What do you do for Big Downloads? - RV-Dreams Community Forum

Gannet · RV-Dreams Family Member

What do you do for Big Downloads?

Lucky Mike · RV-Dreams Family Member

I wouldnt want to know why a 30 or 40 Gig download would be needed on the road.......but you better hope for real good WiFi or paying your plan provider dearly!!

bjoyce · RV-Dreams Family Member

The biggest downloads most RVs seem to need are GPS map updates, which run 2 to 4GB. Then there was that 13GB Xbox update.

Gannet · RV-Dreams Family Member

Trust me, there are reasons for these, and larger. Many software models today assume that everyone has free broadband and plenty of it, and the number grows daily.

Lucky Mike · RV-Dreams Family Member

Well as your going to find out on the road , Broadband isnt free and FIOS isnt portable......most likely you will have to find shore hookups that you can subscribe thru the cable company a download that big thru mobile services would be throttled down pretty fast

Ann and Steve · RV-Dreams Family Member

Most restaurants these days have free WiFi. Go out for dinner with a good charge on your battery.

RVKevi · RV-Dreams Family Member

Many libraries have free wifi and electric sockets for plugging in. Would that work?

Technomadia · RV-Dreams Family Member

Some ideas:

Find a seasonal spot where you can subscribe to high speed unlimited internet for a while
Find friends on the road who live in houses with unlimited cable/DSL hook-ups.. and bring beer to share.
Assume an unlimited Verizon plan (details here)

A lot of public locations may or may not be able to accommodate those sorts of sizes - they either just don't have the bandwidth and/or their open hours won't be long enough to complete that sort of download. We regularly have about a 5GB download we have to do for one of our projects, and going to a library/cafe could be a 5-6 hour stop for us depending on how fast we're able to get. And a major OS or developer tool update can be the same too.

- Cherie

Alie and Jims Carrilite · RV-Dreams Family Member

I have found that Libraries, McDonalds in the middle of the night, hospital snack bars, and even asking a campground office if I could plug in for an hour or 4.
I use Dropbox to send and receive big files, when you start using the animated versions of Rhino 3D and other design software, the size of the files can be rather large. Friend of mine sent a 3D printer file from his house to office.... something like 200G and 3 days later the printer started working....

bjoyce · RV-Dreams Family Member

Hopefully those downloads will allow you to use a download manager that will help you with partial downloads and restarts. I find that cell phone internet and free wifi can go down or get flaky for periods of 30 seconds to a few minutes. You do not want to be 35GB into a 40GB download and have to restart it from the beginning. I used to use Free Download Manager for Windows with my Hughes.net internet satellite, mostly because it could download during the 5 hour free period at night. My sister spent the money for GetRight, since DSL is flaky in Alaska.

Many home internet systems are not "unlimited", last I heard AT&T DSL has a limit of 150GB per month and Comcast 300GB.

cheryls-other-half · RV-Dreams Family Member

Technomadia wrote:
Some ideas:
Find a seasonal spot where you can subscribe to high speed unlimited internet for a while
Find friends on the road who live in houses with unlimited cable/DSL hook-ups.. and bring beer to share.
Assume an unlimited Verizon plan (details here)

A lot of public locations may or may not be able to accommodate those sorts of sizes - they either just don't have the bandwidth and/or their open hours won't be long enough to complete that sort of download. We regularly have about a 5GB download we have to do for one of our projects, and going to a library/cafe could be a 5-6 hour stop for us depending on how fast we're able to get. And a major OS or developer tool update can be the same too.

- Cherie

... OR if you had Milennicom, you could have used (and still use) the old simm until 11/8 in UNLIMITED, SUCK out as much as you can mode!

heh heh

Gannet · RV-Dreams Family Member

Several good suggestions,and thanks for that. One I thought of that hasn't been mentioned is to just have a one-night "vacation" and stay in a motel with broadband. That may well be cost-competitive with some of the other choices mentioned, and it gives a shot at a real bathtub - quite the luxury. :) Kindof expensive, though.

Thanks for the reminder about download managers. I haven't used one in years, but I'm essentially going "back in time" here, so that's a good thought.

Camper Chronicles · RV-Dreams Family Member

Great question. Love some of the suggestions.

Neil and Connie · RV-Dreams Family Member

Library, kids, or friends with S&B. Usually the first one but the second one if we happen to be in VA.

The Crumps · RV-Dreams Family Member

We have found a computer services and repair store will download for about $5/hr. My DH is a gamer and has a desktop tower so not easy to take to a restaurant. But, they downloaded a large game for about $15 We already have 40 GB on our Verizon MiFi and he often maxes that out. He loves his games and I love him so we try to make it work. A happy husband is a happy wife!

TXRVr · RV-Dreams Family Member

I know this is an older post, but I see that no one mentioned Dropbox as a source for handling big files. Original poster did not specify what needed to be downloaded, but Dropbox will handle just about anything except software downloads. I wouldn't leave home without it.

bjoyce · RV-Dreams Family Member

TXRVr: Dropbox doesn't give you that kind of space for free. You can get promotions that give you lots of GB, but they expire. I just had 2GB expire on me. When you upload or download that 5 to 20GB file from Dropbox, which is the kind of thing Gannet is talking about, it still takes lots of internet bandwidth. Dropbox is another service that implicitly assumes you have unlimited up and download. Just like all the other cloud services from Apple, Microsoft, Google and others.

bjoyce · RV-Dreams Family Member

Another thought would be to put the computer or computers into an office that you can use remote control software to run. I used to run servers remotely using Microsoft Remote Desktop, only the screen video had to go across the internet.