Onboard communications - an idiots guide to mobile internet

giolconda

giolconda

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Is such a thing available?

Whilst I can sort out a lot of problems at home/work concerning the computer/wifi, I have not had any dealings at all with mobile internet.
As it will be our main source of communicating with those back home, I wondered if anyone knew of any publications that explain things in layman's terms.

To be honest I'm completely baffled by it all, and even posts on here seem to be written in a different language. I appear to have a mental block as soon as data packets and 3g dongles are mentioned!

If anyone can recommend a website or publication, I would be very grateful.

We're taking 2 laptops, one running vista (probably the one to be used for communicating), one xp (to be linked to the chartplotter), and one of those asus thingies that'll fit in a bag when we go walkabout.

Any suggestions?

/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif
 
There are many more knowledgeable people than us here but maybe therefore this idiot can be a little help. We use a pc and an apple for wandering around, but at the moment have separate techniques for the two of them.

For the PC we rely on wifi. That might be a friends house/boat, it might be free or we might pay as we go. Your laptop should be equipped for this, but you might want to add an additional antenna to improve signal strength. This means that when you turn it on it should find the various networks, and you can either use an unsecured one (only legal with the owners permission) or pay to someone like BT Openzone or Orange. You do not need any additional equipment if you are close enough to the wifi base. An antenna then plugs in - usually to a USB port, and runs a little thingybob to a higher point. You can buy these in all sorts of shops. If you want to further boost it, then you can push it through the base of a 'parabolic booster' such that the incoming waves focus on it's receiving end. We have made a hole in a small steel colander and found that actually works well (despite being small and holey); other people use a wok. This will enable you to pick up more signals and better strength.

Alternatively, you can buy a dongle. This is what we use for the apple, as for business reasons we must be able to use that peripatetically and reliably. OUr decision on which to go with comes down to four things: does it work with a Mac, can it be used in different countries and what's the coverage and how much? For us, at the moment, that means we use a Vodafone 3g dongle. That's a reasonably good bandwidth (but not as good as broadband) at a price we can tolerate. We can send lots of documents, pix etc, but don't try downloading music or films this way.

We annually or more review price and availability for our plans.

All the main manufacturers/suppliers now do these dongles - it's essentially like a USB stick but slightly bigger - you plug it in and follow the instructions, and sometimes ring them up and scream at them but basically it works. Of course they all work with windows if you wish to go that way, so for you it will be customer service, coverage and price.

Incidentally you can also buy wifi finders, which are great things as it saves you lugging the laptop till you've found the wifi. Jiwire.com is also a good source of wifi info but invariably behind. We have also used a wifi finder to get our anchor down in the best place for coverage of a land-based wifi, which was very useful when working on the hook!

I hope this is fairly straightforward. If you want a dongle as well as the wifi hunt, then it is worth investigating the offers, and deciding whether you will be in one country long enough for an annual contract or the higher PAYG rates, or coming back to the UK enough to justify a UK contract with roaming in whichever country. The market obviously changes frequently so at any given time and place the best advice will be from the nearest user or website.

HTH
 
I see you are located in the south of France. How do you find the data charges using a Vodafone dongle on the French networks? - I'm assuming your Vfone account is in the UK
 
We are based in France and keep it very simple.

We use a WiFi enabled laptop that we can access 'free' WiFi in lots of cafes/bars (for the price of a drink) or a couple of Euros for an unlimited access.

In many marinas & other WiFi hotspots, Orange France do a deal that you can have up to a set number of hours per month for a fixed fee. Last year that was 15 Euros for 20 hours. We found that more than adequate as long as you were composing emails etc off-line.

Also, many marinas had an open access computer which anyone could use or had a cable you could plug your own laptop into. So, we were never out of touch and spent no more than 15 Euros a month.

Hope this helps
 
For mobile broadband, (i.e. sim card 3G/GPRS with a dongle or just a mobile phone), this forum seems to know everything sooner than anywhere else:

http://www.prepaidgsm.net/forum/europe/

they have other forums, (fora??), for other parts of the world.

