Cell Tower Overload

by Chris Guld, www.geeksontour.com RV Rallies present major issues for Internet Access.  Rarely is Wi-Fi provided throughout the rally grounds, and, when you try to use your Cellular provider for data, you may find it doesn’t work so well. That was our experience at the FMCA SE Area rally last week in Brooksville, FL.  At times like these I wish we had our Satellite Dish back. If you doubt that cell tower overload is a factor, check out this article on AT&Ts troubles due to all the iPhone users out there. Actually, this article has me a little worried about Verizon as well, once the Droid (Verizon’s answer to the iPhone) catches on.  You see, once you have Internet browsing capabilities on your cell phone, you use it a lot more.  When I use my phone to make a voice call, I’m on for 5 – 20 minutes.  When Jim uses his new Droid to browse the web, he’s on for hours.  Both usages connect to the Cellular Tower, but the data usage represents a quantum leap in loading the Tower’s connections.  Read More →

Wi-Fi – A Better Antenna will Get You a Better Connection

We’ve said this time and time again, but it’s been a while and we have a lot of new readers. If you’re using a Wi-Fi hotspot and it’s not working so great, get an external Wi-Fi adapter. We have quite a collection of them over the years, but we recently bought a new one to go with our Windows 7 64 bit computer.  Here’s the one we purchased, a Hawking HWDN2: Read more  Read More →

Make a Wi-Fi Hotspot with your Cell Phone

by Chris Guld, www.GeeksOnTour.com If you’ve been reading my posts here – you probably know that you can tether your cellphone (if it’s the right model with the right service) to your computer.  Tethering your cellphone to your computer will give you Internet Access on that computer.  What you may not know is that you can tether it to a router as well. The Cradlepoint cellular router is very popular among RVers.  Most people use it for their Data Cards.  Plug the data card into the router and configure the router for your hotspot.  Now several computers can use that same Internet connection.  The router that we have will accept a Data Card, an Ethernet cable from DSL or Cable Internet, or a cell phone USB connection. While we are parked for the season at Paradise Island RV Park in Fort Lauderdale, Florida – we decided to spoil ourselves and get a month-to-month DSL Internet connection.  The telephone cable comes in from the post outside (the yellow cable) and plugs into the modem and then to our Cradlepoint router.  The Cradlepoint creates a wireless network called ‘GeeksOnTour.’  We can both connect to that network and we have Internet supplied by the DSL cable. We’re on the road right now, headed toward Holiday Travel Resort in Leesburg, Florida where we are presenting some computer classes.  Then, on to the FMCA Southeast Area Rally in Brooksville, Florida.  As we pulled into our overnight site at Thousand Trails, Orlando – I felt a bit of panic. ... Read more

Cruising vs RVing, and Wi-Fi

by Chris Guld, www.geeksontour.com I think there are a lot of RVers who also take cruising vacations.  Cruising is very much like RVing in that you don’t have to check in and out of a room for every destination.  You keep your stuff all in one room, yet you travel to multiple locations.  Then there’s the food.  Sure wish I could have that available when we’re RVing!  The primary reason I love RVing is the complete freedom and independence of going wherever we want to go, whenever we want to go there.  Although that does not describe cruising, I find cruising to be a nice change of pace where I don’t have any decisions to make.  We took a short, weekend cruise to the Bahamas this past weekend with the whole family.  Six of us.  It’s a great way to spend time together and be sure that everyone is comfortable. The only decision I had to make is what to eat! I was also looking forward to staying connected while we were on the cruise ship.  I could have sworn I saw, “Free Wi-Fi on board” in the promotional literature.  As it turns out, I was only half right.  There was Wi-Fi in the public areas, but it was not free.  $24/hour for Wi-Fi! An I thought $10/day was high the last time I was in a hotel!  It is amazing that they have an Internet connection at all way out at sea, but for that price I decided to leave my computer in my bag!  I can survive 4 days being disconnected, but not much more.  We did find a free Wi-Fi hotspot at the Ferry terminal in... Read more

Computing in the Clouds is Good for RVers

by Chris Guld, www.GeeksonTour.com Have you heard of ‘Cloud Computing’?’  It means using applications on the web rather than on your computer.  Blogging is one example, it’s all web-based, any computer will do.  As long as you can connect to the Internet (the ‘cloud’) you can use the blogging applications.  And, there are more web-based applications every day.  Now, you can even create spreadsheets and letters in the Clouds with Google Docs. Read more  Read More →

Gotta Have Internet

We’ve said it before, … and I’ll say it again, If you really *need* the Internet, you need more than one way to connect. On the road, that means wireless, and there are 3 ways – Wi-Fi, Cellular, and Satellite. See our video on High Speed Internet on the Road: 3 Ways to Connect. We’re at a hotel in San Jose, California at the moment, and we’re using the in-room Wi-Fi … at $12.95/day! But, just now I tried to use the Wi-Fi and, even though I connected fine, there was no Internet. So, I used the Ethernet cable and plugged it into the wall connection for ‘Network.’ All is well. Wired is always better than wireless if you have that option. Read more  Read More →

The Best Wi-Fi in RV Parks

Wouldn’t it be nice for us travelers if we could find a list of parks with *really good* Wi-Fi?  There are lots of directories of RV parks which include information on whether Wi-Fi exists or not – but those of us who use these systems know that the quality varies *greatly.*  Some systems are blazing fast, and some are unusably slow. Then, the really bad news is that, even the blazing fast ones are subject to variation depending on the other users in the park. Because of all these factors, most of us who travel a lot take our own Internet connection with us, either with a satellite dish or a cellular data card.  The main problems with satellite and cellular is that there are usage limits.  We don’t want to go over our limits with Verizon – I’ve heard of people getting $500+ bills for overages!  So, we keep looking for those parks with the really good Wi-Fi. Read more  Read More →

Are you Online while Driving?

by Chris Guld, Geeks on Tour I remember when we had to schlep our laptop up to the RV park’s office and plug in to their phone line in order to use dial-up to get online.  Then came Wi-Fi.  You could browse the Internet from the comfort of your RV.  We even got a Datastorm Satellite dish that gave us high-speed Internet *wherever* we were parked – in the middle of the desert, or in the most remote national forest.  What luxury that was.  We live fulltime in our motorhome and we need to work to make our living.  Our work is primarily on our website so it’s important that we be able to connect wherever we are. Read more  Read More →

Kindle Book Reader is perfect for RVers

GeeksOnTour.com: I love to read, but I don’t get to do it anywhere near as much as I like. Books are heavy, so we don’t carry many in the RV. The hardest part of selling our house and getting rid of all our possessions was the bookshelves full of books. I have to *really* want a book to buy it, or I have to luck into a good find at a park’s lending/trading library. All that has changed with the Kindle. Read more  Read More →

Wi-Fi: The Best of Speeds, The Worst of Speeds

We spent the past week in Essex Junction Vermont at the FMCA Northeast Area Rally (NEAR.)  To our surprise and delight, there was Wi-Fi available right at our parking spot.  We could tell it came from the fairgrounds since it was named, “CVFairmn1.”  We were at the Champlain Valley Fairgrounds.  We like taking advantage of available Wi-Fi so as to avoid going over our bandwidth allotment on our Verizon contract. Read more  Read More →

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