It's incredible how they went far as launching satellites to provide internet worldwide and then they screw it with a shitty router

The Ethernet port is stored in the balls.

That Thinkpad is probably equipped with 802.11n Wi-Fi, 50 Mbps is quite fast. Starlink router is at least 802.11ac or ax (WiFi 6), that's why your phone is considerably faster.

they went stupidly hardcore on minimalism, that manual is hilarious

5:40 The indicator light on the bottom is GOOD design IMO. How many rooms are annoyingly illuminated at night by lights that are constantly on? If you have a problem, you can check. No need for light indicator 99.9% of the time.

You're right. Even if you design your router for remote location you need to at least add a WAN port for cascading to an actual router or meshing system. The absence of a LAN port makes no sense. I guess the design team has focused more on people going hiking and in remote locations occasionally rather than actual human being living remote.

I did the research out of curiosity and the documentation around Starlink is truly awful. I cannot confirm this since Starlink is not available where I live, but you can factory reset the router by putting the antenna/dish in "stow mode" and then unplugging the router from the power socket (AC) and keeping that way for at least 20 min -- after that you can plug into power again the set the WiFi SSID and password. The "stow mode", to my understand, is a way to fold the antenna into it's original position so you can transport it. I've also saw something about accessing the "admin page" that the app would give you by using the internal address "192.168.100.1/support" -- on this YT video (v=lA5XtyctSPA).

Thanks for the info, Kenny.

Soylink good. Roads bad.

I am so proud of Luke. Now he can start to backup github/youtube onto his hdd

Amazing that they did the hardest thing and somehow failed at basically just providing a modem

The ethernet port was actually removed. The earlier Starlink models with the circular disk had an ethernet port on the router. The model where its shaped like a square doesn't have an ethernet port. With the square one you have to buy an adapter off their store separately.

Luke could in theory install an android emulator on his Linux laptop, it comes with the Play Store, and then in there install the Starlink app. In that way you have an android app without any tracking of the phone, you just turn on the emulator when needed.

all problems could have been solved with a SINGLE gigabit port. JUST ONE. I guess the solution is to buy a wireless booster and put it right next to the thing, which is absurd.

The worst thing about Starlink is it attracting awful people to rural areas.

Luke Smith back at it again with the super late night uploads

Remember when routers were actually configurable?

I set up a new nighthawk router for a friend recently and I was extremely annoyed that I had to download an app in order to do it. I think a big part of it is to hold the hand of someone who has never been into a router menu before, but I just hated using it.

I soyfaced so much looking at how badly designed this product is

That router doesn't host website like any other does? Imagine installing an app to configure your router, what a joke.

Whenever my internet is messed up Ookla speedtest says my ping is 0. I think if it can't connect quick enough it times out and just says 0, instead of putting an error up for whatever reason.

Imagine getting the beta package and not the sigma package, kinda cringe

The reason I moved from speedtest to fast for my speed tests was because it wasn't properly measuring ping

On pricing I don't think you're so spot on: where i live, getting fiber to the cabinet internet at 50-100 MBit/s costs about 70 bucks upfront + 30 bucks a month. So i don't think your opinion of "most of the world" internet price/quality ratio is so accurate

One thing I've been wondering since forever: In some european countries including my home germany, internet customers have got what's called "Router freedom", which means that the internet provider must give the opportunity to customers to use alternative routers. Does starlink abide by this?

Is the connection between the antenna and the router in a proprietary port?

Old vs New... I have the older round version. I don't know if they are the same for this. Mine has/had the worthless router (although mine did have one lan port) but you don't want to use it anyway. Again on the old version, it had a brick with a wire running to the dish and another running to the router. The port that ran to the router is just a POE Lan/Wan port. I unplugged the router from the brick and plugged my choice of router into it. I prefer wired connections where it's available anyway but then for wireless you can use a real router that will give you a decent signal. If this newer version is setup the same then I would absolutely do your own router. Keep in mind you still won't be able to do port forwarding because starlink uses CGNAT. There are ways around it but they aren't as easy as I would like. The phone app thing...I'm on android but assume the apple stuff has the same features. There are three things it's good for. It shows the area that should be open for the dish. It has a stats section that will show the outages and the type which is informative. It allows you to setup the WIFI on the router. Since I don't use their router the last one doesn't matter to me. Actually all three don't matter to me as you can get the same info (except I don't think you can do the WIFI setup) from any computer connected with a web browser. Just go to 192.168.100.1. They have something hard coded to take you to their stats screen. The stats page is one thing you have to work around with your own router. There are several you tube videos on how to get it to work with your own router...

