Starlink Gen 3 WiFi Router and Mesh Network Test - How far can it reach?

hey friends it's me Micah this is the Homestead bandwagon I'm standing outside admiring my generation one starlink a dishy is that what they call it a dishy that was a great marketing idea calling it something stupid like that but whatever this is one that I mounted a couple years ago on a custom iron pipe that everybody said was going to fall over in the first couple weeks and guess what username LOL your mom 69 420 it's still standing but that's not what we're talking about today what we're talking about today is progress we were a beta tester for starlink and they sent me an invite to try out their new generation three router kit we have the generation one router it's not the best they said hey you want to Trout the New Gen 3 router I said I sure do and they said cool they're 200 bucks each yeah but you can you can buy two and you can mesh them together or three or whatever I was like okay I guess I'll buy two so I've got two of them so here's the two boxes I haven't even opened them up they just showed up what I'm going to do today is install both of them without reading the directions and see if we can create a mesh wi-fi system now first question is why would I buy these from starlink instead of just buying like a Linksys router which a lot of people do just buy a Wi-Fi router that's better than the starlink router and meshing off that isn't it cheaper yes yes it is is this going to be better quality probably not I don't know we'll see is there any real advantage to buying these instead of buying third-party stuff I don't see any advantage but I couldn't couldn't resist buying two of these so I got 400 bucks on my hands here I'm going to try to mesh from the house to the barn let's show you where the barn is it's a ways away so like I was saying I've already got a link sys router that I bought to like get better wi-fi coverage because the Gen 1 um starlink or Skylink or whatever you want to call it starlink router didn't have the greatest coverage in our house and you know I wanted to watch My Game of Thrones in 4k in the room that was farthest away from the router so yeah I bought a another Wi-Fi router and it works fine but I don't know man it's I can't resist blowing money I guess so here's the barn we're at the barn the house is Over Yonder so it's a couple hundred feet away and when we're in the barn we obviously don't have the best Wi-Fi coverage let's uh grab my phone here and we'll check see uh what kind of signal we have out here now right off the bat here I don't even know if we're going to be able to mesh out to the barn but it's a good experiment because earlier today I had Wi-Fi signal now I have very little but when I'm standing at the doorway where there's a plug-in I have some Wi-Fi signals so I've got a little Wi-Fi scanner here that's like starlink and that's a star link so I've got two starlink networks for whatever reason and this needs to be up here to have a good signal right now not very good signal so we want a bubble that's up here um we'll do a little speed test real quick just to give us a baseline here this is not very good hope it's getting worse long story short we don't have very good coverage right now so I'm going to go hook up the Wi-Fi router on the house and then hook up the other router here see if we can make a mesh system that works so we'll cross our fingers here otherwise I just blew 200 bucks okay let's open this box and see what's going on here it's a little Dusty up here because we don't use the uh desktop computer too much I use laptops for all my stuff but we can deal with a little dust oh this is fancy looking we got here is this the thing it's got some Schmutz on it already supposed to be Pure White is the driven snow okay what do we got so I've got this is where the dish plugs in this is where the power plugs in and then it sits like that I guess so does it sit like this I don't know because there's an opening here and this is one of the main reasons I thought it'd be cool to upgrade is you can open this and there's two uh plugs here see the the old the old star link oh see the old star link just has one out and so that really makes networking hard I need two and we were just using a uh we were just using a router to get our two signals going but this this guy over here can shoot out four so that's why I have to go from there to there plus it had a bad connection so anyway this will allow me to connect to I guess this is the bottom this will allow us to to go out to our desktop and then downstairs we run ethernet as well for other stuff so that's kind of cool we'll sit on the desk real easy here's some instructions I guess you can scan this to tell you how to do it I'm just going to plug it in and they give us a little wall wart they give us a this must be the power cord great not super long but we'll deal and then this cable I wonder if this is for like the Gen 2 maybe that had a different plug on it I don't know we're just gonna see if that plugs into that it should so I guess we'll just try it first things first I'm going to plug the power in very exciting that fits in there really nice man it's got like rubber around there I don't know if it's supposed to dust proof it or waterproof it or what but it's I don't know fancy looking 200 bucks well spent okay power's plugged in things are falling off the shelf so I guess we'll just go out with the old unplug the old one plug in the new one yeah that plugs right in there we go now what there's a light down here foreign Okay so we've got our networking plugged in got a light turned on get rid of old gen one it's nice for cable management it's a lot cleaner this is the old power cord here for the other router so that can go away that looks pretty clean so now I'm going to jump on the starlink app and just see if it lets us connect I'm just gonna just see if I even have internet access right now no nothing okay connect to starlink Wi-Fi we don't have Sterling qualify hope it's doing some some thinking light things over here so we'll give it a minute or so to think about what it's doing so right now it just shows that we're there's a lot of light and glare but we're disconnected okay so I uploaded updated the app one now it's got a couple things for me to do it says router not configured so we're going to finish setting up so I'm going to have to set up some private stuff here like a network name stay