{"id":13633,"date":"2024-05-05T14:52:34","date_gmt":"2024-05-05T19:52:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/?p=13633"},"modified":"2024-05-05T14:52:35","modified_gmt":"2024-05-05T19:52:35","slug":"making-a-mesh-of-starlink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2024\/05\/05\/making-a-mesh-of-starlink\/","title":{"rendered":"Making a Mesh of Starlink"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Alert Gazette readers will recall my enthusiam for Starlink’s internet service<\/a>, once we finally got it up and running. That enthusiasm continues unabated — I just now ran a speed test and got 193 Mbps download \/ 17.4 Mbps upload*, more than enough to run everything in our house and then some. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, leaving well enough alone has never been my modus operandi<\/em>, so when I received an email describing Starlink’s new WiFi mesh routers<\/a>, I felt compelled to give them a try.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
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It’s about 12″ x 5″ in size.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Now, we already have an Eero<\/a> mesh system throughout our house, and it seemed to be working fine, so installing another mesh is a “belts and suspenders” kind of strategy. However, our primary movie streaming device had inexplicably begun to drop the Eero connection and switch over to the Starlink base router and we decided to give it what it apparently wants in the form of a stronger WiFi signal. Plus, I was curious about how the Starlink system would perform, and whether it might allow us to do away with the Eero network altogether. So, I made the economically indefensible decision to drop a nickel on two new routers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starlink’s plug-and-play designs theoretically make installation of new equipment stupid simple, and I’m just the kind of stupid simple to test that theory. So when the two new routers arrived, I glanced at the instructions, plugged one of them into a kitchen AC outlet, fired up the Starlink app on my phone, and waited for the magic to begin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know what you’re thinking…this is where the wheels fall off.<\/em> You know me all too well. But in this case, the center held, and in less than a minute, the app notified me that a new router was asking to connect to the main router located in our office. I clicked the “pair” button and, well, pairing happened. We had ourselves a new mesh, and the WiFI signal was robust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was time to add the second router to the mesh. I plugged this one into an outlet in the den, about eighty feet from the office. And THAT’S when the wheels came off. The app gave the same pairing message but when I tried to pair it, the entire mesh disappeared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I did some basic troubleshooting and discovered that my phone had switched to the Eero mesh, and I guessed that it should be on the Starlink WiFi in order to successfully configure the mesh. So I switched it back to Starlink, started over, and in a relatively short time (less than ten minutes) had both routers connected to the base station and the mesh operating perfectly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our Eero mesh is still activated and working fine, and I think I’m going to leave it in place, as we have a number of devices connected to it and I don’t feel like going to the trouble of switching them to the Starlink network. I worried a bit that the new network would negatively impact the performance of the Eero network (and vice versa) but so far they seem to be playing well together. (For the record, I have the Eero base station hardwired via Ethernet to the primary Starlink router.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of the day, I’m not sure I accomplished any meaningful upgrades, other than ensuring a stronger and more reliable connection to our primary streaming device — which is not nothing, but also perhaps not worth the cost. But if you don’t already have a WiFi mesh and want to boost your Starlink signal throughout your house, the new mesh routers are definitely worth considering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*This performance varies through the day. I’ve had speeds of more than 250 Mbps early in the morning, and less than 100 during peak hours, but it’s always enough to stream movies without a hitch. Oh, and in the interest of full disclosure, “just now” took place on May 2. Yes, this is not a real-time report. Sorry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wherein I describe an expensive-yet-successful solution to a problem that may or may not have existed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13643,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[78],"tags":[380,381],"class_list":["post-13633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech","tag-starlink-mesh-router","tag-wifi","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/ai_circuitboard.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13633"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13644,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13633\/revisions\/13644"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}