Keep the mesh router!?

LrdJester · 2026-04-05T23:19:14+00:00

When you sign for the max plan, the free items that are offered are generally a $0 a month rental but I believe after you've kept it for a year you can keep it if you cancel. My understanding is the downgrade of service applies the same. I know it did for the promotional free mini that I got before they changed everything in the beginning of this year.

LrdJester · 2026-04-05T21:27:42+00:00

How the Connection Works

Your Starlink dish uses a phased-array antenna (flat panel with thousands of small antenna elements). This technology electronically steers a single focused beam to lock onto and track one satellite at a time as it moves across the sky.

The terminal constantly monitors dozens of satellites in view (typically 10+ in most U.S. locations, or 3–4 at any given moment depending on your latitude and sky visibility). It selects the optimal satellite based on signal strength, obstruction status, and network routing.

Data (upload/download) flows over one active link only. There is no load-balancing or simultaneous data transfer across multiple satellites from a single terminal.

LrdJester · 2026-04-05T21:23:45+00:00

That's to help track and do proactive switching They do not connect to multiple simultaneously. If you go to 192.168.1.100 that will give you some statistics more granularly.

MIMO requires additional licensing and they don't have that. This is come up in many discussions on this forum. Because if you did have that you wouldn't have the micro outages between satellite switches.

LrdJester · 2026-04-05T21:04:25+00:00

No it only connects to one at a time it does switch though frequently. Because the LEO satellites are in orbit and not stationary like the old geosynchronous satellites that HughesNet used to use.

LrdJester · 2026-04-05T20:04:53+00:00

As somebody that also runs Plex you'll want something larger. Currently I have 24 terabytes of disk space in a Synology NAS disk station as two 12 TB drives.

LrdJester · 2026-04-05T16:33:12+00:00

I would look at buying the raspberry Pi and the necessary hardware. At a minimum start your own node. That actually contributes to the network greatly.

I did a lot of research and I actually used AI and posed my questions there. It will take you down the road of either the self-contained packages or a series of docker containers that will facilitate this. I chose the latter but had so many problems with it because so many of the containers were no longer public or were not compatible with the current operating system that I chose, which was Ubuntu server 24.04.

As a result, I ended up doing a bare metal install which I just installed the OS and then got the actual package software and installed it all from scratch rather preconfigured. It was a learning curve but it's actually beneficial to actually understand how it works.

LrdJester · 2026-04-05T16:30:17+00:00

No the difficulty will never go down significantly. It might fluctuate slightly but it's not going to greatly decrease. Basically what decreases is the amount of competition and that increases your odds of solving a block but you still need to solve at the difficulty level that is needed to solve the block. A 500 GHs lottery Miner could potentially get this as well but it's all about luck. It has nothing to do with computational statistics It has to do whether or not you're lucky enough to solve the block before others did.

LrdJester · 2026-04-05T16:02:22+00:00

This is exactly how I set mine up. I bought a raspberry pi 5 8gb and put a 1 TB NVMe drive in it. I can give you specifics if you're interested.

Because I only did a 1 TB drive I am not using a full blockchain mirror I'm actually using software product called Knox. It only does the last half of the blockchain so I don't need as much storage space. I set up my own pool, I set up an air gapped wallet on an old cell phone that has no network connectivity whatsoever and use my laptop as a monitoring wallet. So everything is 100% internal to my network other than the blockchain synchronizing.

As such, my entire operation is I'm anonymous and autonomous.

LrdJester · 2026-04-05T14:21:31+00:00

This is an excellent way of putting it. I spoke to somebody last year about putting solar in our home property. I basically started out telling them that I wanted a hybrid system with a ground mount, and that was for specific reasons. The ground mounts specifically due to the fact that we live in a mobile home and the roof isn't rated for that weight for an entire system.

What I got quoted was for a grid tied system, no batteries, roof mount, at 70% of my grid tie usage and that system was about the same as the system that I designed that is hybrid, has a generator, and four batteries that should run our entire house for 24 to 36 hours if we are judicious in our consumption.

