might be yes, but it'd be very marginal.
- Freestyler_3 5y ago
  How much WP you got on there? edit: just read you got 3*350wp While that is plenty for your computer and routing, do you have any other electrical devices on board? You have a tour of the vans inside?
  - ghuntley 5y ago
    Tour of the final kitout is coming; leave your digits at https://ghuntley.com/newsletter https://ghuntley.com/newsletter Fridge, Freezer, Electric Blanket, Electric Hotwater, 12v Oven, Microwave, Instapot, Telephony Kit (blog post), Gaming Computer and Xbox.

bvm 5y ago

I have tried Speedify (not with such an impressive setup) on multiple 4g connections (different towers, different providers) and didn't see much, or indeed any, throughput bump. So I sort of gave up, because ~20mbps is surprisingly livable-with. I would definitely be interested in trying again, especially with a starlink + 4g + crap-uk-rural-adsl. I did also once have to manage one of those Mushroom bonding things and....never again, please.

shkkmo 5y ago
My use case was multiplexing poor wifi in central american hostels with poor cellular data to get a single stable connection. I never tried to get faster speeds but only to improve connection stability by reducing packet loss.
- bvm 5y ago
  did it work well for you?
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    It did, I was able to get sufficiently stable connections to do work calls when neither connection was reliable enough alone.

creamynebula 5y ago

The most powerful magic number.

ComputerGuru 5y ago

In the USA, Starlink requires registration against a particular set of satellites visible to a fixed/bounded area - you can’t just take the modem and satellite with you and move to another location (and especially not use them while moving continuously). Is that not the case in Australia?

shkkmo 5y ago
This seems a bit inaccurately stated. The registration is tied a a particular geographic cell over which a large number of different satellites will pass. Starlink has added the ability to change your address if the cell of your new address has available capacity. You do need some sort of internet access to submit that address change.
- Ancapistani 5y ago
  IIRC, you have to call them and they stress that it’s not something that they will support doing multiple times in series. It’s for moving to a new address, not working as a nomad.

barbazoo 5y ago

Impressive setup. As someone who has lived in a van for a little bit, I'd be terrified of that van getting stolen or even just equipment getting stolen off the roof, especially in cities. I wouldn't want to leave the van much.

ghuntley 5y ago
Theft is indeed a concern. It's not something I talk publically about but if you look closely at the header image you'll see some clues about one of the mitigations. Footage is backed up offsite.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

r0m4n0 5y ago

Just to share my own setup, I've been living in a van for the past year. I develop mostly via SSH and RDP so I found that any connection was important and total bandwidth wasn't the highest priority. Also in the US, way better coverage of 4g. Because of that invested fully in 4g and not at all in 5g. * 11 in 1 Panorama External Antenna (LG-IN2447) around $500. 4 internal cradlepoint antennas, see photo below. In retrospect would not have invested so heavily in wifi antennas and bought more 4g. I also added a little antenna lifter to make sure it has line of site of all cell towers, I wanted it to be the highest point on my sprinter van roof. * Cradlepoint IBR1700 1200M-B around $900 on ebay. Runs on 12 volt, a ton of antenna ports has 1 internal modem that supports big US carriers, came with an additional modem that does the same for carrier aggregation. A bunch of different ways to configure the router to aggregate links, mostly I switch back and forth manually, I found that if there was an issue it would be obvious and I could just switch the link. Cradlepoint software wouldn't handle issues and signal strength that well. Honestly one carrier has been plenty good for me though and between ATT and Verizon, I only have issues in the national parks where there are cell dead zones. * Verizon and ATT 4g cell plans. I added 1 line on my family plan for Verizon and the same with a friends family plan with ATT for $20 a month each. Took some phone calls into support to get it to work but after some escalations in the support chain I have unlimited 4g data. Total bill is around $50 a month. * Still room to add more sim cards and more antennas. It honestly works great though, get 20-150 mbps basically everywhere. Photo of my antenna and cradlepoint router/modem: https://imgur.com/a/MOdJkT8 https://imgur.com/a/MOdJkT8

