Starlink in the Snow? Speed Test and Connection Quality
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- Опубликовано: 24 июл 2024
- In this video, I run multiple speed tests while it is snowing. Then I remove the standing snow that is on the satellite dish and test the speed again.
TLDR, snow definitely reduces the quality of the connection and standing snow needs to be brushed off. Even with snow no longer on the dish the speed of the connection is reduced.
I did make a mistake with testing both the latency and the speed at the same time. This did negatively impact the latency when the speed test was running. You can ignore the latency piece and still notice that the internet connection was disconnecting when there was snow on the dish. I have been using this for a week and haven't had dropouts like this until today when it snowed.
About Brett
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A Software Engineer / Entrepreneur / Father of Four / Fulltime RV Traveler / Creator of filerev.com / Integration Builder
The density of the snowfall between the dish and satellite seem to be a factor. Good that you’re informing current and potential users.
I wonder if he could slip a heating element into the top of that plastic cover without compromising signal quality. I'm sure the majority of his issue is that it's currently snowing but even after it's over he'll have to go dust it off for it to work at full capacity.
@@christinam2805 It may not be the snow on the dish, but the volume of the snow in the sky itself, much like how difficult it’s sometime it is to see an object at a distant during a snowfall. Same may be true with the dish trying to get a clear line if sight through the falling snow.
@@christinam2805 correct me if I am wrong but the satellite actually already has a heating element inside. that is why some of the snow has melted into ice already but it is not strong enough to melt the ice in strong cold.
It probably is. Snowfall is poison for 12 GHz satellite tv link budgets and this is roughly the same band.
@@softbreeze941 Yes, but it may not account for the density or volume of snow fall in between the dish and the satellite it’s pointed at. Think of it as you with an umbrella during a snow fall. It will protect you from the snow, but it still may be difficult to see at a distant because of how much snow is falling.
it looks like most people on the internet doing reviews are really overjoyed with finally having fast internet.
Well in Germany in the hearth of Karlsruhe(Second biggest. City in Berlin) you geht 16 Download so the Space x Internet is Better xD
Ofcourse bro
in iraq we pay 80$ for a 250Kbps internet i have to stay awake at night to play video games and if i want to download a game it will take about a week and a half
faster internet does really make vast difference in our human lives
starlink is definitely the saviour
i hope it will be available for iraq
@@samuelkuehne The thing is to find good local ISP - I have 300/50Mbps with ping under 2 ms for less than $50.
Great thing about Starlink is you can bring it with you anywhere on the planet. So it's like McDonald's - not the best food to eat but you will get (almost) the same quality everywhere.
I have 1000mbit 30euros month in finland fiber and phone 5g 600m 25e month 😂 and ofc unlimited everything
@@aw-g true. what games do you play?
Your ping is slow, because you run 2 test at the same time. Running a ping test while doing the Speedtest will increase my ping on fiberoptic from 2ms to 10-15.
Exactly what i wanted to say
Same here. effect of the snow is not the same as running pingtest while speedtesting and saturating the line. While its great that Brett is showing the tests, the description is a little confusing.
The best way to describe will be to say that snow certainly slows down the connection.
Ping might be affected but the extent of effect on ping is not that much.
Especially when you max out any internet connection's upload. You will literally see dailup era responses. But for what it is, its better than what I was expecting.
Came here to say exactly this. Kept shouting it at the screen every time he’d start the Speedtest over again... ugh...
Bufferbloat... all internet services have ping spikes when the quality of the service at that moment is overloaded.
Not just the snow covering the dish, also the clouds and weather.
At 2:30 he said that during cloudy and rainy days he didn’t had problem
i use satellite tv and during bad storms i definitely have drop outs. I can't see why internet would be any different. A few thing I don't like is the dish. #1 the positioning. It lays almost flat making snow and ice build too easy. #2 A white dish may not be the ideal color during the winter months a darker color would be better so the sun can warm up the dish to help with ice and snow melt.
@@cameranmanner4701depends on the frequency it will be in the ghz not sure on the frequency but that will effect the signal high ghz cant get through object's like rain clouds and snow buildings walls and things like that cause of ultra high frequency 👍
Its cause sat dishes use ultra high ghz frequencies like 12ghz and higher they not good at penetrating though clouds of snow or rain 👍
@@cameranmanner4701 Your satellite for your tv is WAY higher in the atmosphere and therefore using different frequencies. It's impossible to compare the two technologies.
Starlink is a game-changer, now everyone will get to experience high-speed internet access across the globe. Thanks for sharing your experience. 😀
Yeah everyone who can afford $500 upfront and $100 a month.
Still too expensive and unreliable in areas with lots of cloud cover and weather throughout the year, like Seattle.
