Full-timing Internet?

[wingfoot321]

I am running Verizon Express Network tonight from south Texas. I have been at it since the middle of January. Spending the winter in the valley.
I have been getting kicked off quite a lot. Am zinging Verizon daily until we get some things fixed.
I think they are timing me off if I read the forum for more than about 6-7 minutes. They insist they are not. We are talking about it daily.
The system is working. I have a cell tower within 6 miles and I logged 1900 minutes since mid January.
I plan to get an external antennae this week to see if some of the drop outs are due to signal.
I could go to earthlink here in the park but, they close the building at night .
I check my bank statement, credit card statement, mutual funds, etc.
There are problems but, it is working fairly well with the exception of the drop outs.
They just did it to me. Had to log back on before I could send this reply.

[joshua32064]

I know that this is no solution, but for $29.99 per month, you can join the T-Mobile Hot Spot Network and use the Internet wirelessly from practically any Kinkos or Starbucks in America.

With those two stores being all over the place, it's usually within a reasonable distance of many places and the speed is unbeatable.

[sparkleplenty]

thanks a lot for all of your responses. I guess I'll give earthlink a try until the satellite comes more in my price range.

[wahoonc]

Originally posted by wingfoot321
I am running Verizon Express Network tonight from south Texas. I have been at it since the middle of January. Spending the winter in the valley.
I have been getting kicked off quite a lot. Am zinging Verizon daily until we get some things fixed.
I think they are timing me off if I read the forum for more than about 6-7 minutes. They insist they are not. We are talking about it daily.
The system is working. I have a cell tower within 6 miles and I logged 1900 minutes since mid January.
I plan to get an external antennae this week to see if some of the drop outs are due to signal.
I could go to earthlink here in the park but, they close the building at night .
I check my bank statement, credit card statement, mutual funds, etc.
There are problems but, it is working fairly well with the exception of the drop outs.
They just did it to me. Had to log back on before I could send this reply.

Wingfoot,
I have the same problem with the Sprint PCS. Best as I can figure is it is an issue with card parameter settings, and according to a techy friend of mine will vary based on a whole range of things, including but not limited to, distance from tower, type of tower, amount of traffic on that specific tower, as well as over all cell traffic, number of roamers on the tower, etc, etc, etc, I don't have an aircard...yet. I have been relying on a patch cable and my 3G phone, the speeds are very reasonable, except for the having to deal with the timeouts. We were out in Elk City, OK this past fall, passing thru and the only choices for going online was an 800 number @ 21,600 or the cell modem. I have had decent luck with wardriving but would hate to rely on it. But it is a relative low cost option

Aaron

[Jeromepix]

Does anyone have first hand knowledge of Satellite use? I am seriously considering it, and need info soon. Best companies? Places where it won't work at all? Connection speed?

J

[norbert]

just like people in the thread have said ...unless you wait, i expect you will be paying premium price...obviously if you have a bidness....yoou could care less what it costs.....
best of luck...

[nds]

Originally posted by Jeromepix
Does anyone have first hand knowledge of Satellite use? I am seriously considering it, and need info soon. Best companies? Places where it won't work at all? Connection speed?

J

From what I've seen, this appears to be one of the better offerings.... but, it ain't cheap!

MotoSat

Ground Control

[ipso_facto]

As I did research, Earthlink has an air card.. about $300 and not sure what the monthly service is. But it does work. Speeds are several times faster than dial-up modem and depend on location.

Verizon is best, Cingular is OK, T-Mobile has horrible coverage.

[sfixx]

Rich of Vintage Thunder and Airsream Life fame uses "Internet in Motion".

http://www.internetinmotion.net/

I know nothing about it except that Rich and everybody who parks near his Hot Spot is pleased with the service. He's currently at a rally but perhaps this thread will catch his eye. I see that this thread is 15 months old and I'm sure that the technology and pricing has certainly changed.

Steve

[GlenCoombe]

As I work from my rig I guess you'd call me a fulltimer. My setup is great for my needs. I have a Sprint Aircard with an unlimited package for $80 a month. Anytime I'm in a coverage area I'm online. I check my email all day long. I use an internet fax server to send and receive faxes as I send orders to my suppliers and take orders via fax from my customers. Fax service runs me $12. mo for 200 pages and includes a toll free 800 inbound number. Everything turns into a PDF for sending and receiving.

When I've a need to send dense files or need to download the same I just stop by a Starbucks and buy a one day pass. I've only had to do this a couple of times in the past six months. Of course I use my wireless network card for this.

The beauty of it all is that I use a moble desktop solution that was built by Industrial Flower Factory in NH. My wall mounted CPU has a PCMCIA card solt for the aircard or network card. It also has a CF slot. Came with a DVD combo drive and is both compact and light weight.

I run all of it via a wireless keyboard and mouse. Viewing is done on a 20" LCD wall mounted. The wireless printer adapter connects to the Samsung laser printer on the other side of the bus so I can print out orders for my customers before they leave the coach.

Sprint solution has been great with the exception of the western NC mountains where Verison owns the airwaves it seems... For as much time as I spend up there I feel like I've got a winner of a setup and would not change a thing.

Tonight from the Wal-Mart lot in Anderson SC.

[wahoonc]

Glen,
I will second the reliabilty and usefulness of the Sprint PCS network. I use a patch cable and a 3g data capable phone. I have found a few places where the coverage is non existent but you will get those with any cellular service at some point in time. Laptop Magazine ran an aircard/service test a while back, Verizon was #1 and Sprint # 2 in reliability and coverage. I use my company server 800 dialup as a backup. Last weekend I was in a state park in NC sitting in a camp chair by the campfire...reading the forums (boy do I need to get a life )

Aaron

[M&M CAPECOD]

Originally Posted by wahoonc

Last weekend I was in a state park in NC sitting in a camp chair by the campfire...reading the forums (boy do I need to get a life )

Aaron,
Sounds like a pretty good life to me.

[rluhr]

Originally Posted by sfixx

Rich of Vintage Thunder and Airsream Life fame uses "Internet in Motion".

Yep, I'm using it at the International Rally in Springfield MO right now. The Internet in Motion system uses either Sprint or Verizon's wireless network. Our box is on Sprint, and basically doing the same thing as GlenCoombe posted, except that with the Internet in Motion box we probably get better performance than with the Aircard.

The Internet in Motion system is a full 3-watt transceiver (remember "bag phones"?) with a rooftop mounted high-gain antenna. This gives us better throughput than a cell phone, which is limited to 0.6 watts max, and it will pull in the signal where cell phones can't even make voice calls. I typically get speeds about 3-4x dialup.

The other advantage is that it re-broadcasts the Internet through a standard Netgear wireless router, so I can access the Internet anywhere inside the trailer with my laptop, or within about a 50-ft radius outside the trailer. No wires!

That aspect is key for me, because with family in the trailer too, I often need to move from spot to spot to get my work done. See today's (July 1, 2005) blog post for more info: http://www.airstreamlife.com/vintage...underblog.html

BTW, Airstream may be offering this system as an option later in the 2006 model year. You can also get it installed by certain dealers, but the distributor (not Airstream) is just now getting the dealers signed on, so most won't have heard of it.

Like GlenCoombe, we also use an Internet fax service (eFax) and even Internet postage (Endicia) to reduce the amount of paper we carry in the trailer. That way, instead of hauling around a lot of paper, everything fits inside the laptop, which is incredibly convenient. (Just remember to make backups periodically!)

And Glen's got it right about the need for Internet backups too. I'll go hit a Panera Bread or Starbucks once in a while to download big system updates or upload large files. I tell people that if you full-time and work on the road, you need to have at least three ways to get online. I have four: cellular through Internet in Motion on Sprint, cellular through my Verizon phone, dialup, and wi-fi.

Even with all this I get skunked once in a while. Last week we were camping in a Missouri State Park where no cellular signals existed. The nearest wifi hotspot was 40-50 miles away, and the only phone available was a payphone that I couldn't plug my laptop into. Oh well. When that happens, it's a day off!

[n7bdl]

Check out portable satelite systems from Direcway and Starband. I bought mine from Dustyfoot.com for about $1500 and highly recommend him. The monthly charge is $60. It takes a while to set everything up (30-60 minutes), but once you get used to it, it's not a problem. The modem and dish are the same as the Motosat, just not automatic. Speeds are typically 500-600 k. We also use our Verizon cell phone to connect when we are only staying for one night.

Terry

[wahoonc]

Originally Posted by rluhr

Even with all this I get skunked once in a while. Last week we were camping in a Missouri State Park where no cellular signals existed. The nearest wifi hotspot was 40-50 miles away, and the only phone available was a payphone that I couldn't plug my laptop into. Oh well. When that happens, it's a day off!

Must need one of those old 9600baud modems that you cradled the phone handset into I may still have one floating around somewhere...

Aaron

[airstream6666]

Hiya, Aaron:

Originally Posted by wahoonc

Must need one of those old 9600baud modems that you cradled the phone handset into I may still have one floating around somewhere...


Aaron

Hmmm. The first acoustic coupler modem (what we called the thingy that cradled the phone handset) I had was a 1200 baud unit. It was an upgrade, and had replaced a 300 baud unit that had required a soldering iron to do the initial install, and a jumping-jack-flash 300 baud unit that was entirely store-bought.

Of course, I also walked several miles in the snow — barefoot — to purchase that 1200 baud hot-rod. It was coal-fired, as I remember. I had to switch to acoustic coupling because I was still twenty-plus years ahead of finding data ports in most aiirports/hotels.

Ain't technollergy wunnerful?

— Johnny

[rluhr]

I used Direcway 2-way satellite at my house for two years. Last week I disconnected it with a smile. I hated it. It was better than dial up on download (we got 200 kbps average), but the upload speed was awful. Typically it was slower than dial-up. And the reliability was so-so. Tech support was not great. I recommend it only to people who have no other alternative.

But to be fair, I hear the new boxes are better than what they sold me. Mine required software running on the PC, which was buggy for the first ten versions or so. Now they don't need PC software (with the DW6000 series).

Still, the upload speed will never reach the 128 kbps they advertise because it is shared bandwidth. With cellular I get synchronous up and download speeds and similar performance to the best I ever got with my Direcway system. I'm happier with the Internet-in-Motion box.

[rluhr]

I forgot a few other reasons I was happy to dump Direcway. There are issues inherent to satellite systems. A big one is the latency. You're shooting a signal up to a satellite that is 22,000 miles away and it takes a while even at the speed of light. The throughput of 200, 400, or even 500 kbps is irrelevant when each little transaction between your computer and the server requires 1/4 of a second just to fly up to outer space and back again.

That doesn't seem like much until you do something that requires a lot of "handshaking", like POP3 email or secure web pages. Then it can be effectively slower than dialup. A single secure web page can have dozens of individual transactions, and the quarter-seconds add up fast!

For this reason, satellite is unsuitable for any real-time Internet applications like Voice over IP, game playing, or videoconferencing. I wasn't too happy with it on secure sites (eBay, PayPal, online banking, etc) either.

[driftwood]

Here is another 'oldie' on internet connections while traveling ...

http://www.airforums.com/forum...ad.php?t=15338

[flyingcloud]

we're using direcway - 2 computers online at the same time one mac, one pc - DW6000 modem - I work on a website for a living, upload is a touch slow for graphic files, but not text or html.

we got ours from: http://www.rvnetworking.com - barb and joe provide great direction and support