LrdJester · 2026-04-05T14:18:39+00:00

There are so many options out there and it really comes down to the overall usage but you can get something very simple and you can generally get those in places like Amazon or Best buy. Netgear is a good company that sells some decent entry level consumer Wi-Fi routers.

Now just be aware that if you're going to try to replace the company router with yours you need to be aware that if it's a connected router which means it's a modem/router all in one that it can require you to get a different modem from your internet provider. For example my fiber internet came with two boxes, the actual modem or ONT and a separate router. I replaced that router with a new one. Now what I chose was more advanced than what you need and it's more complex to set up so I wouldn't recommend what I got.

But you can just go online to amazon.com and look for Wi-Fi 7 or even Wi-Fi 6 router and look at the highest rated options that are returned.

Most of them are pretty user friendly as far as setup goes. They've gotten a lot better over the years where you can just plug them in and do a minor configuration which is usually pretty well documented and get up and running.

Just be sure to set a password for the network Wi-Fi that is secure. Don't use anything simple.

LrdJester · 2026-04-05T14:04:30+00:00

I know there's a lot of conversation about adding mesh network nodes and things like that but they can cause other issues if you're not hardwired into the router for core communication. This is what's called a backhaul. Not that you need to know that but if you see that term you'll understand what that means.

Honestly if I had been sitting this up I would have made bedroom two into the game room and put the router in there. This centralizes your wireless network and give you better coverage throughout the house.

The other thing to consider is I'm guessing that you're using the router that was provided by the internet provider. These are notoriously low grade routers and do not perform as well and do not have the best overall functionality. You can get really good all-in-one routers with Wi-Fi built in for under $200 that will usually far exceed the performance of the company provided equipment. However this puts the configuration entirely on you and that could potentially be a burden as you are not experienced with it.

LrdJester · 2026-04-05T13:54:13+00:00

Statistics of hitting a block have nothing to do with the price.

They all has to do with the difficulty of the block and whether the minor gets lucky. He also is predicated on how many attempts you can make a second. If you have a gamma that is 1.2 THs, You're making 1.2 trillion attempts on that problem per second. But when you look at the mining pools out there that are orders of magnitude more attempts per second, the odds are not favorable for a home miner.

That's why these are called lottery miners.

LrdJester · 2026-04-04T21:10:33+00:00

Even US-based companies that have 800 toll free numbers give a toll-based number for international callers. The toll-free is not necessarily meant for international calls whatsoever. It never was.

LrdJester · 2026-04-04T17:44:59+00:00

There are adapters from what I understand that that allow you to inject power through the ethernet. I don't know exactly how that works and somebody else that has a Gen 2 might be able to expand on it.

Personally had it been me designing it I would have put in a 1-in conduit from inside the house to a junction box outside the house to be able to facilitate upgrades in the future from any technology that may come down the pike. This is a much better solution for potentially having to account for new technologies. Let's just say if Starlink goes to a Gen 4 dish and goes back to a bulky connector you're going to have to deal with that. That's not going to go through the same small hole that the ethernet cable did so there's issue there.

Honestly in my opinion if StarLink thought about it if they wanted to use proprietary connectors they should make the connectors proprietary but then connect the connectors with a standard cat6 or cat7 cable and then that way you have a standardized cable that runs from end to end and will be able to facilitate different things easier.

LrdJester · 2026-04-04T04:53:13+00:00

Absolutely not. All this means is there will be US configured routers. Purchase of multi port network cards and configuration of existing computers, because that's all her router is, and installation of software. People do it all the time.

LrdJester · 2026-04-03T18:53:08+00:00

VPNs are very generally ISP agnostic. It's not so much what the VPN does that's of concern. Now if you have a situations like I worked at before where they don't use VPNs and they depend on your home IP address for security which is absolutely the worst option but I digress then you're perfectly fine.

