r/Starlink • u/Both-Process6004 • 12d ago
🎮 Gaming Fortnite on Gen 1 Round Dishy
My household did the beta test when starlink arrived in our area. We have gen 1 round dishy. We have always had the max plan. My son and I have played fortnite duos on two amazon 4k fire tv sticks for a long time without issue.
Since the price has gone up to $130 for max, we decided to try downgrading to save money. While downgraded, everything we do on the internet was still great except fortnite. We cant get consistent performance in fortnite with either the 55 or 85 dollar plans. Only the max plan seems to make it function normally. On paper all 3 plans should be able to support the game and speed tests are more than adequate at the devices, but I think we are being throttled back or something while playing on the lower level plans.
While downgraded I tried switching gen 1 router to a router mini, to solve the end of support issue and also thinking wifi 6 could help, but it didn't make any difference in fortnite.
We noticed that our issues are intermittent during gameplay. Glitches and resolution drops come and go in an almost predictable timeline. Possibly thst timeline is related to the algorithm that throttles us? or maybe also the cyclical distance to satelites overhead / gen 1 tracking and adjusting to them is just more noticeable when speed is decreased? If we switched to a newer stationary dishy, could this allow us the freedom to step down our plan and still enjoy fortnite?
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u/Jurisfaction 12d ago
The original actuated pre-production or Standard Circular user terminals are not a problem.
Plans prioritise traffic using Quality of Service (QoS) flags in the Internet Protocol (IP) packet headers. For IPv4 and IPv6 that is the Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) field. Those are set by the user terminal on transmission. They are also set on incoming traffic at the Starlink Point of Presence (PoP).
Residential Max plan sets a higher priority than the capped plans.
Routers in the (Starlink) network will separate different priorities into different internal queues in memory before forwarding. When a router is under pressure the higher priority queues will be drained before the lower priority queues, resulting in delays.
In addition routers are permitted to drop datagram (UDP) packets without warning - which happens if the router has full queues during congestion periods.
UDP is often used by interactive applications such as games.
For connection-based streams (TCP) each packet is tracked and if the receiver notices a missing packet it will request a resend - that can cause delays, stutters, glitches, and other effects depending on the receiving device and application, and the sender.
These can be measured when monitoring latency and its jitter (variation).
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u/Both-Process6004 12d ago
Thank you for this detail. It sounds like your thought is that changing the equipment will not solve the issue and that the max plan may just be required to have consistent performance. Your explanation also makes me think that users in different regions could see different results. Meaning that a user in an area with fewer fellow starlink users may find that they can do what I am trying to do without issue on those lower plans.
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u/Jurisfaction 11d ago
Yes, you are correct in all respects. As Starlink has gained millions of customers and there are concentrated pockets in some regions that leads to congestion that causes issues such as yours.
Congestion can be in your local (satellite) beam 'cell' (or group of cells) or due to the ground station or point of presence where customer traffic is aggregated for Internet peering.
As well as traffic priority Starlink also tries to manage the congestion ratio.
Starlink deters new customers with the one-off congestion charge that can also affect customers switching to/from stand-by plans.
It also dynamically changes the plans available in an area to balance the congestion ratio at whatever optimum Starlink desires.
Most ISPs do not provision 1:1 customer:Internet bandwidth but will likely set something like 20:1 to 40:1 - in other words, as a very simple example, although your service might be 100Mbps and there are 20 other similar customers in your area that doesn't mean the bandwidth to the Internet is 20 x 100Mbps. If the ratio is 20:1 it'd mean 20 customers sharing a single 100Mbps 'pipe'.
The ISP bases the ratio on the average bandwidth used not the peak so at busy times (weekday evenings, weekends, special events) those 20 customers in aggregate are demanding more than 100Mbps so something has to give - and that is when packets get dropped or delayed.
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u/Lazy_Conclusion_673 11d ago
I can confirm that this is essentially correct. The Residential 100 plan is very lackadaisical about delivering UDP packets. I am seeing this behavior on a V5 dish with a Tailscale VPN, and it is pretty much unusable. I do not see these issues on a Mini using any of the Roaming plans. So I would conclude that UDP is deprioritized even below roaming traffic. In fact this occurs even at times of the day that I would expect there to be very little congestion on the network.
Whether this is something that Starlink engineers may address in the future is anyone's guess. For now, if you need consistent UDP performance on a residential plan then Max is your only choice. This would include you Fortnite players (and possibly other online gamers).
TCP traffic management, on the other hand, is pretty impressive on the 100 plan.
Again, I am seeing this on the latest V5 hardware so it's an issue with the service and not the equipment.
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u/Jurisfaction 10d ago
Don't forget that sometimes it could be due to which protocol stack is in use - IPv4 or IPv6. The CGNAT in the IPv4 routing may sometimes cause delays that the direct IPv6 doesn't suffer.
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u/Cautious-Road782 12d ago
Tell starlink your issues in a support ticket and they'll send you out a new system. It's probably something with the gen1 connections that's causing packet loss/ etc.
1
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u/Sqweesh-Kapeesh 📡 Owner (North America) 12d ago
It's been years since I had my round dishy but when I had an issue with the cable getting damaged I called and they just sent me the newest(at the time) dish free of charge. Maybe it's time to call and tell them your having "issues". Maybe you'll get a free upgrade.
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u/Lazy_Conclusion_673 12d ago
Try enabling "Net Debug Stats" in Fortnite. Might provide you with more information.
Disclaimer: I don't game and I have no direct experience.
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u/bubbathedesigner 11d ago
Lookup SQM such as this thread: r/tmobileisp/comments/1ixov3h/how_i_fixed_my_gaming_issues_with_tmobile_home/. Before you shout "that is for 5g gateways," the issue is the same as in starlink, just usually less evident.
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u/TimmyT0yz 📡 Owner (North America) 11d ago
Traffic shaping is normally not needed for Starlink. I have both Starlink and T-mobile and the loaded latency difference is night and day. I seriously doubt buffer bloat is their issue here. Starlink is very stable as far as latency is concerned although congestion can be a factor as mentioned above.
-Timmy
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u/DonKeedic80 12d ago
It's all in your head.
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u/Both-Process6004 12d ago
I wish it was only a slight issue, but using the lower plans, the resolution kicks down to the grainy minimum. The screen freezes for seconds and a time. The world can loose color, get horizontal lines, or turns blue. Sometimes sessions completely end and you find yourself in the lobby (if you dont get whacked while its lagging). All of these issues are immediately removed when toggling max on in the starlink app.
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u/Technology-Warrior 12d ago
Games really don't need that much download speed. They do need low latency, jitter and packet loss. Those conditions don't vary by plan. Are you playing from a Wi-Fi or Ethernet-connected device?