At $100/month, it will just be something for people who no other choice.
@@MasterMayhem78 If you don't have in your area any Fiber or DSL or cable connection and you leave in a remote area - all the competing solutions are much slower and costs much more than $100 a month.
@@sonacphotos when he says everyone can enjoy high speed internet now he means the people who are left out can also join those who already have access (urban areas etc) meaning everyone can now have access without rural areas having no other option.
Unfortunately you’re trying too hard to be smart and making yourself look stupid because its not that hard to comprehend what he was saying.
Btw poor people in Africa cant afford phones and laptops they can barely afford shoes and you think they’re going to have a starlink subscription? Lmao
It was literally clear there 5 days ago in your first video, I'm actually shocked lmfao
The weather can change fast in this neck of the woods.
same here, i just saw it yesterday XD
That's idaho for you one day you can be in sunny and decently warm weather and next day be snow and ice ive seen it happen!
what is shocking about this? hes doing speed tests over and over and over again and wondering why latency is high. if he just watched latency without slamming speed tests over and over, it looks like it would have been fine. notice how it only spikes every time he runs a speed test.
5 days? It was literally 5 minutes ago here.
Starlink operate as follows: down-link in KU band and up-link in KA band, KU band is less susceptible for weather condition but not completely, on the other hand KA band is more susceptible to all kind of bad weather. That is why you will still have a better download experience than uploads, C band is completely beyond weather interference but the satellites are far away and the latency is huge. I am currently using KA band satellite internet service and whenever it rains I lose connection (20 Mbps down/4 Mbps up I pay 100 USD for 150 Gb per month). Starlink is a game changer for me and I can't wait to get coverage of the country I resides.
Can you please provide a Link for ur satellite provider?
@@wemox1 let me know where you live, I have done a lot of research of Satellites ISPs, if you want I can share some useful info
so you're saying elongated muskrat is not going to solve my upload speed woes? all i want in this life is gigabit up, it's just not an option, even with a "business" plan... best you can get is 42mbps unless you pay to bring in a dedicated 2gig fiber line, which is a couple thousand bucks for installation and then $300/m for the service.
Your story have a reay NBN flavour to it...
@@rawhide_kobayashi why do you need a gigabit upload if you dont mind me asking
Glad to know you using our Speedtest Server(cutting edge communications). Its on a 10gig connection so it has plenty of bandwidth to work with.
Looks more like stress test, rather than a ping test
Yes, that's what I meant to say.
@@brettbatie look at your ping time when you were not trying to do a speed test... speed test has a latency test built in at the beginning before it stresses the network. Do one or the other, not both. You are trying to get a fuel economy rating while running 1/4 mile drag races.
@@coreysullivan3490 I just did a speedtest at home while ping testing, it didn't affect each other at all. The Starlink router is just shit
FYI, it doesn't make any sense to run a speed test that maxes out your download and simultaneously run a ping test to check the latency. Run one test and then the other not both at the same time.
Yup totally correct, fortunately this is easy to see for anyone not totally technically minded with the graph correlating exactly with either an upload or download event in the speed test, notice the top left windows status and the graph. When a feed is maxed out you would expect higher latency as ping packets have to wait/are queued to either be sent or received. Latency tests a as quality indicator should be run independent of other tests as you quite rightly point out.
this does make sense if youre watching videos while playing a game or if anything is using the network and how badly it would affect your ping
Oh, how could I miss that!
Well, ignoring the latency piece the Internet connection was still disconnecting when there was snow on top of the dish. So the conclusion is still the same that the snow has a negative impact. Thanks for pointing this out for all the viewers though!
It has stopped snowing now but when it does snow again I will post another speed /latency test where I run them independently.
@@brettbatie Cannot wait as I also live rurally (though EU - who knows if/when it'll come here)...
@@tonygreen8536 Testing like that is just a way to measure bufferbloat. Better active queue management algorithms would give better results even under heavy load.
Thanks for doing this test. Because of where we live we have to deal with snow during the winter months so this was very informative. We wound up with 5" of heavy wet snow yesterday so this was a good test. Thanks again.
Can’t believe the snow came so fast and heavy since your installation just recently! You installed it just in time!
with snow still falling and sitting on the dish like that, I'm actually surprised it worked at all. That's actually much better than I expected.
The sky being overcast with snow in the air would constitute a partially blocked signal in itself I would think.
Indeed. I've even lost GPS signal when there was a lot of snow high up in the atmosphere.
I’m more impressed how 6 days later from your original video, there already is that much snow. Wow. Also cute dog
You are so lucky! We can't wait to have this Starlink service available in Africa. I'm a farmer in a very secluded part of Northern Mozambique in Africa. Willing to pay big money for this service. Luckily we don't have a problem with snow here. Going to make a big difference in our day to day lives. Well done Starlink. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
I know my brother was working at a hospital in Niger and the best the hospital could get for internet service was 3Mbps download which was used for the entire hospital and all 100 employees.
