Question Anyone seen ethernet hookups at RV sites?

[Neal]

Most campgrounds never got Wi-Fi right, some do high speed which is nice, some still think 5 MB/s is sufficient. The campground I'm at now offers great Internet, the problem is I'm at a site that's in an area they didn't do so well with Wi-Fi coverage. I can look left and see antennas, look right and see, and I can typically connect just fine. But it's not ideal. I called the office this morning and just wanted to suggest their IT folks consider adding antennas for the section I'm in and they said they are actually running fiber, they know there are problems with the Wi-Fi. I didn't ask what that entailed as I won't be here to see it, but it raises a thought, when will campgrounds start offering ethernet connections such as at the pedestal for high speed reliable Internet? Yeah, it's an infrastructure spend, that wire has to be run and someone has to know how to set it all up. But I'd love to see it someday.

With that said, I'd need to run a cable to the shore power bay so that I could pull out an ethernet connection and connect. Not until I actually see this become available which I don't have high hopes for.

Just curious, has anyone seen a RV campground with "Internet hookups?"

 

[team bradfield]

I have not seen any

 

[DennisT]

Well, they could run the fiber then include a router at each site. That would be a big expense probably but would work great. Then you just get the password for your assigned router at check in.

Our fiber, included in our new place, is 1.4 G down and 1.3 G up which all works out to over 700 when you go through WiFi and test it.

Didn’t see actual internet run at any stops but I know the place we wintered in FL had Spectrum for cable. Some folks had internet through the cable similar to what your home would. They picked that up themselves though.

These days it would pay the parks to update that side of the infrastructure given how connected everything is anymore.

 

[Kevin D Pem]

To offer such without throttling wouldn't they need to have a T1 connection?

 

[Neal]

Well, they could run the fiber then include a router at each site.

I don't think that's needed. The Wi-Fi system is already backed by a router. They just need weather safe ethernet ports at the pedestal. You plug in and you're assigned your IP just like Wi-Fi (DHCP). In fact they could use fixed IP's and know who is actually doing whatever (larger consumer, etc.).

I think the only thing is laying the ethernet and adding outlets.

 

[redbaron]

A properly designed site with wifi is far cheaper than ethernet to the coach, and satisifies 100% of the customers. Ethernet would confuse 99% of the customers and create more headache than it fixes, even for those techincally able to handle the ethernet.

A site with 50 spaces needs to handle 500 simultaneouns connections and needs to expect that at least 100 of those are consuming an average of 2Mb/s.

When I designed the sites for the last few parks, we brought in the bandwidth that would handle it - 10Gb/s delivered via FIbre, and distributed as 10GBs to each tower that then handed off to the AP's. Each AP was designed for 100 connections, and we had 20 AP's across the campus, with 2.4 and 5Ghz broadcast. Using same SSID, the devices choose their frequency.

What most people don't realize is how much defense goes into an RV park, since every RV has multiple RF devices broadcasting and repeating, and creating a very large signal storm. To combat that every RV space needs to have at least 3 different AP's pointing at it with offset frequencies to ensure its not blocked by another radio.

Still, with that design, the cost for a 50 site campground was approx $100k all in, where going ethernet would be close to 300k, and be a support nightmare.