Rural Internet with Starlink

Introduction

We're very proud of our high speed Internet connectivity and WiFi guest experience here at Chale Bay Farm which surpasses that of many of our competitors, especially in such a rural location.

We've written this page about our journey with rural internet culminating with Starlink which we've now had installed since early 2022. We've also written a page to complement this one that talks about WiFi. These pages provide a lot of free advice based on our experience that may be useful to others with internet and wifi connectivity problems. 

We currently use Starlink as our primary internet provider, backed up by mobile coverage from EE.  We use Unifi WiFi from Ubiquiti.  Prior to escaping the rat race to run our holiday letting business on the Isle of Wight we had long careers in technology and especially the Internet, so have all the skills to make things work well for us and our guests and provide advice and consulting to people with internet and wifi issues.

Important Terminology (WiFi is NOT the Internet)

Many people without a technical background often don't fully appreciate the difference between the Internet and their WiFi.  This probably comes about because traditionally Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have bundled three things together in one box commonly known as a "router".  The three things are the Internet connection, the "local area network" (LAN) and the gateway that links them together (this is the bit that is actually the router).  The LAN normally comes as WiFi, plus a handful of physical network ethernet ports may also be provided.

A few years ago bad WiFi didn't matter as much as it does now as WiFi was almost always much faster than the internet connection, so the interent connection was almost always the limiting factor.  Now, sicne the advent of so called "superfast" internet conenctions and beyond it can often be the other way around.

You can have very good WiFi and poor Internet connectivity, very good Internet connectivity and poor WiFi, or both.  The first step in solving problems is to know whether your issue is poor internet, poor WiFi or both.  Generally if you do a speedtest from a physically connected PC and it is good, whilst a speedtest from a WiFi connected device is only good near the "router" but deteriorates elsewhere in the property then the Internet is OK and the WiFi needs addressing.  If the speedtest is poor on a connected device or on a wifi device near the router then the Internet needs addressing.

For consistancy of measurement we have over the years used Ookla Speedtest which is available as a mobile App, on the web and also as a Windows App.

The rest of this page is about Internet.  If you need to find out more about WiFi then visit our WiFi Page.

A Brief History of our Issues that we have Solved

Being very rural here at Chale Bay Farm on the Isle of Wight, we've struggled in the past with providing reliable high speed internet access for ourselves and our guests.  Our local cabinet that provides basic landline connectivity was missed out in all the programmes of work to provide improvements and still only provides the original ADSL speeds that were available when BT first introdcued ADSL in the late 1990's, so just 2.5Mbps download on a good day (and just 0.5Mbps upload)!

Initially we subscribed to an expensive commercial wireless link that gave us connectivity of up to about 15Mbps/3Mbps (down/up).

Our next opportunity was when Three introduced unlimited data services, and this was followed by EE doing similarly on a business package.  For a while we actually had services from Three and EE at the same time and then introduced Starlink.  With Starlink's proven (and increasing) reliability we phased out Three but have retained EE as a failover backup.  With EE we get about 70mbps/20mbps with an outside antenna.  Although or EE system is 5G capable we still only have 4G access in our rural lcoation.

This is all NOTHING to do with our WiFi! If you need help with WiFi then visit our WiFi Page.

How Fast an Internet Connection do you Need?

Having established that any slowness you are trying to rectify is definitely the Internet connection not Wifi, How fast a connection do you actually need.

Before making it a fait accompli that you need Starlink, are there any other options?  It may well be that 4G (or 5G if available in your area) is enough.  It's natural to think that bigger is better, but it might come as a surprise that at Chale Bay Farm our internet usage as measured by our gateway typically has mid-evening sustained peaks at about 25Mbps, with occasional periods of up to 50 Mbps.  This is a network with over 120 devices including 12 streaming TVs half of which are 4K capable. In fact the only times we see it hit higher speeds is when our game consoles do a major game update or we are doing a speedtest!  Our uploads don't tend to run at greater than 3Mbps unless doing large image uploads. 

so, for many hosueholds, 50-70Mbs may actually be enough as that's enough for almost every use including a couple of 4K streaming TVs to stream 4L content simultaneously (they require 25-28mbps each), and to occasionally download big game updates in a reasonable length of time.

