Internet to Go!

You may be wondering how we are getting internet access while on the road. It's not amazing of course, the technology has been around for some time. If you don't own a laptop, however, you may be less familiar with the internet-away-from-home options. There are a number of internet on the go options available, and we are taking advantage of several, but let's start by talking about wi-fi.

Any relatively new laptop will include wi-fi as will many smart phones. Other devices that use networking but would be awkward to have to to use with a cable will have wi-fi as well; for expample, the Apple iPod Touch. Wi-fi is the common term for wireless ethernet networking technology. In your home, you can install a wireless base station which is connected with an ethernet cable to your DSL or cable internet system. Then you can use your laptop around the home without wires; the laptop communciates wirelessly through the base station. (You can also put a wireless network card in you desktop computer. We did this at home with a machine that was located in a place where it wasn't possible to run a cable.)

You have no doubt heard the term "Internet Cafe." This refers to a business, often a coffee house of some sort, which has intalled a wi-fi base station and make it available for their customers. These businesses seemed to be among the first to recognize that providing internet access could increase sales. Now many fast food and fairly upscale restaurants offer wi-fi, as well as hotels, automobile service waiting rooms, and much more including - yes - RV parks. Now, businesses are offering wi-fi because they just about have to; it is just part of doing business in the 21st century.

However, campgrounds in state and national parks generally do not offer wi-fi. Our first stop on this trip was at Fall Creek Falls, a Tennessee state park. This is remote enough that even cell phone service was flaky at our camp site. If you stepped outside the RV, it worked poorly. Inside the RV was hopeless, as were the non campsite places; the bike trails, the falls observation areas, and so on; but that is probably a good thing. Fall Creek Falls does, however, have an inn. The inn provides wi-fi service, but only the in the lobby, not the guest rooms. But that was good enough for us. It was about a two mile bike ride from our campsite. We loaded the laptop into our bike's saddle bag and made the trek to the inn, posted to the blog, and headed back to the campsite.

Traveling from one campground to another will often consume several hours of your time. It would be nice to be able to use the internet as you drive down the road. Of course, I mean the passenger, not the driver. The technology that will do this is commonly known as wireless broadband. The technology that provides digital voice service for your cell phone can also provide data service for your computer. The hardware required for this is rarely provided in a laptop computer. You will need to purchase a seperate device for this which usually (in 2010 anyway) connects to one of your USB ports. This modem device will probably cost somewhere between 75 and 120 dollars. You can get a full time service, but the monthly fee is pretty high for occasional use. I opted instead for a prepaid, no contract plan. Prior to our trip to Illinois in late June, I purchased a service through an internet merchant where I had purchased before with good results. Unfortunately, I did not research before I bought. Although the service is on the Sprint network (no problem there) the prepaid service I purchased was through a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) which contracts with Sprint for the physical network. The initial setup was painful and customer service was poor. Once setup, it worked quite well, at least for our first trip. When we took off for our next trip, it did not work at all. I called customer service and found it would be out for a week. A week later, I was told two more weeks. So, I looked elsewhere.

I found that Virgin Mobile is also an MVNO using the Sprint network. You can purchase a modem and prepaid cards at a variety of locations. We picked ours up at Walmart while enroute between campgrounds. I did have a couple of glitches with the setup, but by comparison to the previous MVNO, Virgin Mobile was a breath of fresh air. This first problem was that I had hoped set up the service while driving down the road. The setup procedure did not work as expected, I could not install their software. I called customer service but their first question was "What zip code are you in?" Well, I didn't know, so we were not able to complete the install. Once we arrived at our next site, I tried again. We still had trouble with the software, but customer service was very helpful. The problem turned out to be that I had to remove the software from the previous MVNO. Once that was done, the Virgin Mobile installation worked as expected.

For the first few days, the service was rather disappointing. When using a web browser, it would seem to hang frequently when loading pages. Sometimes the delay would be just a few seconds, sometimes fifteen to twenty seconds, and occasionaly so long that you felt the need to restart the broadband software. It did not seem to matter whether we were in a remote RV park, driving down I-40, or in the heart of Nashville, the performance was about the same. Today, suddenly, it is working quite well.

I don't know that I can explain what is going on, but perhaps it is a combination of service area and the weather. Since I started using the Virgin Mobile service, we have either been in a fringe coverage area, or in rain, often very heavy rain, or both. Today is the first day that we have had sunshine while we are in a fixed location and in what should be a good coverage area. Most types of radio transmissions are affected to one degree or another by rain, so perhaps that has been the cause of the poor performance. I'll keep testing and give you an update. By the way, this is what is refered to as a 3G broadband service.

There are other options out there. Clear Communications has a new service known as WiMax. It works using equipment deployed on cell phone towers, and is several times faster than 3G. The cost is about the same. Unfortunately, it is still in the rollout phase and is only available in a limited number of cities at this time; the current coverage wouldn't meet the needs of a serious business traveler, much less an RVer. However, coverage is increasing. The speed is fast enough that it may be the only service you need. That is, if you don't need internet service in your home when you are not at home, then if you have the Clear service, you could cancel your cable or DSL service. Clear works in my home town and in the cities where I visit family. I have it and it works well as long as you are in their coverage area. Clear is being resold by Sprint. You can get a dual mode modem that uses the WiMax service when you are in a coverage area and automatically uses 3G whenever you are out of WiMax range. Not surprisingly, the dual service is quite expensive.

Then there are satellite based systems. The equipment is very expensive, that is several thousands of dollars. It is also very large. I saw a HughesNet setup at an RV on the first day we were at our current campground. The dish was somewhere between two and three feet in diameter and was set up on a heavy duty tripod like you would see on a professional TV camera. The advantage of this system is that it will work in even the most remote areas, so long as you have a clear view of the southern sky. Of course, the most desireable RV sites are often the ones surrounded by trees which would interfere with satellite reception. Obviously, it does not work while traveling. Since I have not used it, I can't speak about the speed, quality of service, or effort needed to setup and aim the dish.

If you are desperate, some RV parks have POTS lines (Plain Ol' Telephone Service) available along side the power and water hookups. This would allow you to use a dial up analog modem at less than 56K speeds.

We will be at Land Between the Lakes soon for a seven night stay. I expect cell phone service to be similar to Fall Creek Falls, but without the backup of wi-fi in a nearby hotel. I'll let you know about our internet connectivity there, but it may be after the fact.........Hardware