Thanks for posting this, this makes me excited for the possibility when this comes out in other countries. Latency and speeds for a sat link are even better than I was expecting. Lets hope starlink doesn't go the way of other sat providers and over subscribe their services and leave us with very little actual speed when everyone is signed up.
Yeah, I'm concerned about them over subscribing as well. It's not an issue yet but it may be in the future.
You shouldn't measure ping times, while doing a speed test.
I wish I would have caught this. Even so the internet was definitely less stable (connection going down) while there was snow on the dish. I'm going to post a follow-up video the next time it snows running those tests independently.
@@brettbatie I'm very interested in this too. As for KU bands, snow has always been an issue on the dish. For dish and directv folk you could put a vibrator on the dish to keep the snow from staying. But don't know what that would do to this unit. You know of course, the signal will go through a wood roof ;-) But not if there's snow on it I guess LOL
You mean because of the buffer bloat right?
@@iridiumflare speed test are done by using files, temp files, you're still downloading and uploading files, so ping time will slow down, waiting for packets during file load time.
There is NOTHING... wrong with measuring ping times under load... you just need to know what you are looking at. As far as that goes he did measure unloaded before starting the test... but perhaps did not interpret it correctly.
You are awesome Brett! you are giving hope to me that want to escape from the city, but need internet
Your dog is SO CUTE!! I love this channel already. I’d love to see more videos. Like a “day in the life” or exploring the wilderness or anything!
Thanks for the input on Starlink. Been interested!
As others have already said, stick to one test at a time.
Next time it snows I'll post an update where I run the tests independently.
No, it‘s actually valueable to know how the latency behaves during high network load.
@@switzerland But we know how the latency behaves during high network load
@@switzerland I agree, but not when you're doing a maximum speed test.
One of the things my old man used to do with the DirecTV dish he had, was spray PAM or another cooking spray on the dish. It would generally allow the snow to slide off the dish rather than build up, might be worth a shot.
Snow! I am so glad I live in LA.
CRC 226 . (the plastic safe version of CRC 556.)
Also, a long pole with a large paintbrush attached to it for brushing snow off.
@@oldmech619 I'm so glad you do too!
@@atodaso1668 I lived in Houston. Too hot and humid. I lived in Michigan. To damn cold. I moved to California. I have a house near the ocean, never needed an airconditioning. Daytime highs in summer to winter only varies by thirteen degrees. I have a nice sailboat, an airplane, RV, several cars, and a cabin in the mountains. If I want to get away from Los Angeles, I can. The great thing I like is that I hang with people like me. Yes, I Love LA.
Happy it works in the snow.
Cute dog.
First person to patent a Starlink wiper system will be a millionaire.
Don't mind if i do
looks like I am going to be rich I did it with the sound of my voice! call it voice-activated cleaning (hey bitch clean my dish off when your done with dinner ) lol
It already appears to be heated based on his install video. Simply need to be able to switch on additional heating when weather demands.
Necessity is the mother of invention Plato
@@cghoward70 Simply you need more snow on it and it gonna melt it then and drop the snow... snow is poor heat conductor so if covered completly the dish will be much warmer and then gonna melt the snow that is touching its surface.
Keep in mind only 800 Starlink sats right now. Just wait till it hits 16000 :)
Final number approved for now for Starlink is 44,000 :)
16000 and how many million tons of CO2?
@@alanmay7929 Probably less than it would cost if the itnernet was provided by other means
True. The current trains of satellites have yet to come online. Which they will by January. You will see a boost in performance and reliability when that happens, Elon mentioned in a tweet.
@@alanmay7929 0.000000001% of global CO2, that's not a made up number. Tons of CO2 by rocket industry For All of 2018 for all rockets in the World (Not just SpaceX) was just 22 Thousand Tons of CO2 for 1 complete year of Rocket launches, Not Million or Billions of Tons lof CO 2 like from cars and airplanes :).
Lets say it takes SpaceX 7 years to launch 16000 sats, that's just 100 thousand tons of CO2 over 7 year, worst case senario.
Airplane make 1 Billion Ton of CO2 pollution Every Year :) And Cars&Trucks make 10 Billion Tons of CO2 Pollution Every Year :)
The ping is only really bad though when you're blocking the connection with the speed test. That happens to me as well with a land line
Great video. Love to see how the system fairs in snow weather.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing!
A heated dome is what is commonly used for wireless bridge hardware. It also helps with preventing the dish from being affected by high winds.
