Starlink weekend

I spent last weekend putting up new Starlink internet dish. As some of you know we recently moved to Vermont. Well Vermont (at least the area around us) has pretty horrible cell phone coverage with all the hills and also poor internet service as much of the area is still rural.

We get zero cell phone coverage at our house, from ANY provider. The only internet available is through a single provider, Consolidated Communications, and it is pretty lame compared to what we are used to. They promised we would be able to get 25MB download and 2MB upload speeds when we called to check before purchasing home. Now that we're here, and after waiting a month to get it turned on (even though previous owner had it), we find that it only provides ADSL 12MB down and less than 1MB upload speeds. Not ideal for me working remote or uploading photo's and video's to HIVE! Especially not with all the connected devices we have, streaming TV, etc. Still fighting with them now two months later to upgrade their switch at the main box so we can get the promised speeds.

So, luckily, before we moved, I looked into Elon Musk Starlink Beta program. It's not scheduled to be fully in production until Q4 of this year sometime, but has already proven benefit. It is available in some areas for early Beta users. For those not aware, this is NOT like the old Hughes and older satellites with horrible (150ms) latency and performance, this is new cool low orbit technology with reasonable 35-60ms latency times.

Components are simple, Here is the Power over Ethernet box, and the small, vertical white/gray Starlink router. It includes a single ethernet out port if you want to connect your own wireless router, but so far the internal wireless router is working pretty well with more power and range than I expected. All I had to do was untangle cable plug it into the AC power, then plug in the two color coded cables shown here. It found it's satellites and was working in about 3 minutes.

The initial setup and install was a breeze, I put it in the yard, plugged it in and before I could even finish untangling the cable, I had internet up and working. Fantastic! Later, I found the bad news, our yard is surrounded by tall trees, and the tree tops were partially obstructing the signal, causing a brief interruption every 9 minutes or so. This made video conference calls a bit buggy and jittery, not good when that's how I spend most of my days. But at least it was up and working instead of being down and isolated for an entire month waiting on "the Cable guys".

There is even a cool little app on the Starlink phone app or in the router that actually displays your obstructions and connectivity history. You can download the phone app for free and actually test your area ahead of time with your phone. If you look close, you can see the little red in the treetops that were my initial obstructions in the yard location.

So, this past weekend I spent putting the Dish up on the roof. They sell several mount styles for this. I chose a movable mount that does not require drilling holes or screwing into my roof. One reason is because I wasn't sure where I would need to mount it to be sure that all the trees were clear from obstructing the signal, and two, I am still waiting to see if it can really melt the sometimes large snows we will be getting. The roof is very steep and there's no (reasonable) way of climbing it in the winter to brush snow off if needed. The satellite dish (or dishy as they like to call it) supposedly has a heating element that will melt the snow. We'll see. On to the install.

Here is the nice little rubber mat they provide to protect the roof and cushion the mount.

This mount I bought just folds over the roof peak and locks in with a lever.

Then the hard part, hauling the 20lb bricks up the roof to hold the mount in place (I used a backpack and did 2 at a time cause I hate climbing ladders). Then it was easy hauling up the dishy and just popping it into the designed hole. They actually provided a special little backpack for the dishy. Luckily I made it through the whole thing without falling off the roof like GDog or was it GBird? @galenkp (had to rub it in lol).

Anyway so after climbing the ladder and dragging the mount up there, placing it and then also dragging up four 20lb paving bricks to hold it down, the dish is now mounted on the roof and no obstructions. It is performing much better. I still get the occasional jitter, or interruption (expected because it's still beta), but overall VERY happy with the added connectivity. Bandwidth speeds are now typically 120MB-150MB download with 10MB-15MB upload speeds.

So much better speeds now, and great ping/latency times averaging 39-51ms with 120-160MB down and 10-20MB upload speeds.

I'll keep the DSL to have as a backup for internet and phone, and to help split the usage. I currently have my work laptop connected to the DSL and everything else to the Starlink with more bandwidth. If one connection fails, my work laptop and personal laptop and cell phones will automatically switch to the other connection. Works pretty seamlessly. The cell phones we have are able to send/receive calls across the wireless internet connection so that is covered now too.

It's been quite the adventure. bottom line is that I'm very pleased with the Starlink for this location. Not as stable (yet) as a good cable connection, and certainly no comparison to the lucky folks with fiber available, but fantastic for remote locations like ours.