Another aspect to speed is latency (often known as "ping" time) and it is measured in milliseconds.  The best Fibre to the Property (fttp) networks deliver single digit ping times.  4G Mobile networks typically deliver 25-50ms ping times.  Starlink presently is delivering ping times to us from the low 20's to over 100, but is very often 30-40.  In practice the ping time is irrelevant to most internet functions except first person gaming where you will typically become uncompetitive to a degree where the fun stops above 40ms.  For highly competitve play a wireless internet connection will never be as good as a wired connection.  

Loking at 4G (and 5G), if you can stand outside your property and have a good 4G (or better still 5G) signal and can get good speedtests, 4G might do the job - it will be cheaper than Starlink both in terms of equipment outlay and monthly subscription.  Try standing both outside at different parts of the property and at different upstairs windows to test the signal to improve the chances of getting a signal from the best mast.  We can get about 70mbps/20mbps on EE with an outside antenna, so based on raw commercials rather than technical interest we could currently make do with 4G at our rural location (5G not yet available). 

So consider if taking on the upfront costs of Starlink as well as the monthly costs which tend to be twice those of iland based and 4G subscriptions is really needed (especially if you can get a fibre based solution to your property).

Choosing and Installing Starlink

Ahead of acquiring Starlink, it's important to check if it will have a good field of view to "see" the satellites.  Luckily the Starlink mobile App has a feature which enables you to use the phone camera to do a visual survey.  Starlink dishes automatically align themselves.  Empirical evidence at the time of writing (November 2023) suggests that in the very south of the UK dishes will align tilting twards the North and once you get a little bit North of London they start to align South. In a rural property which has lots of land and you may be able to do your initial test out away from buildings and other obstructions to see exactly which way the disk will point - we did this and as a result knew we could get away with mounting the dish on an outbuilding rather than having to mount it on a chimney on the main house.  Once set up and given 24 hours to settle the obstructions page will show what the line of sight to satellites looks like and any problems.  Within a day or so our display shows a clear horizon except at the very lowest part of the tilt but with Starlink happy that it has no obstructions. From a purist point of view it should probably go higher but it is working well. Transient or moving obstructions show in red - we only see those very rarely and hypothosise they are birds.

It's worth pointing out that in the Outages section of the App that very short "Network Issue" and "No Signal Received" reports are normal and even the occasional 2s+  are nothing to worry about - you won't notice these in most intenet appliciations. However regular long 5s+ outages or other errors regularly occuring can indicate issues that may need further support (A relatively common issue reported is that a chimney getting in the way can even disrupt the settlement period, not just provide a constant obstruction).

There are two parts to installing Starlink:  Firstly the physical installation and secondly the technical configuration.  The physical installation involves importantly siting the dish where it has a good line of sight as described above but also running the cable to the dish and siting the Wifi/Router component.  It's important that when you choose an installer they understand about computer networking and they aren't just an aerial/satellite dish installer jumping on the Starlink bandwagon as otherwise they may not be able to help you solve any hitches in the install that are related to the techncial configuration of the setup rather than the physical.  This especially applies if they are complementing the Starlink install with an improved WiFi installation and a new gateway.

Just harking back to the is it Internet or WiFi diagnosis above: If you have low speeds when using Speed test, the WiFi that comes as part of Starlink doesn't have a particularly good reputation even when you are near the router, and so WiFi may well be the issue - the downside is that as standard Starlink doesn't come with an Ethernet port and when first installed the internet side of things can take time to stabilise so even using the App's inbuilt speed tests can give a spurious impresson - we suggest having patience in the first 24 hours until the App shows good visibility and no long outages before taking a view.  If WiFi is indeed the issue visit our page of advice on how to address poor WiFi.

For lots more about Starlink in the UK and for advice out of scope of this page look at the Starlink UK group on Facebook.