For help, advice and discussion about stuff not related to aviation. Play nice: no religion, no politics and no axe grinding please.
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By rikur_
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1841124
townleyc wrote:I think Plusnet have gone downhill in the last few years. BT want to brand them as cheap...

Out of interest, what sort of issues have you had? Has it been stability of the connection itself; customer support issues; or something else? I've been lucky enough not to need to speak to them for years except the price negotiation every 18 months.
Interestingly I have interviewed a couple of job applicants recently who were leaving Plusnet because they didn't like the direction BT was taking it.
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By townleyc
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1841168
rikur_ wrote:
townleyc wrote:I think Plusnet have gone downhill in the last few years. BT want to brand them as cheap...

Out of interest, what sort of issues have you had? Has it been stability of the connection itself; customer support issues; or something else? I've been lucky enough not to need to speak to them for years except the price negotiation every 18 months.
Interestingly I have interviewed a couple of job applicants recently who were leaving Plusnet because they didn't like the direction BT was taking it.


Mainly stability of connection. I am only 30ft from the cabinet so I get good speed, but get regular dropouts. Improved by changing router, but still not good. Sometimes due to congestion I think.
Customer support on the rare couple of occasions I have used them has been good. It is the service.
I also had a mobile contract with them (SIM only) and they would not offer anything except the basics. Now moved that.

KE
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By TheKentishFledgling
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1843727
Finally found time to get Dishy mounted on the side of the building (not at home, have put him at a remote office site for now) - all done and he came to life in a few minutes and was showing 150Mbps down, 11 up and a 35ms latency. Impressive, and from what Steve said it'll likely only increase in the coming days. Will monitor with interest and get back soon to config dual WANs.
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By stevelup
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1843971
Just thought I'd post again as it's been over a month since I installed mine and...

Not one problem. There have been brief outages, but always overnight and I've never actually noticed one during working hours. There was one incident where after a firmware update I had to reset the DHCP lease on the router, but I noticed as soon as I woke because the internet was dog slow as my router had automatically fallen over to DSL.

Speaking of which, I kept my DSL line for VoIP calls and I also had a 'panic' button configured on my router so I could force my work laptop to route via the DSL if Starlink messed up during one of many never-ending Zoom calls. Never ended up pressing the button...

At the beginning of last week, I also dropped the rule that was forcing VoIP via the DSL and haven't had a dropped call all week.

I might actually ditch the DSL line altogether soon. I can use 4G in case of emergency.
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By TheKentishFledgling
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1844017
Really good to know, thanks @stevelup. I plan on settings things up in virtually the same way you have, so it's good to hear aren't a major issue. Hopefully in a few months I'll feel confident to drop the old line too...

There's also a 4G connection but, even with a decent antenna, the signal is utter Carp so it's not really worth having other than as a last ditch backup. Have to laugh that Elon can launch satellites and provide a decent service going before I can even get a proper mobile signal :lol:
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By stevelup
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1844040
The FCC just dismissed all the nonsense claims made by about ten competitors and SpaceX are free to finish rolling out the full constellation now, so it will only get better.
By Colonel Panic
#1855781
Could someone post a brief summary of what I would need to get if I order Starlink - in addition to whatever comes from Starlink itself. Would I need a new router etc, and is it reasonably plug 'n play?

I currently have a Vigor 130 modem and a Unifi USG router.

TIA
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By stevelup
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1855784
You won’t need any additional hardware.

Dishy comes with a massive 190w PoE injector and a router.

You would not use their router - instead you will plug the output of the Starlink PoE injector into the USG.
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By stevelup
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1855801
I'm not convinced it's consistently as high as stated in that article.

Mine's powered by my garage circuit which has a separate power monitor. Also running 24x7 in the garage are:-

- PoE switch with 2 x Hik cameras and 1 x Ubiquiti AP
- Apple Airport Express (for audio)
- Freezer (cat food...)
- Raspberry Pi (octoprint for 3D printer)
- Soundweb (audio processor for the outdoor speakers)
- Car charger (Ohme)
- Car charger (Optimate for the old Range Rover)
- Two garage door openers with IR curtains
- Hot tub in standby
- Daikin air conditioning unit
- PC / monitor which is sleeping rather than off
- Three drill chargers
- Starlink!

The 'idle' consumption for the garage with all of the above is 217Wh - so it’s unlikely the Starlink is averaging 100W
Last edited by stevelup on Tue Jun 29, 2021 10:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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