Creating a heated dome to cover the dish would be a cool diy project.
The dish is heated. But when there's a lot of snow it's easy to beat a heated surface
Perhaps it could tilt off the snow periodically? I mean it’s already motorized. It could also use weather data to know when it’s snowing.
@DialatedPupils once it stops snowing the snow/water will roll off. You can clearly see it was doing that already.
It isn't a deep bowl like you think it is
Then you would worsen your signal even more, the less stuff the signal has to go through, the better.
The problem is mostly the snow that's in the air
that is inefficient.just need a strong electric fan or wiper
With any satellite service, anything moving between the receiver and the sender, can impact communication. So rain, clouds, snow, animals... They all impact it. As others have said, more sats can help stabilize, however, I expect it to have perf issues with weather in the way.
Good test. My Mom only gets at best 5mbps on a clear day. I'll definitely be upgrading her to this setup.
You are still 10x faster then what I have on a normal day and you are in the snow! I get like 2.5 on a good day!
Your upload speed in the snow is faster than my download speed lol. I have the fastest internet for my address too. I can't wait until Starlink comes to my area.
A really great website for running tests is DSL Reports, not only will it give you your latency and speeds, but it will also show you how your ping preforms under heavy speed usage. After the test it then gives you a score, really great if you are looking to stress test the system, and covers about all the bases. Thanks for this series, it's awesome to see some starlink results!
Thanks for the info. I'll look into it for a future video.
@@brettbatie which tool are you using I want to test my connection in graph thanx for the info really looking forward to getting Starlink in India and good job climbing the roof many times for us.
That's still better than I expected under those conditions. Imagine all the snow flakes the signal has to fly past and through to get there and back.
one thing I am very excited about you was your house . hope someday I will enjoy the flavor of snow
Imagine having an automatic snow wiper on the next version of Starlink 🔥
Will probably come as a addon for $299.
In earlier video he did mentioned that dish got pretty warm.. So may be some kind of builtin heater to melt off the snow from the dish
@@mukeshgoyal There is a built in heater for exactly this purpose yes.
it would be a better option if the satellite dish had some non stick coating than a heater .
@@MrDuck-oi3qc Or Both
The dropouts happened only when loaded in the upload direction. Also the latency only got really bad during upload tests. To me it seems more like a standard buffer bloat problem and a software "issue" on the starlink router as your ping results show the "ICMP: destination net can't be reached" message from a cgnat ip (100.xxx....), possibly the starlink routers WAN ip. With software "issue" I mean that the starlink router marked its default route to the internet unreachable as it was not getting answers from the other side anymore due to the buffer bloat the speedtest caused and this breaks the connection and takes a few seconds to recover. To me this shows that the starlink router does not seem to do upload bandwidth based QOS. The satallite in the sky though seems to know the bandwidth of the downlink channel to your station and thus run QOS accordingly to avoid buffer bloat mostly.
Agree. Anybody got a hack for it yet?
I have no idea what you're talking about 😂
@@jstrndm945 I'll try analogy: the router is a floodgate operator at an important dam. the satellite dish is the automated floodgate that kicks in to save the city from being flooded when the operator falls asleep after all those packets of sugar he put in his coffee this morning.
is native v6 avaible over starlink?
@@tmdpc There is free router firmware you could install on a router of your choice, well those that are supported.
Learn in the link below what "bufferbloat" is and how you can mitigate it. I personally use DD-WRT firmware and its traffic-shaper/QoS system on my router, and I can upload to the brim (torrent) without annoying the rest of the family. At full upload the ping only is raising 20-30ms above normal. It could be better, but the processing power of the router is already at the max for more than 100Mb down/10Mb up. Others flash routers with OpenWrt and install the SQM(smart management queue) software as a package. You mileage may vary, it is up to you to learn about that topic and to apply it to your network.
www.bufferbloat.net
Amazing view with all the snow
Even with the snow, it's still faster than the connection in my old place. I'm quite excited to see how the starlink tech matures :)
Whenever there’s demand on bandwidth, latency will rise. That’s normal on wireless links.
Doesn't have to be. On one wireless link I have, the latency rises by about 1ms under full load. If you don't have large buffers in routers, or especially if they have some sort of an AQM, it does wonders.
