Hi Everyone. Well, after 15 years the RV-Dreams Community Forum is coming to an end. Since it began in August 2005, we've had 58 Million page views, 124,000 posts, and we've spent about $15,000 to keep this valuable resource for RVers free and open. But since we are now off the road and have settled down for the next chapter of our lives, we are taking the Forum down effective June 30, 2021. It has been a tough decision, but it is now time.


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Post Info TOPIC: What do you do for Big Downloads?


RV-Dreams Family Member

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What do you do for Big Downloads?


Let's say I occasionally need to do a really big download - 30 or 40 Gb. This isn't a problem with my current Fios setup, but once we fulltime even with a 30 Gb Jetpack plan that's not going to be practical. What do other folks do? Is there a way, or do I just have to forego?



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RV-Dreams Family Member

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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!!

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RV-Dreams Family Member

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

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Bill Joyce,
40' 2004 Dutch Star DP towing an AWD 2020 Ford Escape Hybrid
Journal at http://www.sacnoth.com
Full-timing since July 2003



RV-Dreams Family Member

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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.

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RV-Dreams Family Member

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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


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 1998 ...Harney Renegade DP  class A

rers1@mail.com

 

My Service dog and life partner " Nikki"......Klee Kia Miniature Husky....(she Runs the ship!!)

We are not lost in the Woods.....Just Extreme boondocking!!!!!!



RV-Dreams Family Member

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

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Ann and Steve
2012 Silverado HD3500 Crew Cab, Long Bed, Dually
2013 Dutchmen Infinity 3850RL



RV-Dreams Family Member

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


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2011 Heartland Big Horn 3670RL, 2012 RAM 3500

http://wemustaway.wordpress.com/



RV-Dreams Family Member

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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



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Cherie (and Chris) / Our blog: Technomadia.com

Full time since 2006 as Gen-X 'technomads' (technology enabled nomads)

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RV-Dreams Family Member

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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....

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RV-Dreams Family Member

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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.

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Bill Joyce,
40' 2004 Dutch Star DP towing an AWD 2020 Ford Escape Hybrid
Journal at http://www.sacnoth.com
Full-timing since July 2003



RV-Dreams Family Member

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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



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RV-Dreams Family Member

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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.

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RV-Dreams Family Member

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Great question. Love some of the suggestions.

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 Trace 

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RV-Dreams Family Member

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



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RV-Dreams Family Member

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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!

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The Crumps

1997 37' Itasca Suncruiser and Scion Xb toad.

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RV-Dreams Family Member

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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. 



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RV-Dreams Family Member

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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.



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Bill Joyce,
40' 2004 Dutch Star DP towing an AWD 2020 Ford Escape Hybrid
Journal at http://www.sacnoth.com
Full-timing since July 2003



RV-Dreams Family Member

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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.

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Bill Joyce,
40' 2004 Dutch Star DP towing an AWD 2020 Ford Escape Hybrid
Journal at http://www.sacnoth.com
Full-timing since July 2003

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