ghuntley 5y ago
Nice, thanks for sharing. Since you mentioned SSH - make sure you use MOSH. If using an iPad https://blink.sh/ https://blink.sh/ is an absolute gem.
tristor 5y ago
That sounds really similar to the setup I made for my parent's RV. Cradlepoint devices are really fantastic for what they do. If you set it up correctly, you can also use it to bridge WiFi, so all the devices internally only ever connect to the WiFi from the Cradlepoint and when you can you can park near a public WiFi hotspot and bridge it. This can often be faster or more reliable than 4G, depending on your location, or in their case if you pay for RV park premium WiFi. We found that Verizon had very good coverage of 4G/LTE, especially in areas that were unlikely to be covered by other providers. AT&T was a good backup. T-Mobile was not, even though it was cheaper, coverage off the Interstate or in sparser populated areas was pretty bad. We also found how much throughput was needed to handle my dad's work remotely and set an upward limit on throughput on the Cradlepoint so we would overwhelm any WiFi networks we used as a courtesy to others, which ended up being around 10Mbps. Honestly, if you could just get 10Mbps nationwide without interruption, I think it would make a huge difference in the possibilities of remote work and rural technology. Love the photos, we also used the IBR1700. I set it up with NetCloud though with an active license from Cradlepoint (and bought new) so I could help my parents remotely administrate it while they were traveling. Have you tried satellite internet with the rooftop dishes that have electronically controlled seeking / adjustments? It was another thing we considered but hadn't done yet, but once Starlink becomes more widely available would be worth a consideration.

xpe 5y ago

Tip: blurring photos of sensitive information is a bad idea: https://dheera.net/posts/20140725-why-you-should-never-use-pixelation/ https://dheera.net/posts/20140725-why-you-should-never-use-p... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8078747 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8078747

ghuntley 5y ago
Answered at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28594133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28594133

Reason077 5y ago

Interesting that he places Starlink above the 5G link in "network priority". I would think that 5G would usually offer better speeds and ping times than Starlink in areas where it's available.

ghuntley 5y ago
Starlink would be used when camping; 5G doesn't work in scenarios like [1] this and is only useful when hanging around cities as the range of 5G is very poor. [1] https://ghuntley.com/content/images/size/w1600/2021/02/Photo_6554005_DJI_405_jpg_6288768_0_202121019728_photo_original-PANO.jpg https://ghuntley.com/content/images/size/w1600/2021/02/Photo...
- ezfe 5y ago
  The point of the priority system is that it isn't based on what you're doing ("camping") but instead on the actual network conditions. If Starlink is ranked above 5G, then it'll never fall back to 5G. 5G should be ranked above Starlink, and then when camping and there's no 5G it doesn't matter the ranking.
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
    Starlink is still geofenced to 25 miles IIRC, so his setup should fall back to other options when he leaves that area. I'm still not sure if it makes sense to rank starlink above 5G, though.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
sgtnoodle 5y ago
If Starlink gets their lasers working, it may be better than 5G in some areas, since it depends on the backhaul.

ajvs 5y ago

Speedify is very intriguing. Does anybody know of an open-source alternative?

mattmatt 5y ago
This is what you’re looking for- https://www.openmptcprouter.com/ https://www.openmptcprouter.com/

yunohn 5y ago

Pretty interesting setup! What is the added benefit of having 3 different 4G connections? My understanding is that most of these networks would overlap.

cjrp 5y ago
Seems like it's win-win; if coverage overlaps then the connections are bonded and you get 3* 4G lines, and if you only have coverage on some of the networks that's still a usable connection.
etherael 5y ago
Those specific three have their own dedicated spectrum and don't overlap in Australia. There are many other MVNOs there that just resell that spectrum under a different brand name with sometimes better deals, but those three are the "upstream".
m0dest 5y ago
You choose 3 separate providers so that they don't have overlapping spectrum. I've used 2 modems on the same provider, but with each modem locked to a different LTE band. This way, if the provider has one nearby tower on band 1 and another tower on band 2, you can use both of them. (Note: If you're going to do this, make sure that you understand LTE carrier aggregation and have confirmed that the 2 bands are not being offered as a CA combination.)

hall0ween 5y ago

I try to avoid cynicism in comments, but here it's tough. Tech bros bringing work out to campsites is shite.

