Wi-Fi Extenders - good info

westernrvparkowner wrote:

jcpainter wrote:


To bring the campground WiFi into your rig from the furthest distance, a CPE device like "Rogue Wave" will work best. Even then, if the park doesn't have adequate bandwidth, you won't get wonderful speeds.

You also have to remember wifi is a two way communication. My access points are antennas that have over three square feet of surface area. The radio attached to that antenna to broadcast my signal is hard wired to the power source and is transmitting at the maximum output allowed by law. Your antenna inside your phone, tablet or laptop is about the size of a dime. It's radio transmits at a fraction of the power the park's wifi system is transmitting. Apple devices especially are known for having low power radio transmitters. Apple actually depowered the radios in their devices to prolong battery life.
So it becomes just like the commercial, "can you hear my now?" Hearing the park's wifi signal is just half of the battle. That access point has to hear your device also. If it doesn't, you will show connected and the connection will just spin and spin with nothing happening. The simple test for that is to walk your device closer to the access point and see if suddenly you don't get throughput. If you were connected at your RV and you couldn't get throughput and then throughput suddenly occurs when you get closer to the access point, the problem is the access point isn't hearing your device.

Agreed. With the Rogue Wave CPE (of course there are other brands too) the radio and antenna combination unit is mounted on a pole, or on the batwing with an Ethernet cable that runs into the rig and feeds the router.