7 ms·

I've been using "Starlink for RV" for a couple months now. It's nice in that the alternative is often nothing at all, but it's not nearly as reliable as I'd lik

I've been using "Starlink for RV" for a couple months now. It's nice in that the alternative is often nothing at all, but it's not nearly as reliable as I'd like. I'm constantly battling trees, because it wants to look really low on the horizon. Even when I have full line of sight to all of the sky, it cuts out with some frequency (multiple times per hour) for anywhere from a couple seconds to half a minute. And the speed is heavily throttled on the RV plan (or on the "portable" plan for those who primarily have a fixed address). Starlink is fantastic in some ways, but I think they've massively oversold it, and I'm not sure they'll ever catch up as they're recruiting people faster than they're adding satellites. I've now used it all around the country, and it seems particularly bad on the US east coast. I worry that this push to sell to more-lucrative customers at sea is just going to make the service even worse for nobodies like me.

alphabettsy 4y ago
That’s unfortunate to hear. I was considering buying this for travel and I’ve been looking for objective feedback. I’m seeing very mixed results.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  Worth waiting for their laser links to come online and see if they improve things. May be coming by the end of the year.
grecy 4y ago
Like many things that are overcrowded, the experience is vastly different when you leave the lower 48. Remember this is a global service. 95.75% of the world's population do not live in the US. I used Starlink in rural Australia where the alternative was non-fuctional 3G tethering and it was very fast without a single dropout in many days. Friends in off-grid cabins in Western Canada have the same experience.
- capableweb 4y ago
  > Remember this is a global service International service. Maybe they are aiming to be a global one, but not there yet. Starlink is not available anywhere in Africa nor Asia, two of the most populous continents in the world, together accounting for more than 50% of the total population.
  - april_22 4y ago
    And also exactly in those places internet is most needed https://www.statista.com/statistics/1124283/internet-penetration-in-africa-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1124283/internet-penetra...
    - ztrww 4y ago
      I assume that the number of people willing to pay $50-100 per month there is not that high, though
      - capableweb 4y ago
        If the minimum price you can pay for Starlink is $50 and they think of themselves as a "global service", then do I have news for them...
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        njarboe 4y ago
        $50 a month shared by a whole village. Not so bad.
  - mlindner 4y ago
    There have been anecdotal reports of some people taking their RV dishes to places like the Philippines and having it work.
- 4y ago
Arbortheus 4y ago
IIRC adding ships and planes to the mix likely won’t make a big difference to the home/land user as they are geographically far apart. The bottleneck is the bandwidth/users a single satellite can serve at any given time, as a single satellite serves users below where it is at that point in the sky. So when satellites start orbiting over the ocean or remote/uninhabited locations, they are sitting idle.
- loonster 4y ago
  >IIRC adding ships and planes to the mix likely won’t make a big difference to the home/land user as they are geographically far apart. I would think that latitude distance is irrelevant and longitude distance is everything. A ship going across the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans would have the satelites all to themselves. A ship sailing ports in the Caribbean would be in a very congested region. Airplanes fly at a very high elevation which should allow them to access satellites covering less dense cells.
  - shiftpgdn 4y ago
    What's the backhaul for those ships though? I thought point to point transmission wasn't available yet and therefore you needed to be relatively close to the backhaul point.
  - Salgat 4y ago
    The nice thing about these cruise ships are that they aren't using one satellite dish per user, which massively reduces transmission overhead.
  - mlindner 4y ago
    > I would think that latitude distance is irrelevant and longitude distance is everything. Why would you think that? There's nothing special about north south directions versus east west directions. > A ship sailing ports in the Caribbean would be in a very congested region. Congested by what exactly? Most of the countries in the Caribbean don't have Starlink.
tommica 4y ago
On a positive note, seas are not really known for their trees
- imdsm 4y ago
  I can confirm this
  - choeger 4y ago
    It is indeed a pitty. Imagine how much carbon could be captured if these pesky seas had their fair share of trees.
    - stinos 4y ago
      It's quite hard to imagine, because those trees could mess up other carbon sequestration cycles already present in oceans. E.g. phytoplankton uses CO2 but need sunlight to do so.
    - jorge-d 4y ago
      Or maybe we should replace all the trees by Oceans, because they're a much more efficient carbon sink !
      - bottled_poe 4y ago
        Well good news then! This seems to be the current strategy.
    - mensetmanusman 4y ago
      The ocean captures a lot of CO2…
- _ea1k 4y ago
  Also, they aren't known for having high densities of people, unlike the east coast of the US.
  - 4y ago
IneffablePigeon 4y ago
I stayed at a rural Airbnb that had it in place of a wired connection. It was pretty good for download (100mbps fairly consistently) but the latency jitter and upload speeds made it almost unusable for video calls and it did cut out for a minute or so once or twice over the course of a few days. It's definitely a nice option but it's hard to rely on. I certainly wouldn't want to work remotely using it as my main connection for any length of time.
- ghaff 4y ago
  My requirements may be different but my experience is that it's usable for remote work but, yes, you need to be tolerant of it cutting out for a bit every now and then (but, hey, that happens with Comcast 50 miles outside of a major city) and maybe drop off video for a call especially if you have reasonable cellular backup. It really is pretty much Starlink or nothing in many rural locations in the US.
  - biomcgary 4y ago
    I used Starlink for fully remote work for a couple years in a rural area (US West). I had occasional 5-15 second drops until the satellite-picking algorithm was updated (from the closest satellite to the satellite with the best signal). Ever since, it has been nearly flawless for my remote job purposes; however, speedtesting indicates a mild slowdown over time. I was an early-ish adopter, so I have the first gen hardware. I think that may make some difference.
TinkersW 4y ago
My experience with the fixed version was not like this, it worked very well, and this is in a location with huge trees in all directions(redwoods).
BoxOfRain 4y ago
I'm planning on moving onto a liveaboard boat next year and was really excited about Starlink until the price was revealed to be way out of reach for yachtsmen who aren't in the super-rich bracket. People assume boat owners have lots of money but the very fact of owning a boat means they often don't! I've been tempted to try RV Starlink as an alternative but I don't think having my livelihood reliant on 'Elon Musk might think I'm taking the piss and cut off my internet' is a great idea. Realistically 4G and 5G coverage is good enough where I'm intending to go that it's not a huge issue.
- AnssiH 4y ago
  > until the price was revealed to be way out of reach for yachtsmen who aren't in the super-rich bracket To save others the googling: $5000/mo for Starlink Maritime, equipment cost $10000.
derekp7 4y ago
The sea customers shouldn't directly impact land use, esp. in the current bent pipe mode. May have impact once laser interconnects re fully functional, but most likely not. The biggest obstacle for future growth is launch capacity, which hopefully Starship will address. If Starship doesn't fly in time, Starlink is toast
osrec 4y ago
Overselling seems to be a feature of a lot of Musk's ventures. Another example is the level of autonomy in the Tesla.
- mlindner 4y ago
  OP's experience is highly atypical.
Salgat 4y ago
They're charging substantially more for their boat service, and with the added bonus that boats are utilizing satellites in areas where they'd otherwise be running idle.
mlindner 4y ago
> Even when I have full line of sight to all of the sky, it cuts out with some frequency (multiple times per hour) for anywhere from a couple seconds to half a minute. This would be incorrect. If it has proper line of sight this does not occur. You're experiencing some other problem that most people do not experience. > Starlink is fantastic in some ways, but I think they've massively oversold it, and I'm not sure they'll ever catch up as they're recruiting people faster than they're adding satellites. This isn't a problem over the ocean as there's no one out there. It will be extremely high speeds in such places. > I worry that this push to sell to more-lucrative customers at sea is just going to make the service even worse for nobodies like me. It can't make service worse on land because the systems are disjoint. Speeds in one cell do not affect speeds in another cell.

