Marina Wi-Fi signal strength.

[Gixer]

My marina has put in Wi-Fi which is great but when I go below the signal drops massively. I guess this is due to the thick GRP above my head.
Some of you must have come up against this before, do you know if a Wi-Fi aerial or something that can boost the signal?
I don't know much about this but hope you can help.

 

[Plum]

My marina has put in Wi-Fi which is great but when I go below the signal drops massively. I guess this is due to the thick GRP above my head.
Some of you must have come up against this before, do you know if a Wi-Fi aerial or something that can boost the signal?
I don't know much about this but hope you can help.

Suggest you tell the marina to tell whoever just installed the WiFi to do a better job before they pay them.

Www.solocoastalsailing.co.uk

 

[Lightwave395]

Suggest you tell the marina to tell whoever just installed the WiFi to do a better job before they pay them.

Www.solocoastalsailing.co.uk

I spent 3 years as GM of a company that installed wifi into marinas (plus many other locations) back around 2010

The problem was usually the marina who wanted to advertise they had the service but wouldn't spend any money on a decent installation with plenty of bandwidth.

My help desk / support guys spent most of the weekends handling calls from irate boaters, you can possibly imagine lots of them down for the weekend with teens and such glued to their screens trying to stream something or other simultaneously when the marina ( I can think of several) had very little bandwidth in some cases.
At least MDL coughed up for leased lines while some marinas were relatively remote and couldn't get any more than 2MB.

It should certainly not be a problem these days though

 

[KompetentKrew]

In the past I used a GL-iNet travel router, which connects to a wifi network and shares it with your devices. It has its own wifi network that you connect your phone / laptop etc to, so it works as a "repeater" - you can stick it under the sprayhood to extend the range a little bit. It was one of the cheaper models, maybe £30 in late 2019, but it seemed sometimes less reliable than connecting to the wifi directly.

I think the most common wifi problem in marinas is that there's just so much congestion and interference. In one marina I would get great service at 4am, with fast steady downloads, and then during the day the connection to just kept dropping constantly and you'd see the little "searching for networks" animation again. At certain times of day this was happening several times in 10 minutes - it was very frustrating.

I think I've reached the conclusion that the solution is just always to share the internet connection from my phone (and buy an unlimited SIM) but maybe a GL-iNet will work for you.

 

[38mess]

In our Marina all the wi fi let's us do is open emails and browse social media. It won't allow us to download anything. In fact when I am on the boat I turn off the WiFi and use my 5g phone with unlimited data which is the way things are going I believe

 

[Refueler]

A lot of people think that WiFi just fans out regardless ... generally yes - but I noted a strange effect .... If I stand on deck of my boat - I get good connection ... about 3.5 on a scale of 5. But if I drop down to cabin level - which puts me below ground level of my house ... my Router in the ground floor party room - connection falls off seriously .. sometimes lost.

I moved my Router to second floor of house and connection improved.

I spoke to pal of mine who has business looking after systems for Polyclinic and various factories ... we could not find a reason for it unless something in the ground ..

I mention it because usually in a Marina - you are very low in relation to most around the yard etc.

 

[finestgreen]

A lot of people think that WiFi just fans out regardless ... generally yes - but I noted a strange effect .... If I stand on deck of my boat - I get good connection ... about 3.5 on a scale of 5. But if I drop down to cabin level - which puts me below ground level of my house ... my Router in the ground floor party room - connection falls off seriously .. sometimes lost.

I moved my Router to second floor of house and connection improved.

I spoke to pal of mine who has business looking after systems for Polyclinic and various factories ... we could not find a reason for it unless something in the ground ..

I mention it because usually in a Marina - you are very low in relation to most around the yard etc.

Yes, the radiation is never going to be perfectly even and it'd be surprising if they didn't optimise for "up and out". Eg this is the pattern of one specific model;

https://help.ui.com/hc/article_atta...UAP-AC-Lite-Overall_-_Summary_Plotupdated.png

 

[Martin_J]

If it is a laptop that you're using, it's worth checking the WiFi drivers are fully up to date before doing anything else.

 

[Mambo42]

In all the marina's I have been I never had good internet, so in the end I gave up, bought Starlink and never looked back. 350 download and 100 upload is something I will never have anywhere else. And best part of it is that it works almost everywhere. As a back up I use mobile data cards of the countries I am in. But in order to have a decent speed you need to be in good LOS with a transmitter and that can be tricky.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

It's about contention ratios. The marina won't have that much more bandwidth than a small business or a good household connection. It's being shared amongst potentially hundreds of users, each of whom uses some part of that bandwidth. So if there are lots of people in the marina - for example, at the weekend - the bandwidth available per user is less than during the week when there are relatively few.

GRP on its own shouldn't block the signal; even the weak signal from GPS gets through, and that's orders of magnitude weaker.

 

[Northern Star]

I gave up on the marina wifi several years ago and now have a Three mobile 4G router on board that costs me £17 a month for unlimited data. It also works on 12v so at least we can have wifi when we are cruising too.

