Starlink Mini as a failover

https://www.jackpearce.co.uk/posts/starlink-failover/

by jkpe • 4 months ago

324 156 4 months ago

jackpearce.co.uk

haunter• 4 months ago

TIL standby mode. Is that enough to operate a remote webcam? Not real time video feed but say uploading a photo every 1 minute or so

olex• 4 months ago

Apparently you get unlimited data capped at 500 kbit/s. So that would be a clear "yes".

kkapelon4• 4 months ago

You can find something similar with IOT sims. And then you just need a standard 4g/5g dongle/router

gh02t• 4 months ago

Care to point me to it? The best I can find searching a bit with unlimited data is capped to 64 kbps for $100/yr, which is quite a bit worse.

alexfoo10• 4 months ago

Depending on a whole bunch of things but a 200KB photo once a minute might be in the realms of LoRa. You could get the data out for free.

The 500Kbps of Starlink would be close enough for a 500KB photo every 10 seconds or so assuming typical packet overheads.

dheera2• 4 months ago

For security applications where most of the image doesn't change, 500 Kbps is fine for low resolution video streaming.

mynameisvlad• 4 months ago

I also do this. Xfinity went out for a few hours earlier this month and Unifi failed over almost instantly, and within minutes we had high speed internet once I upgraded us. The standby mode would have been plenty for basic web browsing, too.

$5/mo for pretty guaranteed connectivity, plus being able to take it around with me on travels is pretty awesome.

intrasight• 4 months ago

What is the role of Unifi here? I read the article and went to their site but I still have no clue.

lmz• 4 months ago

Most likely to be a router, configured to fail over.

QuiEgo• 4 months ago

Unifi is one of the few consumer-grade routers that supports dual WAN.

drnick1• 4 months ago

Same remark here. This reads more like paid promotion for UniFi than anything. It should be mentioned that any Linux box can trivially accommodate multiple WAN interfaces. You don't need to pay the UniFi tax for this.

SunshineTheCat• 4 months ago

I was paying for gigabit with the local ISP and it slowed down and lost connection so frequently I bought a Starlink (the regular one, not the mini) as a "backup."

As per the usual, my internet went down and I switched to the backup Starlink. After working with it for about a week I cancelled my ISP.

Turned out around 350MBPS down was fine for everything I was doing (and it's way more reliable).

WarmWash• 4 months ago

Kinda drifting off topic, but I'm so bitter over this

My girlfriend had been paying for 1Gb fiber for about 5 years at the insistence of the rep because "You stream 4k content and use your internet for work". $110/mo or something. Verizon comes by and sets her up with a modem and an "auto-route smart 2.4GHz/5GHz" router which slots you into a frequency based on...something. Who knows because it didn't work. It just put everything on 2.4GHz.

I noticed while at her house that the internet was painfully slow downloading large files and dug into it.

For those who don't know, 2.4GHz will typically top out around 100Mbps. Around the house you're looking at closer to 50Mbps. With 5Ghz it's much better, about 500Mbps typical, but verizons awful "smart" router just put everything on 2.4GHz.

So for years she had been paying for 1Gbps, Verizon happily taking her money, while she never saw over 100Mbps. It's also not like they tell you anywhere that the router they give you will only realistically offer 1/10th your Gb speed. Such a dumpster tier company. I can only imagine there are tens of thousands being conned by this scheme.

Anyway, I put in a new router and switched to the cheapest plan. The internet is now much faster.

bigbuppo• 4 months ago

I hate that it works so well these days. I have my antenna right out ground level between the house and trees. Absolute worst case scenario, and it's been rock solid in everything but the heaviest of rain storms for almost a year now. Still, the occasional slowdown or half-second outage really screws up Android's idiotic magic for switching between wifi and cell to the point that my pixel phone is basically useless at home. But that's more of a "google knows best" problem.

M4R5H4LL3• 4 months ago

XFinity has been terrible lately, and I have a Starlink Mini. XFinity failed today, and I did fallback for a few hours on the Mini. Connectivity was actually better than fiber. If only it worked when it is cloudy -- for $50 on roaming, that's a no-brainer given the exorbitant cost of living in northern cal.

natch2• 4 months ago

I’ve never had an issue with Starlink when it’s cloudy, or rainy for that matter. They even advertise this. Mini is different this way?

pseudohadamard4• 4 months ago

How likely is it that this $5 deal will continue in the future? It sounds like a no-brainer WAN backup option, are Starlink going to discontinue it when they realise that people are using it as such?

Also, is this available globally or UK-only? I can't find any mention of it on the local Starlink site.

wongarsu• 4 months ago

It's $5 for every month where you don't actually use it. If they are still subsidizing the hardware cost, that's probably where that money goes. If you actually use it you pay regular price for that month

I don't see how this would be a bad deal for Starlink

It's in available on most plans in most locations, with some restrictions described here: https://starlink.com/ca/support/article/37bb3b47-9525-7224-5...

kkapelon4• 4 months ago

Using a 4g/5g router is much easier and probably cheaper/power efficient.

Depending on your area you don't even need an external one. A simple 4g dongle would do.

prism563• 4 months ago

Yup, OP is from the UK. In the UK I got a ThreeUK business SIM for £49 that lasted 2 years with 500GB data. It sits in wan failover and manages about 50mbps which is perfect to keep most services running.

dazc• 4 months ago

Very much location dependent though. I lived less than a mile from Southampton city centre for a while and could never get anything close to dial-up standard download/upload speeds. I've heard similar from London residents.

rjh293• 4 months ago

Is that £49 a month, or £49 for the 500GB data? Sounds useful!

ycombinete• 4 months ago

Unifi (which the OP uses) even has dedicated devices for this type of failover: https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/29887153953559-UniFi-5...

alexfoo10• 4 months ago

Spendy though.

The Unifi 5G modem for the UK [1] is £378 (~USD500) and that's just the hardware, you still have to pay for a suitable SIM.

I can see why some people are drawn to the Starlink option at 1/3 of that price.

1. https://uk.store.ui.com/uk/en/category/internet-solutions/co...

zajio1am• 4 months ago

When here is local power outage and everyone switches to 4g/5g, it is overwhelmed and unusable.

alexfoo10• 4 months ago

And the local power outage takes out the 4g/5g mast too.

kkapelon4• 4 months ago

Again this is location specific. I have a mini ups on my router/ont. And I assume that my provider also has a UPS, because even when power is out my landline connection just works.

tshaddox• 4 months ago

There are probably cheaper options, especially if you want to literally use your smartphone as the hotspot, but the Verizon home backup internet plan I looked at recently is $20 a month (and gives you 7 24-hour periods per month of unlimited data).

The Verizon home router is included when you sign up (you have to return it if you cancel). I bought it out of desperation when my home fiber internet was down all weekend due to a local tech screwing up and unplugging my house from the breakout box on the curb, but given the cost and the normal reliability of my home internet it’s really barely worth it.

bob1029• 4 months ago

I prefer having a 2nd wired connection as my backup. The satellite connection has some clear benefits, but it's still going to outer space. A DOCSIS failover won't suffer from rain fade or a something landing on the antenna.

If I've got a situation so bad it takes out both of my connections I've probably got bigger things to deal with than internet access.

The buried fiber getting cut by is really the only thing that kills the connection. Fiber can go for a long time without power from the local grid infrastructure. My cable provider has a mostly orthogonal failure mode (goes down like clockwork with the grid).

JimmyBiscuit• 4 months ago

It honestly has to be very strong rain for it to create connection issues. I dont know where you live but here in germany we have that maybe once or twice a year with our antenna.

forinti2• 4 months ago

I have a second fiber connection and found out recently that both fibers come along the same route and when a fire took out a utility pole, I lost both connections.

I then found out that all providers bar one (there are 5 or 6) come along the same street.

So if you are going to go with this option choose carefully your providers!

SV_BubbleTime• 4 months ago

This entirely.

“I like docsis”… cool, it turns to fiber 500ft after your house.

daemonologist• 4 months ago

Five or six! My kingdom for one fiber provider.

merpkz• 4 months ago

Man, that 500kbit/s is quite generous for that price, can easily be used to access CCTV cameras in remote areas. I currently use LTE for that and it's 10 eur for 15GB data cap per month for that use case

Reubend• 4 months ago

A mobile failover would be cheaper and would give you better connectivity in heavy rain.

A 4G dongle can be purchased for $15, rather than $200 for a Starlink Mini. Then, let's say your main internet source fails and you need to actually use the backup plan beyond the standby amount of 0.5 Mbps. That will cost you a minimum of $50 for Starlink, versus roughly $25 for a month of unlimited cell service. As for standby costs, you can find phone plans for $5 per month tat give a small amount of fast data, as opposed to Starlink's unlimited amount of slow data.

But of course this only works for areas that actually have cell service.

lxgr4• 4 months ago

TFA specifically calls out not wanting to depend on 4G/5G coverage, which is anything but ubiquitous:

It has the advantage of working pretty much anywhere with a view of the sky so no relying on mobile network coverage.

I'm also not sure if $25/month is anything close to the global average for unlimited 4G/5G data (if even available).

antonkochubey2• 4 months ago

Sounds way too high to me, I am paying €8.80/month for unlimited 5G, calls and texting

rjh293• 4 months ago

I mean it's more to do with the cool factor of using a satellite, not practical concerns. Practically a mobile failover is superior if you have coverage.

wooger4• 4 months ago

Why does coverage matter... when you know perfectly well if you have decent 5G coverage at the location of your fibre router?

kotaKat3• 4 months ago

If you're in a rural area (and heck, even in an urban era) the primary ISP of a region dropping is likely to cause a lot of congestion from cellphones falling back to the operator network.

I found it quite absurd that Spectrum (my cable operator) wants to sell me a modem with integrated 5G/4G backup knowing that as soon as the cable plant drops, hundreds of local phones are going to congest the network as well and my "Invincible WiFi(tm)" will end up dead as a dodo.

I'll just throw a Peplink up and throw the cable and Starlink into it and run that as my load balancer.

bsjshshsb• 4 months ago

I noticed the pattern. 5G disappears when ISP is down. Everyone WFH trying to get on I guess.

bdavbdav2• 4 months ago

I live a 25 minute train ride from london in a town with about 16000 residents, on a busy street 5 minutes walk from the main station.

My cell is unusable.

alexfoo10• 4 months ago

Three in Hitchin?

My personal mobile is on EE. My wife's is on Vodafone. My work mobile was on O2.

(We don't have a fourth device that was on Three unfortunately, otherwise we'd have all of the major carriers covered.)

There are plenty of places I've been around the UK where only one of our devices could get any kind of signal.

matthews3• 4 months ago

I live a 5 hour train ride from London and my mobile data is also unusable.

wooger4• 4 months ago

Yeah, change networks.

TacticalCoder• 4 months ago

A mobile failover would be cheaper and would give you better connectivity in heavy rain.

When I was living in the rural seaside (literally grapes growing in front of the sea: nice place), when a bad electricity outage would happen it'd take down everything, including the only cell tower we'd be connected to. So no Internet, no mobile phone. No nothing but the laptop's batteries.

There are also people who have the same ISP as the company giving them their phone number: about a year ago in my country (highly modern, western EU country) a major carrier went down for a few hours. Electricity kept working but all the people on that ISP and mobile phone carrier were sorry out of luck. Most shops couldn't accept payments anymore (except cash but people don't use that much here).

Failover on mobile is, for many, the same thing as no failover at all: you may as well not even bother.

Satellite failover, on the other hand, is quite harder to disrupt.

ttul2• 4 months ago

The issue is that mobile is easily overloaded if those around you are also failing over onto it. There are only so many channels available per sector. In my experience, when one of the two incumbent carriers in my area goes down, mobile is immediately useless as a backup.

fwipsy2• 4 months ago

Does Starlink have the bandwidth to avoid the same failure mode, or is it just that few people are using it for that purpose yet?

ghaff• 4 months ago

Yeah. I live at the base of a hill and cell service alone is pretty marginal for video or anything else requiring high bandwidth a low latency.

pseudohadamard4• 4 months ago

I'm currently using 4G as a backup and the Starlink Standby plan would definitely be cheaper. Only by a few dollars, but still cheaper, and unlike the cellular plan there's unlimited bandwidth while with the cell plan I'm relying on rollover data accumulating during periods of non-use to cover when it's being used.

alexfoo10• 4 months ago

Every so often I do the numbers on a backup Internet connection and decide that it's not worth it, but understand that it is useful for peace of mind reasons. My Internet is just too reliable. When I'm out of contract with my current provider I'll need to reconsider this as the supplier I'm likely to move to has no obvious/simple/integrated backup option.

tl;dr FTTP. A single outage event in 16 months, lasted 40 minutes, whilst asleep.

I'm in the UK and have FTTP through BT. Way back when I also purchased the 4G backup option (Hybrid Connect) that comes with this service. That's an extra £7.50/mo when taken as part of the usual 24-month contract. It's simple to setup and doesn't require any specific maintenance.

Looking back at the logs it's clear (from an actual usage perspective) it's not been worth the £7.50/mo I've been paying for it, but I'll admit it helped give me peace of mind when I was on-call for work so it is easy to justify.

The BT supplied router (which is required if you want to use their 4G backup hardware) keeps a log of "Resilience events".

In the 16 months I've had FTTP it has had exactly one "resilience event". A 40m11s outage that started at 00:20:05 on 28/11/2025. I was unaware of this outage as I was asleep.

It was really useful when I moved house though. I was in the middle of a 24-month contract with BT at my old address so I ported my contract to my new address. This meant they had to come round and install FTTP at the new property, which they couldn't do for a couple of weeks, so I was without home Internet for these two weeks.

Luckily the 4G "Hybrid Connect" backup device wasn't geo-locked (or if it was maybe BT overlooked it given there was an outstanding "Moving house" order on the account) and so it worked perfectly for the ~2 weeks between moving in and FTTP being installed. If this hadn't worked then a temporary 4G router would have worked just as well.

I had a bunch of "resilience events" for this period (it wasn't one continuous event as I was moving/restarting the broadband router for various reasons). During those 13 days the logs show 163GB download and 25GB upload. That's an average of ~150KBps (note the capital B there, in bits-per-second it is ~1.1Mbps) download.

In the 26 months prior to moving (where I was on ~75Mbps FTTC with BT) I had 3 "resilience events". 17m36s, 47m7s, 31m22s. All between midnight and 4am where I wouldn't have noticed, these were also within 1 month of each other, the other 25 months had no problems at all. None.

When my current contract comes to an end I'll move to a different supplier (probably Community Fibre as I can get symmetric 5Gbps for less than I'm paying BT for 1Gbps/120Mbps) and then not worry about a backup. If it is less reliable then I'll look for a solution then.

My current backup is simply to hotspot on my mobile with 5G (good signal here). Doesn't help the others in the house but they can fend for themselves. Neighbours have different suppliers or technologies (DOCSIS vs FTTP) so swapping wifi details would also be an option.

As others have pointed out, a local power-cut that takes out of the FTTP cabinet could easily take out the local 4G/5G masts making a 4G backup solution useless. If this happens I can just take my laptop to a nearby cafe or the co-working space I use. That kind of outage is very rare though round here.

Then again with the sums involved (under £10/month extra) it may just be easier (for peace of mind again) to just plump for something that doesn't really make amazing financial sense as it's just the cost of a pint or two a month.

vablings• 4 months ago

I was with a small company called BRSK who did the FTTP rollout in my area, I think they have changed hands a few times now, but the sheer reliability was legit 5-9s. I don't legally fully understand how small companies ended up getting lots of money from the government for FTTP but they absolutely crushed it in my area. Shame they got mega review-bombed because they installed telegraph poles outside people's houses and that's apparently evil

alexfoo10• 4 months ago

the sheer reliability was legit 5-9s

That made me think about mine...

a) FTTC:

25 months and only outages were 17m36s, 47m7s, 31m22s gives ~99.991

b) FTTP:

16 months and a single 40m11s outage gives ~99.994

(Both using 30 day months, the answers remain the same to 5sf even if I calculate the durations more accurately.)

I'd happily take 4 nines for residential broadband.

I don't legally fully understand how small companies ended up getting lots of money from the government for FTTP

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/project-gigabit-uk-gigabit-progr...

lxgr4• 4 months ago

Set IPv6 Connection to SLAAC (this is critical - SLAAC must be used, not DHCPv6) [...] Set 'Prefix Delegation Size' to 56

Is this also A UniFi bug, is Starlink doing IPv6 address assignment in a weird way, or is this a normal/RFC-compliant way of assigning a /56 subnet to a router?

I always assumed routeable prefixes on v6 require DHCPv6 (except for hacks like RFC 7278 and /64 subnets)?

thedanbob• 4 months ago

I think that section left out some details. On my Unifi setup, the router's IPv6 connection is configured with DHCPv6 (SLAAC isn't even an option) while the local networks are configured with SLAAC.

zzyzxd• 4 months ago

I have a GL.iNet travel router. When I am not travel, it connects to the router's second WAN port. If my main internet goes down, it takes me 30 seconds to tether my phone and failover manually. My carrier detects and throttles hotspot traffic by measuring packets TTL, so I tweaks the router's iptables to dodge that. Typically I get over 400 Mbps.

From time to time I get the itch to improve my home network uptime, and I have to keep reminding myself that the current setup is fine.

nine_k2• 4 months ago

(Tangential, regarding GL.Net routers: I find it satisfying that these routers run OpenWRT out of the box, and top the "Travel routers" category on Amazon: "Overall Pick" and "Amazon's Choice".)

toomuchtodo3• 4 months ago

I run several GL.Net routers in a mesh across two continents, some have Starlink and cellular, some on regular ol' fiber. They are bulletproof, highly recommend.

polishdude20• 4 months ago

It's probably because usually normal people don't but routers because they get them included in their internet subscription. So the people buying them have a specific reason to that normal routers don't do

numbers• 4 months ago

Is your phone connected to the router through a cable or wirelessly?

Havoc• 4 months ago

They can do both - cable or bluetooth. Don't think wifi

codethief3• 4 months ago

My carrier detects and throttles hotspot traffic by measuring packets TTL, so I tweaks the router's iptables to dodge that.

Could you elaborate on this?

dylan604• 4 months ago

I have a friend that is also curious. Their fibre cable was cut by addicts trying to find a source of copper that took a few days to be repaired. Using their hot spot during the outage used up their allotted hot spot bandwidth for the month. My friend would be very interested in how to avoid potential down time in the future.

bobmcnamara2• 4 months ago

Sure, it's widely known.

Default TTL is usually 64.

Phone traffic TTL is 64.

But when behind the phone-as-router/gateway, compy traffic TTL is...63!

jonathonlui• 4 months ago

Some mobile phone providers check the packet TTL to limit tethering.

Network packets commonly have start with default TTL values of 64, 128, or 255. Each hop in the network subtracts 1.

When phone connects direct to carrier (cell tower, I assume) the carrier will see TTL of 64.

A laptop tethered to a phone introduces a hop so laptop-to-phone TTL is 64, phone-to-carrier TTL is 63.

Carriers can then limit bandwidth if network packet that don't have a common TTL.

For `iptables` look at `--ttl-inc 1` (to add back the 1 so 63 => 64) or `--ttl-set 64`.

Alternatively, you set the tethered devices to use a TTL of 65, e.g. linux/mac `sysctl -w net.inet.ip.ttl=65`

nightbrawler• 4 months ago

You can easily manipulate and set TTL to whatever is needed with a Mikrotik router. Override TTL for all devices behind it.

/ip firewall mangle add chain=postrouting out-interface=lte1 action=change-ttl new-ttl=set:64 passthrough=yes comment="Set TTL for Mobile Hotspot"

dheera2• 4 months ago

I have AT&T Fiber and 99% of the time it's fantastic, but there are several instances of 30-60 second downtime a day and I have a 5G modem with a Google Fi data sim as a backup. Failover is nearly-instant with a Unifi UDM.

The data sim costs nothing extra on top of my cellular plan and just counts towards my (already very generous) monthly limit of 50GB.

giwook• 4 months ago

Out of curiosity what carrier are you using?

Pulled the thread on this a bit and it seems that it will be highly carrier-dependent and will likely be flakey if it works at all.

TTL is one of the simplest methods carriers use to detect if there's an extra hop but very unlikely to be their only line of defense against methods like this.

fortranfiend• 4 months ago

I live pretty rural and starlink has been worth the price over the last few years. When you compare it to dialup or hughesnet or viasat, it just works.

lithocarpus• 4 months ago

Same, right now it's great. I imagine we'll get enshittification soon enough when starlink gets enough lock in, but right now it's good.

nickcw• 4 months ago

I was looking at the Standby plan a few months ago. There was some talk as to needing to activate it to full speed and price at least once per year or pay an extra fee which makes it a lot less attractive.

heraldgeezer• 4 months ago

Whatever one might think about Elon Musk's posts on X, the engineering and achievements coming out of SpaceX are genuinely extraordinary and deserve a lot of respect.

arjie• 4 months ago

We've used this in San Francisco to great effect. Once the Internet went down and I took our portable battery to the roof with the Mini and my wife was only a few minutes on her phone hotspot before she was able to have meetings normally. Great functionality.

syntaxing• 4 months ago

The use case varies but for what it’s worth, most major cellular provider in the US offer fallback Internet plans. Ranges from 10-20 a month depending if you already have a line with them. AT&T has an interesting one where your phone lines hotspot is free and unthrottled whenever your fiber is impacted.

mholt• 4 months ago

Yeah but if you need Internet failover, cell phone towers are likely flooded. Starlink will be much more available (probably).

baby_souffle• 4 months ago

This too depends on which POP/ground station you're landing at.

Maybe less so once the majority of starling satellites are capable of laser communications to route your traffic down to a less saturated ground station.

madaxe_again3• 4 months ago

Or they’re just offline, because their backup batteries only last a few hours, and the gensets for the backhaul have run out of diesel. Iberian blackout last year, I didn’t even know it had happened until I went to pick the kid up from school - just another day at the home office.

Boss0565• 4 months ago

I have no desire to give Elon Musk any money.

sayamqazi• 4 months ago

If you are from USA and pay tax Govt has likely put some money into things done by Elon

dmitrygr• 4 months ago

And yet again 50% of the work is working around IPv6 nonsense. I long for the day when we give up on it and try again (with proper DHCP and proper support for NAT)

speakbits• 4 months ago

I wish I had an excuse to actually need this much uptime at home. It's not the hardest thing to jump over to my phone as hotspot the very few times I need it to work.

asdefghyk5• 4 months ago

Be aware of rain fade. Unit is only rated to operate up to 50 C Hail impact protection for antenna ?

madaxe_again3• 4 months ago

I mean, if you’re planning on using it in Death Valley on a rainy day, sure, you might have some problems. Also it doesn’t brush your teeth for you.

szszrk• 4 months ago

You phrase it like it's some insane requirements, but is asking for an outdoor antenna to survive *rain* such a huge ask?

asdefghyk5• 4 months ago

RE "...planning on using it in Death Valley....."

Would be easy for unit to go over 50 C due to combination of heat from the sun and heat generated from the electronics. Where I am, temperatures of 30 C are common - in the shade.

dboreham• 4 months ago

I use Starlink as a backup provider, have done loads of work to tunnel public IPs via it, automatically fail over traffic etc, yet had no idea they supported public IPv6 subnets until reading this article.

corford2• 4 months ago

I've just done something similar in response to a heavy storm that's taken out the fiber where I live (7 weeks now, still hasn't been reconnected). Starlink has been a life saver and works flawlessly (~200Mbps, <35ms latency) but I've also added a cheap 4G data SIM in to the mix too for extra resilience (no 5G coverage where I am but 4G gets ~45Mbs with an external antenna).

Had to get this going quickly so used tplink gear as it was readily accessible and surprisingly it's worked quite well. Used an NX210 (for WiFi to house and the backup 4G sim). Connected the NX210's WAN to an ER605, with Starlink router in WAN1 (in bypass mode) and fiber router in WAN2. This gives me instant fail over across all three and the option of load balancing across fiber and starlink (whenever the fiber comes back). Last step was to get an EAP211 so I could share my starlink over to a neighbour who also lost their fiber after the storm. That has worked well too.

* I'm using a residential starlink plan with the full dish (not mini), mounted with their pipe adapter accessory

mrlinx• 4 months ago

you must be around leiria? :D

corford2• 4 months ago

South of there but yup was Kristin that caused the fiber damage.

JonChesterfield• 4 months ago

Something similar here but aggregated instead of failover, see openmptcprouter or diy equivalent.

blinded• 4 months ago

Do the same thing with an edge router x and 4g pay as you go t-mobile mifi.

obayesshelton• 4 months ago

Jack, not sure why but I love your writing / site.

Reminds me of the good old days of the internet.

I also migrated to Starlink recently and quite like the service so far.

Starlink Mini as a failover

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