Maximizing Your Campground WiFi

So when I traveled all over the country, I hit a lot of campgrounds and WiFi was just kind of starting to come out as the, as the new thing. That's how long ago that was. It was before your time, I'm pretty sure. But I, I brought Lewis Callaway in. He's the owner of Callaway Technologies, to give you an overview of the campground system, how the WiFi comes to it, some of the old technology and what has changed over the year. So Lewis, tell us a little bit, how do they get the WiFi system there? Thanks Dave. So originally, the WiFi at a Campground was generally you'd have maybe the visitor center or the campground host would have some kind of consumer router, like you'd buy from a big box store connected to just a basic internet package. And it was more than enough when you wanted to go check your email in the morning and then disconnect for the day. Well, and sometimes you have to even go to the visitor center to do that. You couldn't get it. Okay? But in today's world, when people are watching Netflix, and streaming Hulu, and we're Zoom calling with their family, the one access point with a limited amount of speed is, you know, not quite what we need. So in that case, RV parks are not only upping their speed through their internet provider, but they're also employing a campground wide WiFi system. So how this is going to kind of work is you're going to have a centralized router and your internet comes into there from the ISP. Similar to this, or a little more industrial probably. Yeah, fancier version of that. Exactly. And then from there, it's going to be distributed off to other access points throughout the campground. So that can be done through a variety of ways. One of them is one of these, this is a directional WiFi antenna. This can go actually miles with line of sight but this will send internet to another access point where then we have another, like device that can send the WiFi signal for individual consumers' devices. Okay. Other times we can feed it through fiber, or through old phone lines or copper coax lines. Okay. So what are the different downloads and uploads? What does that mean, you know, for, for gaming, for, you know, I mean, just to check your internet some packages are the basic package they would get would be here, but yet you can up. So what is that? Yeah, so, I mean, it depends everything. A lot of things will work on a lower speed. It's just going to be like at a lesser quality. So originally, campgrounds had just this basic router and you know, usually the speeds weren't great. They were what maybe a regular home had for internet or maybe a little cheaper because they might have to be on a business plan. But that was more than enough when you were just checking your email. But now that people are wanting to do Netflix and Zoom calls with family, you need a little bit more bandwidth. So people are having to not only call their ISP and ask for more speed, but they also are having to upgrade the WiFi system throughout the campground. So a company like mine, will go throughout the campground and ensure that the same speed is consistent throughout the campground and that every spot can receive the same WiFi signal, not just the visitor center. Okay, so if you're looking for a campground that has WiFi accessibility and you're going to be gaming, you're going to be zooming, you want a little more speed for that, what would you look on their website for? What's the keywords that you would want to find? I would say when it says like, "WiFi access point available", that generally means, you know, they've got one spot that has wifi. But when it's, you know, park wide WiFi, that usually means that they have this kind of system throughout the park. Okay. Another good place is just to check the traveler reviews. Cause people will say, "Oh, I had 28 megabits per second at my camp spot." or, "Oh, the WiFi was slow. It was terrible." And people, the reviews are the best way to tell. Like TripAdvisor- Exactly. And some of those and see some of the forums that are out there. There's a lot of RV forums that have been created too. So a lot of good information out there. If you're traveling, you're going into a campground, and you need some WiFi speed, download capabilities, make sure you check out those reviews. And that's the history of WiFi at the Campground. Thanks Lewis. Thanks.