5 ms·

> But you can never get around 600~ms pings and limited data allowance ... I'm not sure how that sentence is meant to be parsed, but the NBN Sky Muster Plus pa

by Jedd 5y ago

> But you can never get around 600~ms pings and limited data allowance ... I'm not sure how that sentence is meant to be parsed, but the NBN Sky Muster Plus packages include unlimited downlink traffic (for everything except streaming video), though of course you're always stuck with satellite latency at ~ 600ms to domestic services ... at least until Starlink saves us all. Though the Starlink phased arrays apparently consume a fairly consistent 100W, which might kibosh these kinds of cheap and cheerful solar + car battery rigs. Plus I've not seen what Starlink offers in terms of fixed IP, or at least inbound routing. I can confirm that NBN SMP (as above) while relatively cheap for those of us in the middle of nowhere, does suffer from CGNAT, which makes this kind of self-hosted service infeasible.

zbrozek 5y ago
Carrier-imposed NAT is a horrible thing, and it isn't clear to me why connections can't be given _at least_ a publicly accessible IPv6 address.
- Jedd 5y ago
  Can confirm that it's truly horrendous. Since switching to that grade of service I have consistently had captcha challenges every time I go through paypal (despite it saying 'we recognise you on this device...'), my Unifi VPN fails to work, despite following several guides specifically for double NAT (I'll probably end up with wireguard), and most recently my O365 endpoint failed to talk to me, as one of the half-dozen IPv4 addresses they route out of had been marked by Spamhaus.org, which a) is identified a woeful arrangement in itself, and b) took me two days to get rectified by the ISP by switching which address I came out with (a minor change which resulted in a 24 hour total outage). I did ask about IPv6 - but nothing about that experience screamed 'we're ready to move our customers to IPv6', as you could imagine.
- conradev 5y ago
  T-Mobile switched from CGNAT to 464XLAT and an IPv6-only network something like 7 years ago … but I believe they heavily filter the traffic in said IPv6 network, so that the addresses are not reachable
jandrese 5y ago
> Though the Starlink phased arrays apparently consume a fairly consistent 100W Ouch. I hope that's something they can work on with the next version of the ground terminal. Do they at least start up quickly when powered down?
- jkilpatr 5y ago
  The power consumption is a fundamental part of how phased array antennas work. You have hundreds of tiny antennas using constructive and destructive interference to steer the signal in software. This digital aiming is awesome for targeting fast moving objects in low earth orbit. But you lose the huge amplification factor possible with a simple metal dish. Combine this with the the desire to use higher attenuation frequencies in order to increase throughput and I don't really see Starlink's power consumption going down. That power budget already represents a pretty big victory, and any gains will probably go to lower unit cost or higher data rates.
  - lucb1e 5y ago
    Wait, but it already physically moves to track the satellite. Sorry for the stupid question but what is this digital tracking still for? Sending it to within a degree or so is not close enough?
    - Johnythree 5y ago
      > Wait, but it already physically moves to track the satellite It doesn't. It moves to be in the same plane as the satellite, but it doesn't actually track the satellite. The phased array can only track a single line across the sky. The dish moves so that line is parallel with the satellites orbit.
      - lucb1e 5y ago
        Ah, so if I understand it correctly they (motor and phase array) basically each do one axis?
eldersnake 5y ago
That IS true about Skymuster Plus. It wasn't true when I first set up this mobile/solar internet solution and back then I had to save every gigabyte; admittedly I forgot to mention that in the article. Still, yeah, not much can be done about the ping. I do have hope for Starlink.
- Jedd 5y ago
  Fairy nuff. I only discovered the SMP plans about 8 months ago, but evidently they've been around since ~ 2019-08. Not hugely well advertised to existing customers, unfortunately. I'm barely hitting 1GB / month of metered content (but doing 300-600gb of unmetered) which is a huge improvement over the similar-priced satellite plans from SkyMesh for 70/70 (peak & off peak) plans, which involved regular usage checks and much fretting over bandwidth utilisation.
borski 5y ago
> I'm not sure how that sentence is meant to be parsed… I think you parsed it correctly - author is saying you can’t get away from 600ms latency and limited bandwidth given where they live.
- Jedd 5y ago
  Aha, okay, that was my initial reading. NBN (Australia's national broadband system) introduced, via a partner, this Sky Muster Plus offering about two years ago, that includes effectively unmetered plans, so the claim isn't as true as it used to be.

