RV Private WiFi Network

[cookinwitdiesel]

So, this will be somewhat technical and probably not apply to many of the folks on here - BUT I built it and I want to share

My home network at my house is fully built using Ubiquiti Networks Unifi gear managed from a central controller. I like this set up and am familiar with it. The WiFi stuff is fantastic. I figured, for my RV, why don't I make another "site" with a full stack of gear (router, switch, access point). The only thing "special" for the RV is I needed to add a WiFi radio that could connect to the RV park WiFi and feed that internet into my network via the router.

My goal was to have a private network that my devices can talk on allowing for the use of stuff like a smart speaker or chromecast while being isolated from everyone else at the campground.



From Left to Right:

Ubiquiti AirMAX NanoStation Loco M2 - This is the radio that will connect to the parks WiFi and feed that data into your private network
Ubiquiti POE Adapter (the tall skinny one) and POE Surge Protector (the rectangular one) - these allow the switch to power the NanoStation and protect it from any power surges on the wire - the radio can be mounted outside
Ubiquiti Unifi Security Gateway (USG-3P) - This is the router for the network. It has a basic firewall on it and handles distribution of IP addresses for any clients that will connect to the private network
Ubiquiti Unifi 8-Port POE Switch (USW-8-60w) - This switch distributes the network traffic and powers the radio and WiFi Access Point using POE
Ubiquiti Unifi WiFi Access Point (UAP-AC-Lite) - This is the wireless access point that your own devices will connect to to communicate with each other as well as get internet through the rest of the setup

All in this was a little over $300. The Youtube video below outlines a similarly functional setup that totals about $100.

Everything is mounted on a single board of plywood and is powered by the one power strip - it just needs a single 120v outlet and you are up and running. Once powered up, you just log into the radio and connect it up to the park wifi. If the wifi has a logon page, the first device that tries to connect out can sign you in and then your entire network is good to go as the park wifi will only see the radio and not everything behind it - so only one device to logon. Now all your devices only need to have a single WiFi network that they connect to regardless of where you go.

While this can be used to connect to park WiFi, it will work with literally any WiFi, a friends house if you are in their driveway, a McDonalds down street, a Starbucks a mile away (that radio is pretty powerful and made for point-to-point multi km connections). If I get a longer STP ethernet cable (I believe up to 100m is allowed by the standard) for the the radio instead of leaving it mounted on the board, I can put it outside mounted on an antenna mast and have insane wifi options from very far away if I can get it above most obstructions.

I am a network security engineer and a total geek so I am prone to overbuilding pretty much everything IT related in my life If you made it this far and thought "what a cool idea but that all looks very complicated" then this video is for you. It uses the same radio and then everything else is combined into a single little black (literally) box. Your functional end outcome will be the same (albeit with less knobs to turn for the network nerds out there )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGLwwREDzNQ

For my specific RV, this whole setup will fit in the skinny cabinet over the microwave (which also has a power outlet in there for the microwave) so it can be hidden out of sight.


Enjoy!

[jkwilson]

Sweet! Unfortunately with the typical RV park WiFi performance it’s going to be like eating Spam on fine china with sterling utensils.

[bogen2]

I have a similar setup and ran into a problem last winter at my Arizona rv park. It worked great testing it against my home network but would constantly disconnect in the rv park.

I am using a Nanostation Loco M2 as a router to connect to AP's in the rv park. I have it configured as a router with NAT and DHCP enabled. The LAN port is connected to my Apple Airport AP which is configured for bridge mode WiFi, so no NAT or DHCP. I would get either no connectivity or very short intervals of poor throughput. On the Main tab of the config interface I can see the status of the connection to the AP looks good. I can ping the NanoStation router (192.168.2.1) but when I ping the default route to the upstream AP, I get some very slow pings and some request timeouts.

In the NanoStation log I can see it connecting but then I get messages like these:
Dec 5 15:53:34 wireless: ath0 Received deauth from 08:02:8e:c0:41:4b. Reason: Class 2 frame received from nonauthenticated STA (6).
Dec 5 16:25:45 wireless: ath0 Received disassoc from 08:02:8e:c0:41:4b. Reason: Previous authentication no longer valid (2).

Ubiquiti tech support couldn’t help me find the problem. I’m suspecting there may be something preventing this connection in the rv park’s AP, although it works great if I just connect my laptop or phone directly to their network.

Would love to solve this mystery as we are going back there this winter.

Bob

[gbkims]

So, this will be somewhat technical and probably not apply to many of the folks on here - BUT I built it and I want to share

My home network at my house is fully built using Ubiquiti Networks Unifi gear managed from a central controller.
...
Ubiquiti AirMAX NanoStation Loco M2 - This is the radio that will connect to the parks WiFi and feed that data into your private network
Ubiquiti POE Adapter (the tall skinny one) and POE Surge Protector (the rectangular one) - these allow the switch to power the NanoStation and protect it from any power surges on the wire - the radio can be mounted outside
Ubiquiti Unifi Security Gateway (USG-3P) - This is the router for the network. It has a basic firewall on it and handles distribution of IP addresses for any clients that will connect to the private network
Ubiquiti Unifi 8-Port POE Switch (USW-8-60w) - This switch distributes the network traffic and powers the radio and WiFi Access Point using POE
Ubiquiti Unifi WiFi Access Point (UAP-AC-Lite) - This is the wireless access point that your own devices will connect to to communicate with each other as well as get internet through the rest of the setup.
...
Enjoy!

