Starlink Power Architecture: From hardware analysis to proprietary PoE (and why they need it). 🛰️📡🌐⚡🩻

Security researcher and hardware expert Oleg Kutkov shares his knowledge of Starlink’s power architecture. Apparently, Starlink uses a fully custom, non-standard Power-over-Ethernet system because standard PoE simply cannot deliver the massive power these terminals need.

Instead of PoE+/PoE++, Starlink:

1️⃣ Sends 48–56V directly over Ethernet pairs using a proprietary pinout

2️⃣ Uses a custom detection signature to decide whether to turn power on

3️⃣ Cycles power on/off in timed windows until the terminal draws “real” current

Interesting, insightful, and very practical as of today. So please enjoy the read and share it with people for whom it may be relevant. Thanks!

More details:

Starlink rev 3 (V2) power architecture [Blog]: https://olegkutkov.me/2024/12/31/starlink-rev-3-v2-power-architecture/