 

[Refueler]

It's about contention ratios. The marina won't have that much more bandwidth than a small business or a good household connection. It's being shared amongst potentially hundreds of users, each of whom uses some part of that bandwidth. So if there are lots of people in the marina - for example, at the weekend - the bandwidth available per user is less than during the week when there are relatively few.

GRP on its own shouldn't block the signal; even the weak signal from GPS gets through, and that's orders of magnitude weaker.

Just look at internet speeds once Home Work kicked in .... and all those remote conferences hogging bandwidth.

Edgar - manager of the ISP I use for my work ... talking to him about speeds a few months back. I have 'unlimited' - but he said that because of the extra demand on the system with Covid Home working etc. - all ISP's were having to 'throttle' their services to enable maximum number of people to access.

 

[Refueler]

My WiFi plexor can pick up external WiFi and then relay it .... I noticed that my own home WiFi was stronger through it when down on the boat.

 

[KompetentKrew]

It's about contention ratios. The marina won't have that much more bandwidth than a small business or a good household connection. It's being shared amongst potentially hundreds of users, each of whom uses some part of that bandwidth. So if there are lots of people in the marina - for example, at the weekend - the bandwidth available per user is less than during the week when there are relatively few.

It's not just about the backbone bandwidth divided by the number of users though, because in my experience the connection to the wifi access point often gets less reliable during busy times of day, dropping and reconnecting. I've observed this at multiple marinas.

While you're connecting to the marina wifi, someone else further down the pontoon is using their phone's hotspot on the same wifi frequency. "That's ridiculous!" one might say, "Why would the phone choose the same frequency as the marina wifi, wouldn't it choose another channel?" Yes, but there are several other people on the same and neighbouring pontoons all using their own hotspots. I've never checked to see whether all the marina's access points are on the same frequency or different ones - either way they're going to create congestion.

 

[Refueler]

It's not just about the backbone bandwidth divided by the number of users though, because in my experience the connection to the wifi access point often gets less reliable during busy times of day, dropping and reconnecting. I've observed this at multiple marinas.

While you're connecting to the marina wifi, someone else further down the pontoon is using their phone's hotspot on the same wifi frequency. "That's ridiculous!" one might say, "Why would the phone choose the same frequency as the marina wifi, wouldn't it choose another channel?" Yes, but there are several other people on the same and neighbouring pontoons all using their own hotspots. I've never checked to see whether all the marina's access points are on the same frequency or different ones - either way they're going to create congestion.

Actually they should not create interference to each other as the system freq hops the slots available .. the nuimber of slots available is in the hundreds ...

You can thank Hedy Lamarr - actress >:
Although she died in 2000, Lamarr was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for the development of her frequency hopping technology in 2014. Such achievement has led Lamarr to be dubbed “the mother of Wi-Fi” and other wireless communications like GPS and Bluetooth.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

It's not just about the backbone bandwidth divided by the number of users though, because in my experience the connection to the wifi access point often gets less reliable during busy times of day, dropping and reconnecting. I've observed this at multiple marinas.

While you're connecting to the marina wifi, someone else further down the pontoon is using their phone's hotspot on the same wifi frequency. "That's ridiculous!" one might say, "Why would the phone choose the same frequency as the marina wifi, wouldn't it choose another channel?" Yes, but there are several other people on the same and neighbouring pontoons all using their own hotspots. I've never checked to see whether all the marina's access points are on the same frequency or different ones - either way they're going to create congestion.

Yes - I didn't want to get into channel allocation and so on!

 

[Gixer]

Thanks for the responses guys, sounds like I’m expecting too much from a free network. I’ve spotted the antennas and the both seem to be pointed the same way, away from my boat. Are Wi-Fi antennas directional?
i want to work from the boat when things warm up, maybe I should up my data on my EE mobile.

 

[Refueler]

Thanks for the responses guys, sounds like I’m expecting too much from a free network. I’ve spotted the antennas and the both seem to be pointed the same way, away from my boat. Are Wi-Fi antennas directional?
i want to work from the boat when things warm up, maybe I should up my data on my EE mobile.

All antenna have directional properties - even telescopic rod antenna.

If the tip of a antenna rod is pointed at you - that is its weakest for you. If its at 90 deg to you - thats strongest. Then we get horizontal / vertical planes ....

Its why a good router has 2 or more antenna that you can make each one a different angle from the router box - to try maximise the signal in as much direction as possible.

Given that most Mobile Networks now offer unlimited data for small money .... its not such a bad solution. Of course roaming is still an issue if outside of the listed coverage.

You can install a booster on board ... but that will need connecting to each marina WiFi that you visit to be effective ... some are easy - some are a pain !!

 

[Alex_Blackwood]

Thanks for the responses guys, sounds like I’m expecting too much from a free network. I’ve spotted the antennas and the both seem to be pointed the same way, away from my boat. Are Wi-Fi antennas directional?
i want to work from the boat when things warm up, maybe I should up my data on my EE mobile.

+1 for all the answers regarding bandwidth signal distribution etc. Not to mention all the possible weird and wonderful effects from masts and rigging causing reflections, attenuation, wooding, distortion etc. etc. Marinas notably difficult. Having said that how many good "Free Wi-Fi" spots such as hospitals etc are really much good.