New “Airstream Connected” LTE-WiFi Dealer Installed

[SmallStream]

Originally Posted by SWSherrill

I just received my new installation of Airstream connect from Airstream dealer. My GPS cable is still in box. Is it suppose to be installed? I signed up for the $360 data plan and I am only getting 2-3 Mbps download. Why is that? I am better hot spotting off my phone. Now what? Is it suppose to be this bad? I am not happy.

This is exactly my story minus the GPS issue. The GPS should definitely be plugged in. Can you see the back of the router? Should be 4 cables plugged in. The bottom one on mine says GPS and its blue.

I'm so upset about the speeds and feel like Airstream's impressive reputation is taking a hit on this one. I'm a week away from taking it back to a dealer and asking them remove it and asking for a full refund. I'm almost $2000 in on this piece of junk and averaging 1-3 Mbps is unacceptable in 2019. The internet was so slow at one point I couldn't even send an email. The good news is other people are getting great speeds when it works.

The current official Airstream story is "new customers are only getting 3G service for some reason". They are hoping to have it fixed by early next week. Oh and don't bother calling AT&T about this. Their customer service doesn't even know these plans exist. I spent a good 2 hours being bounced from department to department and not one person knew anything about it. Fun times for us pioneers!

[turk123]

I know there is a lot of frustration about these new installs, and there appears to be some issue with either the dealer installs, the hardware that was sent to the dealer, and or the ATT service provided.

Whatever the issue is (and I'm not privy to it!) I think you have to give Airstream a week to resolve it. If it IS an ATT issue (3G instead of LTE), that is out of Airstreams control. Remember, ATT screwed up several months ago when new Classic owners could not find the $360 unlimited plan on the ATT website. ATT removed it. Classic owners could not sign up. At that time, it took Airstream and ATT a week to fix.

If I just spent $2000 for a hotspot and it did not work, I would be furious also. Come to think of it, I spent $130,000.00 on my trailer and the hotspot didn't work at all! It took 3 1/2 months to resolve that issue.

Airstream has learned a lot over this effort. Give them one more week to figure this out. I can assure you when it begins to work and you add a few tweaks, you will be pleasantly surprised. I guess I have more patience than most.

[SWSherrill]

What is the IP address and admin username to access the router and check its configuration?

[turk123]

Originally Posted by SWSherrill

What is the IP address and admin username to access the router and check its configuration?

They don't give you that information

[GT2018WA]

Originally Posted by turk123

No it truly is unlimited. My last month in the trailer I used 220 GB of data. Airstream told me there was another of their customers that used 660 GB!



It has never been throttled.

Do you understand the difference between a data cap and throttling and how they relate to network segment congestion? Let’s try a bad analogy. Let’s say your water supplier to your house served your whole neighborhood. They say you have unlimited water and bill you for that. But they also told you if you use too much at once and pressure drops to your neighbors, they will “throttle” your pipe. They won’t care at all if no one in your neighborhood complains, or their meters don’t detect a problem.

So you can be going around and downloading terabytes of data a month in RV parks where everyone else is out hiking all the time. There’s no congestion. No complaints. Nothing reporting possible problems. But maybe you decide to download more while everyone in the RV park streams the Final Four. Congestion = possibly throttling.

Does above happen. Unlikely, it’s too granular a level. Could it if they sense something really strange, like you are doing DoS attacks or something sinister - yes. Tcpdump that traffic from load balancer and they’ve got you and will do exactly what their fine print says.

So while you haven’t been throttled yet, which means they slow your connection down (would you even notice), the fine print is accurate and will ALWAYS apply, ALWAYS. I’m in the business. Trust me. Network congestion is out of your hands. You can’t do anything about it. Carriers have to manage that and the fine print lets them.

[GT2018WA]

Originally Posted by SmallStream

This is exactly my story minus the GPS issue. The GPS should definitely be plugged in. Can you see the back of the router? Should be 4 cables plugged in. The bottom one on mine says GPS and its blue.



I'm so upset about the speeds and feel like Airstream's impressive reputation is taking a hit on this one. I'm a week away from taking it back to a dealer and asking them remove it and asking for a full refund. I'm almost $2000 in on this piece of junk and averaging 1-3 Mbps is unacceptable in 2019. The internet was so slow at one point I couldn't even send an email. The good news is other people are getting great speeds when it works.



