Forum Discussion

ebaierl's avatar
ebaierl
Explorer
Jan 06, 2017

iPhone/Mac Wifi

I'm currently looking at getting an RV and need to have internet access for work. I have 2 iPhones 7, a Mac mini, two Mac laptops, two iPads, Apple TV 3rd gen, and some other devices like a Nook and Kindle Fire. At home, I use a cable modem attached to an Airport Extreme, then all those devices connected via wifi.

So here's what I want, but I'm not sure it will work: One iPhone connects to the internet through 4g. The Mac mini connects to the iPhone through wifi. The Mac mini connects to the Airport through Ethernet, sharing its internet connection. All the other devices connect to the Airport. Instant RV-wide Wifi. I know that many devices would use a ton of bandwidth if they were all used at the same time, but they won't be. At most, two or three will be in use at the same time since there are only two of us.

Now, what do I do if I'm parked somewhere that has wifi? I think, not sure right now, but I think I can connect the Mac mini to Wifi, share over the ethernet to the airport and still have my own personal Wifi network. With a directional antennae, I think I can get wifi from a good distance and share it inside the RV.

Does anyone know if this would work? If I could connect the iPhone to the Mac mini through a Lightning cable, that might be even better as it would reduce wifi traffic and might be faster, but I'm not sure that would work anyway.

I also know this would probably use a lot of power, so I might have to find a smaller wifi router that uses less electric than the Airport, but I'm not sure which one yet. The Mac mini uses power, but not a lot compared to some desktops.

Thanks for reading this far.
  • Nicholsfamily05's avatar
    Nicholsfamily05
    Explorer
    Jan 06, 2017
    In theory it would work. But your right about your bandwidth. I'm not sure how much it would slow down just between the first two or three connections.
    My wife uses her mac book connected to her iPhone using the lightening cable plugged into the mac book USB port. Works pretty good she says
    We don't have that many devices in our RV just a smart tv and our iPads and the mac book for her college work.
    We are actually liking at
    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LZMZZT9/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=3GZ0DOGR2N1U5&coliid=I1UUKXFT2RP4TU
    But we don't use much wifi. Got kicked off once because our kids tried to stream movies through Netflix in a park.
    Now we just use our phones. But for email and stuff we try to use theirs.
  • DRKMinWA's avatar
    DRKMinWA
    Explorer
    Jan 06, 2017
    Interesting scenario. I'm doing much the same as you at home currently. If I recall correctly my Airport Extreme has to connect to the source internet by ethernet cable, it can't receive internet by WiFi. The Airport Extreme is a router but not an access point.

    What I do when traveling is enable Personal Hotspot on my iPhone then access that signal on my MacBook Pro. My phone carrier is Verizon and most of the time it's better than RV park WiFi. You might check into the MiFi product from Verizon for data service. At work we using the MiFi product and can support several connections to it on the Verizon cellular data network.

    Good luck finding a solution.
  • missnmountains's avatar
    missnmountains
    Explorer
    Jan 06, 2017
    Why not purchase a PDQconnect. It creates a wifi network in your coach. the antenna can connect to your iPhone or the campground internet if available.

    We love ours. When we get to a campground, I login to it via my MacBook. Connect to either the campground network, or my iPhone. All of the other devices including our printer are immediately connected to the PDQ router.

    Ken
  • bob_nestor's avatar
    bob_nestor
    Explorer III
    Jan 06, 2017
    Everything you've listed should be able to just connect via WiFi. My MacMini, Mac laptop and Kindle all do as does my Android phone. I use a WiFi hotspot in my RV and it works fine, although it's easy to hit the data limits.
  • ebaierl's avatar
    ebaierl
    Explorer
    Jan 06, 2017
    Yeah, I had looked into getting a Mifi device, but that would be another $20 a month, whereas we could increase our phone bandwidth by 20gb a month and it would only cost $45 more. We have two phones, so if one was tied up with internet, it wouldn't be a problem to still be able to use the other one.

    Part of the reason I wanted a personal wifi network is so I can connect my devices to each other without having to go through an RV park network. I was thinking about it more, and I think I'm going with a Raspberry Pi and a USB powered wifi router. That way I can still connect most of them together if I run out of power for some reason, and they use far less power than the mac mini/airport combo. They are much smaller too, and I can hide them away somewhere out of sight. The Pi automatically boots too, so if i need to connect it to wifi, I can ssh in and connect it to wifi and have it set up to share the internet connection via ethernet to the router.

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