Can I work on the road?
Traveling to campgrounds and visiting family in rural Michigan has proven that there are challenges that must be overcome if I am to visit without burning vacation days. I work remotely so I need a solid internet connection to do my job.
Campgrounds usually have some sort of WiFi, but it is unreliable and often times when it does work good it's not long before all the bandwidth is sucked up by people streaming cartoons for their kids or downloading the entire catalog of "The Simpsons" or that's at least how I imagine it when I try to check my email.
Campgrounds are also located in rural, quiet, remote areas where cell phone service is also often problematic. The old camper was located at one such campground. My cell would work well sometimes and there would be no signal at others. I recall working from the trailer one time and my connection went up and down more often than a toddler at bedtime.
We often stay at my Mother-in-law's house in Michigan when we visit and it is much the same. She has no internet hence no WiFi, and the cell connection is just unreliable enough that I can't be guaranteed to have it work all of the time.
We desperately want to be on the road more often, and that has led me to do a ton of internet research into possible solutions to these issues. I decided that I will invest some money into a few of these and report back here with the results so that maybe some poor soul that has stumbled upon this lonely corner of the internet might be saved some of the confusion and headache that I've been through.
It is important to understand the method that I am using to attack this problem. I've decided to explicitly separate WiFi and Cellular connections. Since WiFi is unreliable or unavailable in most of the places we go, our main focus will be to improve our ability to get cellular coverage first and enhance our WiFi connection abilities as a backup in those cases where none is available.
Stay tuned for more details soon. The dry run for our first attempt this season is fast approaching!
Campgrounds usually have some sort of WiFi, but it is unreliable and often times when it does work good it's not long before all the bandwidth is sucked up by people streaming cartoons for their kids or downloading the entire catalog of "The Simpsons" or that's at least how I imagine it when I try to check my email.
Campgrounds are also located in rural, quiet, remote areas where cell phone service is also often problematic. The old camper was located at one such campground. My cell would work well sometimes and there would be no signal at others. I recall working from the trailer one time and my connection went up and down more often than a toddler at bedtime.
We often stay at my Mother-in-law's house in Michigan when we visit and it is much the same. She has no internet hence no WiFi, and the cell connection is just unreliable enough that I can't be guaranteed to have it work all of the time.
We desperately want to be on the road more often, and that has led me to do a ton of internet research into possible solutions to these issues. I decided that I will invest some money into a few of these and report back here with the results so that maybe some poor soul that has stumbled upon this lonely corner of the internet might be saved some of the confusion and headache that I've been through.
It is important to understand the method that I am using to attack this problem. I've decided to explicitly separate WiFi and Cellular connections. Since WiFi is unreliable or unavailable in most of the places we go, our main focus will be to improve our ability to get cellular coverage first and enhance our WiFi connection abilities as a backup in those cases where none is available.
Stay tuned for more details soon. The dry run for our first attempt this season is fast approaching!
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