WIFI - RV-Dreams Community Forum

bubbadan · RV-Dreams Family Member

WIFI

bjoyce · RV-Dreams Family Member

The built-in wifi on most computers, maybe all anymore, do not support added antennas. Normally what you need to do is buy a USB wifi adapter and use it instead of the one built in to the PC. Then you can add a USB extension cable and put the adapter up high, even outside on the roof if the weather is decent. Some of these have external antenna adapters of you need more boost but often just having the adapter above the other RVs is enough. If the wifi at the campground is not very good, which is very common, it won't help since the problem is not a weak signal but the campground wifi is overloaded. Wal-Mart and other places carry USB adapters.
An alternative is what I have, a Pepwave Surf mini, which is an Ethernet wifi adapter that costs about $100 and it comes with a strong antenna but you can add an even stronger one for $50 or so from .http://3gstore.com, where I bought my Pepwave. It can be input into a wifi router where it picks up the wifi and repeats it into your own wifi signal. A USB adapter is cheaper, normally $50 to $75. I just used it to pick up my sister-in-law's wifi, which was 1bar with my internal wifi and 4bar with the Pepwave

-- Edited by bjoyce on Thursday 17th of February 2011 06:29:32 PM

bubbadan · RV-Dreams Family Member

Bill thanks for the info.

Mike and Gloria · RV-Dreams Family Member

Bill, I'm intrigued by the Pepwave. When you say wifi router, do you mean wireless router? We have one of those. In anticipation of becoming full-timers (2 weeks & counting) we purchased a Mifi air card from Verizon. Well, actually, we got the card free for signing up for the service. It works great but it's expensive!

Gloria

Bill Adams · RV-Dreams Family Member

Hold off on buying a pepwave and wait for the beta testing on the wi-fi Ranger to finish up. This unit will allow you pick up park wi-fi with the upcoming WFRBoost system, use an air card and share it with your spouse or others or connect to any WAN connection such as satellite internet or a parks cable internet without changing any setting to your local network. It's going to be a great product and we expect the new antenna booster to be a real step forward in ease of operation and range improvement.

Mike and Gloria · RV-Dreams Family Member

And how long before they expect to have the Ranger available? The Verizon Mifi is killing us! It's fast and we can both get online easily with our laptops but, oy, is it expensive!

Gloria

bjoyce · RV-Dreams Family Member

I guess $60/month does not seem expensive to me to have my own internet. If we had to depend on campground wifi we would not have internet more than half the time, most places we stay do not have wifi we could use from the RV. Maybe we could stay in only campgrounds that have wifi, but that would increase our campground costs more than $60/month.
The Ranger is available today but is really a beta device as they are still getting the bugs out and working on making it user friendly, it combines the capabilities of a Pepwave and a cellular router.

-- Edited by bjoyce on Thursday 17th of March 2011 08:51:25 AM

Racerguy · RV-Dreams Family Member

I'm with Bill,We find $ 60.00 a bargain, to be assured of having internet.So far we have not been anywhere we couldn't get a signal.

Jack Mayer · RV-Dreams Family Member

Take a look at my website in the Communications Section. I cover the various ways to connect, and the advantages/disadvantages of each.

I also would recommend waiting a short while for the WiFiRanger to finish stabilizing. I'm testing the WFRBoost capability right now, and it will - by FAR - be the best way for most people to pick up wifi and repeat the signal. This is covered on my website, along with pictures of the WFRBoost.

Bill and Linda · RV-Dreams Family Member

For those who might have followed this discussion, I can confirm the Ubiquiti product, the “Bullet,” which is an outdoor device used to significantly increase the range of campground WiFi (among other things) does indeed support the old WEP standard with non-standard 10 ASCII character login.

On a practical basis we have found this compatibility with the old WEP standard, as well as allowing 10 character ASCII login, is still very important to those who travel a lot and may have to depend on campground WiFi’s still using this old, but rather prolific security login standard.

FWIW gang, it works.

(Works good Jack. My only issue has been getting the Bullet to connect to the wireless router when it and the router are powered up at the same time when I turn on the UPS powering the WiFi / Network / Bullet and Network Drives. Cycling the POE injector or the network cable between the Bullet and the router usually brings success. Guess it is just a “handshake” issue.)

Bill

-- Edited by Bill and Linda on Friday 18th of March 2011 04:52:14 PM