I not too long ago moved to a way more rural space, so getting Starlink arrange was one in every of my prime priorities. My space is an web lifeless zone the place you would possibly get a little bit of 4G on a close-by hill, however that’s about it. No mobile for telephone calls, and the very best I can hope from a landline connection is 3 Mbps. As a contemporary man with a contemporary household full of contemporary gadgets, I would like quick web—so I readied Starlink even earlier than my youngsters’ beds.
It labored fairly nicely, too. At first I heard a bunch of buzzing noises that I used to be not anticipating, however that type of coil whine is outwardly fairly typical. A couple of minutes later, I used to be on-line!
But it wasn’t all clean crusing. Having Starlink isn’t like having fiber web, and I bumped into a number of surprises alongside the way in which. Here are all of the issues I want I’d identified earlier than getting Starlink at residence.
Starlink is healthier when it’s mounted
As quickly as I had Starlink working, I messaged my associates saying “Space internet installed!” with the next picture:
Jon Martindale / Foundry
That’s proper. The Starlink dish is propped up within the cardboard field it got here in, sitting on some steps resulting in a garden that was by no means supposed as its everlasting residence. It labored nicely sufficient for the primary night time—however that’s so long as I’d ever need it to be there.
Turns out, Starlink performs finest when the dish is mounted in a location that’s free from obstructions and oriented in a means that maintains a reference to as many Starlink satellites as potential. The Starlink app makes the entire course of fairly easy, with dynamically adjusting on-screen graphics that enable you to rotate the dish into its optimum going through. My ground-mounted efficiency was (clearly) unhealthy, so taking the time to get it into a greater place was worthwhile.
But I’m no handyman. I can construct a PC, certain, however hoofing up a ladder and drilling into pink brick isn’t one thing I’m tremendous comfy doing—so I introduced in a neighborhood skilled TV antenna installer.
Within a few hours, he had the dish mounted by my roof. Performance jumped from 50 Mbps to just about 200 Mbps downstream. An enormous enchancment with higher protection, much less probability of somebody simply wandering into my yard and stealing the dish, and no probability of my youngsters driving their bikes over the cable. That’s a win-win-win.
…however Starlink may be ugly when mounted
Personally, I feel the Starlink dish appears to be like fairly cool. Its a singular sight in comparison with all these rounded satellite tv for pc dishes that you simply’ve possible seen in city facilities over the past a number of a long time. It’s extra trendy.
Jon Martindale / Foundry
But the makeshift pipe-mount system I used? Eh, that leaves lots to be desired. There are extra enticing first-party mounts you should buy at extra price, however an enormous pipe on an unpainted brace is cheaper. Unfortunately, my spouse is even much less of a fan.
It’s not like I’m going to be taking a look at it a lot up there. But if the outside aesthetics of your private home are necessary to you, it’s in all probability value spending some extra time (and cash) than I did to get it mounted in a means that will get you nice efficiency whereas trying good.
Starlink’s add pace continues to be missing
One side of fiber web that’s simple to miss is that it isn’t simply blazingly quick for downloads—you will get add speeds which are typically as quick as your obtain speeds. That makes fast work when importing work paperwork, private images, YouTube movies, and extra.
Jon Martindale / Foundry
As I mentioned initially, although, Starlink isn’t fiber. I’m getting round 150 Mbps common obtain speeds with peaks as much as 300 Mbps, however my add speeds are decidedly slower. I’ve seen some people post screenshots of 50 Mbps uploads, however I’ve but to see mine break 30 Mbps. More typically than not, it’s nearer to 15 Mbps.
To be honest, 15 Mbps is loads for sending images over messaging apps and streaming my webcam throughout Discord D&D periods, but it surely’s much more noticeable after I’m attempting to ship lengthy movies to family and friends. And I don’t assume I’d get far attempting to livestream my gaming on Twitch at something over 1080p with this sort of web.
Starlink’s router is underwhelming
This would possibly sound like a humblebrag, however the bundled Starlink Gen 3 router—a tri-band Wi-Fi 6 router with a claimed protection of simply over 3,000 sq. toes—wasn’t sufficient for my new home. Truth is, my place is about half of that, but I nonetheless had bother getting sign in every single place resulting from partitions, obstructions, and different sources of interference.
Could I’ve place the Starlink router in a greater spot for higher protection? Yeah, perhaps. And there’s even a mesh system I might’ve employed if I used to be married to Starlink’s {hardware}.
TP-Link
But, thankfully, I’ve a a lot better TP-Link Archer GE800 Wi-Fi 7 router, so I didn’t must trouble. It’s full overkill for a civilian gamer like myself, but it surely does provide implausible protection in my wonky-walled residence, and I already know my means round it from the previous yr of devoted operation. (Lean extra about why you should get your own router.)
Props to Starlink for making the bridging course of tremendous easy, although. Just plug them in, change the router to bypass mode within the app, a fast router reboot, and it was good to go in lower than 10 minutes.
There’s no planning for a world outage
Two days after I received my Starlink dish mounted, my service went down. My spouse had simply left the home and closed the door the very second my PC connection dropped, so I believed it was her fault. Maybe she knocked the mount free by slamming the door too onerous?
But because it seems, it wasn’t something so innocuous. In truth, the entire global Starlink network had gone down.
Jon Martindale / Foundry
I managed to textual content a couple of associates from my board recreation group to see if they may ship me tips about easy methods to get it working once more. They despatched me screengrabs from Reddit, Twitter, DownDetector. It confirmed that it wasn’t simply my router or my dish. Indeed, all of Starlink was down.
Apparently one thing like this has occurred a couple of instances earlier than, however I even have associates who’ve had Starlink for years who declare there’s by no means been any outages so far as they know. So I’m not anticipating this to occur once more anytime quickly, however tech is tech and it could possibly fail. Even the magic of house web can cease working once in a while.
Your associates will choose you for Starlink
Since November 2024, individuals around the globe have been protesting in opposition to Elon Musk and people who assist him. Many Tesla house owners have added stickers to their automobiles, promising that their Teslas had been purchased earlier than the CEO went loopy, all to fend off potential assaults.
It hasn’t gotten that unhealthy for Starlink, however I do should put up with associates who ask if I couldn’t have discovered one other technique to get on-line. Indeed, if I might have, I’d have! But whereas Amazon is engaged on Project Kuiper, its personal low-Earth-orbit community of broadband satellites, that’s nonetheless years away from being absolutely operational and will take even longer to catch as much as Starlink. Plus, so far as billionaire CEOs go, it’s extra a lateral transfer than something to go from Musk to Bezos.
There are different suppliers with geostationary satellites that may have bandwidth, however the latency is poor. Eutelsat is likely to be a official possibility for me sooner or later, however not but. Ultimately, the efficiency and viability of Starlink trumps my very own misgivings about supporting a Musk-related firm. Until that modifications, I’ll should swallow my satisfaction and the condescension of some associates.
Starlink: Incredible tech, flawed execution
There’s no denying it: Starlink feels just like the form of Jetsons-era future tech that has at all times captivated me. It simply works, it’s almost flawless, and it doesn’t have many actual rivals. It’s actually cool that I get super-fast, low-latency web in a spot that’s in any other case barely on-line.
But I want I’d paid extra for a better-looking, less-obvious mounting system. I want I’d had a greater backup answer in place simply in case it went down. I want it wasn’t tied to some of the odious CEOs on the earth.
For now, it’s the very best answer accessible and a pleasure to make use of. It’s onerous to not see the way it could possibly be even higher, although.