I was honestly excited to get Starlink and the biggest bonus was compatibility with existing hardware, now customers have proprietary equipment, dongles and reduced speeds on the standard plan because of the new business tier subscription plan. It'll still be better than being stuck on cellular with a data cap, but it's kind of like a punch in the gut demanding you hand over your lunch money for less of an experience.

I received my dish about 3 weeks ago. For anyone interested in latency, in my case at least it pings only about 10ms higher than when I had DSL (early dsl before it was left to rot). At the moment the second constellation nor the third are in place to my knowledge. I mention that because there are several very brief disconnections and maybe 2 10-30 second ones per day. Once more satellites are up I imagine the stability will improve.

Do you have to pay 100$ every month or you can choose which months you want to use the service? If it's reliable it is great for digital nomads since they can basically use it only when they are off road for a month or two. If there is some pay-per-use model I would actually consider investing in the device.

Recently I got a mesh network kit and in order to set it up, the only thing the "manual" said was to use the app. Thankfully, I could go to the local IP for it, but I feel like in a few years, more and more tech will be going for the apps. Guess I'll be keeping all of my current networking hardware forever.

Is that instruction pamphlet good enough to be used as a mouse-pad?

Does starlink has dual band? Aka 2.4 and 5G. I was having a similar problem with an old laptop vs my phone, It turns out the laptop was only able to use 2.4 band that has a limit of 60 mbps the phone with 5G was able to get 100+ mbps

Guess Who's Back?

Your internet is literally 8 times as fast as my rural ASDL internet

How about plugging the dish directly into a pfsense firewall? Then creating your own network. I've heard that's doable.

You'll need another router, preferably with DD-WRT, and setup it up as an AP or bridge. Just like every ISP gives you a modem that doubles as a terrible router so you supply your own router if you want good coverage or just half decent control over your network.

Old thinkpads wifi card is probably pretty weak you know, laptops and their bios blacklists makes upgrading those a pain.

ALREADY CONSOOOOOOMED ON PEERTUBE!

Here are some of my measurements, just as a comparison (not Starlink, regular optical internet). On my X220 I have a speed of 98 Mbps down and 19 up with ping 2 thorough a wired connection and around 85 down and 19 up with ping 5 through Wi-Fi. The router is about 4m from the laptop. The router also has 5G Wi-Fi to which the X220 can't connect but my phone can and it gets 94 down and 19 up, ping 2 at the same distance.

Can the router be bridged so you can use your own? edit: No Ethernet port. NVM..

Luke this isn't how you test wifi signal strength. Your laptop likely cant do more than a 40mhz bond to the router because the wifi card is older. You need to use software to report the dbM value of the wifi ssid. You can do this on your phone and walk around the house, there should be no noticeable difference in speeds and signal reliability until that number falls below ~-65dbM

can you use a generic router with starlink?

I got starlink about a month ago and recieved a dishy v1, with dishy v1 you can connect it straight to your own router. With that I used a router with openwrt on it, the dishy v1 was pretty much plug and play. Too bad you got the dishy v2 however.

$500 upfront + $100/mo? lmao yeah it's getting internet everywhere bro!!! people in africa and small towns will love this!!!

is the antenna made of cobalt?

You can use the aurora store (downloadable from f-droid) to get apps from the play store while sharing no data or almost no data with google

Starlink is almost fully government subsidized and not economically viable by itself. Nor can it ever be.

Appaz there is a reset button somewhere on the bottom of the device. Press that, and it should present the default interface again. Or you have to reconnect.

12:44 That's kinda like Comcast/Xfinity does it. With their router they provide you use a phone app to set it up and you can like change settings with it. The most ridiculous things is that you also do port forward in the app and like 90% of the time it craps out on you. Also it's pretty scary because it's not like the app communicates over the local network, but instead the router receives the configuration via the internet meaning that they have an open back door that could technically be exploited if anyone ever founds out a vulnerability. I seriously recommend for most people to just buy your own router: you'll skip over the $14 equipment fee and it gives you a heck-of-a-lot more control if you ever need it.

You can reset the password on the mobile app, or by holding down the reset switch beeneth the router until it changes color. Still sucks that it cannot reach longer though.

