Many times the park's wi-fi is fairly slow. Sometimes if there are 5 or 10 people online, then they will be sharing the park's connection. So even if the park is able to transmit 100,000 baud, it will be split up, so the computer server will pick the first person, send their data, then the second request, and third, and so on. Many times the connection will be in the 1 megabit per second range, and then you might not notice if anyone is sharing your bandwidth, because it is wide enough to serve everyone's reasonable request without a delay. Each person might only be requesting say 1 megabit every 20 - 50 seconds (when they go to a new page, or download a bunch of e-mails.)
With a slow connection, it might take a couple of seconds to just download one e-mail with 3 pictures in it. This will slow the next requester's information to be downloaded - somewhat in order of the information request time.
Some high speed fiber optic, satellite or cable TV systems are in the 10 megabit per second speed range. So even if 10 users are asking for a large file, it should not delay anyone for more than 1 second.
Your antenna is another thing altogether. How fast it can communicate has nothing to do with the above problems. A better range antenna will actually transmit everything only once, correctly, and then receive everything once, without having to tell the host computer "It did not download correctly, re-transmit again"
I have a Hawkins HW1 (I think) antenna in my motorhome, and it has a range of about 400 - 600 feet. Sometimes the host computer might have a booster too, and be able to transmit a litter farther than the average Wi=Fi hot spot.
When I was at Morrow Bay, (2006) I was able to connect to Firedude's wi-fi system, and he had a satellite system to post messages at high speed. He had a 'modified' transmitter, with about a 1 watt output, about 5 times more power than a average Wi-Fi.
Stronger wi-fi means the transmitters are better quality, and have a high capacity. However it will not take away someone else's ability to transmit.
Fred.
