Did Starlink Get Me Banned? Shared IPs and AI Rate Limits
Did Starlink Get Me Banned? Shared IPs and AI Rate Limits
You are running an AI agent, everything works fine for a week, then suddenly you hit rate limits or get your account flagged. You did not change anything. The problem might be your internet connection.
The Shared IP Problem
Starlink, most cellular hotspots, and some ISPs use carrier-grade NAT. That means hundreds or thousands of users share the same public IP address. When an AI service sees 500 requests from one IP, it does not know those are 500 different people - it looks like one person hammering the API.
This is especially bad with AI services that have aggressive rate limiting. OpenAI, Anthropic, and others track usage by IP in addition to API key. If someone else on your Starlink terminal is running heavy API traffic, your requests get caught in the same rate limit bucket.
How to Tell If This Is Your Problem
Check your public IP at a site like whatismyip.com. If it changes frequently or matches IPs that other Starlink users report, you are on a shared address. You can also check if the same API calls work fine on a different network - if they do, the IP is the issue.
Workarounds That Actually Help
The most reliable fix is to use the API directly with your own API key instead of going through a web interface. API keys are tracked per-account, not per-IP, so shared IPs matter less.
If you must use web interfaces, a VPN with a dedicated IP can help. The key word is "dedicated" - a regular VPN puts you on another shared IP, which might be worse. Some VPN providers offer static IP add-ons for a few dollars per month.
For local AI agents, running models locally through Ollama eliminates the problem entirely. No API calls means no rate limits.
Fazm is an open source macOS AI agent. Open source on GitHub.