wheybags 5y ago
He lives in the van, he's not just holidaying...
- hervature 5y ago
  I believe OP's gripe is precisely this. Most people go to the wilderness to escape technology/work. There is a reason why we don't run fiber optic lines and electricity to every park and it isn't because of cost.
- hall0ween 5y ago
  https://ghuntley.com/a-new-chapter/ https://ghuntley.com/a-new-chapter/ I can't read the post, but it seems the author seeks to work from forests . Also doubtful the appeal of living in a van is working from a city. It's not difficult to have a minimalist lifestyle from an apartment in the city. I sense the author felt a void in their life and decided to experiment w/ a van. And odds on favor is it will be temporary as it is not addressing the root cause.
  - ghuntley 5y ago
    More insights at https://ghuntley.com/how-long/ https://ghuntley.com/how-long/
Taylor_OD 5y ago
Does your enjoyment of the campsite require everyone to be enjoying it the same way you are? Why do you care if some person is coding away while your walk by their campsite?
- hall0ween 5y ago
  It bothers me because this behavior is an outcropping of consumerism. Author came from town/city that was not good enough. Thus author wanted more* **. And I say more b/c author continues to have many of the comforts of a residence. Other than lack of community community/roots, which is probably one reason author decided to take up a van in the first place. And no, not everyone must enjoy things the same way as me. But not recognizing the sources of ones behavior does，along w/ bringing consumerism & the city mindset to a place w/o it. *These opinions paint in broad strokes and are debatable，and have a good chance of poorly describing the OP. But this van life is a trend, some people see it on social media / blogs & proceed to replicate it, indeed messing with wilderness. **Thinking about the word more and author's post...six internet links not being enough, evidence in favor of consumerism.

chrisbroadfoot 5y ago

> In the future, I intend to sell internet access via the UniFi Captive Portal I'm pretty sure Telstra, Optus, Vodafone disallow reselling.

etherael 5y ago

It has been my dream for decades to do exactly this on a sailboat at sea. With providers like Starlink it might be finally getting close to time to pull the trigger.

megablast 5y ago
Are you going to be working when at sea?? That’s not easy. I work when anchored. Just use my phone hotspot. And a couple of SIM cards.
- etherael 5y ago
  That's the plan, but I'm not sure how realistic it is. In a traditional monohull with no special tricks, looks like it would be basically impossible. In a catamaran though, seems like it depends on sea conditions. And then there are a whole load of other ways that I've researched that seem promising (SWATH hulls, active gyro stabilizers like seakeeper, submarines even but then you have tethers and buoys for surface connectivity to get around the opacity of water when it comes to radio waves). Problem is one can theorycraft forever on this stuff and until you have a platform to actually test on, it's all mental masturbation and I'm aware of that.

sgtnoodle 5y ago

You may see a material improvement in wifi usability if you can figure out a way to use an Intel or Qualcomm wifi chipset over the Alfa, aka Realtek chipset. You probably need an M.2 slot somewhere though. Not every wifi radio is made the same. In particular, they seem to cope with the ambiguity of received packet collisions differently, and Realtek and Mediatek receivers don't do as well.

sparcpile 5y ago

For the wireless connections listed (Telstra, Opus, and Vodaphone), I do wonder how much of this are on the same physical tower and network. Certain parts of this multi-home connection would be running off the same physical network due to how wireless providers provision out their towers. They will share physical space on a tower and even an underlying fiber run out to the local POP. This may be a situation of someone being too clever by half.

rozenmd 5y ago
In Australia - Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone maintain their own independent mobile networks & equipment (Telstra having the most coverage in rural areas). If the author used 3 MVNOs from the same network, then it'd be silly.
- DavidVoid 5y ago
  Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone might share the same physical tower though (while using different antennas and RRUs). But that's only an issue if there are severe interference issues there (on all the bands the author is connecting to) or if the tower itself suffers some catastrophic damage.
jjeaff 5y ago
As long as the bottleneck isn't the fiber coming into the tower, then I don't see the issue. It could easily be that one company's equipment is over provisioned and overloaded while the other is fine.

tibbydudeza 5y ago

A bit of overkill ???. I have backup LTE dongle if my fibre conks out but it happened a few times last year - we had 2 hourly power cuts so the CPE device would send a DHCP request when it rebooted. The local POP DHCP server then got flooded with DHCP requests so no connectivity but it was addressed by the provider - also added a battery to CPE as well.

