Hotspotzz Has Become Luke Warm
We tend to stay at KOA campgrounds for a couple of reasons.
First, there is the typical consistency of quality one gets from a brand name. In order to keep the KOA name, these campgrounds need to have a certain level of quality and they have yet to fail us by this measure.
The second reason we stay at KOA is for the Wi-Fi. KOA has unwired nearly 100 of their campgrounds throughout the country via a service called Hotspotzz. Which means no matter where we travel, we can usually find a KOA with Wi-Fi.
But we’ve hit two KOA’s in a row now where the Hotspotzz isn’t so hot. At both the Nashville, TN, and Fredericksburg, VA, KOA’s the signal quality has been bad. The staffs at both campgrounds have made the same comment to us – “It works good in the [main] building, but it doesn’t work very well out in the campground.”
I’m speculating that the reason for the poor quality signal out in the campground itself is that they installed only one access point – the antenna with which your computer’s wireless card communicates – and probably put that one access point on top of the main building. The problem with that is campgrounds have things called trees, which have things called leaves. Also, campgrounds are hilly and have irregular terrain. All these things tend to diminish Wi-Fi signals.
To combat this, we’ve started asking for campsites close to the office, which is generally where the access point is. The closer you are, the more likely you will get a good signal.
Also, I bought a Wireless Ethernet Bridge. A bridge is a device that connects two networks together. But for this purpose, it is better to think of the Wireless Ethernet Bridge as just a big ass antenna with an ethernet port on it.
I can position this antenna outside and on top of the RV to get a better signal. I then run an ethernet cable into the RV and into a device called a hub. The hub basically splits that one Ethernet line into multiple ethernet lines. Once you’ve done that, you can connect multiple computers up to the same antenna and actually “share” the wireless connection.
So this setup has two benefits – it helps strengthen a week Wi-Fi signal and lets more than one computer share a single account.