Short-Term Rental WiFi, Starlink & Cameras

Why STR properties need a different setup

A consumer router and a doorbell cam from the box store work fine for a family of four who’s home most weekends. They fall apart in a short-term rental.

Guests stream more, connect more devices (phones, laptops, gaming consoles, smart TVs, sometimes a few smart-home gadgets they brought from home), and turnover crews need solid WiFi for cleaning apps and POS readers. Doorbell cams with cloud-only storage rack up monthly fees you have to remember to keep paying. And when a guest’s smart device shows up on your home network, your printer’s on the same broadcast domain as someone you’ve never met.

A proper STR install fixes all of that. Guest WiFi gets its own VLAN with bandwidth limits and a separate SSID that you can reset between stays. Your owner network stays clean. Cameras record locally to an NVR sitting in a closet at the property — no monthly subscription, no third-party server holding your footage hostage, and the recordings are still available remotely from your phone.

What we install for STR hosts

The typical short-term rental package looks like this:

• Starlink (optional) — primary or backup internet, depending on what the property already has. Useful as a backup even if fiber is available, because a fiber outage during a guest stay is a guaranteed bad review.
• Ubiquiti UniFi network — one to three PoE-powered access points depending on square footage, configured with two SSIDs: one for owners/maintenance and one for guests. Bandwidth limits and per-guest connection caps on the guest network.
• Doorbell camera — arrival tracking, package awareness, dispute documentation. Local recording with cloud backup of motion events only.
• Two to four outdoor cameras — driveway, parking area, hot tub deck, common access points. Aimed and configured so motion alerts ignore the wildlife.
• Local NVR (UniFi Protect or equivalent) — 2TB to 4TB of recording depending on camera count. Footage stays on the property; you view it through an app from anywhere.
• Printed network reference — one laminated card that lives in the kitchen drawer with WiFi credentials, an emergency contact, and the gear cheat sheet for your cleaning crew.

The Mountain STR Package

Most STR installs we do fall into roughly the same configuration. The full package — Starlink, UniFi mesh, doorbell, four outdoor cameras, local NVR — lands in roughly the same price range as the Mountain Property Package on our homepage. Larger or multi-unit properties get scoped individually. Get a quote and we’ll send back a real number with a written line-item breakdown.

What property managers tell us matters

Most of our STR installs come through property managers running multiple homes. The things that keep coming up:

Turnover speed. Cleaning crews need WiFi the second they walk in. We configure the guest network to reset cleanly between stays so the previous guest’s device list doesn’t linger.

Owner privacy. A guest seeing the owner’s personal devices on the network is a real complaint. We separate everything cleanly. Owner traffic, guest traffic, IoT devices, and cameras each get their own VLAN.

Incident documentation. Property damage disputes go better with footage. We aim the cameras at the angles that actually matter (entry/exit, parking, hot tub deck) and make pulling a clip take 30 seconds, not a support call.

No subscription creep. Property managers running a dozen homes don’t want a dozen monthly fees stacking up. Local NVR means one-time hardware cost, zero ongoing.

Coverage across Eagle County

We install for STR properties across the full county — Vail, Avon, Edwards, Eagle, Gypsum, Beaver Creek, and Cordillera — plus the unincorporated areas around Minturn, Wolcott, and beyond. Property managers running multiple addresses get prioritized scheduling.