Yeah he should test them separately , cause maxing out the bandwidth causes hiccups on latency
but he is beta testing starlink dumbass this isnt one of the ones open to the public so there isnt enough people to effect latency
@@Oexd20022 So let's just call him a dumbass? Right buddy. I'm a network engineer for a global ISP for the past 13 years and also handled communications in the USAF as a 3C251. The bandwidth he is referring to is the maximum attainable bandwidth between the dish/modem and the satellite. This is the same as you maxing out your DSL connection when you download a file. It doesn't take a portion of the bandwidth. It maxes out your line speed between the modem and DSLAM. He is NOT referring to the BACKBONE shared bandwidth aka trunking that everyone uses to get to the authentication server. When you max out your line doing a speed test, the latency ALWAYS rises because ICMP traffic(which is protocol ping uses) is LOWER priority traffic than real time traffic. This is by design. GET REKT
@@gouda2872 "latency ALWAYS rises because ICMP traffic(which is protocol ping uses) is LOWER priority traffic than real time traffic." Brilliantly stated! You beat me to it
living in a snowy part of the world, you learn to mount a dish lower to the ground so its easier to clean the snow off of it
I was worried about the many Moose that come up here trampling it.
@@brettbatie lol. That’s the first time I’ve heard that one.
@@brettbatie Maybe just build a simple wooden structure outside the house around four or five feet high to put it on? It definitely would seem to be a real pain having to get up on the roof every time it snows. Although with a flat roof, maybe you have to do that anyway? The cracks in the roof surface would tend to suggest you don't want a lot of melting snow sitting there.
@@brettbatie I didn't know Moose have grudge against Starlink!
Someone should tell Elon to not walk in the northern woods
Thanks for sharing. I'd love to see the same test in good weather for comparison.
Nice test. I remember that in some classes on wireless networks the teacher told us that with snow the signal drops a lot, since the electromagnetic wave is absorbed by the snow and cannot bounce.
Maybe Starlink can make a program where the user can make an option to tilt the dish automatically once in a while to clear debris
i was thinking that too
Or a heated dish?
With that internet i could live in the middle of nowhere like you
It's a nice place to be.
@@brettbatie You are blessed. I've been working from home, as many are now and I could have been working the whole time from a cabin in the wilderness or from a tree house in the jungle and it wouldn't have mattered. As long as I have internet. I think that this thing from Elon will give an whole lotta people a lot more liberty to work from wherever, including where it's a lot cheaper to live and you can even grow your own food which can bring costs down even further!
I already live in the country side but working from how has saved me bundles on gas. That more than pays Elon's Starlink monthly internet fees by itself. Also not having to pay as much in car insurance. And I pay less for my house or property taxes than most people because I don;t have to be in the city or even the suburbs. Plus I can go on walks and walk for miles in the forest and its peaceful. I know it's not for some people who feel they have to always be surrounded by civilization, but I think it's sweet and I've always been a countryside person.
It's super nice to have that level of privacy and peace and quiet. I envy that, and the scenery is pretty too. But, there's something to be said for having fast parcel delivery to your door, local grocery, hardware, and pharma stores, fast medical, fire, and police assistance, quickly plowed roads, local schools and playgrounds, your kids having friends less than 11 miles away, etc. Just saying.
Having 4 children, I have definitely contemplated the same pros and cons. I think there are some places that are a good compromise of both worlds - having space and nature but being close enough to amenities. Granted this is still not the same as living on a cul-de-sac in the suburbs. I've done both and spent a year traveling the U.S. with my family in an RV and I enjoyed each lifestyle for different reasons.
very nice video, very informative. not expect a snowing test comes that fast XD. I just saw your installation video yesterday. btw your dog buddy is so cute when it waiting for you lol.
You make good videos keep it up and you already have a way of making video like a pro go for it keep doing it
Even on a solid cable internet connection, when you max out with a speed test, the ping for anything else is going to plummet due to the upload/download request queue.
It seems weather will still be an annoyance when it comes to satellite internet or satellite anything for that matter oh well I’m still sold on this as there is literally nothing better where I live.
It looks like your bandwidth test affects the latency more than the snow. Tanks for testing! and for using CLI.
Also worth considering: if directed at the tree tops, those also block the signal a lot more when covered in snow.
Absolutely amazing service
the latency is because your running a speedtest and ping at the same time..
It should be able to handle both
the router cant handle doing both packets from speedtest and ping. Packets get lined up when entering and exiting the router. The speedtest is creating alot of packets which is causing the ping packets to take longer to pass through the router and get back to you hense the higher ping times..
@@aaron840 But if they (Starlink) implemented (FQ)CoDel/Cake or (FQ)PIE, or just had smaller buffers, this wouldn't happen.
that latency when you do both at the same time is called bufferbloat. aka lag caused when your bandwidth is fully utilized. bufferbloat can be solved with fqcodel/cake as zekicay said. I use openwrt with fq_codel/cake and gaming has been a bliss ever since
Yeah. Speedtest is literally designed to saturate your connection. All you're measuring when you test latency during that time are buffer sizes. Without special effort, you'd run into the same issue on comcast or whatever else. The packet loss/instability was the real issue here
Is there any kind of heating loop/cord on the dish to melt it of by itself?