I think that starlink sells an adapter to add a ethernet port if you want it. As far as I have heard, they are giving you the shittiest router because they need to reduce capital costs because the whole systems is not profitable yet, which given that it is a beta, I think is understandable.

Your phone isn't focusing properly because it's not seeing enough contrast to focus. If it sees nearly blank paper or nearly white sky there's not enough contrasting details for it to grab.

Can't you connect a different brand router to it?

Yey, more space junk.

Which credit provider did you defraud this time to get your Starlink equipment?

This sounds like Apple.. Except that they "simplify" it 10 times more. Yes, sure grandpa loves it, but not everyone are grandpas...

luke why did you get the soylink? i can see from a mile away a camera inside that router looking at your soul and the glowies now have your location with that antenna. you should have connected you ethernet cable to mycelium instead, now that is the only network without any glowies

Maybe you already know it, but for those who don't know, an ethernet adapter is available for separate purchase at their website (i think it's $20).

Do Starlink have static or dynamic IP addresses?

you could use a Mesh Network to distribute the internet connection around.

Looks like there’s an Ethernet port adapter you can buy (I’m guessing it plugs into the PoE the router uses).

I recently bought a mid-range Linksys router to discover that not only does it require an app, but that app has less features than the settings page of the 10 year old router it was replacing. I guess now you need to pay out the nose for enterprise grade routers to have access to what used to be pretty standard features...

Could it be to keep the network from being overused, like cut the ways they can "abuse" the internet and we can ship to more devices. If you cant use ethernet and wifi for more than 1 meter, then the internet usage will exponentially drop, compared to a normal router. So maybe this could be a scaling solution? Like the package is intended as limited, because a basic router has all the basic things, but the thing is, even though it's a router, it's not a router in the common sense, the way its connected to the rest of the world is different, which has i guess you could call it optimization engineering, so calling it a router is a reference to what people already are accustomed to, not necessarily what it is, based on the way it works. This is my take on maybe why it is like that.

I think you can use the Aurora store (which is FOSS) to download apps without a google account.

you got the package for betas?

In my country I pay $32 for 250 MB download and 15 MB upload with 11 ms ping. I am speechless by the prices you have to pay. Why? how do you justify that kind of price?

100$/month for 30Mb/s Jesus Christ you americans are incredible

What about weather? Do you not have Wi-Fi when it's raining?

do clouds make much difference?

The same shit is with the Solar inverters, they give you pretty much nothing, and if you want to connect or see the production logs you need to install a crapy cellphone app that absolutely spy on you, so I put several hours head to head and build my own app for pc to monitor the produced/consumed power, don't know if can be the case for Starlink, maybe they remove any hard connect to the device to avoid people bypass their login, is forcing users link the device to their identity thru app/login.

X220 caps at 50mbps wifi. My X230 was the same. Buy a newer laptop, upgrade the wifi card, or use ethernet. That's not the fault of the router.

Also you should use MicroG as a play services replacement.

I live in rural Appalachia and have mine on the way. We'll see how it works out in my valley.

The worst part about the Gen2 router's lack of ethernet is that the $20 adapter can only be used in "bypass mode." In short, the Starlink router MUST be a part of your network even if you don't want it. Allegedly the router firmware is based on OpenWRT but the fact that Starlink hasn't GPL'd (or even soy licensed) their additions means there might be some nefarious shit in there. Oh, and the ethernet adapter is backordered. My Starlink got here this week after a 1 year waiting period yet I'm using a Raspberry Pi and forwarding WiFi to my wired network over DHCP. What a joke. The Starlink app does have GSF dependencies, namely location for the obstruction finder, but seems to work okay otherwise on LineageOS and Graphene. IIRC you can access the dish directly from 192.168.1.100, even with your own networking equipment, but not sure if you can change the SSID or password from there.

Phone and internet in thr US is atrociously expensive for crappy service. I am so glad we have quality and cheap services in India. It was a shock coming back to India

Can it not use another router?

Might be your browser’s privacy settings not letting speedtest run the script to read your ping. You can install gping (cli) package

I’m probably gonna have to end up getting this myself, it’s cheaper and higher speed and doesn’t have a 50 gig data cap like my current ISP. But not having an Ethernet port is a real dealbreaker for me, I built my PC without wifi because I knew I was going to have it wired in the whole time. Why? Because it works better. Unless there’s some way to add that functionality or ideally, use another router completely with custom firmware I won’t be able to use this.