alphabettsy 4y ago

That’s unfortunate to hear. I was considering buying this for travel and I’ve been looking for objective feedback. I’m seeing very mixed results.

robertlagrant 4y ago
Worth waiting for their laser links to come online and see if they improve things. May be coming by the end of the year.

grecy 4y ago

Like many things that are overcrowded, the experience is vastly different when you leave the lower 48. Remember this is a global service. 95.75% of the world's population do not live in the US. I used Starlink in rural Australia where the alternative was non-fuctional 3G tethering and it was very fast without a single dropout in many days. Friends in off-grid cabins in Western Canada have the same experience.

capableweb 4y ago
> Remember this is a global service International service. Maybe they are aiming to be a global one, but not there yet. Starlink is not available anywhere in Africa nor Asia, two of the most populous continents in the world, together accounting for more than 50% of the total population.
- april_22 4y ago
  And also exactly in those places internet is most needed https://www.statista.com/statistics/1124283/internet-penetration-in-africa-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1124283/internet-penetra...
  - ztrww 4y ago
    I assume that the number of people willing to pay $50-100 per month there is not that high, though
    - capableweb 4y ago
      If the minimum price you can pay for Starlink is $50 and they think of themselves as a "global service", then do I have news for them...
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - njarboe 4y ago
        $50 a month shared by a whole village. Not so bad.
- mlindner 4y ago
  There have been anecdotal reports of some people taking their RV dishes to places like the Philippines and having it work.
4y ago

Arbortheus 4y ago

IIRC adding ships and planes to the mix likely won’t make a big difference to the home/land user as they are geographically far apart. The bottleneck is the bandwidth/users a single satellite can serve at any given time, as a single satellite serves users below where it is at that point in the sky. So when satellites start orbiting over the ocean or remote/uninhabited locations, they are sitting idle.