No....but you can get them at Walmart for less than 10 bucks.
hey Dudde.
Congratulations on demonstrating the potential of this starlink system. even with snow and horrible weather conditions, the satellite and antenna system was able to remain stable with good speed, since the weather conditions were very bad. A very compact antenna achieves excellent RF results. congratulations to the spacex team.
Thanks for sharing your experience and analysis of the #starlink satellite based internet.
There’s lots of snow in the clouds. That could be a factor.
there’s no snow in clouds 😂😂
@@sanchojr what do you mean no snow in the clouds? where do you keep the snow then? ....ouf
No such thing as snow cus the earth is flat. The dome would stop snow
@@n1k32hsrsly? 😐
@@alexmachola163 snow is rain, that freezes on it's way down.
" GUY GETS INTERNET AND HAS A SH*T TONE OF VIEWS OFF THE BAT" should be the title of his previous (first) video!!! :)
Yeah, it is shocking for my first video post!
Even with all that snow and ice it's still working for the most part that is crazy!!!!!!
Way cool! No need for a stress test though as its wireless. That's a good service I reckon and its only going to get better for sure. Very early days, game changing product this!
If the dish is flat maybe you could rig a windshield wiper to clean it off by a switch in the house?
Controlled by an app, good idea.
I don’t know why people are telling you not to check ping when. It is a legit test to look at ping while under load.
What you want to do though is do multiple types of tests under different conditions.
Also, there are a lot of variables and factors, but try performing tests outside of Max performance.
A real important factor to know when in situations dealing with atmospheric attenuation is your Bit Error Rate (BER). I’m going to guess your routers interface doesn’t have a lot of those metrics, but you can load up RUclips and look at the “stats for nerds” or other online test tools that give a general idea of your BER.
Ka and KU bands will be generally effected by snow, and worse by rain. But it shouldn’t be a large degradation.
The Ground Relay stations near by could be affected as well. The answer to this would help when Starlink is able to get the laser between links working and rely less on ground stations. Because then they could divert traffic to different ground stations that were performing better. It’s entirely possible that these conditions will be difficult now but as more constellations come online it could improve.
It would be great to see starlink roll this out to more places and people. I've been on that waiting list FOREVER! Glad to see that it indeed does look promising.
this is much better than I imagined I cant even get a sixth of that even without snow
Not surprising. The issue with satellites+antenna will always be inclement weather degrading service quality.
Even with his inclement weather (snowy to boot) he gets better speeds and reliability than with my cable connection. lol
interesting, I know nothing about living in a snowy place, but could you build some sort of greenhouse around it that is heated enough to repel snow? Not sure it would make much difference but just thinking how you could try and mitigate this
it might affect the connection speed and latency
Oh hey it’s Ben! Didn’t expect to see you here, gathering knowledge for OLF I see.
the core issue is the snow in the air, nothing you can do about that, just the physics of how the world works. building the shed would be less ideal as that's just one more thing you need to punch signal through and since the dish generates some heat that's better than a passive "roof" making no heat. But, even if you heated the room the main problem is still just the snow in the air, the more things between you and the bird the lower the quality and snow is pretty good at being in the way lol (heavy rain will have an effect too, how much is not clear but again, physics)
some sort of sprinkler with anti freeze would be much more effective
spacex is going to think about some simple, cheap and quick solution
(and anti freeze seems like a good idea)
I dont think its the snow on the dish, It might be when theres a snow storm, the starlink satellite might have trouble connecting with dish, when the snow/clouds are weakening the signal . Radio signal waves are weakened when traveling through a medium in between.
Even falling snow will get in the way as it is on its way down. Still i think its better than what you had. Your video has been very helpful as to whether or not I buy this system for my RV. I am definitely leaning toward yes. Thanks a bunch!!
Beautiful view🤤 Starlink with snow)
I'm sure you can buy a product for car windscreens that makes water slip off more easily, perhaps a product like that could help.
The inexpensive one is RainX, the more expensive one (that takes mo but lasts longer) is Aquapel -- both made for GLASS, so I'd try them on a small surface first...
@@artiem5262 If you're gonna do something like that, but don't want to break the bank, get Mr. Fix 9H ceramic coating from eBay (and possibly Amazon), little bottle is enough to do an entire car and would help keep stuff off the dish. It's hydrophobic and works great on just about anything (except glass, it'll streak). Though I do worry that the dish isn't smooth, it sounded like it had a rough surface when he ran his hand over it, that could be what the snow is sticking to. But, maybe with the built in heater and a ceramic coating applied, it might help keep water from refreezing to the surface.
Do a jitter test. Jitter is just as critical for testing as everything else you are doing. Satellite is satellite. I wonder how well it will work when there are a million users.