Does one of the Ubiquiti devices run the UniFi controller?

[DaveMatthewsBand]

Yea there’s a couple of older threads here on using Ubiquiti. One of them is mine, I have been using this since June 2018 with great success.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[cookinwitdiesel]

I have a Cloud Key Gen2+ in my basement that is reachable over the internet - my RV is one of 3 sites on that controller. I can reach the controller remotely through the unifi.ubnt.com cloud interface. I know that the park wifi will always be a bottleneck for me. This was more about having a private WLAN for my personal devices to allow stuff like chromecast to work. As long as I can maintain one video stream in the trailer from somewhere, I will be happy. I have not tested it in the wild yet, but can get up to about 75 mbps at home with my AP-AC-Pros in the house hosting the connection for the Loco M2.

I will be curious to see how it performs in the wild. Worst case scenario, I connect it to the hotspot on a phone.

Future projects include replicating my Plex server locally in the RV so I do not need to stream over the internet to watch my movie library. I do have a Synology DS 718+ that was going to be my NVR but is now idle - if I can figure out how to soft mount it such that the disks would not get murdered, it could house the library (currently about 10 TB also in my basement). My preferred architecture would probably be the NAS hosting media and a Nvidia Shield acting as the Plex server and replacing the Chromecast at the main TV in the rig - media accessed over the network.

Right now I pull the weekly backup USB HDD in the basement and use that as the media source for a Plex server I run locally on my laptop ad-hoc but this is not ideal as it ties up the laptop and requires cabling up a handful of things.

[cookinwitdiesel]

I will add, I am also going to look into getting either a spare door for the cabinet where I will keep the setup and modding it to have mesh in the middle so that the setup can breathe since it does get a bit warm.

[cookinwitdiesel]

Another note, the POE injector gave me terrible reliability and horrendous issues with ethernet connectivity to the Loco M2 - I was literally ready to return it and try another vendor. Fortunately, I had an 802.3af > 24v Passive POE adapter from a G3 Bullet camera I have not installed yet and it worked to power the Loco M2 off of the POE Switch (which was my original plan anyways before I realized that the M2 used Passive 24v and not standard POE protocols).

[boyscout]

While this can be used to connect to park WiFi, it will work with literally any WiFi, a friends house if you are in their driveway, a McDonalds down street, a Starbucks a mile away (that radio is pretty powerful and made for point-to-point multi km connections). If I get a longer STP ethernet cable (I believe up to 100m is allowed by the standard) for the the radio instead of leaving it mounted on the board, I can put it outside mounted on an antenna mast and have insane wifi options from very far away if I can get it above most obstructions.

Thanks for the write-up.

I created private wi-fi with a few less pieces. Used two different antenna/radios, first the Wave WiFi Rogue Pro marine antenna which is an expensive and only-OK omnidirectional unit and then the excellent Ubiquiti Nanostation M2 which is a very inexpensive unit that is theoretically omnidirectional but is so powerful that it isn't especially fussy about exact aiming. Used two different very good (overkill!) routers because I owned them already, first the Asus AC5300 and then the Netgear AX6000, both of which have decent security software and loads of customization in them.

IMO I was very well set-up for wi-fi. Unfortunately, NONE of the places we stayed all over the southeastern U.S. were equally well set-up for it. Despite our equipment giving us (likely) one of the best connections in the park wherever we traveled, the park wi-fi nearly always sucked. Yes, the excellent Nanostation antenna did usually reveal lots of other wi-fi options inside and outside the park, but they were nearly always secured and not usable without hacker skills and soft ethics.

We therefore followed a drift by others here towards cell-based wi-fi. A ~US$200 MiFi device purchased from some of the carriers allows creation of a private network of up to fifteen devices. The carriers offer various "unlimited" plans... we were on one from Verizon for $65/mo and it was truly unlimited and usually plenty fast enough, even for streaming Netflix. Far better speed and reliability than we usually got from wi-fi. More expensive because of the monthly fee, but way more usable.

Where cell service hasn't been great, we have cell phone booster systems to bump it up so our MiFi works OK.

There are doubtless places where cell service just won't cut it, and maybe wi-fi will in those places, but we haven't been there yet.

[cookinwitdiesel]

Thanks for the write-up.

Ya I do not expect this to be a magic bullet for good internet in the trailer. I actually moved away from those high end all-in-one routers a few years back when I first switched to Unifi gear. I wanted discrete elements that could perform well and be managed cleanly and could get a big fancy Asus (or other) router for the same price as this setup or more that may not really perform as well. My house is TERRIBLE for wifi and I need multiple APs which is also why I wanted Unifi vs a single point high end WiFi router. The roaming between APs with Unifi works great (not applicable in RV with single AP but very applicable at my house with 4 APs)

I expect an improvement to our cellular options will be in order next once we actually hit the road and "live the life" some.