spiffytech 5y ago
The article is about living out of a camper van, where fiber isn't an option. I lived and worked remotely out of an RV in 2012. There's really no such thing as overkill when you can't have a hardline internet connection but need internet to do your job. Though Starlink may change that. When I was doing it, I had a T-Mobile unlimited cell plan, a Verizon hotspot, and I'd go into town to find wifi. It still wasn't enough to feel like I could count on internet being there. While travelling, it's easy to not have quality cell signal (or any signal). "Unlimited" plans never mean "you're allowed to push 90GB/mo through this". Public wifi is hard to track down, has highly variable quality, and you're always working in Starbucks instead of at your desk with your equipment. If you have to stay at an RV park, the costs are astronomical enough that you save money by parking out of town, where the cell signal is worse. Satellite offerings are extremely expensive (pre-Starlink, at least), and don't work if you can't get clear line-of-sight to the satellite. If I'd been making more money at the time, I absolutely would have invested more in my internet access. And it sounds like today this stuff has more-numerous and better-documented solutions than when I was doing it. It was easily worth the trouble to live that way for a while.
- tibbydudeza 5y ago
  Point taken.

kingforaday 5y ago

I have been using the following for the last six (6) months in the USA and it has been "just okay": - Pepwave Max Transit Duo Cat12 - Poynting 7 in 1 Omnidirectional Antenna Allows two active cellular connections, but has four (4) sim slots (2 are reserved for hot standby). I have them filled with 2 T-Mobile (100GB/month plan), 1 ATT (50GB/month plan), and 1 Verizon (50GB/month plan). Along side that, I have a T-Mobile Inseego 5G M2000 Hotspot with a 100GB/month plan). This sometimes gets better performance than the externally mounted antenna and Pepwave Cellular connections. The pep wave does allow the use of Wireless-WAN, so I connect to the hotspot from the Pepwave's WWAN and can then have three active bonded connections. This is being used in a travel trailer as I tour the country with my family. The result is just okay meaning it doesn't blow me away, but it does work. Everywhere I have been so far, I have been able to get connected, largely without doing a thing, and get to work.

IronWolve 5y ago

While I'm waiting in queue for my starlink since last year, I went and got a mofi with directional antennas and a 12 foot pool. Its not fast at the rural cabin, but I can stream 480p yt, and ssh. And its always on. I have a grandfathered unlimited wireless account, so I just ordered a another sim card. The mofi changes the network settings so data looks like a phone not a tethered device. I bought a 4g router, they have 5G but its 2x the cost, but seems to cover all the bands, and does channel aggregation. https://mofinetwork.com/ https://mofinetwork.com/

noduerme 5y ago

I lived and worked remotely from a van in Australia for a year... in 2008. It was pretty different back then. We kitted the van out with a solar panel and batteries. There was some 3G service available near roads, and something like CDMA a little more widely. But at times we'd end up driving miles of dirt track to try to find high ground to pick up a signal. My gf would hold the 3G receiver up and look for signal. During one of these treks, trying to turn around on a narrow dirt track way outside of Tenant Creek, the side of the road collapsed like a sand dome under one wheel of the van and we began listing to the side. I had to hold it up with my shoulder so the whole van wouldn't fall over on its side. My gf got out, causing it to tip even more, and started throwing herself against the back of it, while I tried to rock it out of the ditch. It was at this point that I noticed that what I had thought was a tree branch (odd, since there were no trees around), was actually a 4-5 foot long black snake that was moving rather quickly toward us up the road. I guess that gave us the adrenaline burst we needed, because we miraculously heaved the van free and jumped inside just in time. I started it and unceremoniously drove right over the snake. Another funny story... One night camping off a road, not in a campsite, we heard a ruckus outside the van where we had our table and cooking stuff set up under a tarp. It was pitch black out. We kept a katana under the platform bed for protection. So I opened the rear door and jumped out in my boxers and sandals, holding this sword, and found myself looking at a large kangaroo that was rifling through our cookware. I got back in the van and said, forget it, I'm not fighting that thing... we'll just have to clean it up in the morning.

megablast 5y ago

I live on a boat in Australia. Just use my phone hotspot. Only a few places along the coast where I anchor have bad network. I just move.

fy20 5y ago

Does anyone have any suggestions for good data plans to be used throughout the EU? In my country I can get unlimited 5G for a pretty good price (€25/mo), but if I go to another country the datacap is only 15GB. I guess pre-pay is an option, but having to get a new SIM in every country sounds like a lot of hassle.