It'll be pretty awful in even largish cities, but full constellation the areas covered are actually fairly small so it should do pretty well because not that many people in cities will use it anyway. Kinda depends on a lot of factors, unfair to test it when they're not at full constellation and it still looks pretty epic for middle of nowhere. Satellite is satellite - but these are significantly lower orbits and there's a lot more of them - in theory across continents it should be technically better with the downlinks in the right places than fibre for latency.
@@streaky81 its only being sold to people in rural situations right?
@@its_just_me_pete1503 it's in very early beta test now. Only a few states. You have to apply and you have a slim chance of getting accepted. Only 800 satellites are up now. The FCC has approved 12,000. Eventually there will be many more even.
Again, this is a test situation. There will be times when too few satellites are available overhead.
@@henryD9363 ya I believe that. Its just i live in rural paraguay. All I have is mobil data lol
Very very interesting! And thank you very much for sharing!❤️👽🥰
Thanks brett for this video
Higher radio frequencies have a harder time penetrating things, Starlink uses 11GHz. Your speed test is flawed but the snow sure would affect it. 5G NR and 802.11ad use 60GHz and even paper can block the signal...
@@whitesfatal the dish actually worms up !! That's why it was dipping water !! But the snow fall in the air is the real problem
just need crank the Amps. get that wattage up real high. melt the snow and also give it more penetrative power.
@@ThePyroRussian get the wattage up real high !! as high as u are right now
@@ZikoProfessional impossible.
Oh my gosh people are speaking nonsense
There's no cranking amps or overclocking, it is a radio.
I would check with Starlink , and see if you can use water repellent on your dish. 🤷♂️
I bet they will sell a super low wattage self adhesive pad to keep the pizza warm
That dish supposedly has a heating element to keep snow from packing on it.
Pam cooking spray and a truck engine block heater should take care of the snow issues.
@@leroybrown9873 a short heat Trace cable normally used on plumbing pipes adhered to the back would work too
Keep uploading Brett.
Wonderful snow 😍😍😍
That tree may be an issue. You even mentioned it "after" you placed the mount. It appears, you still may have to relocate the dish. We are in Montana and do not have the drop offs you are experiencing with the weather. We have just as much, if not more .... snow. The heater in our dish has been working very well. The dish cover is clear 24/7. Good luck and enjoy.
I think so too. I would move the dish to the opposite end of the roof, to clear the tree.
Hmm, I have been using it every day this last week and haven't had any outages like this until today when it snowed. I'm thinking the tree is not affecting it?
What distro are you running on your laptop?
ubuntu
To me it looks like it is default Ubuntu theme. Yet looks can be deceiving. Why do you ask?
Ubuntu 20. 😁
@@brettbatie Very nice, I had to ask. I seen desktop in your last video and thought you were on Mint. The colors didn't match though. Is that the default gnome environment? or did you tweak it? I use Manjaro on laptop, Open Media Vault on my file server and Windows 10 on my desktop, but I only use it for gaming.
Loving that you're using linux! Thanks for the experiment too!
Good video. All tests performed.!
Well the beta service is called "better than nothing" for a reason. Maybe starlink will make a radome for the antenna for snowy zones.
I was hoping the heating element on the antenna would have been enough to keep the snow off but I guess not while it is coming down.
@@brettbatie Maybe your video will show them the need for a more substantial heating element and/or some other design feature. Maybe when it's snowing they program the antenna to rotate to a steep angle occasionally so the snow can fall off. You may loose signal for a few seconds, but the snow can at least fall off before getting too thick. It looked like the existing heat was sufficient to keep it from sticking too bad, but being a flat surface pointed parallel to the sky it will have to rely on melting most of it. Climbing a ladder in the snow is not the best idea from a safety standpoint, especially when you consider how many people one day will be doing just that while trying and get their Netflix working again...lol I like the mini windshield wiper suggestion in the post above, but a heated radome is probably the best bet. They could sell an optional one for folks in snowy climes like yourself. Nice video! We're all excited for this service and want it to succeed.
I think a radome is actually an option, at least they had a pic of it in early stages, not sure if it was just a render though so maybe it never got made.
Wasn't it supposed to warm up automatically?
Beta test service, remember, that´s why they do beta test to see what sort of thing affect their service and engineer a solution.
Probably not enough power for the amount of snow he gets.
That's exactly right. It was coming down faster than the dish could melt it.
Oh man! I always wanted to live in such an icy weather!! 😎
Thanks for sharing this, great info, Big thumbs up
Having internet in the middle of nowhere is great anyway
Of course the latency was bad, you're running speed tests lol
exactly right, you can see the latency improve when the speed test stops haha
I'm more amazed that there's so much snow (and it's beautiful) since your install video just a few days ago.
