Satellite Internet and Wifi are related but different technologies that have different duties. A home satellite internet plan will bring the internet signal to your home and then if you want it shared out to all your devices like laptop, tablet, and smartphone, a wireless Wifi router can do that.

If you’re weighing the choice between using free public Wifi vs. adding satellite internet to your home it’s a comparison between using a free signal that isn’t secure, and having a secure signal at your home. In a pinch public Wifi can be a life-saver but avoid inputting sensitive passwords if possible.

Satellite internet is a transfer of an internet signal from your ISP (Internet Service Provider) to your home via communications satellites in space. The satellites beam down your provider’s signal to ground stations that transmit the signal to your dish. The signal then travels back and forth from your dish to a modem in your home via a coaxial cable.

A modem device inside your home translates the internet signal from the dish into proper structure that can be read by other devices. Most routers have at least one port to plug in a blue Ethernet cable from a device like a laptop for a direct internet connection on one device. You can go online but your printer would need to be hard-wired into your computer to print a document. Modems have a public IP address that can be seen online. The connection between your home and the internet is called a WAN, or, wide area network.

A Wifi router connects your devices at home to form a private local area network called a LAN. Your devices can talk to one another to share files or to print on a wireless enabled printer without a hard wire connection. The router will assign a local IP address to each of your devices in the network. It will create a firewall for security. A password will be required for each device to access the network. Additionally, the Wifi router can share the internet signal from the modem to all your networked devices. This way more than one device can be online at the same time. The router will manage traffic and enable parental controls.

Satellite Internet and Wifi are related, but separate, technologies.