Internet infrastructure at Skippers and in Kenya

One of the most common questions we have is about internet access at Skippers and in Kenya in WiFi. So here’s the low down.

TLDR;

Kenya has the best internet infrastructure in East Africa and beats most EU countries. The chances of you being without access are very low.

Connections: Fibre up/down 40mbps + Starlink ±100mbps
Power:
- All the network infrastructure is on it’s a power backup that lasts around 5-6 hours
- In addition to this the whole site is powered by grid, solar, big storage batteries and generator that auto starts if all else fails;
Network:
- Our router is a PEPLink B One failover router, it will swap connection if one goes down for more than 5 seconds;
- That’s plugged into a TP-Link Omada managed network;
- The network limits all links to a max of 30mbps so that no one person can wipe out everyone elses calls/works etc;
- We have WiFi access points in the coworking, kitchen, standard rooms and one AP provides access to the basic rooms;
- Standard room access points also have network ports so you can hardwire if you like;

Network diagram

Kenya has one of the most over invested 4G+ networks in the world. It’s not unusual to get 100mbps in the middle of the bush.

There are power cuts every 1-4 weeks. However, the countries infrastructure has been design with this in mind.

All cell towers in Kenya have UPS batteries, solar panels and generators;
All the network infrastructure fibre/4G has it’s own power infrastructure of generators etc.

A typical cell tower in Kenya

Once in the last three years Kenya shutdown uplinks to the wider internet due to some protests. This did not affect Starlink.