tuned I now have a red light but I am connected to the Wi-Fi so I think the Gen 1 cord it came with is an actually compatible with that unit so I'm going to use this weird shaped cord that they gave me and see if this connects it yep that's a positive connection okay I'm pretty sure I solved the issue so you got to take out the white cord that was connected to the Gen one satellite and use the cord they provided who would have thunk if we use the equipment provided by the manufacturer stuff tends to work so we're gonna excuse me we let this thing restart and see how we do ah it's calibrating a connection it says Network's performance stabilized after about 15 minutes now one of the big reasons that you get one of these things is for for better speed they promised us better speed if you use the new starlink gen 3 router for reasons I guess um normally I get about 50 Megs maybe 100 on a really good day I'm paying 120 bucks a month but it's our only choice for for internet so we gotta dance with who brung you right with the new um an improved gen 3 router I just hit 22 Megs [Music] let's try again oh here we go where are we going to go oh that's better so uh what I'm going to do is I'm going to go plug in the other router and then I'll go into the settings for this to get mesh going and just see if we can stretch this thing all the way up to the barn okay we're in route to the barn I'm just seeing if I have any Wi-Fi coverage over here if we remember it was it was a scant coverage at best and I don't really understand how Wi-Fi works but the Gen 1 had no antennas on it this gen 3 has no antennas on it how's it like making squiggle electric lines go through the air with that on tennis throwing it I don't know but I'll tell you right now I have uh basically no Wi-Fi at the barn there's just one little little bump I called the network Spaceballs so if you see that that's what we're seeing um I'll see if it'll stretch all the way here foreign here's something interesting so there's a spot in here for you to plug in your uh your uh your dish connection we don't have a dish connection on this one this one's just supposed to collect that Wi-Fi signal and redistribute it under the same Wi-Fi name that's the idea is continuity no matter where you go in your house this is obviously a way different idea we're just trying to stretch the Wi-Fi as far as possible see what the possibilities are but normally you'd put this in a dead spot in your house where the Wi-Fi is not as good and really spread that Wi-Fi all over under one name so you're not constantly switching Network names but whatever but yeah there's a spot here and they give you a little plug to plug that so you don't get a bunch of dust and gunk in there that's actually a really good design okay I'm going to just plug it in here really nice of this had like a nail spot on it okay so it's plugged in on this on this water pump this is not going to be a permanent solution obviously I don't think this thing's waterproof I'm going to give it a sec to kind of do its thing I guess and I'm going to try to get on the Wi-Fi and hit the mesh button and see if we mesh okay I've had to walk away from the barn a little bit just even just even try to connect to the Wi-Fi and it's a real bad connection I'm still going to see if it'll reach the other Wi-Fi node or or mesh thing um I'll just see what happens here add mesh oops a new mesh node is trying to join your network it sees the other one all right let's pair it and see if we can get any coverage out here at all we're waiting oh we're going to connect it's trying really hard mesh one connecting here we go I don't know man I mean it's trying but if that thing can really pull Wi-Fi from all the way over there that's pretty impressive I guess honestly the tp-link Archer just barely got connection over here but I think we could mesh that thing but I don't know man it's got like big antennas and stuff this this thing's Sleek it's a more of a sports car than a four-wheel drive I guess so I am disconnected well that's not good so I'm going to bring up my Wi-Fi analyzer and just see if it even sees my network oh There's Hope yet yeah I've got some bumps here so two different networks for our Wi-Fi let's walk over to the barn and see if it's really really really pulling any speed though the phone now says I've got full bars so we're just going to run a speed test here and see if it's really working here's what the survey says about 12 Megs a second um see oh we're hitting 16. that's not that terrible for out here really yeah I'm watching some dummy on the homestead bandwagon out here in the barn I guess it works okay well if uh backhoe on the back if you're living in a place with uh with a really limited cell phone connectivity and we want Wi-Fi all over the property maybe this is a solution um because of course you can get starlink in rural areas like like we live in where connectivity for anything is really awful so the we have stretched this Wi-Fi to its limit out here but the mesh system does seem to work again is there a benefit to this gen 3 Wi-Fi over just getting a a good high quality third-party um Wi-Fi router that you just plug your starlink router into I don't know if there really is I guess there's some nice Cable Management it looks nice you know we're using all OEM equipment so that's not bad but other than that I'm not seeing a whole lot of benefits here it stretches again okay but I don't know if you want to fiddle around go for it I guess it's good enough so I can maybe watch a video in the barn I don't think it beats the current technology on the market it does have 6G and then my phones don't use 6G Wi-Fi so I don't know what that is or five six gigahertz I don't know gigawatts I'm not a doctor but it meshes up really easy I guess I could say that I mean this thing's pretty dummy proof once you use the right wires just plug it in and go and use the Starling cap so I don't know I guess we're going to the Moon with Elon Musk once again all right y'all take care of yourselves and uh we'll see you later well Flash update here I went inside and checked things uh we're up to 150 Megs a second so I guess starlink has really uh pushing the speed to us no never mind we're back to 40. ah

Channel: Homestead Bandwagon

Views: 42,654

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Id: AkV7XaIkecs

Length: 18min 19sec (1099 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 12 2023