For help, advice and discussion about stuff not related to aviation. Play nice: no religion, no politics and no axe grinding please.
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By riverrock
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1868309
Before fibre optic cable, Uni of St Andrews had internet supplied to the whole campus via a microwave link, sitting on top of the library, to a communications tower on the top of a nearby hill.
In winter, the signal would often degrade, but the IT department really struggled to work out what was wrong. Alignment was right, the transceiver dish was clean. It would seem to work better for a few days after checking it, then would intermittently degrade again, seemingly at random.
This apparently went on for some time, until one of the engineers was standing on the ground, looking at it perplexed, and noticed the seagulls.
Of course, they disappeared every time someone went to check it, before they would gather in front of it again some time later to warm themselves up, by getting internally cooked by the antenna.

Problem was solved by putting it on a pole.
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By Colonel Panic
#1883392
My "mid to late 2021" Starlink order placed in June came up tonight, so have just pushed the button; almost for sure I'll get the "old" v1 circular dish, but Hey Ho! - at least it can be plugged in to an existing router which, AIUI, the v2 squarial can't be (yet).

Quick Question re: mounting it; can I connect it to my network via a Unifi 8 port switch, or does it have to go straight in to either my USG or Draytek Vigor 130 modem?

If via a switch is OK, the most convenient switch is in the garage and that is connected via "100 FDX" as I use an ethernet splitter; will 100mbps plus internet speeds be restricted by this limited connection? I am not sure how LAN speeds compare to the claimed Starlink speeds.

You can expect to see download speeds between 100 Mb/s and 200 Mb/s, and latency as low as 20ms in most locations.


TIA
By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1883438
We have fibre to the house and can have any speed up to 1 gigabit per sec. 50 mb in both directions for £29 pcm unlimited works for us.

The earlier "pigeon" post reminded me that way back in the 1980s we ran the government data network and we had microwave links up Western side of the country through the Lake District and we could tell what the weather was doing by the error rate on the link :-)
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By riverrock
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1883518
Colonel Panic wrote:My "mid to late 2021" Starlink order placed in June came up tonight, so have just pushed the button; almost for sure I'll get the "old" v1 circular dish, but Hey Ho! - at least it can be plugged in to an existing router which, AIUI, the v2 squarial can't be (yet).

Quick Question re: mounting it; can I connect it to my network via a Unifi 8 port switch, or does it have to go straight in to either my USG or Draytek Vigor 130 modem?

If via a switch is OK, the most convenient switch is in the garage and that is connected via "100 FDX" as I use an ethernet splitter; will 100mbps plus internet speeds be restricted by this limited connection? I am not sure how LAN speeds compare to the claimed Starlink speeds.

You can expect to see download speeds between 100 Mb/s and 200 Mb/s, and latency as low as 20ms in most locations.


TIA

I would assume that the starlink router will replace your modem, unless you are keeping your modem as a backup connection (I've not checked if that is an option on that modem)? So it should plug into any switch, and it would expect to be the DHCP server (etc) on the network. If you get the square version, I believe you can buy an adapter to allow it to plug into a wider network.
By Colonel Panic
#1883550
Thanks @riverrock ; I will keep my FTTC connection going for now - possibly forever? - so I would want to keep my Draytek modem for that. All of the network "stuff", like DHCP, is handled by the Unifi USG, so I had hoped that I could just plug the round Dish directly in to my network via a switch and not bother with the Starlink router at all. Some more thinking at this end is required ...
User avatar
By stevelup
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1883563
You can get rid of the Ethernet splitter and put a small managed switch at each end - you can then pass gigabit down the same cable.

If you use your splitter, you'll be limiting your Starlink connection to 100Mbps and it's capable of much more - I typically get well in excess of 350Mbps.

Can't you just put Dishy somewhere else? I mean, it can go anywhere it can see the sky...

You absolutely cannot do what you're wanting to do with the USG. It's all or nothing - you either have FTTC or Starlink. It can't do anything at all interesting with multiple WAN ports other than failover.

As nice as it is for easy setup etc., it's really inconvenient how limited the WAN side is.

If you want to keep the USG and your FTTC and Starlink together, you'll need to put another small router in front of it.
By Colonel Panic
#1883571
stevelup wrote:You can get rid of the Ethernet splitter and put a small managed switch at each end - you can then pass gigabit down the same cable.

Hmm, I'm confused as I have a Unifi 8 port (managed?) switch at each end now, but the connection is shown as "CONNECTED 100 FDX"; maybe I have set this up incorrectly within the Unifi CP.

Can't you just put Dishy somewhere else? I mean, it can go anywhere it can see the sky...

I could, but aesthetics are important to me, and in an ideal world I'd want to "hide" the dish. I will experiment with reception nearer to / on the house when the dish arrives.

If you want to keep the USG and your FTTC and Starlink together, you'll need to put another small router in front of it.

I certainly think I want to run both the FTTC & Starlink at the same time (FTTC gets me a static IP and a reliable fallback); what small router might fit the bill for this? Maybe dig out my old Draytek Vigor 2760 again? I can't recall exactly why I swapped it out for the slightly stripped down Vigor 130 a year or so ago. Or more than happy to get something else as required.

As always, TIA :oops:
User avatar
By townleyc
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1883916
stevelup wrote:You can get rid of the Ethernet splitter and put a small managed switch at each end - you can then pass gigabit down the same cable.

If you use your splitter, you'll be limiting your Starlink connection to 100Mbps and it's capable of much more - I typically get well in excess of 350Mbps.

Can't you just put Dishy somewhere else? I mean, it can go anywhere it can see the sky...

You absolutely cannot do what you're wanting to do with the USG. It's all or nothing - you either have FTTC or Starlink. It can't do anything at all interesting with multiple WAN ports other than failover.

As nice as it is for easy setup etc., it's really inconvenient how limited the WAN side is.

If you want to keep the USG and your FTTC and Starlink together, you'll need to put another small router in front of it.


Can you not connect the Starlink box to the Draytek router, and use both from there?

KE
User avatar
By stevelup
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1883963
They're in two different locations and there's just a single cat5 linking them.

And there are client devices in the location CP wants to install dishy.

That's why I'm suggesting trunking dishy back to the main location using a VLAN.

Would certainly be easier to just put dishy somewhere near the main location at least for the initial testing.
By Colonel Panic
#1884786
A circular Dishy arrived yesterday and I have put it in the middle of the lawn for now. Plugging it in to the Starlink router (via the PoE brick), and it worked fine via a direct wi-fi connection to my iPhone.

I have now unplugged the Starlink router and connected the lead to the WAN2 port of my USG, and it looks like that has provisioned and is working, inasmuch as WAN1 has my static IP address and WAN2 has a Starlink IP (in the range 100.68.xxx.yyy).

Following this video ...

... he then talks about fallover & load balancing at Time 07:30 ...

What I would like to happen is that Starlink becomes my "main" internet feed, and my PlusNet FTTC becomes _both_ a failover _and_ a way to have remote access to my LAN using the static IP that PlusNet have given me (& Starlink can't). How might I best configure this? Do I _need_ to swap the two WAN cables over so that Starlink goes to WAN1 and PlusNet goes to WAN2? And then perhaps load balance so that (guessing here) 95% goes via Starlink and 5% via PlusNet?

TIA
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