Is that typical?

Why do you need Starlink? Do you live far from civilization?

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"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion." (1987) -- Carl Sagan

Rural Arkansas is about as far from civilization as you can get.

Have you tried complementing Elon?

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What does Speedtest give as your ping and download speeds?

My understanding is that it needs a good line of site for the satellites, and that even a single tree can cause lag.

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PeterW
Rural Arkansas is about as far from civilization as you can get.

We are just now getting ruffled potato chips.

My friend uses one for work. Zoom, cloud computing, etc and it seems to work pretty well for him.

It should be waaaay better than any other option available to you Dennis. Something's wrong in your setup.

Time of day is a big contributor to slow speeds (especially when the time of day is "evening"). Also, ever since they instituted tiered levels of payment, speeds on the lowest "best effort" service are minimal. They want you to spend more for guaranteed bandwidth. Even then, it's not guaranteed. If you're getting between 15-45 Mbps up then that's pretty normal, especially during 'primetime'.

But also, be sure you aren't having obstacles to Dishy getting a 100% clear view of the sky - and not just a clearing directly above the dish, either. Since the internals "follow" the satellites as they cross the sky, being near trees - even if there is clear sky directly above - is a particularly noxious condition.

A couple we know volunteers at Death Valley for three months of the year (Jan-March) and they use Star Link for internet in their RV. Of course, in Death Valley, there are no line-of-site issues. They say it works great for them.

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Dennis S
We are just now getting ruffled potato chips.

My brother left his TV and Star Link with us a few days. My 93 year old mom is watching Dave Chappell.

I had a Starlink dish on its base on the ground with a slight downslope to a lake to the north with some trees behind it to the south and almost directly overhead... The Starlink app indicated "some obstruction" and "interruptions every 6-8 minutes" depending on the time of day, but we never noticed any.

The dish's actual view of sky was vertically about 85 degrees starting about 5 degrees above the northern horizon, and almost a full 180 degrees east to west. It was also not obstructed to a middle portion of the sky from about 90 degrees straight up to 50 degrees to the south with about 90 degree horizontal coverage.

I later moved the Starlink dish to a former tv satellite dish mount on top of the house, facing south, with the roofline obscuring the northern horizon and a line of trees to the west nearby and more trees to the east. This location was clear overhead, vertically it could see about 120 degrees from about 30 degrees to the north above the roofline to the southern tree line. But horizontally the trees to the west encroached to about 45 degrees and 10 degrees to the east, and the another tv satellite dish obstructed some of the due north signal... This location was also listed as obstructed, with interruptions every 3 minutes and I could experience a zoom call dropping about once every 15 minutes or so for 30 seconds. Streaming video is usually ok, tho once every hour we might experience a pause while it reconnects and refills the buffer.

It's all in the dish placement, you want as high and wide a view of the sky esp to the north if you are much south of Minnesota.

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g=

You're holding it wrong.

I've had great experience with it.

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"Defending your own life when in immediate danger to me is a basic right of each person. " Lemon Drop 11/17/2023 03:10 pm

Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008) Private citizens have the right under the Second Amendment to possess an ordinary type of weapon and use it for lawful, historically established situations such as self-defense in a home, even when there is no relationship to a local militia.

"The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner." Right to Keep and Bear Arms: Report of the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Ninety-seventh Congress, Second Session. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1982. Digitized September 30, 2008.

From the NYSRPA v Bruen "Today, we decline to adopt that two-part approach. . . . Despite the popularity of this two-step approach, it is one step too many. Step one of the predominant framework is broadly consistent with Heller, which demands a test rooted in the Second Amendment's text, as informed by history."