Starlink engineering teams have been focused on improving the performance of our network with the goal of delivering a service with stable 20 millisecond (ms) median latency and minimal packet loss.

Over the past month, we have meaningfully reduced median and worst-case latency for users around the world. In the United States alone, we reduced median latency by more than 30%, from 48.5ms to 33ms during hours of peak usage. Worst-case peak hour latency (p99) has dropped by over 60%, from over 150ms to less than 65ms. Outside of the United States, we have also reduced median latency by up to 25% and worst-case latencies by up to 35%

To measure Starlink’s latency, we collect anonymized measurements from millions of Starlink routers every 15 seconds. These 15 second average latencies are then used to calculate the median and worstcase latency. The median (50th percentile or p50) refers to the point where half of the latency measurements are below that number and the other half are above. The worst-case latency, or 99th percentile, is defined as the place where 99% of measurements are better than the point. While we look at data from all points in time, we specifically focus on the performance during hours of peak usage (6-9 PM local time), when the largest number of people are using Starlink, and the network is under the most load