Not ours but same model.
Not ours but same model. We pick ours up this week.

Our upcoming mobile lifestyle will require us to examine and adjust most aspects of our day-to-day lives. Among these, especially for me, will be no longer have constant high speed Internet access.

Much will change — for several years I’ve used a CrashPlan back-up solution for my photo library and other important data/documents. Those files and folder’s so designated were automatically backed up across the Internet each night — that’s no longer a viable solution.   I’ll use USB drives and a RAID Network Access Storage (NAS) for back-up but the simple fact is there’s very little that’s all that important.  If I lost all that data and files today, I’d shed a tear and move on.

In our new venture we’ll need to become keenly aware of the amount of data we are pushing/pulling to the Internet.

Of course there will be the planned visits to coffee shops and restaurants for focused updates, uploads and downloads.  The bonus is we both love coffee…we just need to steer away from the pastries.

In addition, most of the private RV parks offer some level of WIFI access but this seems to vary in speed and reliability depending upon how close you are to an access point and how many other people are also trying to use it — much the same situation as found in many hotels these days.

There’s also the capability of using our cellular phones as hotspots or Internet access points — our current plan includes a shared 10Gb of data a month.

Even out new truck has the ability to be a hotspot, for a price of course, but the coverage area and data speeds are still unknowns.

Then, for those with unlimited budgets. there’s the almost never be out of touch solution of satellite Internet — a steep price and investment, mostly good for only email and text files.  Not an option for us!

I’m thinking I’ll migrate much of our current household wireless local area network (LAN) to our new 5th Wheel RV.  When set-up, we’ll be able to wirelessly access and share a common printer, scanner  and NAS. In addition the LAN can also be the backbone providing digitized music or video for our enjoyment.

pepwaveIn our new RV home, connection of our private LAN to the Internet, when it’s available, will be handled by a PEPWAVE Surf SOHO 3G/4G broadband router.  This type of wireless router is unique in a number of ways. In addition to the normal wired Internet access it has WiFi as WAN (WAW) capability (can bridge to another WIFI network for Internet access)  and also automatically supports a cellular USB access point device.

These different methods of Internet access can be prioritized with automatic fall-over (i.e. use wired if available, then use WAW if available, and as a last resort use cellular.)  To a user on the wireless LAN all would be transparent except perhaps for a change in Internet access speed and minor interruption as it switched.  An especially important feature of this router is it provides very detailed cellular usage monitoring and reporting.

bm_pepwaveI suspect at some point we’ll amend our current cellular plan with a USB access point (to plug into the router) and up our shared data plan to 20Gb…depends upon the cost of course. We’re Verizon customers and I don’t see that changing unless we could find a cheaper reseller using the Verizon network.  There are cellular carriers with cheaper rates but no one with a better U.S. network coverage area…from my experience.

If anyone’s got suggestions or experience on this topic…please feel free to share.

 

 

 

 

6 Comments

  1. That is a sweet looking 5th wheel. A big one, too.

    • Thanks, Monte. We picked ours up from the dealer this morning and towed it to a temporary storage location. I was a little apprehensive because of its size but it tows easily behind our truck and I was able to back into the storage without much trouble. We’ll bring it over to our house a little later to start packing it.

  2. That is a nice looking mobile home you’ve got there. It looks like it will be very comfortable. As for your mobile internet dilemma, I’d be all for making do without it. Sounds way too complicated and I wouldn’t get enough use out of it to make it worthwhile. Of course the fact that just about every bit of technology in my house has broken or died in the past 8 weeks might have something to do with that point of view ;)

    • I may indeed be solving for a problem that will not exist. I imagine Internet access will become less important to us in this new lifestyle (I hope so) but we will still need basic access to take care of those few financial requirements, to keep in touch and to post here once in a while.

      Yes, our new mobile home is fairly nice and comfortable…but we’re looking at this hopefully for a long term and this was where Bonnie saw that as possible. We picked ours up yesterday and it was a very positive experience.

      You’ve got to quit breaking things. :-)

  3. Verizon, AT&T and Spring have significantly reduced the cost of their data plans. We have 4 devices on AT&T for about $200 a month (including taxes, etc.) with unlimited phone/text and 30 gb data. Therefore, we have access from anywhere anytime (where there is an AT&T network, and lots of national parks are spotty on network access). We do not have satellite for TV and just tune in for channels we can get via air (lots of parks have cable thought). TV we can do without (we have movies we can watch), but we do miss it when we do not have data access…it is well worth the cost for us. You’re right, RV park wifi is often too slow!

    • Hi Kathy, Bonnie’s shared with me some of the great information you’re providing that will no doubt make the transition a little easier for us. Thanks and it’s nice to know you…perhaps we can meet someday! Same as you, I feel our main (most dependable) source of for data connection will be with our cellular plans. We can use our phones as access points for our iPads if need be and by adding a USB Access Point device we can share a connection across our local wireless network in the 5th Wheel when parked.