WiFi Savvy

One of my soapboxes for RVers is that, if you really need the Internet, you better have multiple ways to connect.  You can’t rely on any one way because it may not be available. 

We proved that while parked in my Dad’s driveway.  Our normal way of connecting to the Internet is with our Datastorm Satellite Dish.  His driveway looks wide open, we don’t even consider that trees will be blocking our connection to the satellite.

But, no.  If you follow the line of sight where the dish is aiming, there are these trees in the neighbors yard.  Wimpy as they look to me, they are enough to block our connection.

Ok, on to plan B.  My Dad has a nice, fast cable connection to the Internet for his computer in the house.  Jim just hooks up a router and, voila, we have Wi-Fi out in the driveway.  Nice.

One night there was a nasty thunderstorm.  I’ve never seen such a dramatic lightning display.  The power never actually went out, but it dimmed enough to cause problems with electronics and the cable connection to the Internet was down.  At 7am I got a call from a client that had an emergency password problem with a website I made for them.  I *needed* to log in and change that password *now*.  Oh no, I have no Internet connection.  It probably was just a problem with the cable modem that needed to be reset after that storm, but that was in the house, and I didn’t want to disturb them this early.

Plan C: plug in my Verizon cell phone using the USB cable that came with the Mobile Office Kit.  Open the software and click ‘Connect’.  Aaahhhhhhh, I’m online again.  I’m so glad I have this backup option - but - I can just hear the dollars clicking away because the plan we have uses our minutes when we’re connected to the Internet.  It would be so easy to go over.  It’s better than paying a specific monthly amount just for Internet connection since we go for months without using it at all. 

There are more ways to connect, but those are my 3.  What are yours?

Yes!  All you have to do is ask.  I think you’ll find that RVers with 2-way Internet Satellite dishes are a pretty friendly bunch.  Like most RVers in general!  We have the Satellite Dish, ours is a Datastorm, because we *must* have Internet at all times!  We love the Internet and we love to talk about it and share it with our neighbors.  We find that most dish-owners are the same.  So, you might want to look for RVs that look like the photos below and park close by!

This next photo was taken at a Datastorm Rally.  There were about 60 2-way Internet satellite dishes deployed here!  No problem getting online here!

We don’t leave it wide open however.  The WiFi network that we have set up with our satellite Internet connection has WEP encryption on and you need to know the key in order to use it.  As I said, we’re a friendly sort and we want to talk to you about using the Internet.  We’re happy to share, but we want to know who is using it.

We have a little sign in our window that says, “Want Internet, Ask Us”.  And the name or ‘SSID’ of our Wireless Network is “Want Internet - Ask Us”.  We are probably a little more accessible than some others because we also sell the Datastorms.  But, an informal survey of other dish-owners confirm that they’re happy to share - all ya gotta do is ask.

Please be prepared for a ‘No’ answer though.  There are some people who are very dependent on their Internet connection and need every *bit* of bandwidth they can get.  The systems are expensive, and the monthly service ain’t cheap either ($60 - 200.)  Dish-owners are certainly under no obligation to share, but you’ll find that most of them *want* to. 

Jim and Don presented a session yesterday, here at the Datastorm Rally, on networking issues … Wireless Networking … WiFi.

One of the topics of discussion was what channel should you be on…

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There is so much to learn.
I am so lucky to be able to attend training as I did last week in Salt Lake City.
The MotoSat facility is impressive…

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