wifi solutions

**acadiaforever** · 05-25-2019, 11:44 AM

Something to keep in mind for MiFi from whatever provider... There are two different tower capacities that many people often aggregate together. The first is the strength of the cellular radio signal. This is something that amplifiers like the WeBoost (which we have) can help with if you are in a place with very low RF strength.

The second is the data bandwidth available to the tower in aggregate. We spent the winter in the AZ desert, in Quartzsite. We had been warned that Verizon data there was terrible. It was. Out on the desert where we were camped, we had 2 bars, usually between -110 and -115 dBm into our VZW 8800-L. When we drove into town and got much higher strength--4 bars--the data rates didn't change. We were doing well and considered ourselves lucky when we got more than 3MiB down. Frequently, it was < 1MiB. All of these data rates were determined by using the Ookla Speed Test. At Verizon's request, I also checked on their speed test site; the results were comparable.

Then we visited Joshua Tree NP for a week, staying in Joshua Tree, CA, just north of the park. We again had 2 bars of coverage. But we got reliably 40MiB down; in the middle of the night, I saw as high as 65MiB down.

The Q Verizon tower is woefully under equipped for data, even when it isn't the January peak season.

Moral of the story: signal strength isn't everything; if you have two bars, the data capacity of the tower is almost certainly the biggest thing.

Another takeaway for me is that Verizon customer service doesn't get it. They had me trying all sorts of steps to try to get my jetpack performing better. They even wanted me to stop into my "local Verizon store" to get a new SIM. Hah! When it finally got stepped up to network support, the response several days later was, "The network and data access at that tower is performing normally." It would help if they had a database of expected data rates on a per tower basis. Yes, that would be a lot of data, but that's what computers are for. They already monitor it, I'm sure, to identify and respond to faults. They just don't make it available to their customer support staff at levels 1, 2, or 3.

**boyscout** · 05-25-2019, 01:33 PM

Originally Posted by acadiaforever

Another takeaway for me is that Verizon customer service doesn't get it. They had me trying all sorts of steps to try to get my jetpack performing better. They even wanted me to stop intomy "local Verizon store" to get a new SIM. Hah! When it finally got stepped up to network support, the response several days later was, "The network and data access at that tower is performing normally." It would help if they had a database of expected data rates on a per tower basis. Yes, that would be a lot of data, but that's what computers are for. They already monitor it, I'm sure, to identify and respond to faults. They just don't make it available to their customer support staff at levels 1, 2, or 3.

Ohh man, been there. For me it was between four and five HOURS on the phone with Verizon support over the course of a month, doing things that I (and they, I'd bet) knew would make no difference at all.

I'd already re-booted the device - twice, definition of insanity, right? - before calling Verizon for the first time. Nevertheless, each of 4-5 techs over several calls insisted that I do it again. "Replace SIM card" is perhaps the most long-shot remedy in the business yet they all - several carriers and Apple in my experience - recommend it to cure all problems. Verizon two or three times offered the remedy, "They were doing work on your local tower, maybe it has to be rebooted", when I was in two or three different locations hundreds of miles apart. Bull!!

In the end, replacing the device fixed the problem.

It's almost as though these companies want to create the *impression* of doing their best to serve you rather than dedicating hard resources to actually serving you. I guess call-center reps with scripts are cheaper than real technicians.

**Cqyqte** · 06-21-2019, 12:42 PM

Canadian here, but we travel extensively in the US as fuel and campsites in our homeland are very dear. Our cellular plans are a joke, only now are our providers talking about unlimited plans but the pricing is still prohibitive. Our experience though with RV parks and wifi service, most reasonable services use a tightly controlled captive portal with site # and password required. Usually they also limit the number of devices to two or less, thus the required site # to gain access. I have acquired an expensive set up of my own that gets around the long list of obstacles to provide internet and wifi for everyone in the RV. I bought an Awow mini PC (4"x 4"x 1" size) that runs WIN 10 Pro, I also purchased a licence for Connectify Max, which enables wifi sharing over ethernet, and lastly I picked up a Mofi4500 4sim router. The Mofi4500 can share internet wirelessly from a Sim card from any provider, from a WAN source, a tethered source, or via a repeated RV park wifi signal. On it's own the Mofi4500 does well for our internet needs, until we stay in an RV park that utilizes a captive portal access, that's when the Awow PC comes into play. I connect the Awow PC to the RV park wifi using our site# and password they provide. I then initiate the Connectify app and share the internet service from the captive portal via ethernet to the WAN port of our Mofi4500 which inturn beams that internet wirelessly to all of our devices with no further campsite passwords required. Every morning, or when the RV site IP lease needs renewing I use the Awow PC to reconnect and again that internet access is reshared to all of our devices. Sounds complex, but trust me it's way easier than having to purchase and manage site# and passwords for multiple devices. Each of our devices are set to login to our Mofi4500 when in range, the only login is the Awow PC when we travel from campground to campground.

**cookinwitdiesel** · 06-25-2019, 08:34 AM

Couldn't you just use a travel router that accepts a wifi antenna as its WAN connection and then have all of your clients connect to the travel router LAN. That way there would still only be one "device" with a MAC address showing to the campsite wifi. The first computer that connects up will get served the login page, once you have authenticated, all other devices should also have access as the campsite will see them all as a single device due to NAT at the travel router. I almost guarantee they are doing basic MAC white listing on the WiFi at the campsite and not serving device specific cookies.

You are of course still limited to your campsite wifi with this setup, but at least it solves the connection sharing issue.