Friend uses an RV where campgrounds have varying degrees of wi-fi and cellular signal depending on the campsite chosen.
He asked me for advice where I would like to ask GENERAL questions of you.
The first is for cellular which is whether they sell a cellular repeater for use not at a home but in an RV that moves to different places?
I suspect not, so then the rest of the questions are related to wi-fi. For distance, is it true that 2.5GHz travels farther (assuming obstructions) than does 5GHz? Noise shouldn't be a problem in a campground but distance is.
The power supply can be the batteries of the RV or 120VAC at the campground. The laptop has an ethernet port on the side. And he has an old router too.
But his main problem is amplifying weak signal which most of the time he says exists at the check-in desk but it's too low to be useful (phone calls or wifi) at the camping spot.
When I looked for radio/antenna setups the first I found was these.
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But then I found this at streakwave which is more cost effective.
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The questions I have about those $80 setups is what's the difference to him of a 400 mm horn versus a 300 mm long horn (100 mm does what?).
And given he doesn't know whether they'll have 2.4 or 5GHz, do they make a powerbeam or bullet or rocket that is both 2.5GHz and 5GHz at the same time?
In the end, for around a hundred bucks, what would you recommend for an RV?
I'm curious what makes you say that. Is this related to the Krebs kerfuffle? We don't need to litigate that but I'm curious if there's technical reasoning here beyond the hack and the Krebs incident.
On Mon, 4 Apr 2022 at 10:22:44, mike snipped-for-privacy@address.is.invalid> wrote (my responses usually FOLLOW):
Answering from UK, where things may be different.
I presume that means for the mobile (UK)/cellular (US) network, i. e. 'phone coverage. I've never heard of such a repeater, though I can see it might be plausible, in places where (say) a good mobile/cellular signal might only be available at the peak of the chimney/roof or something. Would presumably be nothing to do with the campsite owner though (unless s/he has some arrangement with the network provider to actually provide a base station/tower/whatever).
Being somewhat at a disadvantage never having seen one, but trying to think about how such a thing would work, I can't see why it would be different for a home one versus an RV one, other than possibly what power it runs on. Do such repeaters themselves connect to the mobile/cellular network, and then act as a "base station" for any mobile below them? Do they contain a SIM (or hardwired identity - I gather SIMless 'phones are commoner in US [they're almost unknown here]), or would they just relay any and all signals? Either way, I can't see they'd be different for home and RV.
By which I take it you mean a facility provided by the campsite owner for the convenience of campers.
As Dan has said, in theory, 2.5 is less obscured by obstructions than 5; conversely, in built-up areas, it's far more likely to be noisy - microwave oven leakage, security cameras, and many other things. In what I would imagine to be the rural location of most campsites, that might be less the case though. On the whole the 5 GHz band is more recently developed, so connections on it are likely to be faster/higher capacity than the older band - if they work at all.
[] I've no experience of active devices (actual amplifiers), or horns. I have seen multi-element Yagi aerials (like a rooftop/pole-mounted TV aerial, but with more elements - which is practical as the dimensions are shorter; they're about a foot or two long) for the 2.4 GHz band; they might exist for the 5, I've not looked. Not very expensive (I think $5-$30); I think one of the main makers is Swan, who I think are Australian (though their products are widely available online, certainly in UK and I would guess in US). I would think it worth trying these out before spending hundreds of dollars. The main practical difficulty is how you connect them to the computer; they generally have a lead ending with a little gold connector (F type I think it's called); laptops with built-in wifi ('phones ditto) tend not to have an external socket. USB wifi dongles that have a "rubber duck" aerial, it's often removable leaving a suitable socket: such dongles are very cheap (few bucks, especially if not dual-band).
Personally, I'd experiment with such a yagi aerial (buying such a dongle if necessary - you'd need to disable the laptop's built-in wifi, or it might be OK to leave it on, as it almost certainly won't receive anything a long way from the site office).
True! Though probably won't have the security cameras, etc., and other "noise sources", you'd get in a more built-up area, and presumably most people who "get away" to them will be out walking, or similar. But I suppose if there's sudden bad weather or something, there might be lots sitting in their RVs trying to use the net - possibly enough to swamp the 11 or 13 channels on the 2.4 MHz band. Though again, whether enough of them would have the ability to use any such facility based at the site office, rather than using data on the cellular/mobile network directly ...
On Tue, 5 Apr 2022 15:48:47 -0000 (UTC), Dan Purgert snipped-for-privacy@djph.net put together some random words that came up with:
RE: WIFI Stick one of these
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On a pole when you park in a campground, and run your Cat6 cable inside the RV (with a POE supply) and have the RV run wired Ethernet inside the RV. This one (they have others, which may be better suited for your needs) should work fine. Just orient it towards the campground's WIFI access point.
