Back-up Internet DIY

[Tom]

We have comcast cable internet and like its speed, but it goes down way too often. Seems to just be our location, because in our last house the comcast internet virtually never went down. To make it worse, we are in a cell tower dead zone, so can't rely on cell coverage when the cable is out. So....I signed up for Starlink satellite internet over a year ago and finally got the hardware and have it up and running as a back-up for the comcast.

I wanted a system that would automatically roll-over to the Starlink when Comcast was down, so that we could remain connected to the same home WiFi without interruptions when the cable was offline. If you poke around the internet, it was surprisingly difficult to get clear info on how to do this -- there are plenty of resources, but most of them are too steeped in networking jargon to be of much use to someone like me. So, without further ado, I did this video for youtube -- kind of the back-up internet for dummies (like me) video....

[Larry C]

Thanks for posting

[Tom]

Thanks for posting

Yeah, not sure if it is of much relevance to anyone here, but figured no harm in sharing. We live at the end of the comcast cable line, so the cable goes out on it's own once a month at least, and to make it worse we lose all cable signal when the power goes out (even with a whole-house generator). Comcast relies on power from the grid to deliver it's signal, so when the power is down, the cable is down. Add to that we are in a cell dead zone, and we are pretty much cut off entirely when the internet goes down. So, Starlink to the rescue -- it's pretty darn good (100+ megabit download speeds), so if it proves reliable through all seasons, I may end up dropping comcast altogether.

[kmaneh]

Historically, this is a difficult thing to do. I used to look for solutions but they were too expensive and complex. I just bought one of these inexpensive boxes and will try to get it to work with Starlink as the primary and a wireless rural network as a backup.

Not as irrelevant as you may have thought to us rural folks!

Thanks for posting this Tom!

[Tom]

Historically, this is a difficult thing to do. I used to look for solutions but they were too expensive and complex. I just bought one of these inexpensive boxes and will try to get it to work with Starlink as the primary and a wireless rural network as a backup.

Not as irrelevant as you may have thought to us rural folks!

Thanks for posting this Tom!

Awesome. Hope it helps! You are at least lucky that you have a wireless you can use as the back-up. We are on the fringe of our local wireless coverage, so can sometimes get one bar of 5G coverage, but more often than not get virtually no data. Starlink has been great so far -- miles ahead of the other internet satellite services I looked at. There are a number of routers with built-in cell-network fail-over, and lots of videos on setting up a cell fail-over. That said, I did this video because I couldn't find any straight-forward 'how-to' videos/instructions made for non-network types like me.