Over the years, a number of people have asked how we stay connected on the road in our RV. So I thought I’d post an article on our solution, which hopefully gives a starting point for researching your own mobile answer. Please note this is not necessarily the fastest or best solution for mobile internet, it’s just what we use.

It all starts with a mobile router. We use a Wifiranger combo product called the Elite AC Pack. This is actually two routers combined by an ethernet cable using Power Over Ethernet (POE). One router handles pulling in weak wifi signals using a large, amplified outdoor antenna while the other router broadcasts a separate SSID for use in the RV.

If you’ve ever stayed at a campground, you’ll understand why an outdoor antenna is necessary. Campground tech is typically non existent, with a few wifi repeaters scattered throughout. We’ve been at numerous campgrounds where none of our devices (iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro) can even see the network. But the external antenna has no problem picking it up.

Ok, so now you’re on campground wifi. Great! Not so fast. And I mean that literally. Campground wifi is indeed not so fast. That’s where the second nice feature of a mobile router comes into play: a USB port for tethering your cellular modem. The Wifiranger (and I’m assuming most mobile routers) has the option to distribute load over multiple internet connections, which typically will be campground wifi + cellular modem. No, it’s not breaking up a single request into multiple, simultaneous requests. The benefit is distributing your overall usage across two connections, which I think is a big advantage. In summary, the response time is the same, but the throughput is increased.

Wifiranger setup screen

Now you have fairly fast and fairly reliable internet by using a mobile router. What else can you do? Most mobile routers include ethernet ports, so hook up a NAS (network attached storage) and you have greatly expanded external storage and/or a backup system that is always on, accessible over fast 802.11ac wifi. Since your NAS is plugged into a 110 AC outlet that is run off the inverter (you did plug into an inverted outlet, right?), you have a really big UPS if shore power fails.

I leave the mobile router, cellular modem and NAS on at all times, and they are all run through inverted outlets. This means we’re always connected, even during driving days or dry camping at a rest area. Time Machine backs up as it normally would, even if we’re driving down the interstate at 70 mph. Speaking of driving, I was not thrilled with the idea of a bunch of hard drives spinning while bumping down the road, so I went the SSD route (a side benefit is they use a fraction of the power of traditional hard drives). I run four 2 TB SSDs in a RAID 5 configuration, which yields 6 TB of space and allows for 1 drive to fail without losing data.

To sum up the advantages of a mobile router:

  • Pulls in weak campground wifi signals (manufacturer claims up to 2 miles away)
  • Creates your own wifi network, so all devices connect to the same SSID and you configure only the router for each new campground wifi network
  • Combines wifi + cellular for faster throughput
  • Expands storage using a NAS that all devices can share

Hardware mentioned in this post:

Wifiranger Elite AC Pack
Verizon 8800L LTE Hotspot Modem
Synology DS418 Disk Station 4-Bay Diskless NAS
Crucial 2 TB SSD drives

 

Share This