Starlink Internet Connection equipment - Home/Office user

[Sciencefan]

Plug a single cable into the dish and one end into a router/WiFi access point. If your router does not have POE builtin, use the provided POE injector. I know that is a second and third plugin due to plugging the injector into the wall and the router. Heck, we could count plugging in the router into the wall if you wanted to nitpick it to death. The intent of the tweet was it is simple compared to installing DirecTv or ViaSat terminal.

For sure it will have its own wi-fi hotspot. I believe PoE will be optional way to connect it, this is cheap and relevant. So fastest but not the better way is to stand dish somewhere near a window in direct view of thesatellites, plug to the power socket and get WI-FI.

[niwax]

Plug a single cable into the dish and one end into a router/WiFi access point. If your router does not have POE builtin, use the provided POE injector. I know that is a second and third plugin due to plugging the injector into the wall and the router. Heck, we could count plugging in the router into the wall if you wanted to nitpick it to death. The intent of the tweet was it is simple compared to installing DirecTv or ViaSat terminal.

For sure it will have its own wi-fi hotspot. I believe PoE will be optional way to connect it, this is cheap and relevant. So fastest but not the better way is to stand dish somewhere near a window in direct view of thesatellites, plug to the power socket and get WI-FI.

Has anyone considered that at unit sales upwards of a million they might make a version with and without wifi? Most businesses and local ISPs will use their own infrastructure. In the beginning they might even use the same hardware for both, that's what my cable provider does. Their integrated solution behaves like a modem but is software upgraded into a wifi router if you pay the extra fee.

[Sciencefan]

Has anyone considered that at unit sales upwards of a million they might make a version with and without wifi? Most businesses and local ISPs will use their own infrastructure.

I can't imagine a costly consumer or soho router without wi-fi in 2020s. What they will offer to big companies later is another question.

[Vanspace]

High-res photo of prototype user terminal, from reddit user u/darkpenguin22, photos taken at the Merrillan, WI gateway.

Any guesses what the little lever like thing might be for?

Cropped from one of reddit user u/darkpenguin22's photos.

I think it is the lever arm for a locking collet to attach the unit to whatever mount you use. The opening in the tube below it suggests that the arm can drop down.

From su27y we can see two different mounting plates (plate sizes, pipe lengths) and from gongora it appears the BC units are mounted sideways on the fence. It makes sense to treat the mounting hardware as separate because of the vast number of possible mounting hardware configurations. Most antennas I have ever dealt with usually came with a few different bits to fit common mounting situations.

[Kansan52]

Speculation mode on One coax to the receiver that supplies power to the receiving systems. Signal comes back and is processed inside. And just like the satellite TV, this will never be an indoor receiving system. Speculation mode off

That would be the worst solution. It would imply unnecessary losses in the coax cable.
The best solution is to convert to a "digital" signal as soon as possible in the chain, to avoid losses.
That's why all 5G mmWave solution we have seen until now are external antennas with integrated modem.

I see your reasoning but block down conversion brings 12 channels of video/audio digital data at a time and very low loss. RG6 can be be easily run (shield/ground plus signal/power) instead of multiple wire of ethernet cable.

Signal loss will be small either way.

Your experience is more recent than mine.

[Swedish chef]

Signal loss will be small either way.

In an normal old type of satellite dish there is often only one antenna that receives the signal. You also have the parabolic dish in front that reflects and focus the radio signal onto the antenna. This is not the case with the Starlink dish. It consists of hundreds of smaller antennas forming an phased array. Per your suggestion one would have to use hundreds of coaxial cables to bring the signal back indoors. It will be much simpler and cheaper to do the required signal processing outdoors and close to the antennas.

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

Remember the demographics of the skill set of the rural (multi acre land owners) that most of these UTs will be a godsend. They would have no trouble at doing simple mounting and a wire run even from outside to inside including sealing the hole with some silicone if needed.

A single page install guide with easy to understand pictures and simple wording is best. Not because of the intelligence of the customer, but to keep the customer from tossing a thick instruction booklet aside and winging it. A single page at least will probably get looked at.

A wifi router with PoE that can do 100Mbps is in the retail price range of $50 (Walmart lists one for $29 but without the PoE). So including one with the antenna as well as 100m of wire (which may cost as much as the router or another $50. That only adds <$100 to the cost (since cost of equipment is commonly as low as 60% that of retail price) of the UT equipment. For a UT that could initially cost >$1000. That is not significant. Even for once production is in mass quantities for the antenna/modem at <$500 each that $60 is still not very significant.

