Internet, Satellite dishes, and Trees

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I have a love/hate relationship with trees. I love the beauty, the shade, and the ambiance they provide. I hate that they block our satellite dish from connecting us to Internet. It took me a while before I had the nerve to ask a park for a site without trees. That was sacrilege! But, I got over it. We have plenty of opportunity to enjoy trees on walks and driving around. When I’m ‘home’ I want my Internet! I’ve learned to simply ask if there are any ’satellite friendly’ sites. Even though relatively few people have the Internet satellite that we do, the TV satellites have the same issue with trees, and park personnel are accustomed to dealing with the issue.

The following pictures are from Oregon and California. Our dish did get connected here, even with all the trees. It doesn’t need a wide open area, just a hole thru the branches (in the exact right spot) will do.

In the 5 years that we’ve been traveling and using our Datastorm Internet Satellite dish, trees have not bothered us. We were always able to find a hole thru the trees big enough for our dish to find its satellite and connect.

Until now.

We are in New England and I’ve never seen so many trees! As I mentioned in last week’s article, we had no connection (Satellite, Wi-Fi, or Cellular) in Acadia National park. The picture below is from a commercial park in central Maine. We didn’t even try to raise the dish here. Luckily, this park had good free Wi-Fi, so we got online all we wanted.

This next photo is from Burlingame State Park in Rhode Island. No satellite connection available here! And no Wi-Fi. Luckily the Verizon signal was good enough to use the Broadband Connect feature of our phone.

The angle of your dish makes a difference
Another thing that makes it more difficult to connect here in New England is that we are so far north and east. The satellite is in geosynchronous orbit over the equator somewhere in the Pacific. That means that it appears to stay in the exact same place … it is orbiting at the same rate the earth is spinning. For more info see this NASA site.

Think about it, if we were parked near the equator, our satellite dish would be pointing straight up. If the photo above was taken in Southern California, we may have been able to connect because the dish would be aimed higher and may be shooting over the trees. Here in New England, the dish is pointing much closer to the horizon, and even short trees get in the way.

Just another example that, if you need the Internet as you travel, you need to use all three methods to connect.

Chris Guld
www.geeksontour.com

Internet at Libraries and Cafes

We are currently in Acadia National Park! It is beautiful here. We really like to stay on the Park property and we chose a national park campground called Seawall. There are no hookups, and certainly no Wi-Fi here at ‘Seawall’ campground. We could run our generator, but our satellite dish could not connect thru all these trees! Our cell phones would not maintain a connection either - so we were OFF line! But, this is where we wanted to stay.

What do we do? I want to stay here for 3 nights, but my RV.net article is due today?! Well there are Wi-Fi hotpspots at various cafes and, most always at Public Libraries. We found a public library in Southwest Harbor, near the campground, where Wi-Fi was offered. What a cool place!

Internet Access at Public Libraries

And, I am certainly not the only one taking advantage of the Internet connection. One man who said he was traveling thru the area had a deadline to submit a grant proposal. Who cares that he’s on vacation in a beautiful national park? He can take a few hours, visit this local library, get his work done and get back to play! Others were just checking their email, and the woman next to me said she lived nearby but appreciated the free high-speed Internet.

I took a few minutes to speak with the director of this library. She said that the state of Maine has a wonderful public library system that helped them get set up as a Wi-Fi hotspot. She enjoys offering this service because she sees the benefits. There are traveling business people who take advantage of it as well as college students taking exams and many travelers every day accessing their email. She said that travelers particularly liked the fact that the Wi-Fi hotpsot was wide open and always on. They could access it from the parking lot 24 hours/day.

So, the purpose of this post is to encourage you to check out local public libraries as sources for Internet connections. They’re free, they’re usually high-speed, and you might meet some interesting people! We also took advantage of Wi-Fi at our lunch spot in Bar Harbor. Lobster Bisque and Internet. Does it get any better?

This is Chris Guld signing off from Acadia National Park in the Southwest Harbor Public Library!

Chris Guld

www.geeksontour.com

I’m Back!

So where has David been the last few weeks? Well, for the past two weeks, my job has taken me away from the blogs. I am still very busy, but I plan on trying to stay on top of this blog. I do miss it very much but the day job has to take front seat with regards to priorities. As for the previous week….I guess that makes it a month ago….my internet was knocked out by a very bad storm. Read more

I Love my Satellite Internet

I write a lot about the 3 different ways to get high-speed Internet as you travel: Wi-Fi, Cellular, and Satellite. We use all three. Satellite is by far the most expensive. In the past year, we have heard from so many people who love their cellular Internet that I’ve considered getting rid of our satellite dish and going all cellular. Read more

Internet on the Road, Bandwidth Limits

We’ve come a long way since dial-up. Just five years ago, if you wanted to get Internet while RVing, you had to schlep your laptop up to the office and plug into the one phone cable. It was very slow, and you needed to limit your time so other guests could use it.

