In light of the dramatic reduction in prices for equipment and subscription fees from Starlink, I decided to join the ranks of the happy owners of the achievement of mankind.
Why Starlink, you ask? Since our house is located in the mountains, there is exactly one of the available Internet operators: Telekom Slovenije, which can provide a maximum speed of 30 Mbps over a copper cable using an antediluvian ADSL. At the same time, the cost of the Internet from Telekom Slovenije is 43 euros per month, and Starlink - is 60. There were no other special motives for connecting.
So, the ordered kit from Starlink arrived in 4 days. The easiest way was to install the mobile phone application, register in it and place an order. Then the fun began, as a hill rises on one side of the house. As a result, the only option for installing the receiving antenna was only the roof.
Choosing a place to install the antenna is another event: using the section in the mobile application, the optimal place on the roof for its installation was chosen. After the fourth attempt, the place was found.
The antenna consists of two parts: the white part and the mounting leg. The leg was eventually fixed to the roof of the house with four 20x6 self-tapping screws.
It seems that because of a gust of wind, it should not fly away.
The fastener supplied by default is suitable for the same metal tile. For other roof coverings, it makes sense to order mounting accessories that are suitable for your type of roof covering. Or consider options for attaching to the wall of the house, these are also available in the Starlink store itself.
The cable length from the antenna to the router is 75 feet, which gives us almost 23 meters. You can buy 150 feet of cable from the store mentioned if you don't have a standard one. Since there is no normal entry into the house from the roof, for this reason, I had to run it through an unused chimney and drag it to the place where the router was installed. It was another adventure, but the cable length was enough.
Important: There are connectors on both ends of the cable. To pull the cable through any obstacle, you need to make a hole of at least 25 mm in diameter!
The whole puzzle is finally assembled, you can now turn it on and see how it all works. To begin with, once again, I check the absence of obstacles. The first picture is how it was originally. It was clear that the hill to the south was preventing a full signal. The second picture already shows fewer obstacles. It should be noted that even trees growing on a hillside greatly reduce the signal level.
Looking ahead, I can assume that the interference in the south continues to affect the quality of the signal. But I won't destroy the mountain :)
The antenna itself adjusts to the position of the satellite and periodically changes its angle of inclination and horizontal orientation. Plus, the antenna has the option of surface heating to melt snow or ice.
Well, for what the fuss was arranged: the speed of the Internet. Since everything
was collected 5 days ago, the statistics are sparse. What is already clearly visible: periodically the reception speed drops to 30–40 Mbps. Periodically, devices freeze for a couple of seconds due to the length of the ping. This will probably affect the quality of the work of toys such as shooters. So far, this hypothesis has not been tested. On a cloudy and rainy day, the speed did not drop dramatically, much less than 160 Mbps was not observed for the reception. Even on the graph of the Starlink application, you can see that both the speed from the router to the satellite and the speed from the device to the router are subject to significant fluctuations.
On the speed test from Speedtest.net, you can see that the ping to the server is 64 ms, which is quite a lot compared to the same networks running on optics.
And now the features of Starlink in general. Firstly, the router does not have any settings at all in principle. Creating, for example, a separate guest network will not work. Secondly, by default, nothing can be connected to the router. There are no additional connectors. You can separately order an adapter to RJ-45 to connect something else.
Thirdly, if it is necessary to amplify the signal, Starlink can only offer an additional repeater for 173 rubles. In my case, I need three of these additional devices. While I'm waiting for the ordered Ethernet adapter to connect those that are already installed in the house. I will write a separate post on this topic.
Conclusion: in general, Starlink is eligible for purchase and installation as an alternative to low-speed copper cable connection via ADSL. It is important to think in advance about the installation location of the antenna, and router and think about how you can strengthen the signal for other rooms where the base router does not finish.