As long as the skill set is drilling holes, mounting a metal post to a sturdy support, running a wire either underground or in the air or down walls, plugging of idot plugs (plugs that only fit one way), and plugging in the power plug of the router into a power socket somewhere in the domicile.

The most complex task is setting up the wifi router instead of leaving it on defaults. But if no one is closer than for 100's of meters that may not matter either.

Most of my such skills for doing this type of work I learned before graduating from High School. Even though I grew up in an area that was on the edge of rural but not quite rural. Most people who grow up in this type of environment are tremendously self sufficient for such simplistic tasks as mounting, running wires, or pipes and likely know much more for construction tasks in wall, building, and roofing. It is only persons no longer able to get around well that would have problems but in these communities there is always a helpful neighbor that would spend and afternoon to help set it up. Even if only to be able to watch a sports game or movie in 4K streaming.

[Asteroza]

In regards to the "no special training" required tweet, it should be remembered that regular satellite internet dishes *must* be installed by a licensed professional by law. No special training just means that it *can* be installed by a willing amateur without legal consequences.

I am curious how the "one cable for all" design is going to work out. As many here I can't imagine the device will ship with only WiFi as a means to connect to it, so POE seems like the reasonable thing to expect.

It could be the dish has a built-in wifi router (+bluetooth perhaps), allowing easy setup via smartphone, and the expectation is that it comes with 100m of ethernet cable and a PoE injector only so the cable provides power by default. If you have other wifi routers or wired switches at home, you can connect the PoE injector to the WAN port on those with a regular ethernet cable, but it isn't required. Generally people using Starlink are going to be somewhat upmarket, so expecting them to have a smartphone that can scan a QRcode on the dish for initial setup is not unrealistic.

[EspenU]

Well we’re discussing the reality of the installation here, not semantics. If you promise a two steps installation people (me included) will expect just that.
Going by your logic they could also sell F9s to the public: just two steps, pointy end up and launch 

Not saying it would be a deal breaker if it required rooftop installation, just that they could be more upfront about it, as they are in making clear that the constellation will be aimed at rural areas initially.

I think you are assuming way to much from a tweet. It all depends on how detailed you are when it comes to defining a step.
You have made an assumption on what a step is which includes fastening to a roof and routing the cable as steps. You could go further down and assume that unpacking from the box is a step, or that extending the pole (if it's collapsible) is a step.
The information was given in a very short text, and I'm guessing that he just used a less detailed definition of steps.

You could argue as you say that launching falcon 9 is a two step process, but at some point the definition of a step just becomes silly (like with the 2 step falcon 9). The same applies if you go the other way and define taking off the plastic protection as a step.

In the end, does it really matter?

[RedLineTrain]

As long as the skill set is drilling holes, mounting a metal post to a sturdy support, running a wire either underground or in the air or down walls, plugging of idot plugs (plugs that only fit one way), and plugging in the power plug of the router into a power socket somewhere in the domicile.

Exactly.  Once the needed skillset and toolbox drifts to "provisioning a modem" or "setting up routers" or "crimping wire connections" or "pointing the antenna at a precise location," that's when the service calls start...

[Mandella]

Apparently I'm in the same demographic as oldAtlas_Eguy...

 

I fully expect, hopefully sometime before I receive my Starlink package, to go grab the post hole digger from the shed and dig a hole, pour some quickcrete in it and drop in one of these ten foot steel posts I have currently leaning against aforementioned shed. I need to go a bit out in the yard since my house is pleasantly tree shaded, which is probably not so pleasant for the antenna. Once mounted to the pole I'll either run the cable overhead or do it right and trench out an underground route back to the house. If need be I'll buy extra ground rated cabling.

None of the above counts as any sort of special skillset for me or any of my neighbors. Anyone who can't handle that shouldn't have a yard. And I wouldn't be surprised if, for yards not quite so tree lined, the antenna doesn't ship with a pointed post that can be simply hammered down into the ground, along with other assorted mounting hardware.

That said, if I were a local handyman I would expect some extra business installing these for those without the time or inclination to do it themselves.

[jrhan48]

It has a modem and WiFi router built in.

No ethernet beside the Wifi?
mmh, installed on the rooftop and with Wifi 2.4Ghz connection (5Ghz won't go very far inside the house), you won't have more than a few hundred Mbps. A little strange for a Starlink connectivity in the Gigabit (theoretical) range.

Well let's hope they will have different versions of the device.

