I got Starlink internet at home. I wish I knew these 6 details first
I recently moved to a much more rural area, so obtaining the configuration of Starlink was one of my main priorities. My region is a dead area on the internet where you could get a little 4G on a neighboring hill, but that’s it. No cell phone for telephone calls, and the best I can hope for from a fixed connection is 3 Mbps. As a modern man with a modern family full of modern devices, I need quick internet – so I prepared Starlink even before the beds of my children.
It worked as well. At first, I heard a bunch of buzzing noise that I was not Caiting, but this kind of spool groan is apparently quite typical. A few minutes later, I was online!
But it was not a smooth navigation. Having Starlink is not like having internet fibers, and I met several surprises along the way. Here are all the things I would have liked to know before getting Starlink at home.
Starlink is better when he went up
As soon as I worked Starlink, I sent a message to my friends by saying “Internet of space installed!” With the following image:
Jon Martindale / Foundry
That’s right. Starlink’s dish is supported in the cardboard box in which he entered, sitting on certain steps leading to a lawn that has never been designed as his permanent house. It worked well enough for the first night, but it is as long as I would like it to be there.
It turns out that Starlink works better when the dish is mounted in a place that is free from obstructions And Oriented in a way that maintains a connection with as many starlink satellites as possible. The Starlink application makes the whole process quite simple, with a dynamic adjustment of graphics to the screen that help you rotate the dish in its optimal face. My performance mounted on the ground was (obviously) bad, so taking the time to put it in place.
But I am not a handyman. I can build a PC, of course, but the hoof of a ladder and the drilling in red brick is not something that I am super comfortable – so I brought an installation program of the local TV antenna.
In a few hours, he had the dish mounted by my roof. The performance went from 50 Mbps to nearly 200 Mbps downstream. A huge improvement with better coverage, less likely than someone walks in my courtyard and steals the dish, and no chance that my children roll on the cable. He’s a win-win.
… But Starlink can be ugly when he went up
Personally, I think the starlink dish looks pretty cool. This is a unique view compared to all these rounded satellite dishes that you have probably seen in urban centers in recent decades. It’s more modern.
Jon Martindale / Foundry
But the makeshift pipe assembly system I used? Eh, that leaves a lot to be desired. There are more attractive first party supports that you can buy at an additional cost, but a giant pipe on an unpainted splint is cheaper. Unfortunately, my wife is even less a fan.
It’s not like I am I’m going to look at him a lot up there. But if the exterior aesthetic of your house is important for you, it is probably worth spending a little more time (and money) than making it go up in a way that gives you good performance while looking good.
Starlink download speed is still lacking
An aspect of the internet fiber which is easy to neglect is that it is not only fast for downloads– You can get download speeds that are often as fast as your download speeds. This does a quick job when downloading working documents, personal photos, YouTube videos, etc.
Jon Martindale / Foundry
As I said at the beginning, however, Starlink is not a fiber. I receive around 150 Mbps of average download speed with peaks up to 300 Mbps, but my download speeds are definitely slower. I saw some people publish screenshots of 50 Mbps download, but I have not yet seen mine break 30 Mbps. More often than not, it is closer to 15 Mbps.
To be fair, 15 Mbps, it’s a lot to send photos on messaging applications and broadcast my webcam during D&D sessions, but it’s much more visible when I try to send long videos to friends and family. And I do not think I would have far from trying to broadcast my game on Twitch to something more than 1080p with this type of internet.
The Starlink router is disappointing
This can look like a humblebrag, but the Gen 3 Starlink Gen 3 router – a 6 -band Wi -Fi Wi -Fi router with a claimed blanket of just over 3000 square feet – was not enough for my new house. The truth is that my place is about half of this, but I still had trouble obtaining a signal everywhere due to the walls, obstructions and other sources of interference.
Can I have placed the Starlink router in a better place for better coverage? Yeah, maybe. And there is even a mesh system that I could have used if I was married to Starlink equipment.
TP
But, fortunately, I have a much best TP-Link Archer GE800 Wi-Fi 7 router, so I didn’t need to bother. It is a complete exaggeration for a civilian player like me, but it offers fantastic cover in my house with bancal walls, and I already know my way from the last year of faithful operating. (Press the reasons for which you should get your own router.)
Starlink accessories to make the bridging process super simple, however. Just plug them into, pass the router in bypass mode in the application, from a restart of the quick router, and it was good to go in less than 10 minutes.
There is no planning for a world failure
Two days after mounting my starlink dish, my service fell. My wife had just left the house and closed the door during the end of my PC’s connection, so I thought it was her fault. Maybe she spilled the mount by slamming the door too hard?
But it turns out that it was nothing so harmless. In fact, the entire global Starlink network had dropped.
Jon Martindale / Foundry
I managed to send sms to a few friends from my group of board games to see if they could send me advice on how to make it work again. They sent me Reddit Screengrabs, Twitter, Downdector. This confirmed that it was not only my router or my dish. Indeed, all Starlink had broken down.
Apparently, something as it has happened several times before, but I have also had friends who have had Starlink for years who claim that there have never been any failures on this subject. So I don’t expect it to happen up soon, but technology is technology and it can fail. Even the magic of internet space can stop working from time to time.
Your friends will judge you for Starlink
Since November 2024, people around the world protest against Elon Musk and those who support him. Many Tesla owners have added stickers to their vehicles, promising that their teslas have been purchased Before The CEO has gone mad, everything to push potential attacks.
It was not so bad for Starlink, but I TO DO I have to adopt friends who ask me if I could not have found another way to connect. Indeed, if I could have it, I would have done it! But while Amazon works on the Kuiper project, its own network of large -band satellites on the ground, it is still years to be fully operational and can take even more time to catch up with Starlink. In addition, with regard to billionaire CEOs, it is more a lateral decision than everything that goes from Musk to Bezos.
There are other suppliers with geostationary satellites who may have a bandwidth, but the latency is poor. Eutelsat could be a legitimate option for me at some point, but not yet. In the end, the performance and viability of Starlink prevail over my own doubts about the support of a company linked to musks. Until it changes, I will have to swallow my pride and the condescension of a few friends.
Starlink: incredible tech, erroneous execution
We cannot deny it: Starlink looks like the kind of Jets-Era Future Tech that has always captured me. It works, it is almost impeccable and it does not have many real competitors. It’s really cool that I receive super fast and low latency in a place that is barely online.
But I would have liked to pay more for a more beautiful and less obvious mounting system. I would have liked to have a better backup solution in place in case it takes place. I hope that it is not linked to one of the most odious CEOs in the world.
For the moment, this is the best solution available and a joy to use. It is difficult not to see how it could be even better, however.