But seriously, world's superpower country and you had only 2mb's of speed before getting starlink, even starlink looks weak but of course still better than before. Anyway, congrats on getting it and thanks for the video 👍
I’ve been paying attention to this since 2016. My favorite memories were always visiting my grandparent’s cabin and walking around the forest or gardening on the hills with them, and I always did have a goal to have that for myself somewhere in Canada or Alaska or Norway where it’s snowy and mountainous by the time I’m 40, but always did love the internet pretty strongly.
AKA, thank you for this. And I’m sure by the time it’s a fuller constellation, it’ll be good to go.
> I did make a mistake with testing both the latency and the speed at the same time. This did negatively impact the latency when the speed test was running.
This video should be removed because of this very reason. As a fellow software engineer, I am disappointed that you're willing to leave the video up or not disclaimer edit about this. It misrepresents the service entirely. Once the snow is removed the service is back to the normal expected behaviour with latency looking to be in the 40-60 ms range when you're not destroying all your upload bandwidth with the speed test.
is 40-60ms Latency the average you get with starlink or can it be lower than that?
@@stephansieber4963 There have been other tests showing lower but in more ideal conditions. I had expected latency increases with the storm but this video for the most part is worthless once both tests got ran at the same time.
Minding you it did provide feedback to the Starlink team that for major snowfalls it won't melt the snow at the rate of it falling which can cause build up on top.
I do plan to post a follow-up video addressing this. I was going to edit this video and found out that RUclips doesn't let you edit it after it is posted. I did update the description pointing out that the latency is caused by the speed test.
I do agree with some other commentors that showing the ping times when under load is beneficial. The conclusion that I had is still the same, I need to wipe off the snow when it is really coming down (or wait for it to melt off).
My intention isn't to mislead or misrepresent.
@@brettbatie No worries, fine for me. I am just curious how the average delay or lets say the best you can achieve is. I had really big discussions regarding this topic with a work colleague. My impression is that because of the up and downlink to the satellites you wont be able to achieve a lower delay then, lets say 15 to 20ms. Or have you seen lower delays which are comparable to a fiber connection?
cmd , tracert to google.com and see to see raw ping between router and connection as well
Would be nice to see a traceroute :)
I'll do that in the next video but until then here is my current traceroute (not snowing or raining).
$ traceroute google.com
traceroute to google.com (172.217.14.238), 64 hops max
1 192.168.1.1 3.345ms 2.677ms 0.938ms
2 136.22.92.161 35.833ms 44.003ms 36.841ms
3 72.14.222.126 39.609ms 36.254ms 43.362ms
4 74.125.243.193 35.536ms 39.846ms 36.520ms
5 209.85.254.247 40.586ms 35.175ms 35.280ms
6 172.217.14.238 44.014ms 48.365ms 37.929ms
@@brettbatie Better off using mtr instead of a trace route, as a traceroute only traces once then stops, but the MTR will do a continuous trace and show you the Avg, Min and Max latency for each hop, every second.
Given your on Ubuntu, you can get mtr with: sudo apt install mtr
to use the tool run: mtr
For windows, you can get WinMTR.
@@brettbatie that’s only 6 hops !! I don’t think I have ever seen a trace route with so few hopes ever .
So maybe Elon’s using google DC as the downlink . Google , Scottish Mortgage and Fidelity are the 3 private investors in Starlink.
It's amazing it's this good in early beta with so few satellites (of the planned constellation) up so far. Can't wait for this for our rural NC family farm and Canada cottage.
Oh My Goodness, where you live is "Awesome".... The surrounding is breath-taking.... LM
super interesting findings... it seems like the frequency of up/down link is due to passing satellites (as one goes out of range another is passing by and maybe there is still not enough of them to overlap sufficiently to smooth the traffic); overall the speeds are not bad considering that performance will only improve from here on and it'll be like that pretty much anywhere in the world
I've been using it for a week now and haven't had the severe connection drops that I was getting today when it was snowing. So, snow on the dish was definitely having a negative impact on the connection quality.
Looks like ping is going thru the roof when the speedtest is testing your upload speed
Yeah, the latency was negatively impacted by the speed test. However, the conclusion that the snow was negatively impacting the speed is still valid.
Very good video. 👏👏👏
To heck with Starlink! You get a like just because of the scenery on those nature flocked pines
make a heavy rain test
You just want to see me stand in the rain, don't you? But since you asked nicely I'll do it next time.
@@brettbatie 😅
Keep sending more data and your snow will melt faster.
😂😂
Snowing already!? And here I thought I live in Canada 😄
You're off to a good start on YT. Keep up the momentum bud! 👍
So much snow, I love that.