loonster 4y ago
>IIRC adding ships and planes to the mix likely won’t make a big difference to the home/land user as they are geographically far apart. I would think that latitude distance is irrelevant and longitude distance is everything. A ship going across the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans would have the satelites all to themselves. A ship sailing ports in the Caribbean would be in a very congested region. Airplanes fly at a very high elevation which should allow them to access satellites covering less dense cells.
- shiftpgdn 4y ago
  What's the backhaul for those ships though? I thought point to point transmission wasn't available yet and therefore you needed to be relatively close to the backhaul point.
- Salgat 4y ago
  The nice thing about these cruise ships are that they aren't using one satellite dish per user, which massively reduces transmission overhead.
- mlindner 4y ago
  > I would think that latitude distance is irrelevant and longitude distance is everything. Why would you think that? There's nothing special about north south directions versus east west directions. > A ship sailing ports in the Caribbean would be in a very congested region. Congested by what exactly? Most of the countries in the Caribbean don't have Starlink.

tommica 4y ago

On a positive note, seas are not really known for their trees

imdsm 4y ago
I can confirm this
- choeger 4y ago
  It is indeed a pitty. Imagine how much carbon could be captured if these pesky seas had their fair share of trees.
  - stinos 4y ago
    It's quite hard to imagine, because those trees could mess up other carbon sequestration cycles already present in oceans. E.g. phytoplankton uses CO2 but need sunlight to do so.
  - jorge-d 4y ago
    Or maybe we should replace all the trees by Oceans, because they're a much more efficient carbon sink !
    - bottled_poe 4y ago
      Well good news then! This seems to be the current strategy.
  - mensetmanusman 4y ago
    The ocean captures a lot of CO2…
_ea1k 4y ago
Also, they aren't known for having high densities of people, unlike the east coast of the US.
- 4y ago

IneffablePigeon 4y ago

I stayed at a rural Airbnb that had it in place of a wired connection. It was pretty good for download (100mbps fairly consistently) but the latency jitter and upload speeds made it almost unusable for video calls and it did cut out for a minute or so once or twice over the course of a few days. It's definitely a nice option but it's hard to rely on. I certainly wouldn't want to work remotely using it as my main connection for any length of time.

ghaff 4y ago
My requirements may be different but my experience is that it's usable for remote work but, yes, you need to be tolerant of it cutting out for a bit every now and then (but, hey, that happens with Comcast 50 miles outside of a major city) and maybe drop off video for a call especially if you have reasonable cellular backup. It really is pretty much Starlink or nothing in many rural locations in the US.
- biomcgary 4y ago
  I used Starlink for fully remote work for a couple years in a rural area (US West). I had occasional 5-15 second drops until the satellite-picking algorithm was updated (from the closest satellite to the satellite with the best signal). Ever since, it has been nearly flawless for my remote job purposes; however, speedtesting indicates a mild slowdown over time. I was an early-ish adopter, so I have the first gen hardware. I think that may make some difference.

TinkersW 4y ago

My experience with the fixed version was not like this, it worked very well, and this is in a location with huge trees in all directions(redwoods).

BoxOfRain 4y ago

I'm planning on moving onto a liveaboard boat next year and was really excited about Starlink until the price was revealed to be way out of reach for yachtsmen who aren't in the super-rich bracket. People assume boat owners have lots of money but the very fact of owning a boat means they often don't! I've been tempted to try RV Starlink as an alternative but I don't think having my livelihood reliant on 'Elon Musk might think I'm taking the piss and cut off my internet' is a great idea. Realistically 4G and 5G coverage is good enough where I'm intending to go that it's not a huge issue.

AnssiH 4y ago
> until the price was revealed to be way out of reach for yachtsmen who aren't in the super-rich bracket To save others the googling: $5000/mo for Starlink Maritime, equipment cost $10000.

derekp7 4y ago

The sea customers shouldn't directly impact land use, esp. in the current bent pipe mode. May have impact once laser interconnects re fully functional, but most likely not. The biggest obstacle for future growth is launch capacity, which hopefully Starship will address. If Starship doesn't fly in time, Starlink is toast

osrec 4y ago

Overselling seems to be a feature of a lot of Musk's ventures. Another example is the level of autonomy in the Tesla.

mlindner 4y ago
OP's experience is highly atypical.

Salgat 4y ago

They're charging substantially more for their boat service, and with the added bonus that boats are utilizing satellites in areas where they'd otherwise be running idle.

mlindner 4y ago

> Even when I have full line of sight to all of the sky, it cuts out with some frequency (multiple times per hour) for anywhere from a couple seconds to half a minute. This would be incorrect. If it has proper line of sight this does not occur. You're experiencing some other problem that most people do not experience. > Starlink is fantastic in some ways, but I think they've massively oversold it, and I'm not sure they'll ever catch up as they're recruiting people faster than they're adding satellites. This isn't a problem over the ocean as there's no one out there. It will be extremely high speeds in such places. > I worry that this push to sell to more-lucrative customers at sea is just going to make the service even worse for nobodies like me. It can't make service worse on land because the systems are disjoint. Speeds in one cell do not affect speeds in another cell.