Starlink

BigBlue1 · 2026-02-19T14:32:25-0500

B7510HSD said:
What is the difference between the Starlink ini router and the Gen 3 router? ould I use my own with either system?

The Starlink Mini is an all-in-one highly portable system that can be flexibly powered (AC or DC). Its performance is reasonably on par with the standard Gen 3 system. The difference comes from the all-in-one nature. The ramification of that is that the wifi router is co-located with the dish, which is going to be outside somewhere. If you're sitting in a tent 15' from it that's probably a non-issue. But if you are in a campground and the dish needs to be 50' away to get a view of the sky all of a sudden your wifi signal in the RV is going to be fairly low. Same thing if you wanted to use it for residential use and mount it on your roof. And while yes, you can hook up your own router to a Mini, that means you need to run another cable - an ethernet connection - from your router out to the dish.

So, CAN it function very similarly to a standard Gen 3? Sure. But with drawbacks. Only you know how you will use it and if those situations are problems for you.

ponytug · 2026-02-19T15:25:42-0500

BigBlue1 said:
The Starlink Mini is an all-in-one highly portable system that can be flexibly powered (AC or DC). Its performance is reasonably on par with the standard Gen 3 system. The difference comes from the all-in-one nature. The ramification of that is that the wifi router is co-located with the dish, which is going to be outside somewhere. If you're sitting in a tent 15' from it that's probably a non-issue. But if you are in a campground and the dish needs to be 50' away to get a view of the sky all of a sudden your wifi signal in the RV is going to be fairly low. Same thing if you wanted to use it for residential use and mount it on your roof. And while yes, you can hook up your own router to a Mini, that means you need to run another cable - an ethernet connection - from your router out to the dish.

So, CAN it function very similarly to a standard Gen 3? Sure. But with drawbacks. Only you know how you will use it and if those situations are problems for you.

I agree, but I think that there is small caveat; the mini can do download speeds "up to" 200Mbits/s (we get 120Mbits/sec here), but the larger gen 3 dish has three service plans currently;
100, 200/Mbits/s, and "MAX",
and the system can do up to 350Mbits/s.