Wifi booster

Phyrcooler said:

I've traveled quite a bit and even at the largest hotel/convention complexes never go without wifi.

There's got to be a better way!

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Through work I understand what you are referring to, but the reality is that the equipment used for commercial applications like these is a far cry from the consumer/business products every marina uses.

Capt.Bill11 said:

The likelyhood of "free" internet being truly free, premium or not, is pretty slim in my option. You may not see the cost broken out, but it's in there.

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It gets even more complicated at a "Public" facility where I am.
While Wifi is "provided", it strains to make it the 300 feet to my boat. A rubber ducky antenna router, a building and trees make it essentially a non event for me. The dockmaster says $20K will get the system up and operational all up and down the dock. Being controlled by the City Council, they are reluctant to provide this "free" service to some, when the rest of the small town will clamor for it as well.. I get it, even though the 20 or so boaters on the waterfront are paying rent.

My Wirie now connects to the Town dock Link with 4 out of 5 bars and an average through-put of 36 mbit/s. There are 18 other signals within range of my on-board set-up. I solved my own problem, though it certainly was not Free to me!

The "WiFi" originates from the building on the right. My boat is behind the last tree on the left. The Waterfront continues another 1/2 mile past that point so you can see the coverage problem

Wifi/internet is part of daily life, for us anyway. When a marina or motel/hotel advertises free wifi, which most do, you expect it to work. We're headed to Ortega Landing Marina in JAX next week. They have internet, that's free or at no additional cost. It is built into the rent. They market it as "reliable" internet, which it is. We have been there and you can expect to live stream Netflix. Last year they updated the service as a way to attract more customers. These guys are ahead of the curve and it shows with their vacancy rates which are becoming smaller. Talk to any cruiser, who's looking at a marina to park themselves for a while and good, reliable internet is in the top 5 if not number one of their selection criteria.

By far, the two biggest reasons for a poor marina review:

1. Dirty bathrooms/showers. Averages an estimated drop of 2 stars from the review.

2. Poor WiFi. Averages an estimated drop of 1 star from the review.

ksanders said:

Amazing!!!! Just amazing!!!

I cannot believe the audacity of those free wifi providers not providing FREE premium service!

Are we really complaining about something that is FREE!

So how about this...

How about we start paying for our premium service! Did you know your cell phone provider has right now a system in place that they spent millions of dollars on, that will provide you with fast internet.

Yes, you have to pay for it. But then again it works!

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Thanks Kevin and Jeffrey,

I think you both hit the nail on the head.

Marinas are reluctant to spend a lot of money for something that could be obsolete in a few years.

yes, free Wifi attracts customers, but the reality is how many boaters are not going to a particular marina because their free Wifi sucks?

It's more likely marinas will do it the way many places do in Europe, advertize free Wifi, broadcast a strong signal and then never connect the router to the Internet.

I think the real threat though are the cellular companies. As I steamed up and down the east coast, trying to use "free" wifi it soon became apparent at least to me, that for the extra $40/month I needed to pay Verizon, i got a much better connection that gave all my devices all the data they could use for the month.

SO that extra 40 bucks was a dollar a day, even at two dollars a day, I dont see how a marina can invest $20k+ and hope to do better than just breaking even.

I got a wifi extender jsut this past summer for europe. It works well, but that only means sometimes I get a 1G connection, 4G

I really miss Verizon.

Greetings,
We got a much better deal with AT&T than Verizon for our onboard Internet. Twice the amount for 1/2 the price. Our marina suffered from overuse at peak hours and was impossible to access at times so we started out with Verizon and then went to AT&T.

Jeffrey S said:

We've been writing about marina WiFi directly to marinas for a few years. I've been involved with about a dozen new installations in the last 18 months at marinas wishing to upgrade their WiFi to something significantly better. It's an extremely complex and expensive upgrade. I'll give a little flavor of the issues...

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Jeff, thank you for sharing your experience! I think you hit a number of nails right on the head.

Here's my take: This whole mess may just resolve itself.

My marina shares it's consumer-grade cable-modem Internet connection over a high-power wireless router with a high-gain external antenna. It's actually quite usable on most of the docks.

It doesn't work down in the cabin of many boats. It slows badly if too many members try to watch streaming video.

But everyone now uses cell phones with data plans. The complaints have died way down over the past year or so. I suspect this trend will continue, as people start to give up on the whole idea of local Wi-Fi.

There's no way our member-owned marina would approve a $20,000 expenditure just so a few boaters could stream video, especially knowing it'll be obsolete in 3 years. I think wired Internet providers have priced themselves out of the market.

Far better to let those who need the high speed pay for it from their cellular provider, and the rest of us who just check e-mail, look up parts on the web or use forums like this will use the slow Wi-Fi when we can, and tether our smart phones when we have to.

That said, I agree a marina with a quality signal is a good find. I just don't see a lot of the marinas I stay being able to cost-justify it.

ksanders said:

Amazing!!!! Just amazing!!!

I cannot believe the audacity of those free wifi providers not providing FREE premium service!

Are we really complaining about something that is FREE!

So how about this...

How about we start paying for our premium service! Did you know your cell phone provider has right now a system in place that they spent millions of dollars on, that will provide you with fast internet.

Yes, you have to pay for it. But then again it works!

Click to expand...

The reference to "free" is only the Marina's excuse for the poor service - suggesting just accept what it is. There is nothing free about it from what they are paying this vendor for the poor level of service, AND I guarantee that I AM paying for it as a part of my slip fee. Additionally, this wifi/internet access vendor goes to great lengths to discuss the difficulties of access in marinas and how they overcome and provide the expected levels of access and bandwidth.

I get it. I COULD pay for cellular. However, as long as they tell me as a tenant that I have access to wifi, garsh darn it, I'd like it to have some semblance of functioning wifi. I'd even spend a couple hundred dollars for additional equipment to reach their equipment LOCATED 50 AND 100 FEET from my boat - if I had any confidence it would work. I'm not sure they even legitimately are providing any acceptable bandwidth pipeline.

I'm learning what I can here. I appreciate every informative response. As well as some of the other comment.

Our home phone is a Verizon , $19,95 a month plus of course 25% in taxes.

Works great for snowbirds , just take it along. North or South

We take it on out motor coach and aboard the boat , same good results with an inverter powering it.

Wont download Gone With The Wind , but works as a communication device.