Now you have 3 choices for high-speed, wireless Internet access:

1. Wi-Fi
2. Satellite
3. Cellular

We depend on our Datastorm Satellite Dish to give us Internet wherever we are.  But we also use Wi-Fi when available, and we tether our cell phone to the computer when the other two methods are not available.

All three of these, when working well, will get you high-speed.  Almost as good as the DSL or Cable you can get at home.  What they won’t get you is unlimited high-speed like you can get at home.  The satellite option has the most clearly regulated limit.  It’s called ‘FAP’ and it stands for Fair Access Policy.  You see, everyone with a satellite dish for Internet is sharing the satellites.  The satellites I’m familiar with are owned by Hughes and Hughes takes care of managing everyone’s usage so no one customer takes more than their fair share of the bandwidth. Read more

Best Alaska Trip Journals

I love living travel vicariously through others’ footsteps. Definitely the next best thing to being there.

Alaska rivals any place on earth for its sheer beauty. Here are my favourites of the best Alaska Trip Journals over the past 12 months. A huge thank-you to these incredible authors/photographers:

Most beautiful sunset, from ‘Wiseman9′:

Most territory covered, from ‘AlaskaExpedition2007′:

Cutest bird, from ‘Tschumper’s Alaskan Journey 2007′:

Most colourful photo, from ‘Holladays in Alaska’:

Trip farthest afield, from ‘BinkleyAlaska2007′:

Best glacier shot, from ‘Holladays in Alaska’:

Dan Parlow

Personal Travel Websites by RV.Net ; Online Travel Journals by MyTripJournal.com ; Explore Good Sam Club Trip Journals ; Woodalls Trip Journals ; Travel Journals by Trailer Life Directory ; Traveling USA Travel Blogs

Windows Vista and Wi-Fi

Does it ever seem like you and your computer are locked in a battle of wits?

And the computer is winning.

As computers, and operating systems, get more and more sophisticated; they do more things automatically. In trying to make it easy for us, the computer programmers make assumptions about what we want. And, you know what happens when you *ASSUME* right? (you make an ASS of U and ME.)

One of the things that happens automatically these days is that your computer will automatically connect to a Wi-Fi network to which it has connected in the past. I say, “Just because I may have connected to a similarly-named network in the past does *not* necessarily mean I want to automatically connect to it now.” The video below shows you how to prevent your computer from connecting to an unwanted network. The video shows Windows Vista. If you have Windows XP, the same principal applies but the menus are a little different. Right-click on the wireless network icon and choose ‘View Available Wireless Networks.’ On that screen click on the menu at left that reads ‘Change the order of preferred networks.’ Now you can select a network and remove it just like in the Vista video below.

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Chris Guld
www.GeeksOnTour.com

RV.Net Goes High Tech

Blog.rv.net Now on the iPhone
For those of you who like to read while traveling we added an new iPhone brower interface this week for our blog. This is in addition to the mobile phone (text) interface the site started using several months ago. Hope you enjoy!

We also added a Gravatar feature to the site. What this does is add a little picture or icon that represents you to the site when you make comments. Go get your own and test your comments out to this post.

You can go set up your own at http://en.gravatar.com/

Be safe and have fun.

Blog vs Trip Journal: Part 3 - Guests and Messaging

Blogs commonly allow guests to post comments related to a single posting. Most commonly, the comment is posted, an email is dispatched to the blogger, and the blogger can then decide to delete. In this way, RV.net authors - myself included - have received quality info from the public on the subject of our informative blogs. Different blogging platforms allow for different levels of control over these comments.

Since Trip Journals are primarily a personal record of your own trip, guest comments are treated differently. Rather than including factual comments on each posting, visitors to your Trip Journal can elect to leave you a personal message through a ‘Leave a Message’ link. Often these messages have nothing whatsoever to do with your individual postings:

Messaging the Trip Journaler

This is like sending a personal email to someone, but with the added advantages that: (a) other visitors may see it; and (b) the message retains the connection to your trip.

Read more

Sharing A BroadBand Cellular Connection

As discussed in prior blogposts, broadband cellular service is typically received through a modem that attaches to one computer through a card slot or a USB port, and provides that single computer with access to the internet for a monthly fee. Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T are the most popular carriers that RVers use for their broadband cellular access.

As you might imagine, the cellular carriers really want to collect a monthly service fee for each computer connected to their network, and if you ask them how you can use one card or USB modem to provide access to more than one computer, they are likely to tell you it cannot be done and that you need to get another card or USB modem and pay another monthly fee for each computer that needs internet access.

Some people have actually been told that if they try to “cheat the system in any way”, they are breaking the law and will go to jail. Probably not true, but the carrier could certainly cancel your account. (I am not a lawyer and you should ask your lawyer for advice if you want to know more about that.)

In this article, I will discuss two popular ways to share one broadband cellular connection:

• the hard way — using your computers built-in “internet sharing” software, or
• the easy way — using a cellular router actually designed for the task. Read more
  Filed Under: Computers, Internet Access, RV How-To
  Tagged: Broadband Cellular, BroadBandAccess, Cellular router, EVDO, EVDO Router, HSDPA, LaptopConnect, MobileBroadBand
  
  
  

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