by Jedd 5y ago

zbrozek 5y ago

Carrier-imposed NAT is a horrible thing, and it isn't clear to me why connections can't be given _at least_ a publicly accessible IPv6 address.

Jedd 5y ago
Can confirm that it's truly horrendous. Since switching to that grade of service I have consistently had captcha challenges every time I go through paypal (despite it saying 'we recognise you on this device...'), my Unifi VPN fails to work, despite following several guides specifically for double NAT (I'll probably end up with wireguard), and most recently my O365 endpoint failed to talk to me, as one of the half-dozen IPv4 addresses they route out of had been marked by Spamhaus.org, which a) is identified a woeful arrangement in itself, and b) took me two days to get rectified by the ISP by switching which address I came out with (a minor change which resulted in a 24 hour total outage). I did ask about IPv6 - but nothing about that experience screamed 'we're ready to move our customers to IPv6', as you could imagine.
conradev 5y ago
T-Mobile switched from CGNAT to 464XLAT and an IPv6-only network something like 7 years ago … but I believe they heavily filter the traffic in said IPv6 network, so that the addresses are not reachable

jandrese 5y ago

> Though the Starlink phased arrays apparently consume a fairly consistent 100W Ouch. I hope that's something they can work on with the next version of the ground terminal. Do they at least start up quickly when powered down?

jkilpatr 5y ago
The power consumption is a fundamental part of how phased array antennas work. You have hundreds of tiny antennas using constructive and destructive interference to steer the signal in software. This digital aiming is awesome for targeting fast moving objects in low earth orbit. But you lose the huge amplification factor possible with a simple metal dish. Combine this with the the desire to use higher attenuation frequencies in order to increase throughput and I don't really see Starlink's power consumption going down. That power budget already represents a pretty big victory, and any gains will probably go to lower unit cost or higher data rates.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  Wait, but it already physically moves to track the satellite. Sorry for the stupid question but what is this digital tracking still for? Sending it to within a degree or so is not close enough?
  - Johnythree 5y ago
    > Wait, but it already physically moves to track the satellite It doesn't. It moves to be in the same plane as the satellite, but it doesn't actually track the satellite. The phased array can only track a single line across the sky. The dish moves so that line is parallel with the satellites orbit.
    - lucb1e 5y ago
      Ah, so if I understand it correctly they (motor and phase array) basically each do one axis?

eldersnake 5y ago

That IS true about Skymuster Plus. It wasn't true when I first set up this mobile/solar internet solution and back then I had to save every gigabyte; admittedly I forgot to mention that in the article. Still, yeah, not much can be done about the ping. I do have hope for Starlink.

Jedd 5y ago
Fairy nuff. I only discovered the SMP plans about 8 months ago, but evidently they've been around since ~ 2019-08. Not hugely well advertised to existing customers, unfortunately. I'm barely hitting 1GB / month of metered content (but doing 300-600gb of unmetered) which is a huge improvement over the similar-priced satellite plans from SkyMesh for 70/70 (peak & off peak) plans, which involved regular usage checks and much fretting over bandwidth utilisation.

borski 5y ago

> I'm not sure how that sentence is meant to be parsed… I think you parsed it correctly - author is saying you can’t get away from 600ms latency and limited bandwidth given where they live.

Jedd 5y ago
Aha, okay, that was my initial reading. NBN (Australia's national broadband system) introduced, via a partner, this Sky Muster Plus offering about two years ago, that includes effectively unmetered plans, so the claim isn't as true as it used to be.