WIFI

Why are folks downloading movies? I've never done it and don't understand how seeing a movie, especially current ones, immediately is necessary.
I go online for email, bank accounts, minor research. Puzzling to me.

Lots of mention of cellular, cellular hotspots and even satellite as an alternative to campground Wifi. They are, but they also have their limitations if you want/need a high speed connection all the time. Many cellular plans include a 5GB/month limit and overage charges can be pretty steep. A single movie can be as large as 2GB. Depending on where you travel, there are still a lot of areas where cellular service is not all that great. In the past year of travelling through the Southeast and Southwest, it has been rare to get 3G speeds over 1.5MBs and there are lots of places that still have only 1X service. 4G is growing, but it is not everywhere. Cellular systems are not immune to overloading either. Don't expect high speeds at places like Quartzsite or Sturgis during peak season.

Basic satellite service is not all that fast and I am not sure if they still limit bandwidth during peak hours and slow the speed if you exceed it.

In my experience; the only way to get consistent, dependable high speed internet is with a wired connection (phone or cable) which is available at many RV parks if you will be staying long enough.

I look at it two ways... Campground close to city.... Not close.

If the cg is close. A good slice of bandwidth should avail. I was at a cg that was serving from a DSL line! I sat in their office and did a fios run. Guess what it was avail... That cg went from 7mb/768k to 50mb/50mb for $17 more... They spent 2k on a router and repeaters... Wow. What a diff.

Not the case in all areas. Sometimes the staff needs to be educated, then shown it's not hard to do it right.

seguin wrote:
I am really frustrated with ALL camping guides. They say the campground has WIFI but when you get there it only works at a few of the sites and if it does work at your site it is very slow. Am I alone on this? I feel that guide such as Trailer Life Directory should change their rating system to reflect whether the WIFI really works. Comments?

I disagree. Because it might work in the site that the rater is camping in, but won't be in the one you are in. Or the other way around. I think maybe a footnote stating that the campground offers wifi, but may or may not work in your campsite very well or at all. I really think it's one of those things that experienced RV'ers come to realize and not depend on 100%. Many of times, you will have people streaming movines and other type of things on wifi systems not designed to handle such a big influx of.

We would never depend on a campground wifi to take care of personal business. We have secure mifi cards. Campgrounds cannot be expected to provide free Internet service for a hundred people with 3 or 4 devices connected trying to stream video. Some really nice campgrounds get bad reviews based on weak wifi. If it is that important to you, bring your own.

We also have never had good luck with WiFi. It was either nonexistant or too weak to stay online for more than a minute or two. Besides it isn't as secure as we'd like.

We opted for an aircard for about 8 years.

Well my wife had her on WiFi and most places we traveled op east cost true Canada to Alaska the WiFi was mostly non existent, and so much for 4g was told by technician non existent out off main cities
Frank.

We have a wifi booster antenna that we sit on a tripod, and as long as we have direct line of sight to the wifi, we can connect to the internet. It has a range of several miles, but the furthest we've tested it so far is about 2 miles across a lake.
We usually use it when we camp on a peninsula area of a CG which is about a mile and in a site where there is a direct line of sight and it's never failed us.

Cheers,
xena

I use my own hotspot for reliability, and security. I bring my own drinking water. I pick a campground based on location, anything else is just icing on the cake.

Dick A wrote:
Campground WiFi systems have always been intended for downloading regular email and general Internet browsing. However, just as the "all you can eat buffet places" a few 300 pound gorillas have to mess up the business plan. The same goes for RV parks with WiFi systems. Thee are always the few folks who consider themselves privileged or in the "I paid for unlimited bandwidth" crowd who thinks someone else should pay for their extravagance.

Absolutely on point. On top of that, RV parks have ever changing topography. If an Airstream trailer happens to park next to you and blocks the line of sight from your computer to the access point, you will lose your connection. Also, device makers have de-powered the wifi radios in their devices to increase battery life. And they aren't that great to begin with. Remember it was only a couple of years ago that the vaunted Apple I-phone had such a bad cellular antenna and transmitter that they had to give out directions how to hold the freakin Phone. Hold it too close to your head and your brain blocked the transmitter signal. Steve Jobs actually had his phone malfunction while on stage at it's introduction due to that design flaw. To the OPs suggestion about scoring reception at sites, what would you have a reviewer do, go and check reception inside every rig in the park? A couple of feet often means the difference between a great connection and a weak one if those couple of feet remove a big tree or a building or an Airstream from the equation. Not very different from Satellite signals. I really believe this will be a self curing problem because I can see where within a very few years parks will drop Wifi assuming all the guests have devices capable of connecting via cell services. That has already happened with pay phones, public phones, instant phones and all the other phone services parks used to provide. I think it is likely wifi is the next dodo bird heading for extinction.