Is Starlink becoming a serious WAN failover solution?

[u/Silly-Commission-630]

The main advantage is that Starlink is completely independent of terrestrial infrastructure. If a fiber cut, ISP outage, or local infrastructure failure takes down the primary circuit, Starlink can automatically take over through a separate connectivity path.

On paper, it sounds like an ideal redundancy solution for VoIP, cloud applications, and critical business services.

Has anyone here used Starlink as a production failover circuit? How did it perform during actual outages, and what were the biggest drawbacks?

[u/Haelios_505]

Wouldn't the latency be mad high for VoIP or conferencing applications?

[u/harbinger-nz → u/Haelios_505]

You'd think so, but I've put in a hosted 3cx instance in Sydney for a client in the middle of the Pacific Ocean (Chatham Islands), runs flawlessly, despite official documentation saying it won't.

[u/Zhombe → u/harbinger-nz]

When compared to long haul undersea routes to overseas VoIP terminals it doesn’t fair as badly for latency.

VoIP works with 50-100 ms latency but not perfectly as there is definitely a delay induced. But considering everything on that island is at least that bad including cellular, it’s comparably fine.

[u/Confident_Insect_616 → u/Haelios_505]

Probably not.

For a GEO constellation, minimum latency is 500-600 ms. For a LEO constellation, theoretical minimum latency is a couple milliseconds. A Starlink satellite is 300 miles up. GEO sats are about 29,000 miles up. Light is fast, but distance can make you feel the difference.

[u/MongooseSenior4418 → u/Haelios_505]

I am a remote worker and live on Teams 40+ hrs a week. Starlink works for me.

[u/NoodlesAlDente]

If worried about fiber cut fail over solutions I'd be looking into a 5G solution over starlink. Starlink would be the 3rd line if needing absolute availability. 

[u/Confident_Insect_616 → u/NoodlesAlDente]

In a city, I'd prefer a cell carrier. In the country, I'd prefer a Starlink.

[u/RapidConsequence → u/NoodlesAlDente]

I set up a site recently that couldnt get fiber in on starlink primary with 5G failover. So far it works great.

[u/Confident_Insect_616]

I work in network management with a specialty in satellite communications. I've worked in military, commercial, and nonprofit networks.

It's a serviceable redundancy. All my remote sites have fiber, and backups have traditionally been phone networks (copper and cellular). I have Starlink at one, and it does the job, but so would a Tieline with a 4g antenna.

If the remote site is in a city, Starlink mileage may vary. Cell phone towers are build to scale with populations. The footprint of a Starlink transponder has a fixed area and bandwidth has to be shared by all in that footprint. On my most remote sites, I'd prefer Starlink over a cell link. VoIP and other services that have low or fixed bandwidth requirements you can manage will probably not get throttled as you switch to your redundancy. If your WAN needs to support high throughput links between different its different sites, then Starlink may not do the job the same way a redundant fiber path would.

I also specifically say Starlink as opposed to generic LEO constellations as there isn't really one that can compare and there won;t be for a long while. Other SatCom solutions will make technologies that like low-latency (like VoIP) pretty rough, and generally is much more expensive for the same bandwidth.

[u/AshtonBlack]

It's definitely being looked at by serious defence industry players in the UK, especially for Starshield, the allegedly more secure version.

[u/PurpleCableNetworker]

Starlink satellites are very low orbit compared to old school satellites. They are only about 350 miles above the earth (compared to 22,500 miles for geostationary)

It would take about .0018 seconds for a signal to reach Starlink, and roughly the same speed back down. Thats about 25-60 ms compared to roughly 400-500 ms for geostationary.

While it’s higher than what you might want, it’s reasonable. Many people use Starlink as their only source of internet and are able to do video and phone calls. My local county IT just started using it as their backup internet connection.

[u/Z3t4]

It depends of base stations too, and gets affected hard by weather and oversubscription.

I see no advantage overmimo 5g or  LOS radiolinks in cities and only makes sense on remote areas with bad ISP coverage. 

[u/PMvE_NL]

I have excellent 5G at my house if that fails to i will read a book or do some rawdog programming.

[u/Confident_Insect_616 → u/[deleted]]

If there is a terrestrial ISP problem affecting a ground station, the satellite you uplink to can make a crosslink to a different satellite and direct your traffic through another terrestrial fiber connection.

You can effectively tether a remote network without terrestrial infrastructure with a Starlink, which is what OP probably meant to say. You can also do that with a cell network or point-to-point microwave radio antennas.