Starlink connectivity guides
Starlink has been a godsend for the rural community in New Zealand that have for many years haven’t had many options if there wasn’t a local WISP available. Slow connection speeds, high latency and prohibitive data caps are now a thing of the past with the Spacex Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite service.
Aftermarket router advantages.
By adding an aftermarket router you have access to more advanced networking features compared to the minimal customization available on the bundled Starlink router. Advantages of bypassing the Starlink router include:
Higher performance, Better mesh speeds
Today’s best Wifi routers come with Wifi 6 technology and other features that the standard Starlink router doesn’t have. These features can enable faster speeds, greater range, and more reliability.
Starlink sells their own mesh system to expand Wifi coverage, but it is only dual-band, there's a WiFi6 variant in the works but is yet to available in New Zealand. compared to the latest tri or quad band technology. An aftermarket router can provide faster mesh speeds and seamless coverage.
More security features
Most aftermarket routers come with a comprehensive administration portal that allows you to set up advanced security features, VPN, SD-WAN, Deep Packet Inspection, Traffic Logging, etc..
Load balancing with traffic steering
A part of the nature of the Starlink system is that there will be micro outages at regular intervals, these can vary from hardly noticeable <1 second outages which happen often, and up to 5 seconds or more which would show as video streaming buffering or lowered video quality. Not too much of an issue for every day computing but service outages over 1 second will be very noticeable with VoIP/Video conferencing. Load balancing with traffic steering means that you have certain services like VoIP steered over VDSL or cellular. The secondary circuit can then also act as a backup for the primary Starlink as well
Failover / backup circuit
Longer outages can be due to equipment failure, service provider interruption or obstructions between the dish and the satellite clusters. Failover means to have a spare backup path to the Internet ready for use when your customers need it. A common solution for this is cellular 4G/5G services or fixed DSL services.
Starlink connectivity guides for DrayTek and Teltonika : https://support.snappernet.co.nz/support/solutions/folders/5000311270