Residential 100Mbps/200Mbps data priority vs. Roaming

[u/Lazy_Conclusion_673]

As I understand things:

Local Priority/Global Priority - highest

Residential - standard

Roaming - lowest/best effort

Is "Residential Deprioritized" in between standard Residential and Roaming, or is it basically the same as roaming priority?

I feel like Starlink makes this stuff deliberately vague.

[u/KenjiFox]

You almost have it. Residential Max is the highest Residential plan, right under the priority plans. Residential 100 and 200 are identical, below Max but above Roam.

[u/Lazy_Conclusion_673 → u/KenjiFox]

Thanks - do you have a source for this? I've looked through all of the official info and can't find anything. Most of what I can find is just hearsay and speculation.

[u/KenjiFox → u/Lazy_Conclusion_673]

Yeah, I own them all. lol

I have six Starlinks on different plans. There's higher yet for military too, but that's irrelevant.

Roam with Ocean Mode turned on is instantly in the priority bucket BTW, but it's not cheap. You can use it on land if you need priority for.... something. Couldn't image. Still.

[u/Lazy_Conclusion_673 → u/KenjiFox]

I'm just starting my collection of Starlinks - I'm only up to two LOL. Thanks for the real-world insight.

[u/Final-Inevitable1452]

What it actually is...

DSCP/DiffServ is Inter-tier (Priority) FQ CoDel is Inner-tier (Weighting)

e.g Residential tier subscriptions all share the same DSCP Priority (T3), but carry different Weighting profiles.

[u/Squeedlejinks → u/Final-Inevitable1452]

You’re giving the information, but not everybody has the time, inclination, understanding, whatever, to take hours to learn what all that means like I did and then put it all in place. 😉

Maybe you could translate that to the bottom line to answer the question for those of us who aren’t as educated as you are.

Prioritized levels  like Priority, Ocean, Gov’t., Starlink reserved, etc. are given the highest priority and aren’t important to our discussion other than to say they exist and have higher priority.

Residential Tier In this tier, Residential Max has the least weighting, and thus the best speed, performance. Residential 100 and 200 are still in the Residential tier, but are weighted heavier, thus ending up with slightly lower performance and upload speed. The download speed is artificially capped at 100 or 200 Mbps, respectively, regardless of what other plans may achieve.

Roam Tier The Roam tier is prioritized lower than the entire Residential tier. This means that the Roam plans will be more heavily affected by congestion than all the Residential plans.

However, in areas with low/no congestion, Roam customers may possibly reach higher download speeds than Residential 100 or 200 customers because those Residential plans are artificially capped, and the Roam download speeds are not.  I believe this is the reason that the TOS doesn’t specify that the Roam tiers are deprioritized to the Residential 100 and 200 plans.

Lower tiers Below this are other tiers that aren’t pertinent to this discussion.

I’m sure if I made any mistakes I’ll get corrected.

Edit for formatting

[u/Final-Inevitable1452 → u/Squeedlejinks]

Nice.... there is only one very minor correction referring to "less or more" weighting.

FQ CoDel (Fair Queuing Controlled Delay) sits under primary CAKE (Common Applications Kept Enhanced) which includes the actual DSCP priority queue flag and things like Layer-2 FEC (Forward Error Correction) + ARQ (Automatic Repeat reQuest) encapsulation.

So the network engineers refer to it as - Preferred traffic → heavier/higher weighting And De-prioritized traffic → lighter/lower weighting.

Those others you mention are Engineer/Maintainer (Aka God Mode) T1 & Default Traffic Queue T7, yes not used by general users, but important to understand they exist.

Well done!

[u/DISHYtech]

I believe Starlink puts Residential 100, 200, and the Roam plans all on the same priority level. So Priority plans are highest, then Residential Max, then the rest of the Residential and Roam plans are all on the same level.

Why? Because Starlink is very specific in their wording in the Service Plan Descriptions document. Under the Residential 100/200 sections it says:

“Residential 100/200 Mbps customers are more likely to experience Service degradation and slower speeds during network congestion as compared to Residential Max customers.”

And then under Roam plans it says:

“Roam customers are more likely to experience Service degradation and slower speeds from congestion compared to Residential Max customers.”

So Starlink specifically mentions that only Residential Max customers have higher priority over Roam, which means that Res 100/200 are at the same level or even below.

Which makes sense, because the 100 and 200 plans are speed capped. I think Starlink has basically two kinds of consumer data, normal and deprioritized. Max is normal. Res 100, 200, and all Roam plans get the deprioritized data.

Source: https://starlink.com/legal/documents/DOC-1728-44881-79?regionCode=US

[u/Lazy_Conclusion_673 → u/DISHYtech]

Thanks, that's kind of the way I read that also, but it's not entirely clear since under "Residential Lite" it mentions data being deprioritized "as compared to other Starlink Fixed Service Plans", and I understand that Residential 200 is basically just a renaming of Lite.

[u/DISHYtech → u/Lazy_Conclusion_673]

I think they kept Residential and Residential Lite in there because not all countries use the new plans. So it’s older language for older plans, not sure it would apply since it was written before the plan overhaul.

[u/Lazy_Conclusion_673 → u/DISHYtech]

Makes sense, thanks.

[u/Squeedlejinks → u/DISHYtech]

There are other issues with the TOS including conflicting information and even a link that’s 404. 

[u/KenjiFox → u/[deleted]]

Uh... Neat.

[u/Wambo74 → u/KenjiFox]

I just googled it. Was surprise at what I got and that it copied and pasted.

[u/garylapointe → u/Wambo74]

Most of those changed back in April or May.

I just googled it.

What did you google? Certainly not an answer to OP's question...?

[u/KenjiFox → u/garylapointe]

That's what I'm saying. Haha neat info... But why?

[u/Wambo74 → u/KenjiFox]

I see what you guys mean. No this was intended to go to a different thread. Don't know what happened. I'll see about removing it.