The current official Airstream story is "new customers are only getting 3G service for some reason". They are hoping to have it fixed by early next week. Oh and don't bother calling AT&T about this. Their customer service doesn't even know these plans exist. I spent a good 2 hours being bounced from department to department and not one person knew anything about it. Fun times for us pioneers!

So this is why I wouldn’t bother spending this type of money on something that is a shared network. You are ultimately at the mercy of how congested the cell tower is your traffic is traversing.

https://forums.att.com/t5/AT-T-Inter...n/td-p/5619300

[turk123]

Originally Posted by GT2018WA

Do you understand the difference between a data cap and throttling and how they relate to network segment congestion? Let’s try a bad analogy. Let’s say your water supplier to your house served your whole neighborhood. They say you have unlimited water and bill you for that. But they also told you if you use too much at once and pressure drops to your neighbors, they will “throttle” your pipe. They won’t care at all if no one in your neighborhood complains, or their meters don’t detect a problem.

So you can be going around and downloading terabytes of data a month in RV parks where everyone else is out hiking all the time. There’s no congestion. No complaints. Nothing reporting possible problems. But maybe you decide to download more while everyone in the RV park streams the Final Four. Congestion = possibly throttling.

Does above happen. Unlikely, it’s too granular a level. Could it if they sense something really strange, like you are doing DoS attacks or something sinister - yes. Tcpdump that traffic from load balancer and they’ve got you and will do exactly what their fine print says.

So while you haven’t been throttled yet, which means they slow your connection down (would you even notice), the fine print is accurate and will ALWAYS apply, ALWAYS. I’m in the business. Trust me. Network congestion is out of your hands. You can’t do anything about it. Carriers have to manage that and the fine print lets them.

I will agree that ATT may one day implement the fine print and throttle my connection, but slowing my connection now is different. In testing the Airstream system over months and months at almost a new location every three days I never saw throttling, I did see slowing. At 6:00 every night I would see a drop in speeds. I attributed that to a crowded tower. If I was at 50 Mb down, it might drop to 40 Mb down. That is not throttling to me but just more people on the tower.

I owned the original ATT hotspot from ATT (and still do!). After the 22 GB, I was throttled at some location especially during peak use times (6:00 PM). Speeds would drop to a complete crawl (almost unusable) until the tower freed up later in the evening. That is throttling. I've also experienced throttling several years ago with my business phones. My maintenance guy would leave my security cameras running on his company provided cell phone at night and burn through my alotted ATT bandwidth for the month. We suffered throttling at the time that was unbearable and lasted into the next month billing period. That's throttling, not slowing.

So I agree that ATT probably has the right to throttle under the ATT plan, I do not believe it has ever happened to me once. I would have recognized the speed change immediately with the amount of data my wife and I are using. Slowing - yes.

But your point is well taken. "truly unlimited" probably does not exist or may not exist in the future with this plan.

But what can you offer that is better at a similar price? It still is the best plan offered today from any cell carrier.

[GT2018WA]

Originally Posted by turk123

I will agree that ATT may one day implement the fine print and throttle my connection, but slowing my connection now is different. In testing the Airstream system over months and months at almost a new location every three days I never saw throttling, I did see slowing. At 6:00 every night I would see a drop in speeds. I attributed that to a crowded tower. If I was at 50 Mb down, it might drop to 40 Mb down. That is not throttling to me but just more people on the tower.



I owned the original ATT hotspot from ATT (and still do!). After the 22 GB, I was throttled at some location especially during peak use times (6:00 PM). Speeds would drop to a complete crawl (almost unusable) until the tower freed up later in the evening. That is throttling. I've also experienced throttling several years ago with my business phones. My maintenance guy would leave my security cameras running on his company provided cell phone at night and burn through my alotted ATT bandwidth for the month. We suffered throttling at the time that was unbearable and lasted into the next month billing period. That's throttling, not slowing.



So I agree that ATT probably has the right to throttle under the ATT plan, I do not believe it has ever happened to me once. I would have recognized the speed change immediately with the amount of data my wife and I are using. Slowing - yes.



