Haven't seen anyone mention that project in a few years, but now I'm in the unique position to talk about it. I live somewhere where I can't get any proper internet service - mobile broadband is slow, DSL or fibre lines are not brought out to where I live, and the only other option is cable internet access, which I've 1. had bad experiences with in the past and 2. where I live is operated by a company with laughably bad reviews at exorbitant prices for what they offer. We are talking about 60 USD (eq) a month for 100 megabit service.

So I shopped around to see what other options there are, and Starlink made me an offer. Free equipment, which is usually 400 bucks, delivered to my house, and then an unlimited data plan at whatever speeds I can get where I live for 50 a month, with a one month free trial. I said yes, paid with Apple Pay (seriously, did not have to fill out a single form or sign anything) and the dish arrived the next day.

Now, I know, Starlink is run by Musk, who is somewhere around the top 10 of my nightmare blunt rotation and also pretty likely to be an actual neo-Nazi, but I say whatever. It's not like the alternatives are much better, and at least SpaceX has some actual value for humanity, if you ask me. I might put a "I bought this before Elon went crazy" on my router, though.

I got the dish delivered and set it up on my roof. The app - which is excellent - tells you to orient it north if you're on the northern hemisphere, and to roughly point it up. I built my own mounting solution - a wooden board with mounting holes that snaps in place on my roof - and set everything up, not expecting much.

I was absolutely blown away. The app, once more, is stellar and incredibly easy to use, and a joy to play around with. I got a satellite connection in minutes, and did a speed test. I got 200 down and 50 up in the Starlink app, but independent speed tests as well as my own experience routinely hit 400 down and around 80 up. Genuinely impressive. Ping around 30, by the way. Consistent as well.

The next few days were a similar experience, although I did notice a drop in speeds if there was heavy rain. The speeds dropped however to around 150 over 30, which is still more than usable, and latency was not impacted at all as far as I can tell.

Honestly, it's a super compelling package. Setup was so simple my grandma could have done it, the hardware is beautifully made and very robust, and the designers really did think of a lot here. The cables are just weatherproofed Ethernet and you can bring your own (although they don't recommend it), the router is Wifi 6 and looks damn snazzy, the dish can even heat itself up to melt snow in winter.

If you're looking for reliable internet service, I really can't recommend Starlink enough. If where you're planning on running it is within the service area and you're fine with the 50 dollar a month price point (no speed or data caps, by the way) I'd say go for it.

Now, there are people who will say that it's a good option for remote places, but not that great for densely populated areas in buildings that could get for example cable service, and you shouldn't rely on it. But, well, I haven't been completely honest here:

The real sting in the tale is that I live in one a large European city with plenty of access to other internet methods (just unlucky in terms of my specific building, which is getting fibre next year), and mounted the dish on top of my townhouse in one of the most dense districts in town. It works flawlessly, and it's been the fastest internet service I've ever had, period.

Course, it can't compete with a fibre line, sure, but many people don't have those - and then, service or hardware might still add large costs on top of that. And with Starlink, I can just take it with me whenever I move, and don't need to ever worry about ISPs again.

I don't have many sufficiently nerdy friends to talk about this with, so if you're curious or have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them. If you have Starlink too and feel like I missed something, feel free to contribute to the conversation.

As the years go by, I’ve become increasingly annoyed (I choose that word intentionally) at the thought that there’s some “record” of my activity on the Internet somewhere, which was probably put together by my ISP. I “don’t have anything to hide” (other than perhaps the one or other ROM or movie that I download), but I also don’t want to randomly get fined or put in prison if, in a few years, our governments decide to retroactively criminalize certain activities (I’m thinking mostly about piracy).

I’m not tech savvy though. That’s not because I haven’t tried. I have. I spent countless hours reading about how one can keep one’s activity on the Internet “private”. To my knowledge, it isn’t actually possible. I mean, even if I didn’t use my real name anywhere, or didn’t have any social media accounts (thankfully, I don’t), just the fact that I have to use an ISP to surf the web means that at least they are “spying” on me.

So, I’m approaching all of you wonderful, tech savvy people (rather than ChatGPT or a search engine) to ask you if there’s something that I’m missing, and if there is a way (preferably a fool-proof one) to stop my ISP (or “anyone” for that matter) from collecting data on my activity on the Internet (particularly when I download ROMs or movies, which is the only “illegal” thing that I ever do).

Hey all,

We're working on a press-freedom / anti-censorship project and we're testing a variety of scenarios in which a journalist's internet traffic is being monitored by a hostile state. We'd like to simulate an ISP's access to the journalist's traffic so we can run some packet collection and other tests to see what it looks like.

What's the best way to do this? Put a few routers in series and collect on the last one?

I just wanted to see what everyone else’s experience has been working with your ISP. I recently had a horrible experience and wanted to see if anyone else can relate and maybe just vent a little.

My recent experience: I moved to a new town, and I had been experiencing issues with my internet dropping out, as we all probably have had at some point, and I contacted Cox communications through their chat app. After multiple attempts to fix it, they finally sent a tech out to find that the coax connectors at the pole were rusted out. He replaced them but it wasn’t fixed completely. The tech dismissed it and said to just use it for now and I wouldn’t notice. So I did, and it wasn’t great at first, but it actually slowly got better and was good for a while until the last couple of weeks. This past week every single night it would drop out. I watched the connection drop while I was trying to watch mythic quest (great show btw) and every night for the past week the internet was unusable in the evenings. I then contacted Cox again multiple times, got a credit refunded back to my account and they wanted to do the whole reset modem thing again, so I did just to get to the next steps. Again they said use it and see if it improves, so I did, and it didn’t. I contacted them again, and again the modem reset, so I got fed up and filed a complaint with the FCC while I was chatting with this guy and he had the nerve to try and sell me home automation at the end of our chat!

The next day goes by, a woman from their escalation lines contacts me about my FCC complaint and they send a new tech out. Turns out Cox never buried my original line in conduit, so the line was probably damaged underground as it was sending a weak return signal. The tech ran a new drop from a different tap and used the thickest coax I’ve ever seen. So far it’s been good after the new drop, but it took multiple chats and calls with two different field technicians and an FCC complaint to get it fixed. The worst part about it is Cox Communications is the only broadband ISP in my area other than Starlink and I seriously considered Starlink. So if you read this far, thanks! Please share your experiences if you’d like, or if you want to vent that’s okay.

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