Functioning
In the equipment that we have to buy to have the service, we will find a large external antenna that we must place on our roof if possible, or in an external place and oriented towards a specific place, with the aim of being able to receive the coverage of the satellites passing through that particular orbit. Inside the house we will have a device that will allow us to feed the external antenna, and it will also take care of bringing a connection to the main router that we have to buy.
Once we have all the wiring connected, we can connect to the router via cable and also via Wi-Fi, and we will be connected to the Internet. The installation kit is self-installable, that is, we have to install it ourselves with the help of the tutorials and manuals that the company itself has on its official website. In principle you shouldn’t have any problems when installing, however, you will always have technical support at your disposal.
How much does the service cost
This Starlink service is quite expensive, especially when it comes to signing up, because we have to buy all the equipment ourselves. In the case of an installation in Spain, the price of the necessary equipment is as follows:
- Equipment: €639
- Shipping and handling: €71
- Service: €99 monthly
- Regulatory fee: €9 per month. This is a CNMC fee that imposes a license cost to access the electromagnetic spectrum.
In the following image you can see the cost that appears on the official website:
As you can see, Starlink is a very interesting service for those people who are in towns where neither fiber optics nor ADSL reach, and who only connect to the Internet through 3G or 4G networks. Thanks to this company, we will be able to navigate at high Internet speeds and relatively low latency compared to other satellite Internet technologies.
Asus Router Setup
If we want to use a router from the manufacturer ASUS to give us Starlink connectivity, we must first make sure we meet some prerequisites, because we are not always going to be able to do so.
Necessary requirements and network scheme
The first thing we must do is check what device Starlink has put in our home, we must check if the model that has installed us has an Ethernet port to be able to connect by cable. In the event that we do not have an Ethernet network port, we will need to buy the official Starlink Ethernet connector, which we can find on the official website of the operator.
In the case of having our device with an Ethernet port, then we must make the connection in the following way:
Our ASUS router must be connected via network cable to the LAN port of the router provided by Starlink, once we have done this, we can start configuring the ASUS router. A very important aspect that you must take into account is that the ASUS router must be a neutral router, that is, we must have an available Ethernet port for the WAN. Once we have checked and connected the cables as in the previous diagram, we can start with the configuration of the router.
Settings on the ASUS router
The first thing we must do is connect to the ASUS router or Wi-Fi Mesh system, through the domain router.asus.com or through the IP address 192.168.50.1. If this is the first time you enter this menu, the step-by-step setup wizard from the ASUS manufacturer will appear. The connection data that we must configure for the Internet WAN is «DHCP automatic IP» without putting any type of VLAN or special ISP requirement.
We have tested it with an ASUS RT-AX89X router, which can be configured with three different WANs (Gigabit Ethernet port for dedicated WAN, 10GBASE-T port for LAN/WAN and also 10G SFP+ port for LAN/WAN) . In our case, we have configured the “normal” WAN port which is the Gigabit Ethernet for the dedicated WAN.
Once the type of WAN has been chosen, we must choose “No” when it asks us if we need a username and password. Next, we choose “Automatic IP Address” without selecting the “Special ISP Requirement” option. Now we will have the Internet connection configured, it would be necessary to configure the SSID and the corresponding WiFi password of the two frequency bands, our recommendation is that you “separate” the frequency bands to know at all times which one you are connecting to.
After configuring the WiFi wireless network with the SSID and password that we want, we must enter the new access password for the ASUS router. Finally, it will ask us whether to activate the 802.11ax or Wi-Fi 6 frames, click on “Next” and we will have the router configured and ready to establish the Internet connection through the Starlink router.
Within the firmware menu of the Asuswrt router, we make sure that we have it configured in the following way the part of the Internet WAN:
And in this way facing the LAN (local network) of the ASUS router:
In these moments we will already have an Internet connection both via cable and via Wi-Fi through the ASUS router and with Starlink.
Deactivate WiFi of the Starlink router
It is highly recommended to disable the Wi-Fi connection of the Starlink router so that it does not create interference with the ASUS router or the configured Wi-Fi Mesh system. To deactivate the Wi-Fi connectivity of the router we can do the following:
- We open the Starlink app, go to configuration options and choose to enable the “bypass” mode. In this mode of operation, the Starlink router will disable the Wi-Fi connection, if we want to return to normal mode we will have to do a factory reset of the router.
Once we have disabled the Wi-Fi, in case you want to continue using the Starlink app to see the status of the Internet connection and other available information, it is absolutely necessary to create two static routes in the ASUS router with the Next information:
- Static Route 1: Host 192.168.50.1; netmask 255.255.255.255; gateway 0.0.0.0, metric 1, WAN interface.
- Static Route 2: Host 192.168.50.24; netmask 255.255.255.255; gateway 0.0.0.0, metric 1, WAN interface.
The IP 192.168.50.1 corresponds to our ASUS router, and the IP address 192.168.50.24 corresponds to our smartphone. In your case, you have to put the IP that the DHCP server has provided you, or the IP of the Static DHCP that you have configured. In the following image you can see how this configuration would look:
Once the changes have been applied, we can open the app again and access the Starlink router configuration menu without any problem.