It is a "Home" unit designed for at most 1GBaud to the home user.  Ku band freqs, are 12-18 GHz mainly, and cannot penetrate roof so designed for outside, it is for the home user.  Easiest for me would be if antenna matched my cable data RF, e.g. 750 MHz to 1.2 GHz output, then just connect to my external cable entryway using one of my unused ports, add a $5 filter, and let my existing internal electronics decode and route it.   The gateways (a different topic) are designed a lot differently, cost a lot more, and can do the multiple GByte connections.  But in the name of simplification, they'll probably make it more complicated.   Coax  (75 ohms) uses cheap type "F" crimp-on connectors cost about $0.50 each retail, and I already have the tools.

[jrhan48]

Of course, you don't even try to send a phased array signal into the home.  What you do is beamform from the phased array elements, demultiplex and down-convert the signal from the phased antenna array AT the antenna, then amplify and send the simpler modulated signal to the house. It does still have the complexity of agreeing on the form of the modulation used for the "cable" emulation, but one can research what should be done easily.  I did not suggest there were no electronics (or plumbing) in the antenna, just that going all the way to ethernet, with its complicated software stack, and vulnerabilities to upset by local EM environment (Read lightning) might, in the end, cost most users who might already have cable connections more to install.  Its all my speculation so I just talked about what would work the easiest for my existing infrastructure, that is shared by a lot of users, (even if they have no knowledge of what they already have)

[DistantTemple]

Just adding to the profusion of connections - Cat6 is <=100m and as someone said is vulnerable to lightning!
So fibre could be run for a longer distance. But POE is lost, so power is needed at your Starlink UFO mast! (Perhaps with solar panels). So You can get 1/2 Km I think.... I have no idea of the costs of the more esoteric standards that allow 10Km etc such as 1000BASE-BX10 .... Once people start setting up UFO's in awkward spots we should have a beauty parade of solutions to awkwardness!

[ChrisWilson68]

When I asked my question about how much the frequencies used by Starlink would be likely to be attenuated in typical houses, I was hoping someone would provide a citation of a definitive source.  Since nobody cited any hard numbers or sources, I've now done a search myself.

I found this paper with some information on different microwave bands.  The paper was published in 2014 and was intended to provide data on the suitability of various bands for 5G cellular networks.  It summarizes data from many different papers.

https://wireless.engineering.nyu.edu/static-homepage/tech-reports/Characterization-of-the-28-GHz-Millimeter-Wave.pdf

The paper has great data on how building materials affect Ku band signals in section 1.3.2 and how they affect Ka band signals in section 1.5.2.

For the Ku band, in section 1.3.2: As one might expect, even a small thickness of metal effectively blocks the entire signal.  Thermal windows and reinforced concrete are also pretty bad for it.  But ceiling tile, sheetrock, plain glass, plywood, fiberglass insulation with paper backing (not the kind with foil backing, which blocks the signal), and plasterboard all attenuate the signal somewhat but don't entirely block it.

My take-away from this is that in some buildings the signal will be entirely unusable, because they have fiberglass insulation with foil backing or metal in the ceiling or roof.  But in a lot of typical wood-frame houses a usable amount of the signal will get in.

For the Ka band, in section 1.5.2: the measurements given here are less directly relevant for the question of how well the signal will penetrate the roof of a typical wood-frame house.  The meansurements are mostly to tell you if there's a large concrete building between the receiver and the transmitter how much will that cut the signal (spoiler alert: a lot).  But one thing that is relevant is that it says the loss from penetrating 38 cm of drywall is only 6.8 dB.  The ceiling of a typical house probably has the equivalent of less than 10% of that, so this is good news.  The reflection loss from drywall is also not too bad.  Unfortunately, while there's a lot of data in here for concrete, brick, and even limestone, there doesn't seem to be much that's more relevant for wood or asphalt roof shingles that I would think would constitute the main materials between a room of a house and the sky.

So, to me, it seems that this data suggests that enough Ka and Ku band signal can get through ceilings and roofs of a lot of houses to allow some communication with satellites.  I can't be sure, though, because there isn't any data on roof shingles that I could find.  And maybe there's something I'm missing in the data that is there.

This doesn't mean that SpaceX is definitely intending for anyone to use their user terminals indoors.  There would clearly be some signal loss indoors, and how much will vary widely from one house to another.  People living in some buildings definitely wouldn't be able to use it indoors at all.  Will SpaceX want to sacrifice so much signal to let people have the terminal indoors?  I don't know.

I could imagine that SpaceX will say that "point at sky" means find a place where the pizza box can lock onto the satellites.  If it doesn't work for you indoors, you might have to go outdoors.

I could also imagine SpaceX will direct people to put it outside, though I think that's hard to reconcile with Musk's tweet.

