park wifi woes

If you really need access to the internet, you're better off with your own hotspot or air card. Campgrounds are typically in business for recreation and many of them do not have the expertise or money to provide reliable WiFi access.

You just cannot depend on campgrounds providing adequate wifi. Bring your own by using a hotspot or a mifi device. We do not use campground provided wifi for any personal business anyway because most are not secure.

There are several threads on the subject - most in the Technology Corner section of this forum.

There are multiple problems involved in setting up good WiFi for a campground.

One is that it takes a good bit of expertise to set up the various antennas and repeaters necessary to ensure good consistent coverage of a large physical area. It usually takes an expensive professional to do such a setup properly.

Another is that many RV parks don't have a very high bandwidth access portal to the internet. When 50 or 100 RVs try to connect at the same time - and RV park need to have a T-1 line or higher - something costing a couple hundred dollars per month. If the RV park is not located in a major metropolitan area - that may be impossible, no matter how much money the RV park owner is willing to spend.

The third big issue is how people use WiFi these days. A shared system like an RV park will not be setup for streaming movies, videos, music by dozens of people at the same time. They simply don't have the bandwidth available. So when a few people get on the WiFi system and start such high usage links - everyone else trying to get on either can't or has very poor speed.

Another thing. I never check my e-mail or do any serious on-line stuff over an open public system like a park WiFi. It is always over a secure connection such as my AT&T Phone or my Verizon MiFi.

The nice thing is that yesterday AT&T cut my data plan costs by 1/3 with their new lower rates to compete with T-Mobile's recent plans.

Realtech makes a booster that will enhance the strength of the signal and help manage the use of adjacent wifi hot spots that are not password protected.

Band width which affects the number of online users in a hot spot is fixable only by trying to get on when the rest of the campground is asleep.

Many times the campground wifi machine will simply be down, asking the CG office to rest the machine fixes the problem.

Ask for a site closer to the transmitter if you do not have a booster.

Plan to get date critical transaction done several days before due to allow searching for another hot spot.

NSA, Snowdon, and the Belarus folks assure me that there are no absolutely secure transactions. My bank account numbers were snatched 2 years ago in a bank to bank transaction completely unrelated to transactions that I had requested. You must have other means of protecting your critical info.

pops

jnharley wrote:
You just cannot depend on campgrounds providing adequate wifi. Bring your own by using a hotspot or a mifi device. We do not use campground provided wifi for any personal business anyway because most are not secure.

X-2

I use a AT&T WiFi and have not looked back. My experience is that most campgrounds are barely adequate at the best and not secure.

We use the Verizon MIFI unit. Ours is older and grandfathered but gives us a 3GB dataplan for around $27 a month. This is plenty of data for us to check in with the kids, pay our online bills, and do some searching on the internet.

The current Verizon MIFI plan is a 5GB Dataplan for around $60 a omnth I think it is...

The stand alone MIFI units will provide a WIFI HOTSPOT for up to five of your wifi ready devices and is secure.



If you want to get into downstreaming alot of data then the MILLENICOM 20GB dataplan would be a good setup. It uses the same verizon Network...

Kinda neat to slip the MIFI unit in your shirt pocket and grab a beach chair and head down to the ocean if you like. You bring your WIFI HOTSPOT with you and it doesnt tie up your cellphone...

Roy ken

We have stayed in a lot of RV parks advertising wifi. Most are little better than useless. Even the best were only useable for checking e-mail and light web surfing.
If you need/want fast internet then best to get your own hot spot.

RoyB wrote:
We use the Verizon MIFI unit. Ours is older and grandfathered but gives us a 3GB dataplan for around $27 a month. This is plenty of data for us to check in with the kids, pay our online bills, and do some searching on the internet.

The current Verizon MIFI plan is a 5GB Dataplan for around $60 a omnth I think it is...

The stand alone MIFI units will provide a WIFI HOTSPOT for up to five of your wifi ready devices and is secure.



If you want to get into downstreaming alot of data then the MILLENICOM 20GB dataplan would be a good setup. It uses the same verizon Network...

Kinda neat to slip the MIFI unit in your shirt pocket and grab a beach chair and head down to the ocean if you like. You bring your WIFI HOTSPOT with you and it doesnt tie up your cellphone...

Roy ken

We used to use this and it works great,, We now use a JETPAK by Verizon , its about the same size , jut a bit thicker is all.... we can link up to 10 devices to it,,, never leave home without it!

You might want to research one of THESE. I've heard good things about them, but I don't have any personal experience with them.

We too, use the Verizon Jetpak...works just fine, but easy to exceed monthly capacity if not careful.

Ron

We use park WiFi and quite often can stream video. If you camp in the woods at $400 a month the WiFi won't be as good as a park near a city at $1000 a month.