Gerall - Skype is a demanding internet user. I have used Skype for years in my office and on my cell phone to make overseas calls. It is not a good choice for anything but fast high speed internet. I had issues with Skype today in my office and I have a very fast connection that is land based.
On the topic of 3G/4G vs wifi...I use my data plan when traveling throughout my home country but once I cross the border I must turn off my data as it would cost a fortune. Wifi is the only way we can remain connected to friends and pay bills. I would be happy to use my own data plan and not have to rely on cg wifi connections but it is not practical yet. I don't mind paying a small fee for wifi but at $5 - $10/day it really adds up over a 2-3month period.
As indicated the quality of wifi in campgrounds varies considerably. I talked to one WIFI provider who was putting broadcast WIFI into a park on Lake Ontario. He admitted that the speed was initially SLOW and the more people that were on it at a time, the slower the access became. He said that aside from checking emails and making short replies, its effectiveness was limited.
We are in week 6 of a cross country run. We work from our camper, and need wifi. Only one campground has offered decent bandwidth. They also have an upgrade for pay feature that allows video conferencing and streaming. Very satisfactory. The others were so throttled down, it took minutes to load the Google home page. Tengo is a provider that does this, and I avoid parks that use this "service". Why even offer it? A good system is very costly, and I expect to lay for it in the price of the site, when I need it. WiFi is a key feature driving my decision on park choice.
QUOTE(dodge guy @ Oct 26 2011, 12:50 PM) [snapback]28023[/snapback] Do hotels charge for Wi-Fi? DW travels (air/hotel) 80% of each work week, mostly lower 48, some international. She says many hotels charge for internet access. The fee is normally waived for frequent stayers. She normally uses mifi/aircard but if she cannot get adequate service she has to use the hotel's. She prefers the paid access as, she says, it normally works better and is more reliable than the free stuff.
For most trips Internet service is very important to me and I will choose campgrounds based on it. If at all possible I will stay away from campgrounds that limit you to 30 minutes or charge a huge fee for it. A wouldn't mind a small fee for a good internet connection but the ones that charge tend to charge a large fee for bad service. In this day and time it is an important extra to keep business.
As an RV Park owner, I do not charge for daily and weekly customers. Those rates are higher then seasonal/monthly rates and are sufficient to cover my cost. We do charge $20 per month for the seasonal/monthly campers. WIFI is a must for any park owners reading these post. I am also a RV owner, we traveled from GA to Yellowstone a year ago and not one time did we find a decent WIFI. Either the signal strength or bandwidth was terrible. Of course they are related. Many owners just don't have access to a good high speed provider, others just put a router in the office and will not spend the money required for a good system. I have spent thousands upgrading equipment but it is money well spent. One of the first questions of a new customer is do I have WIFI. Without any doubt, it brings business. In regards to bandwidth hogs, netflix, etc. Valuepoint Networks makes a very good controller that many hotels use to manage guest. This controls the login and passwords and keeps the rest of town off your system. That alone will give more bandwidth to your customers. Bandwidth controls per user is easily adjusted. I give everyone full speed until I see repeated extreme bandwidth used, then I step by step adjust downward. The average user may consume 100 megs or less per day. I just logged in my controller and have two users that have used over 2 gigs each today! Luckily I have two Internet Providers and great equipment that combines them for extreme bandwidth. Being and RV owner and Park owner, I understand the frustrations from both sides.
QUOTE I give everyone full speed until I see repeated extreme bandwidth used, then I step by step adjust downward. The average user may consume 100 megs or less per day. I just logged in my controller and have two users that have used over 2 gigs each today! I support your right to limit bandwidth use. Do you tell customer's at check in what the limits are? Do you warn them before beginning to limit their access?
One thing more to consider with respect to Wi fi or cable is how fast is it? I have been to parks that advertise it as part of the package and it is so bad it is not worth even having. Kind of like advertising cable and having 15 channels.
QUOTE(joez @ Nov 14 2011, 09:26 AM) [snapback]28173[/snapback] I support your right to limit bandwidth use. Do you tell customer's at check in what the limits are? Do you warn them before beginning to limit their access? Yes we do but most folks have no idea how much bandwidth steaming media such as Netflix uses because they have no way to measure. We dont limit access, we just throttle there speed down so plenty of bandwidth is left for the other customers. Generally 1 person out of 10 uses 90% of the bandwidth. On my wifi system at full speed a user can download 20 megs per minute. Thats a gig in under an hour.
As an RV owner and new reviewer here, I appreciate other reviewers providing information about the wifi service performance in their reviews. A lot of campgrounds advertise wifi, but when you try to use it, you either cannot get a lease because the entire system is bogged down, or they have put you too far from an antenna to be any good. Generally, we have had our best luck at more expensive campgrounds that either charge a premium rate or bill you separately for the wifi. Of course, this is not always the case, we just stayed at the Kiva in Tucumcari, NM and the wifi was flawless at a bargain nightly rate. ($20)
Howdy As a Developer just building our first RV Resort we are wondering what this RV Community would like to see from a WIFI policy that will work for both campers and us owners. our situation is a little different then most of the RV Resorts i see posting in this topic. We are 45min outside of a major city centre and as such our maximum bandwidth is 1mps. so for our office to run online registrations and have a decent service to customers. also our campground is located on 73 acres of land and as such we need up to 5 of the Omni directional antennas. ( there are other options for bandwidth but these get costly we can get 10mps bandwidth but they charge close to 10$ a gigabyte that we go over our 1 GB Limit. whereas the 1Mps service has unlimited download and upload. ( the cable companies have not reached out this far as of yet) ) Any advice out there would be appreciated. so far my personal thought is to not charge for internet. but have a separate service for the office to run administration out of.