Set it up as a receiver.
I have an older version (and ENH500) and use it as a long-range WIFI receiver.
Be the first to dominate the RV park Wi-Fi system. With 800mw (+29dBm) and +1dB antenna gain, you too can have the strongest maximum legal transmitter in the RV park, where all the other RV owners can hear your transmitter, but your receiver can barely hear anyone else. Adaptive transmit power management? Nope[1], full power all the time. This is what's called an "alligator" which is an animal with a big (transmit) mouth and tiny (receive) ears. A high gain directional antenna (and much less transmit power) would be better, where you can get roughly equal transmit and receive ranges.
Usually, the problem is not between the user and the RV park Wi-Fi system. It's the park backhaul to their ISP that causes bottlenecks during peak hours. It doesn't take too many RV's streaming Netflix in
1080p HD video at 5Mbits/sec, to bring the Wi-Fi system to a grinding halt. In desperation, RV park owners often set the QoS (quality of service) bandwidth limit to 3Mbits/sec which forces 720p video and allows more users. Streaming video is usually UDP/RTP, instead of TCP, taking the load off the upstream backhaul bandwidth, which might be 10% of the downstream bandwidth.
A few RV parks have installed wired ethernet or coax cable TV ports on the pole for RV's.
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I don't know how well this works as I've never played with such a system. However, I assume that the RV park would not install wired ethernet if Wi-Fi worked as their customers expect.
[1] It might have adaptive power management, but I didn't see any mention of it in the specifications.
Instead of that $900 dual-band wifi setup with unequal transmit/receive ranges, do the Engenius, Mikrotik, or Ubiquiti people make a <$200 dual
2.4GHz/5GHz wifi radio of sufficient transmit power (maybe 20dBm?) and (maybe 30dBi?) directional antenna to be able in the end to transmit at legal or near legal power and pick up enough signal with enough sensitivity to get roughly equal transmit & receive range?
I'm guessing the EIRP has to be at or near the legal wifi max of somewhere around -30dBm and the sensitivity probably needs to be in the -90dBm to
-100dBm range for the frequency & speeds found at the campsites in a site survey run on his phone.
Do they make a cellular repeater that can be purchased for <$200 and then it can be used in multiple places which can pick up low (maybe -110dBm?) cellular signal which can be amplified by the repeater's second unit to allow the cellphone to be used as a personal hotspot inside the RV?
I suspect it's illegal (FCC rules?) to move a cellular repeater, so that might not be an option but maybe someone knows more about that option?
He won't know ahead of time if it's 5GHz or 2.4GHz with the best signal.
But I don't think he cares if it's Engenius or Mikrotik or Ubiquiti equipment as long as it's around less than about $200 and if it can get him enough signal strength on send/receive to connect to the "free" wifi at a typical campground.
To do that it will probably need a high gain dual band radio & antenna (if they make them in dual bands that is). Do they?
He'll probably need a high sensitivity receiver and a high transmit power (although I'm not sure which is more important but I think the antenna gain and the receiver sensitivity are more important than the transmit power because in the end he's limited to whatever the legal EIRP happens to be).
Do Engenius, Mikrotik or Ubiquiti make a dual band radio and antenna with legal EIRP and decent receiver sensitivity in the approx <$200 range?
Given the specs above bounce back & forth, which is the MOST IMPORTANT specification for this situation of whatever campgrounds use for Wi-Fi APs?
Antenna gain dBi? Transmit power dBm? Receiver sensitivity dBm?
I very much doubt it's anywhere near that good. Otherwise it wouldn't have been a problem. It's likely worse than -85 dBm, which is why good equipment is needed.
I picked 54Mbps for the specs above which seems like a reasonable goal.
Given the common campground wifi AP situation described, which is best? Antenna gain of Ubiquiti 25 & 18 or Mikrotik 16 & 10 dBi Transmit power Ubiquiti 23 & 24 or Mikrotik 20 & 36 dBm EIRP Ubiquiti 48 & 42 or Mikrotik 36 & 46 dBm Receiver sensitivity Ubiquiti 75 & 75 or Mikrotik 80 & 80 dBm
Notice the $158 Ubiquiti set wins on power alone but the $96 Mikrotik set wins big on the sensitivity which can help pull out the weak signals.
Anyone here have the heuristics for making the required performance trade off weighting of which of the three main specs is most important given we can presume the signal is very weak and the campground AP also weak.
How does a boost of 100 decibels of your cellular signal sound to you?
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