Sunday, June 29, 2025

Starlink may be lying about speed.


Today I did a quick speed test. 


Download speed: 224 vs. 45 mbps. Starlink reports 5X as high a speed. 

Upload speed: 15 VS. 12. Seems pretty honest reporting. 

Latency: 40 vs. 50,5 ms. Latency is very hard to compare moment to moment, so let's say they both report honestly in that moment

So how is it possible that Starlink reports soo much higher download speeds? 

My guess would be that the satellite(s) detect the download speed test and simply generate or send from on-device memory some data. This would explain why the speed is higher: it doesn't mimic real internet traffic. 

Cloudflare on the other hand needs to get data from a data center, into a nearby ground station and then have it bounce around the globe between Starlink satellites till it finds one that's above(ish) our location. 

Again, that is simply my guess for the big discrepancy. My advise: don't be bamboozled by Starlink's own speed claims but use your own tests. 






No comments: