If you have a Starlink dish and you want to use it with your UniFi network, there are a few things to take into account. As of 2022, there are two different generations of starling dish and depending on when you purchased it, will dictate what set up process you need to do.

With the original circle dish, SpaceX included what was essentially a PoE injector, with a standard ethernet cable running from the power supply to the dish, using RJ45 ends. If you wanted to, you could easily plug in your own UniFi network into the LAN port and everything would work as intended.

However, with the latest rectangle dish, the setup process has changed somewhat. Even though the Starlink dish is still powered by an ethernet cable, the end has been replaced with a custom ethernet to USB-C connector, making using your own network slightly harder. Our own Reilly Chase has ordered Starlink for his house and used a pipe adaptor, he made a custom connector for getting the cable into the wall much easier and documented the process on his blog post, which you can find here.

WAN Connection Type

With both versions of the Starlink dish, the WAN type is exacltly the same. Set the USG, UDM or UXG to accept DHCP over IPv4 and your device will pick up an IP address. Starlink using CGNAT, which reduces the need for giving every customer a public static IP address. However, this does come with some downsides such as making any form of port forwarding impossible and getting VPNs to work pretty difficult. Applications like UniFi Network and UniFi Protect won't have any issues operating over Starlink, due to the cloud broker technology Ubiquiti has put in place.

With the original round dish, SpaceX included the above PoE injector, making connectivity between your existing network and the new Starlink dish very easy. However, with the newer rectangle dish, the company has made the cabling a lot tidier and simpler, but has meant more advanced users need to purchase the optional 'Starlink Ethernet Adaptor' which is very hard to get hold of currently. The adaptor is $25.

With the adaptor, the Starlink router is still required, but can be put into bypass mode to transfer the CGNAT WAN IP address to your USG, UDM or UXG. The adaptor essentially goes inbetween the Starlink dish and the router.

Conclusions

With the latest Starlink dish, it is possible to use your own network gear - but you just need the Starlink Ethernet Adaptor to make it work. Let us know how you get on by tweeting us at @hostifi_net on Twitter.

HostiFi

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