I have Starlink, too, and concur with your comment.
Chris
Ah, that’s good to know. Nice one, Chris.
I have been using Starlink since October 2022 (here in Rural SW France), having gazed to the fibre on the poles outside the house for over a year but no chance of using it (apparently the other end was not connected yet). It’s been reliable (apart from one or two outages), speed is good and fairly consistent except in extreme weather conditions. The OH now has Orange super fast broadband but I keep the Starlink and it has on occasion kept him online through teams calls etc during power cuts due to us using a small UPS that it’s connected to. People don’t like Elon these days (seems to be trendy) but as a service it’s great. Forgot to say, they have been working hard to ‘tune’ dishes into their specific constellations of satellites and this has significantly reduced the latency, now down to 20ms from 40/50 in the earlier days.
2 Likes
Couldn’t you just connect the broadband router to the UPS and save the Starlink cost?
We could except the orange fibre router is on the opposite side of the house to where the starlink and satellite connectivity comes into the house. The cupboard where starlink comes in also houses the alarm hub, Phillips hue Hub and other VPN, so it’s the best place for it to provide the network connectivity.
I have some concerns about the proliferation of starlink satellites, space junk, interference with radio astronomy and about herr Musk (which is nothing to do with fashion or fads). It seems an ideal technology for those of us who have houses in remote locations and only live there part time, but I’m not convinced that’s a good enough reason. Having said that, since they are unlikely to go away for some time as they do provide an essential service in some places then to not use them might seem pointless.
It’s a good enough reason for me, and I fully support the technology.
1 Like
I’m not dogmatic about it, but it’s also important to express a broader view.
Many thanks for all the informed replies, this is a great thread!
I think I’ve heard enough, especially those with “rural” in the topic as we’re in the Auvergne where internet is patchy at best, a new mast has helped things massively in the last few years, but it’s pretty temperamental, especially if the weather is iffy, and I can’t have that when trying to jump on Zoom calls!
Okay, few more questions!
Can I buy the kit in the UK and take it out to France? Only as I can see Curry’s have an offer!
Also, I may need a few weeks to decide where (and the doing) best to install the main kit outside, so my point is, can I simply have it on a temporary pole outside my office pointing to the sky and just bring it in each night whilst I’m faffing about on that location decision, I think I can?
Cheers,
David.
I think Starlink will only supply to the address specified - the contract is quite specific in this - the price varies, too, from location to location. They don’t approve or support equipment installed elsewhere, other than the billing address, so far as I know - I may be wrong.
Chris
1 Like
Also, the main kit, outside, consists of the antenna only - everything else is inside - receiver and router, if you use one.
Chris
1 Like
That’s great, the plan is coming together.
Last question, router is likely to be one end of the house where I tend to work, but the main family room is the other end, there are some pretty thick stone walls, so can anybody recommend any network extenders, those ones you plug into the wall, assume you can use them in France!
Or any other suggestions to spread the ensure wide spread wifi in this old property.
Cheers,
David.
I use a Netgear Orbi mesh system in my stone house - one router and two satellites. These work well, but are not cheap. There are other similar Mesh systems around, for less. Wifi 6, and all wirelessly connected. If you have the second generation Starlink dish and router, you’ll need the cable adaptor accessory, available From them, to connect to any third party mesh router.
Chris
Yes, you can use them in France. There called CPL (courant porteur en ligne). Just check whether your house is triphasé as they’d need to be on the same phase.
However, as this is for your work and your bandwidth may therefore be a consideration, an alternative may be to invest in a mesh wifi system instead.
The Asus ZenWifi is highly recommended but not cheap. The TP Link Déco is much more affordable and may be sufficient for your needs.
I use Devolo in the house and TP Deco in our apartment. I have TP Tapo stuff everywhere too and I think it’s excellent kit.
Despite the Devolo still working well, I should relook at the three phase issue, with the installation of the car chargers I think there may have been a bit of rebalancing.
Depending on cost, I think I’d go the mesh route… I used to have a Devolo setup with a NetGear router box at the far end as a wifi hotspot but it wasn’t reliable (this is in a UK house BTW).
So I splurged on a Netgear Orbi mesh setup (now 8 years old I was surprised to discover!) and it’s worked perfectly ever since.
Ideally on the same circuit.
2 Likes
They are mesh too. We have five of them around the house and they cover a very reasonable distance outdoors too. Expensive initially but rock solid in terms of performance. I first used line based Devolos in 2011 and then upgraded to mesh in 2021. No regrets.
Ok I didn’t know that - when I had Devolo kit some years ago I think they only made the units that connect via the mains cables.
1 Like
Great, I like the look of the TP Link Deco, but is it compatible with the Starlink routers?