When To Use A WIFI Extender at the RV Park
01-29-2018
Author: in Henley's Happy Trails
RV park WIFI is notoriously hit and miss. Some will have great speed and bad coverage to all of the sites. Others will have great coverage, but the speed will not be fast enough to accommodate everyone in the park. A WIFI extender will help you with the former and do little if anything for the latter. Here are a few tips to assist with deciding when an extender is a good idea.
One Router Parks
These parks have one wireless router hooked up to the internet and you can connect as long as you are close enough. This is by far the most limited set up in a park and signal usually starts to get poor once you get about 25 feet from the router which is usually located in or near the office. In short, unless you have a rather powerful extender, if you are a notable distance away from the router, you are out of access and out of luck!
Multiple Repeaters with One SSID
The SSID or service set identifier is the name of the wireless network you connect to such as “RVPARKNAME_WIFI.”. If the RV park you are staying at seems to have excellent signal quality everywhere you go but only one SSID available for the park, they most likely have several repeaters in the park all bouncing the signal off each other.
This setup can work well if the park only needs one or two repeaters to get the signal to all the sites. The issue with this setup is that traffic jams can easily be created when many people are trying to use the net at once. Though the signal strength can be great, the quality and speed will suffer. In short, too many cars trying to enter the freeway causes slow traffic.
Using an extender in this case will most likely not offer much help. If you notice the WIFI signal is excellent but the service is awful, there isn’t much you’re going to gain by boosting an already good signal. The good news is the culprit is most likely the traffic on that type of network. Trying to use the WIFI early in the morning or very late at night may prove faster than peak hours.
This setup can work well if the park only needs one or two repeaters to get the signal to all the sites. The issue with this setup is that traffic jams can easily be created when many people are trying to use the net at once. Though the signal strength can be great, the quality and speed will suffer. In short, too many cars trying to enter the freeway causes slow traffic.
Using an extender in this case will most likely not offer much help. If you notice the WIFI signal is excellent but the service is awful, there isn’t much you’re going to gain by boosting an already good signal. The good news is the culprit is most likely the traffic on that type of network. Trying to use the WIFI early in the morning or very late at night may prove faster than peak hours.
Multiple Routers
The third prevalent type of setup uses repeaters that act as their own routers with their own SSIDs. This setup is easily spotted when a park has multiple SSIDs such as “RVPARKNAME_1”, “RVPARKNAME_2” and so on. This setup can suffer from the same issues as the second type mentioned. However, with each repeater acting as its own router, there can be slightly more traffic control which can translate to a better WIFI experience.
Many times parks that use this setup may have only a few extenders and you could be at the edge of the signal. If you notice you don’t have all of the WIFI bars, you may try setting up your extender to see if your quality improves.
Many times parks that use this setup may have only a few extenders and you could be at the edge of the signal. If you notice you don’t have all of the WIFI bars, you may try setting up your extender to see if your quality improves.
Conclusion
If you have excellent WIFI signal and the speed is just awful, your extender probably isn’t going to help much. If you have low signal, but decent speed when you are close enough to the source of the WIFI, an extender will probably work very well at that particular RV Park. It never hurts to try your extender if you're not getting good WIFI. Keep in mind it will usually only assist with signal strength, not necessarily quality.
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Comment
Wifiext-setupApril 1, 2021 | 10:02 AM
nice information
Author: Levi and Natalie Henley
