Starlink in a rural agriturismo: improving network performance and prioritizing wired devices

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

Hi everyone,
my name is Stefano and I run Agriturismo Podere Coldifico, a rural agriturismo in Italy located in an area with no mobile or landline coverage. The only available internet connection is Starlink.

Situation

I need to provide:

  • Wi-Fi access for guests in 7 apartments

  • a wired (Ethernet) connection for the reception PC, which is critical for daily operations

Each apartment hosts an average of 3 people, so I need to manage around 21 guests connected at the same time, in addition to staff and service devices.

Due to building constraints, I have only one Ethernet cable per apartment and I cannot create a star topology. The network is therefore built in a daisy-chain / tree topology.

Current network

I am currently using Tenda F3 devices configured as access points, connected to each other and also acting as switches.

Simplified diagram:

       [ Starlink ]
            |
          [App6]
   \         |         /
[App7]     [App3]     [App5]
    |          |
 [App4]     [App2]
                 |
              [App1]
                 |
            [Reception]

Performance

At the Starlink router:

  • ~450 Mbps download

  • ~35 Mbps upload

  • ~35 ms ping

At reception:

  • ~90 Mbps download

  • ~15 Mbps upload

  • ~55 ms ping

What I would like to achieve

I want to improve overall network stability and performance, especially for the reception PC.

In practice, I would like:

  • wired devices to have higher priority than Wi-Fi devices

  • guest Wi-Fi traffic not to be able to fully saturate the connection

  • Wi-Fi clients to share the available bandwidth fairly, especially with up to 21 guests online at the same time

  • the network to remain responsive even under load

Planned changes

I am considering:

  • putting Starlink into bypass mode

  • using an OpenWrt router as the main gateway

  • installing Gigabit switches in the apartments

  • using the Tenda F3 only as access points, not as part of the wired backbone

Questions

  • Does this approach make sense for my scenario?

  • Is OpenWrt suitable for managing priority between wired and Wi-Fi traffic in a simple way?

  • What kind of router hardware would you recommend for Starlink?

  • Should I use managed or unmanaged switches?

Thanks in advance to anyone willing to share advice or experience :slightly_smiling_face:

2

These are not supported by OpenWrt. Do they support VLANs?

Do you have this hardware already or will you be buying something? If you already have the device, what is it? And where is it/will it be in the network topology?

3

I don't have all hardware. I will buy it…

Now i have only starlink router and 7 tenda f3.

4

Do the f3 devices support VLANs?

5

No the f3 not have vian support…

6

Most of what you want to do will not be possible without VLANs.

7

Can i ask you: if i will take a switch managed and a router openwrt and connect by ethernet tenda f3 with switch can i make a vlan connection?

8

You would want managed switches. But because of the physical topology, you would need to set that up in every room. It would probably make sense to replace all of the tenda devices with vlan aware (and probably openwrt supported) wifi APs.

9

Openwrt is only for router or i can make a AP.

I am sorry but i not have experience with openwrt…

10

Openwrt can be used both for routing and APs. It is supported on thousands of devices, the majority being all-in-one WiFi routers.

11

You can suggest me an hardwares that works fine for me?

I not have idea of budget for made that…

And expecially the type of device low price is enough or i must to take one with big performance…

12
13

Your current setup with multiple AP is not a bad setup, but those Tendas are a problem, only 2.4G means a lot of interference, since you have around 7 APs right now, and most likelike the apartments are in range of each wifi. Thus right now you would have 7APs and a bunch of clients all utilizing 2.4G and if that’s not enough these routers do not support latest wifi standards.

The most simple setup would be a capable router attached to the starlink, with enough power for proper traffic shaping. Then it doesn’t matter if the line is fully saturated. Then you could reserve bandwith for the reception, which can be a s simple as reserving a certain amount of bandwidth for a specified IP. Besides that you need to use APs with 5G or mix 2.4 and 5G in a way that they don’t interfere with each other.

With VLANs you would have some extra control, but with a higher complexity, especially if you want to set limits for each apartment. Reserving bandwidth is an easy task, but distribution bandwidth fairly among clients, is not such an easy task. You do not want to throttle clients with fixed limits etc.

I would try to first setup things with new HW in the same way you have done so far. With one powerful router and several APs. Where most wifi traffic will go through on 5G, and 2.4G will only be utilized by clients when 5G signal is bad. If that still isn’t sufficient you can always switch to a vlan setup, newer routers pretty much always have vlan support.

Regarding HW. Where are the RJ45 sockets in the apartments? Do they apartments have multiple floors? Do you already have fixed places for the HW, behind covers. How much money do you want to spend?

At my place I have a passive cooled embedded x86 router with N100 as main router, which is very capable when it comes to traffic shaping at gigabit speeds. Then I have a bunch of wifi 6 routers and APs with 2.5G WAN ports, which allow you to run setup vlans through the 2.5G WAN port.

3 Likes
14

Thanks for your reply.

What budget should I plan for?
Could you suggest the specifications I should look for when choosing the router?
At the moment, it’s difficult for me to choose a router because I don’t yet know the actual requirements.
Please note that the network will be used only for internet access; I don’t need the devices to communicate with each other like a nas.

15

I would suggest 6x Cudy WR3000S (which includes the Gbit-Switch and 2.4G + 5G WIFI for <40EUR) for AP’s and GL-MT6000 (buy it at ~130EUR) for main Router (SQM) and the 7th AP.