In part 3 and 4 of this Starlink discovery series, I’ve been taking a look and the downlink throughput performance. While the standard Cubic TCP congestion avoidance algorithm used by Linux produced only meager results, switching to BBR produced a five-fold throughput increase. So how about throughput in the uplink direction?
Continue reading Starlink – Part 5 – Uplink Performance – Standard Cubic
In part 3 of this series, I’ve taken a look Starlink’s downlink performance with the non-standard TCP BBR congestion avoidance algorithm. Overall, I was quite happy with the result as, despite the variable channel and quite some packet loss, BBR kept overall throughput quite high. Cubic, the standard TCP congestion avoidance algorithm, is not quite as lenient on packet loss, so I was anxious to see how the system behaves in the default Linux TCP configuration. And it’s not pretty I’m afraid.
Continue reading Starlink – Part 4 – Downlink Performance – Standard Cubic
After the more high level parts 1 and 2 on Starlink, it’s now time to have a closer look at how the Starlink downlink channel behaves. I’m totally amazed by the system and it performs very well in Germany. That being said, it probably comes as no surprise that on the IP layer, the graphs produced by the data transmission over satellites look very different from the same graphs produced by a data transfer over a fixed line VDSL link. For the comparison, I’ve used Starlink over the router’s built in Wi-Fi and compared it to my VDSL line at home, which is also connected to a 5 GHz Wi-Fi router.
Continue reading Starlink – Part 3 – Downlink Performance – The BBR Version
Summer seems to have taken a break in the second half of July, and the day I wanted to test Starlink at another place and demonstrate it to some people was as inhospitable as it could probably get during a summer day in Germany: The temperature was well below 20 degrees Celsius, it was very windy, and we had everything from very cloudy but dry weather to periods with light to strong rain showers throughout the day. Or to look at it from a positive side: Perfect for testing Starlink in less than ideal conditions. So here’s how that went.
Continue reading Starlink – Part 2 – Radio Shadow, Rain and Umbrellas
I’m sure you’ve seen the one or other satellite focused post on this blog over the last year. So far, I’ve mostly been looking into handheld satellite text messaging, but I always had a close eye on Starlink as well. Recently, Starlink has lowered their prices and introduced mobile tariffs that can be activated and deactivated on a monthly basis. Mobility is important for me, as I wanted to test and potentially use satellite based Internet access in a number of different places. Also, I don’t need it all year around, so being able to only pay for the months while in use is just what I was waiting for, too. In other words, the time had come for me to order a terminal and see how it really performs in the Cologne area in Germany.
Continue reading Starlink – Part 1 – First Bring-Up
While heat insulating windows are a great thing, they have one big disadvantage: They also block RF signals. That means that cellular reception inside buildings and trains becomes very difficult. Back in 2016, I first heard about the concept of modifying the heat insulation layer of windows so they would let RF signals through. At the time I had little hope that I would see this in trains in my lifetime. But I was wrong, it has really happened now!
Continue reading Train Windows Permeable For Cellular Signals – From Theory to Practice
Just a quick note today about what to do when videos inserted in OpenOffice Impress start to flicker: I had this strange behavior with Ubuntu 20.04 and the rather old OpenOffice version that comes shipped with it by default. And it seems I’m not the only one. But here’s the fix: Instead of using the default X-window compositor, switch to Wayland during login. There’s a little cogwheel at the bottom right side of the login screen where the compositor can be changed after selecting an account. And there we go, after starting the desktop with Wayland, no more flickering! That’s not a permanent solution for me, because apps for taking screenshots and recording the screen as well as remote desktop sharing do not work any longer, at least not with Ubuntu 20.04. Over time, these issues will probably go away anyway, as Wayland is the default compositor starting with Ubuntu 22.04. I guess that’s probably why nobody is keen to fix this in the first place. But I’m not quite there yet.
It’s been a while since I installed a headless Raspberry Pi from scratch with a desktop GUI to be accessed over the network. In the ‘early days’ of the Pi this used to be very simple: Get an image file from the Raspbian website, use ‘dd’ on Linux to copy the image to an SD card and start it. SSH was active by default and the username and password was known. Done! But then the project became very popular and these days things are a bit more complicated. I guess it probably turned out that having an open SSH port by default with default credentials is not ideal. Also, the makers of the Raspberry Pi have made some decisions that are not quite to my liking. So here’s a quick guide how to get a headless Raspi up and running with a GUI over the network WITHOUT using special installers and proprietary remote desktop viewers.
Continue reading Raspberry Pi With Remote Screen Sharing – A Quick Installation GuideIn the previous post, I discussed how to do a straight forward OnlyOffice install on a server or VM with docker-compose and then connect it to a Nextcloud installation running on another server. It turned out that this was phenomenally simple. Now that everything is up and running and working like a charm, I wanted to see if I could consolidate the setup somewhat. To reduce the number of virtual machines, I run many of my services with Docker and docker-compose on a single virtual machine and behind a simple dockerized reverse proxy that also takes care of getting TLS certificates via Letsencrypt. So the big question: Can I run an OnlyOffice inside Docker containers behind that reverse proxy to save me a public IP address and a separate virtual machine?
Continue reading Nextcloud – OnlyOffice Install – With A Reverse Proxy
In the previous post on the topic, I gave a general overview of how Nextcloud and OnlyOffice can play together. There are many ways to combine the two online services and hence, installation instructions that can be found on the net from Nextcloud, from OnlyOffice, from third parties and from each with many different installation options. This confused me to no end, I couldn’t see the wood for the trees anymore. But I finally figured it out and if you already have a private Nextcloud instance up and running, you can install OnlyOffice with just a few commands on the shell if you are willing to go for a no frills setup.
Continue reading Nextcloud – OnlyOffice Install – Quick and Simple