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Why does this seem aimed at the enterprise market (besides the price tag)? From what I've seen, Starlink uses CGNAT (carrier grade network address translation)

by mdasen 5y ago

Why does this seem aimed at the enterprise market (besides the price tag)? From what I've seen, Starlink uses CGNAT (carrier grade network address translation) so it's hard to handle incoming connections (given the lack of a public IP address). CGNAT seems like it would be a problem for enterprise customers. Would this be enterprises in cities where they'd be looking for a backup for a wired connection? I know that a lot of companies have wireless back-ups for their wired connection so I'm not sure that Starlink would be a better enterprise option for them. The question in my head is whether Starlink is going to slow down their $100-tier signups if they start seeing enough $500-tier signups. People have been waiting for years to get Starlink. If they start getting lots of $500-tier interest, it seems like they'd prioritize those users for new signups.

plugger 5y ago
How many enterprises are running their own DCs these days? Very few from what I see. Cloud for your services, StarLink for individual office premises. Sounds fine to me.
- ale42 5y ago
  Many small enterprises probably aren't. But the CGNAT problem can be solved by a VPN seamlessly connecting to the rest of the enterprise network, for those companies that need incoming connectivity (might be for remote maintenance, for example).
toomuchtodo 5y ago
From the page: > Unlimited Service Locations: Starlink is ideal for rural and remote locations. Order as many Starlinks as needed and manage all of your service locations, no matter how remote, from a single account. This screams corp fleet management of the equipment, similar to SSO price segmentation.
- gonehome 5y ago
  Ah I missed this bit, yeah that’s definitely what they’re going for.
gonehome 5y ago
The cost paired with this copy: “enabling high throughput connectivity for small offices, storefronts, and super users across the globe.” It’s 5x the price of standard Starlink (both for the hardware and the monthly cost). Won’t be worth it for most regular users imo when standard Starlink is quite good. I’d pay $150/mo easily and maybe $200/mo for premium, but not $500/mo. There’s also currently no way to order one from your current account if you have regular Starlink, you have to use a different email (also suggests targeting different market).
kube-system 5y ago
They say in their support topics that they may support publicly routable IPs in the future, so it looks like they may change that. But not all enterprise use-cases require inbound traffic, or they may require the bandwidth and low-latency even more, and can workaround the CGNAT in the meantime.
bubblethink 5y ago
Why is CGNAT an issue ? Enterprise here doesn't mean on-prem public facing hosting. It just means rich entity that can afford $500/month per account. It could be anything ranging from a government office to a small business. You just need the ability to connect to your actual servers in AWS or wherever and transfer at acceptable rates and latency.

by mdasen 5y ago

plugger 5y ago

How many enterprises are running their own DCs these days? Very few from what I see. Cloud for your services, StarLink for individual office premises. Sounds fine to me.

ale42 5y ago
Many small enterprises probably aren't. But the CGNAT problem can be solved by a VPN seamlessly connecting to the rest of the enterprise network, for those companies that need incoming connectivity (might be for remote maintenance, for example).

toomuchtodo 5y ago

From the page: > Unlimited Service Locations: Starlink is ideal for rural and remote locations. Order as many Starlinks as needed and manage all of your service locations, no matter how remote, from a single account. This screams corp fleet management of the equipment, similar to SSO price segmentation.

gonehome 5y ago
Ah I missed this bit, yeah that’s definitely what they’re going for.

gonehome 5y ago

The cost paired with this copy: “enabling high throughput connectivity for small offices, storefronts, and super users across the globe.” It’s 5x the price of standard Starlink (both for the hardware and the monthly cost). Won’t be worth it for most regular users imo when standard Starlink is quite good. I’d pay $150/mo easily and maybe $200/mo for premium, but not $500/mo. There’s also currently no way to order one from your current account if you have regular Starlink, you have to use a different email (also suggests targeting different market).

kube-system 5y ago

They say in their support topics that they may support publicly routable IPs in the future, so it looks like they may change that. But not all enterprise use-cases require inbound traffic, or they may require the bandwidth and low-latency even more, and can workaround the CGNAT in the meantime.

bubblethink 5y ago

Why is CGNAT an issue ? Enterprise here doesn't mean on-prem public facing hosting. It just means rich entity that can afford $500/month per account. It could be anything ranging from a government office to a small business. You just need the ability to connect to your actual servers in AWS or wherever and transfer at acceptable rates and latency.