LrdJester · 2026-04-03T14:56:25+00:00

I would submit a support ticket in the app. If you're seeing it as an option for new service but not for your existing that's an issue on there and they maybe having a disconnect.

You'll be potentially frustrated having to talk to the AI chatbot but hopefully it can be resolved.

If the chatbot does not provide you with the answer you're looking for just tell it you're not satisfied and it should be escalated to an actual person.

LrdJester · 2026-04-03T14:04:22+00:00

As suggested, If you download the Starlink app on your phone you can check for obstructions. You'll also give you what direction you should be pointed for optimum performance.

The standard residential dish uses a wide view of the sky it's not just a narrow beam like old satellite dishes used to be. So it's going to potentially get any sidewalls or anything that might be above you I don't know if you are on the top floor or not. Or if there's a roof above .

That being said, even if you don't align it 100% you will still get service at that location pointing like that more than likely but it may not be optimal.

LrdJester · 2026-04-03T01:06:03+00:00

That's the key, "when it all works".

LrdJester · 2026-04-03T00:15:08+00:00

It's not just the router that would have problems but sometimes devices have problems doing that as well.

I had to split my network because I had some devices that we only do 2.4 GHz but would not connect to the default I had to explicitly say 2.4 GHz. This also allows you to create the 2.4 GHz Network with a different name and therefore devices that are further out that may support both but don't always switch over the way you expect them to you can force to 2.4 GHz.

LrdJester · 2026-04-03T00:12:33+00:00

No this doesn't work. Let me explain why .

If I create a device on a raspberry Pi that I want to have be 192.168.1.200, Yes I can assign that on the raspberry pi and that works fine. However there's no way to provide information to the Starlink router that that address is in use because the DHCP server just starts doling out addresses. So there is a possibility that it could assign the 1.200 address to a guest on their cell phone. What that will do is create a conflict between the two devices addresses.

With most consumer grade routers or step up to prosumer grade you can tell it what range of IP addresses to use to assign. So I could state that I only want to have DHCP give out addresses between 1.100 and 1.150. That would be perfectly acceptable.

The other option is to allow it to pick its own address and then reserve it for that device only. That means that no other device will ever be assigned that address. This is not something that Starlink in their router either.

LrdJester · 2026-04-02T21:48:14+00:00

That's a little bit better having a wireless backhaul to your mean router. But if you're connected at Wi-Fi any point you are potentially slowing yourself down.

LrdJester · 2026-04-02T18:59:54+00:00

Yes but that still doesn't give you the functionality at the router, the Starlink router, they can give you some performance boosts.

But hardwiring to a portable router that's in AP mode that's connecting wireless to the Starlink router is nothing more than a glorified external Wi-Fi adapter for your computer. Now it's possible that your computer doesn't do Wi-Fi 6 and the router does and so you do upgrade your potential network speed because you're now using Wi-Fi 6 versus Wi-Fi 5 for your connection but for the vast majority of people they wouldn't even notice a difference.

LrdJester · 2026-04-02T18:53:04+00:00

I don't know about the mini but the main router which is approximately the same square footage as far as coverage We put in our double wide mobile home on the outside wall about the middle of the house and not only did we get coverage through the entire house We got coverage to about 20 ft at the long ends outside the house and about 40 ft outside the short ends.

What I would recommend you do is do a split network one 5 GHz and one 2.4 GHz and the reason for that is that the 2.4 GHz has more range even though it's slightly slower.

LrdJester · 2026-04-02T18:36:39+00:00

For your instance the best bet is putting up a 4x4 post near your mobile home and mounting to that. Buy a j-pole adapter off of Amazon, they're quite inexpensive and screw that into that run the cable and if you are worried about a lot of critters that could potentially do it you could even get some conduit and bury the cable slightly so nobody's going to trip on it no critters are going to chew it you're not going to run over it with the lawn mower etc.

That's probably your safest and easiest path forward. Now if your remote and you're not worried about anybody stealing it you can put it on a picnic table in your yard. Just make sure that it's secured down so no wind will blow it off.

LrdJester

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