France seems to be notoriously slow in providing PAYG data services but he following suggests a small improvement: it is a short thread on what seems to be the latest thing in PAYG mobile broadband in France:

http://www.prepaidgsm.net/forum/europe/4759-report-using-orange-mobicarte-france.html

Hope that helps.

Italy is the best with WIND and TIM, Spain is quite good with YOIGO, Greece is bad /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
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Is such a thing available?

[/ QUOTE ]

I wrote a general overview on this stuff here... http://www.bluemapia.com/blog/?p=139

If you have any particular questions once you start to learn more about how it all works, feel free to ask... I went to all sorts of trouble trying to stay connected! /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

nick
 
Thanks for that - I'll be doing some research into a booster now.
I know this will probably seem a really dumb question, but how do I know how much data I'm downloading/uploading? /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

Hopefully this will give me an idea of which payg 3g card to buy.

We'll be cruising down the coast of Croatia and Greece, then overwintering in Turkey this year, so I think payg will probably be the cheaper option?

Also, is it possible to block large emails, you know the sort that friends insist on passing on, that are 2 or 3 meg. I obviously don't want to block my friends messages but getting them to understand not to send .wmv etc may prove difficult!
 
Hi Nick,

From your blog:

"France is one of the European countries offering affordable pre-paid options and network coverage."

Which provider and which deal did you use in France - I havent been able to find anything of significance, other than Orange 500Mb per month for 9 euros.
 
[ QUOTE ]
Italy is the best with WIND and TIM,

[/ QUOTE ]
I dont know about Italy, but in Greece TIM has gone, taken over by WIND, most peeps in Greece use Vodaphone to connect via laptop, or a cheapskate like me uses free Wifi.
 
Can't think of any simple all-in-one website or book covering a subject of this breadth, complexity and speed-of-change.

There are 3 main methods of connecting to the internet.

1. Wi-Fi or WLAN where a radio router acts as the connection between a PC and ADSL (broadband). Most French marinas offer this, at a price, the farther S and E you go the more unlikely this becomes. Best is to find a bar offering this free or for a small fee, McDonalds all have free wi-fi (if awful food) and most internet cafés offer fee-based connection. Many use WEP or WAP encryption to prevent unauthorised users. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi for a fuller explanation.

2. Thin ethernet or LAN, more commonly available (being older technology) where the link to ADSL is provided by a wire jacked into the oversize telephone socket at the back of the laptop
More secure and usually faster than Wi-Fi, it has the disadvantage that you usually have to specify the DNS and subnet mask of the server you wish to use. This is usually found in internet cafés.

3. General Packet Radio Service over the cellular network (GPRS is a a mature technology widely used in radio and telecoms) various speeds available from the basic 2.5G over nearly all cells, through 2.5G (EDGE) to the limited area coverage 3G (HDSPA). The first is slightly faster in practice than analogue modems whilst the last compared favourably with most ADSL connections.
See http://www.mobile-phones-uk.org.uk/gprs.htm

I use all three where appropriate, but prefer to use a mobile phone as the modem for GPRS, rather than a USB dongle.
I always use local PAYG SIM cards, data download is generally cheaper and can be done without a contract, unlike the UK. I would advise against purchasing a general go-anywhere SIM in UK as prices and conditions here are excessive.

There is a lot of discussion about wi-fi boosters. These are, no doubt, of value in specific positions, where the receiver is a fixed location from an attenuated signal, about 100-150m away. Most places I anchor have no wi-fi within 1-20km, so I see them as only worthwhile for liveaboards overwintering in a marina berth where the marina has wi-fi. Unfortunately too many people on the same WLAN inevitably results in too little bandwidth for anyone.

Operating systems make little difference, even Linux will drive most in-PC transceivers now.
Vista is IMHO the least desirable as it is too opaque, so setting the gates on an Ethernet LAN becomes a struggle.

For GPRS reception, in the last 3 years (since it's become economic and widespread) I've used Bouygues in France, T-Mobile in Croatia and TIM in Italy. I've tried Orange and Vodafone and would advise against using them for reasons of cost and customer unfriendliness.

