Space: the final frontier (or ‘how I got my Starlink working’)

Ok, so this one’s a bit tenuous to be delivered as a “work” post, but I thought LinkedIn was still a reasonable place for it as there’s a lot of curiosity around this topic generally. Also, the broader availability of fast internet access can only be a boon for both cloud computing and the world in general.

So, tl;dr: if you’re interested in satellite internet connections from Elon Musk, this is worth a read. Otherwise, you could probably find some Dogecoin memes on Twitter to pass the time until my next cloud related post.

Starlink. What is it?

It’s a satellite internet service provided by SpaceX, a company founded by Elon Musk which focuses on rocketry and space technologies, with a stated goal of driving the colonisation of Mars. Nearer term, there are easier nuts to crack involving low earth orbit satellites and the provision of internet access to those around the globe desiring better speeds - primarily in rural locations. 

When I say “low earth orbit”, let me clarify by saying they’re still a long way up, but Starlink confirm they’re “over 60 times closer to earth than traditional satellites” - which means the horrendous latency you probably have in mind when thinking about traditional internet access from boats no longer applies. If you’re interested, they sit about 340 miles above your head.

Starlink is basically a giant mesh of satellites you can connect to as an end user, and access a fast internet connection. This is the next level of Edge computing network. There are also ground stations being built across the globe which essentially connect the satellites themselves to the internet. 

Just think about how that chain of communications works, and marvel at the speed of light…. i.e. 

• your laptop communicating to a satellite dish on your property, via a router in your house
• which talks to a satellite way above your head
• which talks back to a ground station on earth
• which talks to a data centre in, let’s say Google’s cloud
• which talks back to the ground station
• and then back to the satellite again
• and finally back to your dish and back to your local network and laptop... 

In under 50 milliseconds.

Is it for me?

A fair question, and one I’d summarise as only being a ‘fit’ if the following apply:

1.  you live in a remote or semi remote area without a fast connection
2. have an utterly incompetent government that fails year after year to invest in critical national infrastructure
3. are comfortable paying a premium price for better performing internet access.

Let’s get the most important point out of the way first: this isn’t cheap, and isn’t a mass market product yet as a result. This is still in beta phase, which comes with a relatively punchy price tag, and an evolving service level. Price wise - you’re looking at around ￡400 upfront for the dish, plus a recurring monthly fee of around ￡90 (without any lock-in currently).

Now, I should explain that this is actually “good value” compared to my experiences with Openreach, the UK’s main networking infrastructure provider, spun out of BT some years ago. They currently provide me with an FTTC connection (copper for the last section of the journey to my house) which yields about 15Mb/sec down and 1.5Mb/sec up. I asked for a quote for fibre to the premises (FTTP), i.e. without copper, and after battling for about 4 months to even get a price via a third party company, I was eventually given a quote of ￡10,000. Plus VAT. That’s to run fibre overground on existing poles for about 500 metres. Bargain….

And the FTTP recurring fee was higher than with Starlink, for the first couple of years of the contract at least. So, when I got Elon’s email offering a slot at the beta test, I jumped at it. However, I note again, it is expensive.

I also state again that this is in beta. That means the speeds and latency numbers are variable, there will be some downtime, as the satellite mesh isn’t yet fully formed. As a result, your service will not be 100% reliable for video calling, for example. For streaming or downloads, it will be better than you have today, definitely. For video calling, you’ll need additional solutions if you want a “perfect” experience. More on that later. 

As I type, Starlink is getting me a download speed of around 150Mb/sec and an upload of around 15Mb/sec, with a latency of around 40-50ms, i.e. basically 10x what I have with my prior FTTC line. And I’ve not spent ￡10K. Plus VAT.

Tech setup?

Interested in the setup process? If yes, this might help you - skip this section if not!

So, out of the box, you get a satellite dish, a tripod for ground mounting (not on your roof - that’s an additional accessory), a shiny router, plus all cabling needed. 

It’s simple to get going - and the instructions (one side of paper, 3 pictures!) cover it:

- Bolt tripod to the floor

- Place dish into tripod, noting it must be somewhere with clear access to the sky (no trees, etc, that could interfere with signal)

- Run ethernet (PoE) cabling into your house through a wall and into power supply

- Connect router to power supply

- Turn on and wait about 10 mins for the dish to *self align* (not like pointing a satellite TV dish at a certain fixed point in the sky). This is pretty funky to watch the first time

Despite the charge for the kit, I refuse to believe this is being sold at anything other than a loss to SpaceX.

You could mount it on a roof via an optional pole, but we (I!) decided a feature on the patio was more interesting. Also, the dish is solid and it’s windy where I live, so I figured it might put a fair bit of strain on the brickwork.

Post setup, I immediately ran a speedtest and got back 190Mb/sec download result. Lovely.

So what then?

Well, I’ve got a house with thick stone walls in it and the supplied router wouldn’t cover it all. So, the first thing I did was plug a mesh network into it to spread out the signal. In my case, I’ve used a couple of Eero devices, but you could use pretty much anything really. Technically mesh isn’t supported at the moment, but if you just jam your main mesh device into the spare “Aux” ethernet socket on your Starlink router, it will work just fine.

