Our first thought was stability: can Starlink provide a stable connection? Will the latency be acceptable? What about the actual achievable speeds? Satellite Internet has been around for years, but often falls short in terms of stability, latency and speed. Can Starlink fill in the gaps of satellite and radio links?

Getting started!

Currently, Starlink has an impressive fleet of more than 5,000 satellites in orbit, offering speeds of up to 150 Mbit with latency as low as 20ms. Of course, we took the opportunity to put these claims to the test!

We immediately ordered the basic model, which arrived with us within a few days. The consideration was whether to mount the dish directly on the roof or test it in our parking lot first. We chose the latter and started a trial in our parking lot.

Installation proved surprisingly easy and within minutes we were online. The dish autonomously located a satellite, eliminating the need for manual adjustments. All that was left to do was to place it in a spot with a clear view of the sky, and the dish did the rest. Initially, the latency was acceptable, but the speed hovered around 30 Mbit/s. About thirty minutes later, we observed a significant boost, reaching nearly 200 Mbit/s. In the first half-hour, reception was automatically optimized, leading to a stable connection. So far so good!

The standard Starlink router supports only Wi-Fi, which may not match the wired connections usually preferred in office networks. Fortunately, it is possible to connect your own router with a dongle, making the supplied Starlink router unnecessary. This setup allowed us to connect an iunxi router and explore the possibility of setting up a VPN over the Starlink connection. Remarkably, it worked seamlessly and we quickly connected to our test VRF in our core network.

We then conducted a series of tests on standard office-related services. Voice over IP? Check! Connect to our servers? Check! Safely connect to the Internet through our own firewall? Check! We immediately ordered the basic model, which arrived with us within a few days. The consideration was whether to mount the dish directly on the roof or test it in our parking lot first. We chose the latter and started a trial in our parking lot.

After checking the stability of Starlink, we moved the dish to the roof and conducted a more extensive stability test. That month, we saw the connection go down once or twice a week during late hours, corresponding to Starlink’s maintenance window. Apart from these short interruptions, the connection has proven reliable and suitable for office environments, for example.

Definitely! We are genuinely fascinated by this technology and who knows, we may soon be able to offer our customers in outlying areas a reliable, low latency, high speed connection. If you’re as excited about this as we are, follow our LinkedIn page and stay up to date on the future of technology and connectivity!

Is Starlink a solution within your organization or are you looking for other solutions, read more about our Backup and failover solutions.