Honestly those wifi speeds are really good. It's clearly running in 5 GHz mode which is BLAZING fast but it can get interrupted by practically anything. I'd recommend setting up the router in a high enough place or purchasing some repeaters (preferably with an ethernet plug) and installing them on your ceeling. Or if you want to go the cheap route you can slow it down to 2.4 GHz which will be slower but it will allow it to cross some thiner walls (cca 5 to 10 cm) You can access all of these settings and more by going into the configuration site of your router. Here's a quote from the user manual: "Access the Router Admin Portal by entering this IP address into a browser: 192.168.1.1." Hope that helps!

There's gotta be a way of using a third party router right?

Instructions be like: *uga booga, no english*

Interesting. I'd like to see what the speeds are like once it's out of beta.

You might Check Amazon for a AC600 dual band USN adapter for your computer. The ac600 comes with drives. If you still have a CD reader it is a fast set up. You can find a USB CD reader on amazon.. It possibly is your laptop not the Star Link Router. I get the same speed 30 feet away with my Star link. You are not suppose to touch the surface of your satellite terminal. (dish).

I just confirmed my order yesterday. It sucks to hear there's no ports on that router.

$100 a month and $500 for equipment all for maybe 100-200 mbps down, seems kinda steep for me, I pay significantly less and I get triple in my speeds than what I've seen so far in this video. But if you live in a more rural location, it might be a smart investment, I guess if its your last resort.

can you not replace it with your own router?

buy a router, change it repeater/extender mode then use the ethernet cable. easy

1. Reverse engineer Starlink app 2. Create alternative desktop app?

Just an FYI. I write software at an ISP. That business is margin thin. The problem is you need world class support when margins are thin because everyone can charge the same price you’ll have to win on service. Call centres are super expensive. They are a sunk cost that constantly balloons up. Then they unionize. See where this is going? You want to sell your product with ZERO options. Why. Because any knob that can be turned will be turned incorrectly and that means something will stop working. Now you’ll get call to your very expensive margin eating call center with an angry customer yelling. They’ll even damage the hardware and cancel their service. If for every knob that can be turned, it means down time for your call center staff who have to be trained how to spot that issue, troubleshoot that issue and fix that issue. This compounds if you keep adding more knobs to modify. Then you’ll have to invest in refresher training for the staff to retain all these things over the years. So why not hire smarter call center agents? 1) cost 2) they won’t stay even if you find one desperate enough to take the job. To avoid all these issues, you sell a product that just plugs and plays. This cuts out all the above garbage. If it doesn’t make dollars, it doesn’t make sense.

Can you use ethernet on the laptopt+ ?

If you live in a rural county that has something like a Touchstone Electric Coop, they are all connecting their grids with fiber, and as a benefit they are offering internet. I will have to wait 3-5 years for it, but eventually I will be able to get 1 Gbps for $79.99

Luke, you know that there is aurora store it's foss front end for google store, you know this exist right?

Could you not setup a 4G antenna and router on the roof?

You may try Aurora to install APKs. It's backed by Calyx OS. A degoogled android replacement

I found the ethernet port! You gotto cut the cable and get a compatible POE power injector though :/ Also its not normal POE wiring, so you have to make your own crossover cables. After plugging it directly in to my network its showing full duplex gigabit ethernet, and pings dropped by 20-30ms! I'm hoping as more sats are launched I see bandwidth closer to 350mbps or above.

You need the crappy phone app to modify the settings, don't know about the other problems but there you go problem solved I guess. In addition, many people just replace the router anyways, so maybe look into that

You have to buy an extra dongle if you want an ethernet port I think. Then you have to buy your own switch. Bit piss

Can you spin up a neutered virtual android device on your computer with google services and install the app there to test? I kind of want to see the results if you do.

Dude... I live in rural North FL and the closest cell towers are 4 miles away. I have a little device that gets me LTE data at 30/30 on the best days... 20/20 on most. I have a pre-paid unlimited data sim in there for $60/month and have not been throttled. Yeah, playing an MMO is annoying, but I have at least 8 devices on my router and can stream all day, connect to all my VPSes, and do all the video conference calls my work demands with very little issues. Thanks to this video, I'm cancelling my Starlink order... I had the original pre-ordered for about a year now- not the Premium- and I saw this morning they cut the speed to it. I'd rather get fiber at 1200/month for 300/300 than pay 500 a month for 100/15 and shitty hardware.