This is a bit of a cludge technically, and you could just remove the Starlink router and use the mesh network as both router and mesh. I intentionally haven’t done this as the Starlink app on your phone needs a static route (not a static IP) to talk to the dish and get some useful stats on performance, downtime, etc, which I’ve found interesting. Setting a static route up isn’t supported on an Eero yet, although it is on basically any standard switch or router, so you can use your own hardware if preferred.

The Starlink router is super basic - which makes sense as it’s in beta and they don’t want 10,000 different configurations to support. So you end with some double NAT unpleasantness in the configuration I’ve described as you can’t put your Starlink kit into bridge mode yet - BUT - it’s made zero negative difference to me. I’m not sure if that’s a cunning implementation from Eero or something else, but the speed with and without the mesh is the same, and the coverage is now great throughout the whole house.

If you want some more technical detail, whilst I was happy with the download speed for streaming and/or downloading content, the odd blip for a second or so every now and again whilst on video calls was a bit annoying. How to fix this? 

I read a lot about load balancing WAN technologies (yay!), but that doesn’t solve the issue as a failover mid-call won’t help. In the end, I used Speedify which is another cost to add (but is reasonably priced) into the mix, and provides a software VPN but crucially also channel bonding. This means it can magically combine my existing FTTC connection (reliable, but slow) with my new Starlink connection (less reliable, but fast) into a single connection and handle seamless failover, i.e. it is “bonding” the two “channels” together. This works really well. Here are a few caveats I’ve found with it that took a bit of tinkering to solve:

• On a Mac, you need a USB network adapter to be able to connect to two Wifi signals at once. Fine. Except the Big Sur MacOS update disabled USB networking. Doh. Workaround? I’ve bought a USB to ethernet network adapter and then connected the ethernet cable to one of the Eero mesh devices. It then works seamlessly as expected via Speedify, if perhaps a trifle Heath Robinson in design. Phew.
• I’ve not yet tested it on my work Chromebook as I need some policy changes to allow apps from outside the Play store to be deployed. If I can’t make that happen, I’m told (thanks, Liam Dow) that installing into Chromebook Linux should work.
• Android devices can’t handle combinations of multiple wifi, so you can’t combine in this way on say a Firestick - but it’s not really needed as streaming works fine even at high resolution. On my Android phone I’ve bonded 4G + Starlink to create a solid connection as I do video calls from it sometimes.

Downsides? None yet, beyond the extra cost of Speedify (about ￡65 for the year for 5 devices), and that using a VPN means Google keeps asking me Captcha questions when I’m running searches. Yes, I can identify the “crosswalks” in this picture...

I see this as a temporary fix, as I’m tied into a contract with my FTTC provider anyway, and by the time that expires, I’m hoping there’s enough satellites live in space and I can cancel the old connection and just use Starlink. 

One other technical point of note, the dish doesn’t appear to be affected by rain or heavy winds based on my early experiences. I didn’t get hold of one early enough in the UK winter to verify whether or not the inbuilt snow heater works well, ;-)

Conclusions?

I’m pleased with it. It’s early days, but working well. I knew when we moved to this part of the world, the connectivity wouldn’t be great, and figured I’d have to suck it up or pay the Openreach tax. As it is, I’ve got something in place more swiftly and a lot cheaper than an FTTP option. I was going to explore channel bonding 4G and FTTC before this new option arose.

Starlink prices will decrease, this is an early beta, and mass adoption will bring prices down as things become established in future years. Presumably however this will remain a “developed economy” solution for some time, unless they can get significant government funding. 

It’s not suitable for latency sensitive gamers yet perhaps (which fortunately isn’t me!), but worth bearing in mind that the latency is similar to using 4G currently, although it’s expected to be closer to 20ms than 40ms by the summer of 2021. Interestingly, download speeds are also forecast (by Elon) to double this year, which would be astonishing performance. 

More satellites are being launched all the time - another 60 went up a few weeks ago, with over 1,000 now live and operational globally. There are allegedly plans for 40,000+ for Starlink alone.

Other providers, e.g. Kuiper from Amazon or OneWeb from, erm, the UK taxpayer, will add much needed competition if they can bring a credible service online. That will definitely help to drive price and service levels in the right direction.

There were even rumours of the UK government talking to Starlink about investment models to help reach more rural parts of the country that will take a lot more time (and money!) to roll out fibre to. This investment, or something similar, needs to happen urgently. In a post-covid, post-brexit world, the UK needs that investment to stay competitive. 

These activities are expensive - and most “space” related endeavours fail. If Musk and team can demonstrate a credible business model evolving, as I believe they will, an IPO will follow in future years.

Tie it back to cloud, perhaps?

Dishy McDishface, as the SpaceX engineering team allegedly call Starlink kit, is a great reminder that space tech is getting cheaper and more affordable every year. There are already deals being struck to provide more seamless connectivity into cloud providers via satellite links, and you will definitely see more Edge compute moving into space in future years. If you’re a lawyer, I’ll let you start to ponder about data transit and residency challenges that might exist in space… In the meantime, I’ll enjoy my now fit for purpose internet connection. On to my next Google Meet.