What Is Starlink Internet

Internet access is becoming indispensable in every household around the world. Without it, we are almost lost as we use it to stay in contact with loved ones, work, find pertinent information or entertain ourselves. However, some areas, especially around Australia, are far from enjoying regular fibre and other internet services. Enter, Starlink Internet. The company is the brainchild of Elon Musk, and they’ve developed a satellite internet system that allows you to connect from anywhere on Earth. 

Satellite Dish

Starlink has developed and introduced a pizza-sized satellite dish that you can purchase and position on the roof of your house. That dish beams into Earth’s orbit, where Starlink satellites constantly pass by at speed. Those satellites sit roughly 550 kilometres from the Earth, maintain communication with your dish, and pass data up to 100MB/s. Since there are so many Starlink satellites in orbit, the dish switches between them every four minutes to maintain your connection. 

Because your Dishy is small and doesn’t have a wide angle to communicate, there must be over 10,000 Starlink satellites outside the Earth’s atmosphere that can send and receive clear signals from the dish. Their distance from the Earth and your dish means you can comfortably play games and stream movies without delays. 

High Tech Circuitry

Your dish has two motors and an ethernet cable connecting to your router. The motors help point the dish toward the satellite initially. The dish’s printed circuit board (PCB) features 640 tiny microchips and 20 large ones. The main CPU and GPS module sits on the edge of this board. On the other side of the board are 1,400 copper circles. These make up 1,280 antennas, with each stack sending magnetic waves directly to the satellite. 

The high-tech circuitry inside the dish uses phase shifting to ensure it beams a signal directly to outer space and when switching between passing satellites. The messages the dish and satellite use to communicate use varying amplitude and phase of the signal. They then assign or encode 6-bit binary values to each value or permutation. 

The Satellite Connection

The dish sends data to the satellite in about 74 milliseconds of every second, and it takes 926 milliseconds of every second for the satellite to send signals to the dish. This duration is spread out through a second instead of grouping to avoid latency. As a result, you experience seamless internet. 

Starlink was undoubtedly onto something by using satellite technology to ensure that people in remote areas across the earth could access some form of the internet. You can use this system even when you’re out on the water, far from any network access. The best part about Starlink producing this solution is that they’re constantly improving the product and have already launched Gen2, where the hardware is entirely new and better than the first. 

Whatever you need to make your Starlink system work for you, you’ll find it in our online store. From mounts to routers and cables to adaptors, you can now make the internet work for you wherever you go.