QUOTE As a Developer just building our first RV Resort we are wondering what this RV Community would like to see from a WIFI policy that will work for both campers and us owners. We as WIFI users want unlimited access, lightening speed, free, always available WIFI on which we, and every other user, can Skype, play online games, download humongeous files, and stream multiple movies. Most of us are, however, aware that all this is not possible at most of the places we stay. I would suggest that you install the best system you can afford, provide the expertise to keep it running and then be honest with your guests. We have stayed at several places where system limitations and allowances were explained to us (in writing) and then usage was monitored and abusers excluded from the system. If the system will not support heavy use then tell us so. This is so much better than staying somewhere that advertises WIFI only to find that the system is only available at the office, or down more than up, or only available in 1/3 of the sites and nobody working knows anything about the system. Good luck with your venture. Keep us updated as you succeed.
Not knowing your location or terrain, how far away is Cable? If you can get line of site, there is equipment to transmit 10 miles or more to bring to you from a family member, friend etc. You would be suprised how cheap you can do this. 1 Mbps is super slow and you will get alot of compaints but as a previous post mentions, just advise your customers of your limited resources and they will understand its "better then nothing". I have 85 sites in my park but only about 40 users and we use about 10 gigs per day in bandwidth usage. Make sure you have enough controll over your system to keep non customers from getting online. I use a controller that will allow me to combine up to 4 Internet providers into 1 to increase our bandwidth. Can you get more then one account at a fair price? They sometimes freak out if they know what your doing, so get the second account in a workshop or something nearby that "justifies" the second account. QUOTE(Mayatan Lake RV Resort @ Dec 1 2011, 05:04 PM) [snapback]28319[/snapback] Howdy As a Developer just building our first RV Resort we are wondering what this RV Community would like to see from a WIFI policy that will work for both campers and us owners. our situation is a little different then most of the RV Resorts i see posting in this topic. We are 45min outside of a major city centre and as such our maximum bandwidth is 1mps. so for our office to run online registrations and have a decent service to customers. also our campground is located on 73 acres of land and as such we need up to 5 of the Omni directional antennas. ( there are other options for bandwidth but these get costly we can get 10mps bandwidth but they charge close to 10$ a gigabyte that we go over our 1 GB Limit. whereas the 1Mps service has unlimited download and upload. ( the cable companies have not reached out this far as of yet) ) Any advice out there would be appreciated. so far my personal thought is to not charge for internet. but have a separate service for the office to run administration out of.
the closest town with cable is 17 km by air, 31km by road. and we have the ability to put a 15m tower on a hill with no problem from the development authority. however according to he topographical there are 3 same height hills between us and the town. what type of equipment would i need to be able to do this? i would love to be able to provide real high speed to our customers not the rural 1mps high speed that is available locally. Thanks for the info 10 gig a day would be a lot for 1mps but hat gives me some numbers to work out with a isp over what we estimate we will do. what type of control would you suggest. i was thinking a standard router system with all the passwords and security on. Thanks! QUOTE(Don-in-GA @ Jan 1 2012, 09:00 AM) [snapback]28531[/snapback] Not knowing your location or terrain, how far away is Cable? If you can get line of site, there is equipment to transmit 10 miles or more to bring to you from a family member, friend etc. You would be suprised how cheap you can do this. 1 Mbps is super slow and you will get alot of compaints but as a previous post mentions, just advise your customers of your limited resources and they will understand its "better then nothing". I have 85 sites in my park but only about 40 users and we use about 10 gigs per day in bandwidth usage. Make sure you have enough controll over your system to keep non customers from getting online. I use a controller that will allow me to combine up to 4 Internet providers into 1 to increase our bandwidth. Can you get more then one account at a fair price? They sometimes freak out if they know what your doing, so get the second account in a workshop or something nearby that "justifies" the second account.
QUOTE(Out Fishing @ Jan 2 2012, 01:02 AM) [snapback]28539[/snapback] the closest town with cable is 17 km by air, 31km by road. and we have the ability to put a 15m tower on a hill with no problem from the development authority. however according to he topographical there are 3 same height hills between us and the town. what type of equipment would i need to be able to do this? i would love to be able to provide real high speed to our customers not the rural 1mps high speed that is available locally. Thanks for the info 10 gig a day would be a lot for 1mps but hat gives me some numbers to work out with a isp over what we estimate we will do. what type of control would you suggest. i was thinking a standard router system with all the passwords and security on. Thanks! Here is a product that advertises 30 km. You would need one at each end but if you dont have line of sight then it would not work. I use a smaller version for a much shorter distance. This company makes some of the best equipment I have ever seen. http://www.streakwave.com/Itemdesc.asp?ic=...D5G27%2DHP%2DUS As for a control, I use this unit below. It creates an separate login for each user. http://www.valuepointnet.com/controllers-nc-3500.php
I just got a new super Droid smart phone. On my old Droid, I could tether my laptop, but not sure on this one yet. This one has a huge screen and is very fast with 4G so I might not even have to tether when I can't get WiFi.
I have to say that when camping with teenagers wifi is a definite plus. I know that a lot of folks say that technology should be left at home but apparently they have never tried to 'unplug' a teenager for any period of time and expect them to have fun. Now with that being said we take technology with us in case it rains or whatever but most of the time it's only used at night because we are busy having fun during the day. I would have to say that if we see wifi available for a charge we would steer clear of that campground. I think free wifi is a perk and in this day and age it's almost a must. My teens have much more fun 'getting away from it all' when they can still stay caught up.