Using GPRS demands a modicum of self-discipline, minimal surfing, e-mails written off-line (Firefox is better than IE6-8 in this respect) and data upload mimimised. It is far more convenient than wi-fi, if slower, and usually cheaper (free wi-fi is uncommon, even when paying marina fees).
 
Just spent a lot of time in France trying to sort out Prepay sim card or dongle for 3g HSDA internet with absolutely no luck at all.

Orange Fr did one but I can't top it up now. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

The contract schemes are pretty good but you do need French address and bank account.
 
'Quote Also, is it possible to block large emails,'
I use Eudora as my email software package, have done since 1997. with that you can set how much of a message is downloaded and then it gives you the choice of logging on just to download the rest of the message. As I use my PDA and now my TynTin II mobil phone it's a great way to check emails on the move.
 
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Italy is the best with WIND and TIM,

[/ QUOTE ]
I dont know about Italy, but in Greece TIM has gone, taken over by WIND, most peeps in Greece use Vodaphone to connect via laptop, or a cheapskate like me uses free Wifi.

[/ QUOTE ]

Do they use Vodafone on a contract, or PAYG? AFAIK, Greece no longer has a workable PAYG data option. There seems to be one that allows 40Mb per month, but I'm not sure you could call that workable in this day and age.

Do you find free wifi wherever you go, or do you go where the free wi fi is?
 
[ QUOTE ]
I always use local PAYG SIM cards, data download is generally cheaper and can be done without a contract, unlike the UK. I would advise against purchasing a general go-anywhere SIM in UK as prices and conditions here are excessive.

[/ QUOTE ]

T-Mobile PAYG max charge £1 per day, fair usage policy 40Mb.... equates to 1GB per month. (I used this for a couple of years quite satisfactorily), and was never told to limit my downloads.

3 offer 12Gb for about £100 including the dongle on PAYG, and they have better deals without the dongle.

Orange offer Orange World £1 for "unlimited browsing" - not sure what the fair usage limit is, and it's only GPRS.

So we're reasonably well served in the UK for a small amount of PAYG surfing.
 
As far as how much data you are downloading, the Vodaphone dongle (and I imagine the other ones too?) have a menu you can access anytime showing you how long you've been online and how many "bits" you've used. The one I have in a pay monthly and so the "timer" and "usage" graphic resets on 1st of every month.

HTH
 
I agree. I checked this out in France last week. French PAYG data and phone charges are outrageous --- 30 times the price of Spain or Italy!
 
[ QUOTE ]
Do you find free wifi wherever you go, or do you go where the free wi fi is?


[/ QUOTE ]
Richard, I live not far from Agia Efimia (Kefalonia) there is free Wifi in the harbour 11Mps, I can pick this up from 3 kilometers away, I have a 16db directional antenna, 4 metres of usb cable and a Wireless usb adapter. It works very well for me, I was paying a fortune for a dial up connection from OTE net, at 16kbps it was difficult!
As far as I know the Vodaphone mobile connection is on contract not PAYG.
 
I know several people who have taken out Greek Vodafone contracts. Advice last year was that if you try to set it up in Levkas it will cost a lot and they are pretty picky about having a Greek address, etc. In Preveza it cost 11 Euros for the dongle, the contract cost 15 Euros per month and 'Preveza Marine' was sufficient address.

I believe, but not absolutely certain, that the contract is for 1 Gb per month with not too excessive charges for use above this figure.

So far as the original question is concerned we have only a standard laptop with built in wifi. We use this when something is available, increasingly so in cafes and even ports in Greece. In many towns we use internet cafes, quite popular in most towns. Otherwise, for Outlook and grib files we use GPRS on my UK Vodafone contract. Not cheap but I can be quite disciplined. Never surf with it and if you have to use Internet turn the graphics off first.
 
obviously

your ideas of reasonable charges are dissimilar to mine.

TIM, just before I left, on EDGE gave me 40hrs/month of data for €20 + 1000' airtime for €4 in Italy.

About 10% of the best UK suppliers (3 are the most economic).

Last year, T-Mobile were giving me 15Mb for the equivalent of £0.15 in Croatia.
 
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