But your point is well taken. "truly unlimited" probably does not exist or may not exist in the future with this plan.



But what can you offer that is better at a similar price? It still is the best plan offered today from any cell carrier.

Hike more . 5G once they get it everywhere and the kinks worked out. Get (or use existing) a mobile hotspot so you can upgrade more often, e.g. 5G, 6G. I started out on a 300 baud modem, my work has a dedicated OC-12 (622Mbps) - anything in the middle I just live with. I’m not full timing, so when I’m out I’m glad to be away from technology. My iPhone acts as a great mobile hotspot. I download movies to my laptop either at home (150Mbs) or work, to watch when camping sometimes. If I have to work with 6GB files for work in an emergency, I’ll remote into work PC and that is just screen sharing and keystrokes, i.e. slower connections do fine. Anyone, as example, working on animation and uploading their finished work is never going to be happy trying to do that from the road. All depends on what you need to do.

Your plan is unlimited. Meaning they won’t stop your connection completely, ever (in theory). Throttling is slowing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_throttling

[grandmaester]

Has anyone tried installing this themselves? I got the whole kit from the dealer, just haven't made an install appt yet. May try it myself, the instructions aren't too bad. Requires drilling a hole in the roof, which I'm reluctant to do, but maybe could route wires through something else up there?

[OTRA15]

The main problem with DIY is troubleshooting an install which does not work. Not to mention the cost of making it work. With all the possible hiccups in this system [read the thread from Post #1 !!!], no way a DIY install is a good idea IMO.



Peter

[turk123]

Originally Posted by grandmaester

Has anyone tried installing this themselves? I got the whole kit from the dealer, just haven't made an install appt yet. May try it myself, the instructions aren't too bad. Requires drilling a hole in the roof, which I'm reluctant to do, but maybe could route wires through something else up there?

There's also is a limited length of cable (4) coming from the antenna. You probably do not want to add more cable length to these either.

Airstream also has instructed their dealers with specific "Do's and Don'ts" as there was an original problem with the antenna installation with early trailers.

Did the kit come with installation instructions from Airstream or just for the antenna?

[UncleBad]

I was told I could not purchase and self install.

[UncleBad]

Update: install done! LazyDays charged 4 hours for the install on our 27FB Tommy Bahama. Here is a picture of the external antenna:



Boy they liked applying the goop. Anyone else have antenna pictures they can share?

Got the app installed and was able to get the plan purchased albeit with a couple of restarts and hiccups. It “works”. I also then integrated my own router to front end everything as per turk123 instructions.

Will have to wait for detailed testing as our AT&T signal at home is very poor and we are headed out for a week of sailing in the BVI’s. More to come when we return!

[turk123]

Originally Posted by UncleBad

Update: install done! LazyDays charged 4 hours for the install on our 27FB Tommy Bahama. Here is a picture of the external antenna:

Attachment 338348

Boy they liked applying the goop. Anyone else have antenna pictures they can share?

Got the app installed and was able to get the plan purchased albeit with a couple of restarts and hiccups. It “works”. I also then integrated my own router to front end everything as per turk123 instructions.

Will have to wait for detailed testing as our AT&T signal at home is very poor and we are headed out for a week of sailing in the BVI’s. More to come when we return!

Don't forget to have Airstream turn off "Wifi as WAN" in the router.

[turk123]

A week of sailing in the BVi's!! What the heck are you doing with an Airstream!

Sailing is my first love . . . . .

[Rocinante]

Put some pontoons and a sail on that Airstream, and you’ll be good to go!

[UncleBad]

Originally Posted by turk123

Don't forget to have Airstream turn off "Wifi as WAN" in the router.

Yep - sent an email to customer support. Let’s see how long the toggle off of that option takes!

[turk123]

Just got setup 12 miles south of Lake Havasu at a state park. On the Colorado river no service on iphone or Goggle fyi. Getting 47 Mb down and 6 Mb up on AS hotspot with added router!!! Great performance!

[turk123]

Also, wife’s and my phone is getting voice service through internet!

[turk123]

Here is my current status will the wifi - second router speed. The second image is my Iphone 10 inside the trailer with wifi turned off. There is a remarkable difference that I attribute to the remarkable antenna on the roof of the Airstream. This stuff can work well with a little coaxing!