Load sharing for Starlink on Zoom

[GRIT]

Originally Posted by dpcmiller

Have you checked out the free article here: https://onboardwireless.com/Using-St...vity_b_10.html
Full disclosure, I wrote the article. This setup works well and you can do it with or without SpeedFusion.

Thanks for that article. 5Gstore.com has told me the virtual connection for speedfusion is $250 a month, and that speedfusion will only work with their virtual connection, or by connecting another peplink speedfusion capable router to a fast connection at your home or office, or wherever you can find a fast reliable connection. Preferrably with someone available to fix the occasional glitch (it's electronic afterall, it will need to be rebooted at some point).

I was also told, if not using speedfusion, it would take 2-3 seconds for the failover to work, and that I'd likely be booted off a zoom call as the IP address would change when the router changes sources. Have you found that you don't get cut off of zoom during a changeover?

Thanks for sharing, it's always better to hear from a user, than from the support staff. The support at the 5gstore seems to be very educated on the subject, but I've had two different opinions coming from their staff, as regards failover, hot failover, and speedfusion.

It's been suggested I buy two "max transit Pro" routers, and have one set up at "home", in order to build the "tunnel". I think I may set one up at my sister's house.

Dario, at the 5gstore, also told me the BRM was not capable of "bonding", which I find surprising, as the way I read the advertising, it seems like it is capable of bonding through speedfusion. It can do WAN smoothing, and hot failover, but he says it won't "bond".

It would be nice to hear what you think of what I've been told.

Thanks.
Paul.

[jcapo]

Originally Posted by shimari

Sadly we don't have that in the US last I checked. Unlimited in the US also usually means once you pass an arbitrary cap - we'll throttle your connection down to 3G.

That depends on the provider. I switched from T-Mobile to Verizon recently because there is little to no T-Mobile signal at Rocky's boatyard in St. Marys, GA. I expected Verizon to throttle when I hit my 60GB limit but its still full speed.

Verizon claims to throttle only when the network is congested and that appears to be the case here. T-Mobile flips the switch to 3G when the limit is hit.

As always, YMMV.

[dpcmiller]

That information is not correct.
If you buy a Peplink router with PrimeCare, such as the new BR1 Mini (HW3), then SpeedFusion is included for a year. For the BR1 Mini you'll want to get the feature pack ($99 which includes 2 additional years of PrimeCare) to enable can do ehternet WAN, bonding, WiFi WAN etc.
You connect to the Peplink servers with SpeedFusion Connect, not the 5GStore servers. There is no additional cost for connecting to SF Connect.
If you have the cellular connection active e.g. in Priority One or Two, the failover is immediate.

[RickG]

Originally Posted by wingssail

For an inhouse possibility I'd look at Speedify, part of Connectify. I downloaded Connectify and use it on my PC in place of a router. It connects to my nearby access points through a separate WiFi antenna and sends it out on the boat over the PC's WiFi.

When I also have a cellular modem connection or an ethernet connection it prompts me, "Do you want to combine all your connections?"

I have not looked into it but it seems like it is sending and receiving IP Packets over all available connections and if one is not responding it uses the others.

We use Speedify to bond multiple channels. Works fine with Starlink, current marina wifi, hotspot, tethered phone, tethered ipad. You need an interface for each of those; I added a second wifi adapter via wifi. These all help when coverage is marginal.

But, I run Zoom meetings no problem over Starlink in the Caribbean. Even the data hog Teams works fine. We have not seen latency over 100ms on Starlink. which is better than 4G/LTE/5G in some places.

I would just give the Starlink a try and see how that works for you. Our buddy had Peplink on his cat with two high gain antennas and just turned that off as Starlink works so well for fulltime liveaboard/workaboard.

Cheers, RickG

[GRIT]

Originally Posted by dpcmiller

That information is not correct.
If you buy a Peplink router with PrimeCare, such as the new BR1 Mini (HW3), then SpeedFusion is included for a year. For the BR1 Mini you'll want to get the feature pack ($99 which includes 2 additional years of PrimeCare) to enable can do ehternet WAN, bonding, WiFi WAN etc.
You connect to the Peplink servers with SpeedFusion Connect, not the 5GStore servers. There is no additional cost for connecting to SF Connect.
If you have the cellular connection active e.g. in Priority One or Two, the failover is immediate.

Thanks for that. I thought that's what the literature said (though it doesn't specifically mention Bonding, it does mention smoothing) I'll have read a little more on peplink's own website.

Thanks again.
Paul.

[GRIT]

Originally Posted by RickG

We use Speedify to bond multiple channels. Works fine with Starlink, current marina wifi, hotspot, tethered phone, tethered ipad. You need an interface for each of those; I added a second wifi adapter via wifi. These all help when coverage is marginal.

But, I run Zoom meetings no problem over Starlink in the Caribbean. Even the data hog Teams works fine. We have not seen latency over 100ms on Starlink. which is better than 4G/LTE/5G in some places.

I would just give the Starlink a try and see how that works for you. Our buddy had Peplink on his cat with two high gain antennas and just turned that off as Starlink works so well for fulltime liveaboard/workaboard.

Cheers, RickG

I like the speedify idea, but I tried their free 2gb app, and couldn't get it to complete the video test. I kept getting an error. It did seem to combine my various internet connections, and give more speed, but the video test was never able to complete.