What I can conclude, though, is that blanket claims that it can't possibly work indoors don't seem to be supported by the evidence I've seen so far.

[oldAtlas_Eguy]

Just adding to the profusion of connections - Cat6 is <=100m and as someone said is vulnerable to lightning!
So fibre could be run for a longer distance. But POE is lost, so power is needed at your Starlink UFO mast! (Perhaps with solar panels). So You can get 1/2 Km I think.... I have no idea of the costs of the more esoteric standards that allow 10Km etc such as 1000BASE-BX10 .... Once people start setting up UFO's in awkward spots we should have a beauty parade of solutions to awkwardness!

The number for Cat 6 distance limitation is for 1Gbps data rates. For 100Mbps data rates you do not even need cat 6 cable but just Cat 5e is perfectly fine and it works at longer distance at the 100Mbps data rate max distance 100m. At 1Gbps Cat 5e does 50m. It is a myth that you need Cat 6 for 1Gbps speeds.

Added: So a Higher speed UT that does all the way up to 1Gbps would only have a 50m cable. Same cable type, same plugs, and  same PoE just half the length.

[Asteroza]

Just adding to the profusion of connections - Cat6 is <=100m and as someone said is vulnerable to lightning!
So fibre could be run for a longer distance. But POE is lost, so power is needed at your Starlink UFO mast! (Perhaps with solar panels). So You can get 1/2 Km I think.... I have no idea of the costs of the more esoteric standards that allow 10Km etc such as 1000BASE-BX10 .... Once people start setting up UFO's in awkward spots we should have a beauty parade of solutions to awkwardness!

The number for Cat 6 distance limitation is for 1Gbps data rates. For 100Mbps data rates you do not even need cat 6 cable but just Cat 5e is perfectly fine and it works at longer distance at the 100Mbps data rate max distance 100m. At 1Gbps Cat 5e does 50m. It is a myth that you need Cat 6 for 1Gbps speeds.

Added: So a Higher speed UT that does all the way up to 1Gbps would only have a 50m cable. Same cable type, same plugs, and  same PoE just half the length.

Yes, a poorly known thing is 1000BASE-T requires 4 pairs of wires, thus your typical ethernet cable has 8 wires. However, if you lose a pair, you can still run with 100BASE-T which actually only needs 2 pair. An old skeezy trick in the 100Mbit LAN party days was running Cat5e with splitter adapters at both ends so you can run two 100Mbit lines.

The physical choice of connector at the UT is going to be a potential issue though. Will they have some sort of polyurethane seal strips and a conventional RJ45 connector, or something more outdoor rated? What about the other end at the PoE injector?

[vsatman]

Maybe someone knows the answer - how many times will the frequencies in the StarLink beam be reused?
According to the FCC application, Starlink uses 4000 Mhz for transmission from the gateway to the satellite and only 2000 MHz from Satellite to the User Terminal. The MIT report says that there will be reuse, but not exactly how many times, if we assume that the spectral efficiency is 3 bits / Hz, then in order to have a bandwidth of 17 Gbps for one satellite, you need to have a reuse factor of 3 (2000 MHz x 3 bit/Hz x 3). 

[RedLineTrain]

Maybe someone knows the answer - how many times will the frequencies in the StarLink beam be reused?
According to the FCC application, Starlink uses 4000 Mhz for transmission from the gateway to the satellite and only 2000 MHz from Satellite to the User Terminal. The MIT report says that there will be reuse, but not exactly how many times, if we assume that the spectral efficiency is 3 bits / Hz, then in order to have a bandwidth of 17 Gbps for one satellite, you need to have a reuse factor of 3 (2000 MHz x 3 bit/Hz x 3).

I don't have an answer regarding reuse, but to piggyback on your post, I get different frequency amounts than MIT, at least for Starlink.  By my count, the down/up ratio is 2:1 rather than 4:1.

User Down: 2 GHz total (10.7 - 12.7 GHz, agrees with MIT)
User Up:  1 GHz total (12.75 - 13.25 GHz and 14.0 - 14.5 GHz)
Gateway Down:  1.8 GHz total (17.8 - 18.6 GHz, 18.8 - 19.3 GHz, and 19.7 - 20.2 GHz)
Gateway Up:  2.1 GHz (27.5 - 29.1 GHz and 29.5 - 30.0 GHz)

Would welcome being corrected.

[Hummy]

Maybe someone knows the answer - how many times will the frequencies in the StarLink beam be reused?

It's in the fourth column of the table you attached: 4-5 times.