Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Connecting - or Not


This is not one of my usual product eval/reviews. Rather, I thought I'd describe my trials during our current camping trip with regard to being able to be connected to the internet.

For better or for worse, when I travel / camp, I'm never away from my work. Of course the good part of that is that I can travel pretty much whenever and wherever I like. The converse is that I'm pretty much always working - at least for some part of the day. But I'm fortunate in that I love what I do, and as long as I have a decent internet connection, I'm able to accomplish most of what I need to get done. And that's where this post begins... getting and staying connected in less than optimum conditions.

I've stayed in plenty of great campgrounds that offer well managed and speedy WiFi service - often for free. And I've stayed in places that don't offer WiFi, which is why I carry both AT&T and Sprint wireless broadband cards with me. During all my travels last year, I was able to connect using one of the setups.

This week's trip is a 10 day stay at a beautiful, well managed campground New River Junction in SW VA. Our site is directly on the New River, and we've taken advantage of tubing and canoing the river during our stay. The campground advertises free WiFi, and even has a directional antenna with a decent booster attached. I was expecting good things and easy connectivity during the week.

After setting up and getting comfortable, I decided to check my email. I was able to connect to the camp's network using the access code provided at the office, and my email began to appear - slowly. No problem; I'm connected and getting what I needed for the time being.

The next day, connectivity was a different story. I was able to connect to the network, but could not get to any web sites. The camp office doesn't open till 11:00 am, but unconcerned, I switched on my camper's own router using my AT&T card. After waiting a few minutes, I was able to connect to the network, but it seemed that AT&T service was unavailable in this large, remote valley. On to the next option...

I inserted my iPass card (Sprint service) and fired up a connection. Happily, I was able to get a slow, but usable connection, even though the connection reported itself as Roaming. I guessed that I should conclude my business and terminate the roaming connection ASAP, which I did.

I should say here that I was probably able to get the Sprint connection, only because I have a decent cellular booster that uses a trucker's antenna mounted atop the camper. Still, it was not a happy situation.

When the campground office opened, I asked about the connection, and found that the local cable company doesn't support this area, DSL service has just recently been announced here, but is not installed yet, and the current connection is a satellite connection through DirectWay. I've used satellite connections before, and they have been passable, but using one as a campground's main connection is fraught with issues, and one of them was showing itself.

Satellite providers have pretty restrictive 'fair use' policies that limit how much bandwidth can be consumed at any given time, and for how many megabytes of download. In a campground, it's likely that any number of campers might decide to
a) download some music
b) listen to internet radio
c) play a Netflix video
d) watch a Hulu tv episode
e) browse Youtube videos
f) have a video chat over Skype
g) ... well you get the idea

It seems this happens regularly here and has been a source of consistent outages, as DirectWay simply shuts off the service when it determines its bandwidth limits have been exceeded. In fact, it shuts down the service for 24 hours. The campground owner explained that he's contacted DirectWay about this, but they won't budge in restoring service ahead of time. His only recourse is to pay for more bandwidth, but I expect there is no capacity that is likely to be 'enough' for this situation.

So what was my solution? I waited for the campground to clear out on Monday when service was restored, and even then I decided that a trip to Barnes & Noble for coffee and free (fast) WiFi was the thing to do. I was able to get the majority of my work done in a couple of hours, then return to the campground and spend most of the rest of the day sitting in my chair - in the river.

After all, there's got to be at least some time for non-tech camping, right?
Posted by Scott at Tuesday, August 11, 2009

7 comments:

  1. You should have had a Verizon air card. I can't talk to Sprint, but I had AT&T and found that it provided almost no service at all (except for my driveway) when we traveled throughout VA, WV, PA, NJ, and MD. Now with Verizon (no I'm not an employee!) and we have NEVER been without service.
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  2. Ditto re: VERIZON VZ Access. We are full-timers, constantly on the move, and have found that this even works at times when our Verizon cell phones don't!

    However, not in Canada. We are in the Maritimes these days, and VERIZON is useless either way, phones or internet access. But it's so nice here that we can keep searching for WI-FI connections until our move-ments return us to the USA. Sometimes, taking in the view and the local offerings serves us best!
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  3. We are running a verizon aircard via a cell antenna on the roof, into a amplifier, into the air card, into a cradlepoint wireless modem. Works great.

    On campground wifi: too many "experts" on blogs and newsletters advise waiting for wifi in campground, then downloading videos, movies, tv shows, and software updates instead of doing so on the air card --to avoid the common 5 GB limit on aircards. These usage hogs reduce a shared wifi connection in a campground to the useless level for other users.
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  4. Where we live, which really isn't in the boonies, we can only get Altel data and cell phone.

    In traveling around I have found that I can use my blackberry almost everywhere on altel many places where everyone elses 3G systems are unavailable. My blackberry has the data plan so I can tether the computer on it.

    I am not sure what has happened to Altel now that Verizon owns them but if I had to do what you are doing I would have AT&T and Altel as the backup

    Your repeater is a good start but you didn't say if it covered all the bands, which it probably doesn't. Most will amplify only one of the bands which means that if it works on 3G it won't fall back to the other slower standards on different bands, even though the network card will.
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  5. I have a Mac laptop with the required AT&T service. The enclosed reviews seem to pan the AT&T wireless card, what is my best course? I will be full timing beginning October.

    Thanks,
    John
    johnrides@yahoo.com
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  6. re: Verizon - before using the Verizon aircard in Canada, you better check their rates, and then check again, because most of their support staff are clueless that using the VZ aircard in Canada will incur major roaming, long distance and megabyte charges. We were told multiple times we could use the card in Canada, but when we did, we ended up with a bill of over $22,000 for 45 days use!!!! We contacted the CEO's office, and after a couple of months they gave in and wiped out the bill, but in the process they changed our online account # without telling us, then cut off our phones because we hadn't paid...
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  7. Based on the comments here, Verizon seems to have decent coverage. In fact, several of our fellow campers in the VA location were able to use their Verizon based cell phones, though none of them had internet systems.

    My experience with AT&T has been good when traveling around the country. Sprint has also provided decent coverage. My personal opinion, though it can get costly, is to have more than one carrier to try.

    It's likely that I'll add a Verizon service (most likely the MyFi unit) to my arsenal in the near future, through I'm not sure that I'll keep all 3 running at $60/month each. On the other hand, staying connected is a necessity to my work, and having a total of 15gb/month download capacity is also likely to avoid any overcharges.

    As for the booster I'm using, it's the Wilson in-building amp with a trucker's antenna. Per the web site: "The Dual-Band SOHO Amplifier improves signals by 50 decibels in the Cellular (824-894 MHz) band and the PCS (1850-1990 MHz) band and works with Verizon, US Cellular, Cellular One, Alltel, Bell Canada, Telus, Cingular, Sprint, T-Mobile and all other Cellular and PCS carriers." So it covers pretty much every carrier. Also, it runs on 110v current, so only runs when docked.

    Scott
    ReplyDelete

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