I think I will give Starlink a try on it's own, and see what happens. It's at my mail forwarding service now, and I just have to get to somewhere with a UPS store (that knows how to receive for transients). We've always had great service from the Annapolis store, and hope to be there next week.

Cheers.
Paul.

[GRIT]

Originally Posted by RickG

We use Speedify to bond multiple channels. Works fine with Starlink, current marina wifi, hotspot, tethered phone, tethered ipad. You need an interface for each of those; I added a second wifi adapter via wifi. These all help when coverage is marginal.

But, I run Zoom meetings no problem over Starlink in the Caribbean. Even the data hog Teams works fine. We have not seen latency over 100ms on Starlink. which is better than 4G/LTE/5G in some places.

I would just give the Starlink a try and see how that works for you. Our buddy had Peplink on his cat with two high gain antennas and just turned that off as Starlink works so well for fulltime liveaboard/workaboard.

Cheers, RickG

Another question for you Rick. Do you have Starlink RV? Have you had any issues with the supposed "2 month" limit for out of country?

Thanks.
Paul.

[GRIT]

I received the Starlink unit yesterday. It's pretty impressive!

I was going to try the Starlink alone, and see if we needed a Peplink router; but one day last week, my wife's internet was terrible, and she missed a zoom call. That prompted me to buy the Peplink Max Transit Pro, and have it overnighted to our location. It was "lost" in transit! The nice folks at Amazon sent us a replacement immediately, which we just received today.

I now have Starlink, and the slightly delayed Peplink, Max Transit Pro, which has two cellular modems, and a wired WAN.

I think I've hooked up to the speed fusion cloud, but am wondering if it's possible to prioritize data on Starlink, and preserve the cell data, so I don't reach capacity. I want to use Speedfusion, but I only really want it to coast along, while Starlink does the heavy lifting.

Any takers?

Cheers.
Paul.

[GRIT]

Just a quick update.

I've gone to advanced features, and updated the outbound policy, and set the Starlink to 10, and the sims to 4. Will that policy extend to speedfusion as well?

The speedfusion is set to work during voip and video calls only, so I'm supposing it doesn't matter much if the outbound policy holds during speedfusion use, but if someone knows, I'd be interested in knowing as well.

Cheers.
Paul.

[GRIT]

I've been monitoring my traffic, during my wife's zoom calls, and the peplink was favouring the cell services much more than the starlink services. That's a consideration, as Starlink has unlimited bandwidth, whereas our Cell services vary between 40gb per month, to 100 gb per month, which can get eaten up pretty quickly when using zoom, over a bonded connection.

I logged a ticket with Peplink, and a very knowledgeable fellow named Soriam asked me a few questions, so as to understand my goals, and hit a home run on the first go!

I suppose I shouldn't say that until my wife uses it for a business meeting, but I'm very pleased with the results, so far.

My wife's on a business trip, so I can't do an identical test, to what she does every day, but I did do a zoom call, one on one, which takes less data than what she does, but it looks very promising. If the starlink fell behind, the cell boosted it up a bit, it was satisfying to watch the vast majority of the data transmitted going through the Starlink, rather than the sim card. At the moment, our "unlimited" sim card is locked into a hotspot, and feeding the internet into the peplink router through a wifi connection) which you'll see in the second box as priority two (Wifi WAN). A new sim card is on the way, which will be installed in the Peplink router, along with the T-Mobile hotspot Sim, which is good for 100gb.

Soriam simply changed my traffic distribution policy to overflow (from Dynamic Weighted bonding). This opens up another subpolicy box, asking which connection takes priority, and which are the overflow connections.

It's a bit confusing, as this new box is next to the original box, and the connections don't exactly match, but I get it. I can't explain it properly, but I have a grasp of the situation, and the reasoning behind it. If you're familiar with outbound policies, you'll understand this one too.

I'll add a photo here, so you can see what the new policy is, and how to make Peplink favour Starlink (or any other source of internet) over lte, while having the lte take the overflow from the Starlink. It also acts as a hot failover, as the two are connected within the same tunnel, and share an ip address. You may also notice the other two cell services sitting in hot standby as well, so theoretically, she can lose any three services, and her clients won't notice a thing. All four services share an IP address, so zoom doesn't know the difference between them.

I'll be changing one of my other (non wan-smoothing) tunnels back to a bonding tunnel, for those times when none of the cell signals are overly strong, and we'll combine them into one large tunnel. Starlink sometimes goes down, or has blockages, so a large tunnel would be helpful to increase the throughput, rather than just acting as hot-failovers, and overflow uptakes.

I hope this helps someone with a similar problem. As Starlink is gaining popularity among "Cruisers working Virtually", I feel many will encounter this same issue.

Cheers.
Paul.

[shimari]

Paul - Glad it's working great for you! Looking forward to hearing how it works when your wife returns.

I've been noticing more outages with starlink lately. Likely because there are at least four different boats with it near me now. I'm considering adding a set-up like yours.

[GRIT]

Thanks Shimari.

It's very nice to see it working. Quite unique in my experience. I don't know what magic it uses to do it's thing, but it's pretty amazing. Let's hope this does the trick.

Good luck with yours; and if there's anything I can do to help, or answer questions with my very limited knowledge, I'm happy to do so.

Cheers.
Paul.