7 antennas off - 2 on - here is what I did

[RKins]

It's a bad idea to broadcast your wifi outside the rv. Its even worse doing it when you intend to use it inside.

Exterior wifi antenna should be for accessing campground wifi.

By broadcasting on the outside you are adding rf noise to the campground and hurting your own usable signal.

I use a pair of deco m9s inside the rv, set to very low output.

The pepwave wifi is for Wan use only on my setup.

Really? How do you propose not broadcasting your wifi through the walls of your coach. 2.4 and 5ghz are designed to go through walls. I can see 8 of my neighbor's routers on a scan right now.

 

[redbaron]

Really? How do you propose not broadcasting your wifi through the walls of your coach. 2.4 and 5ghz are designed to go through walls. I can see 8 of my neighbor's routers on a scan right now.

You can't stop it, but you can limit it and be smart about it.

2.4ghz has only 3 channels. Parks are mostly broadcasting on 2.4ghz using a 120degree beam so that their channels don't overlap. This wonderful design is thrown out with the king routers and winegard routers that are rooftop configured to broadcast at max signal

The rv parks already had a bad name for wifi. The industry has ensured the bad name stays by adding so much rf pollution.

Going to 5ghz gives a lot more options, but is still limited.

None of this can be stopped, but we what you can do to make sure you have the best possible signal is turn your output to lowest power and disabling 2.4 if possible. I could not disable 2.4 due to the nest smoke detectors and the tank automation.

By running your 2.4 and 5g on low power settings, your devices will connect while in your rv and around. It won't work when you walk around the park, but I would say that's a good thing.

RF pollution is a big deal and getting worse. By educating others we can stretch the useful life of 5g until the 6g catches on...then who cares.

 

[RKins]

MIMO makes it even worse as they are designed to scatter and collect bounced/reflected signals off everything. 5Ghz distances help but MIMO will still collect through their multiple antennas.
I would venture to say most people haven't even changed the default password on their router, let alone gotten into the config pages to tweek anything in them. They plugs it in, it works, they are happy.

 

[redbaron]

most campgrounds take an offense approach to wifi, which usually results in no usable wifi for any guests. I wish it was required to be an amateur radio license holder at minimum to setup WiFi networks in any commercial setting. At least the basic knowledge how radio frequency works, and what RF reflection is would cut down on most of the problems.

I have seen campgrounds with omni 360's broadcasting on channel 4, which as you know, knocks out 2 usable channels.

The only channels that should ever be used are 1,6,11 and you should never allow the distance of the signal to overlap on the same channel.

This means if your campground is broadcasting on 1, then you should change yours to channel 6 for the rebroadcast.

 

[Neal]

Cellular is working well with antennas mounted on the AC shrouds.

 

[Neal]

Then of course this morning I wake up to Verizon showing 0.15 Mb/s. Back to AT&T which is more stable bandwidth. Hate cellular!

 

[Neal]

Very happy about Parsec Husky cellular, very unhappy with its WiFi. It may very well be the AC shrouds are a problem for WiFi, I don't know. Regardless, I just ordered 2 x Puma 201's (WiFi only) which will go back to what I had before for roof WiFi antennas leaving the Parsec's for cellular.

Pepwave Mobility 02 2 x WiFi Dome Antenna (Puma 020/ANT-MB-02)

The Peplink Mobility 02 (AKA Puma 020) is a dual-band (2.4GHz & 5GHz) Wi-Fi antenna built for mobile applications. The Mobility 02 supports 2x2 MIMO and has a solid housing made of UV stable plastic materials. Two color options are available (black and white) to fit different deployments. For...

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[Neal]

I was thinking today about the poor Wi-Fi from the Parsec Husky, at least in my setup... my hunch is that Parsec built in a ground plane in this massive antenna and as such the downward connectivity is limited. Pepwave's antennas are small and obviously don't have this large platform that I suspect is a ground plane which is why I had better downward coverage for Wi-Fi.

My Pepwave Wi-Fi antennas have arrived and will go up at some point in the coming months as the coach is in storage for several months now. Antenna towers/mounts are 3D printing as I type this.

 

[Neal]

Today was the day, ya know, camping, to put the Pepwave antennas on the roof again as I got two new WiFi pepwave antennas (formerly known as 201's). As I had an available path over the driver's AV box I dropped the lines through and connected to perform a test. Welp, the test didn't go well. I'm not sure what I had so right the first time that is not happening now but long story short, I quickly removed the antenna and sealed the path back up. However not all is lost. Instead of dealing with rabbit ears flopping around I connected the pepwave antennas to the pepwaves (both of them) and will use these as indoor antennas. They are working well and now my OCD'ness won't have to deal with rabbit ears not sitting perfectly.

Saga closed, no more antennas on the roof. Very pleased with Parsec cellular performance so my conclusion is, put your cellular on the roof, your wifi inside, and be done with it.

 

[Neal]

I think my conclusion is going to be going back to rabbit ears. They seem to be the best for WiFi.