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 ...
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?
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