Which WiFi/4G Router?

[jrudge]

Tried to PM you the answer but your box is full!


Jeremy

OK understood. The situation I was experiencing often in CF was that the mobile signal would often start on 3G and the degrade to 2G after a while. I could force my phone to pick up 3G again by rebooting it but obviously this is far from ideal. How can you find out if your signal is being throttled?


Me too. Both the Huawei and EE routers were rubbish to be honest



We did manage to watch some live TV on the boat in CF via the Slingbox, in particular the England v Fiji World Cup rugby match, by tethering my laptop to my phone and connecting the laptop to the TV. The picture wasn't great and the connection dropped out occasionally but I'm convinced that with a more stable internet connection, that set up could work well. I have a Vodafone UK SIM card with a monthly data allowance and I know I haven't exceeded that allowance so I guess if you are selective about the programs you watch, the data usage is manageable. Of course if the marina wifi is good enough thats the way to go


Well thats true of the whole f*****g computer industry. I've just bought myself a new Macbook Air and you would think nothing could be simpler than transferring files and settings from one Macbook Air to another but it took me 3 days to do it. Nothing is plug 'n play in the computer world



How and when do you record all that content on to the drive?

 

[Deleted User YDKXO]

Tried to PM you the answer but your box is full!

Sorry J, its cleared now

 

[grumpy_o_g]

That photo sync is responsible for about half my wifi traffic .... there are lots of things on the web asking how to turn it off or block it .... you can't ...

I take it you don't have the option of asking your guests to turn it off on their iPhones, etc?

Unfortunately Apple chose to use port 443 for photo stream and most other iCloud services - a really poor implementation to my mind as this is the default port for SSL. You could block it very easily but you would not get an https connection to any secure sites such as online banking, Amazon, etc.

This is the list of ports that Apple uses if anyone is interested - it's very difficult to minimise traffic by port blocking unfortunately. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202944

 

[TwoHooter]

Both the Huawei and EE routers were rubbish to be honest.

FWIW we got a Huawei B315 from WiFiOnboard at SIBS and so far it has worked very well using the EE network at our marina. We didn't buy the WiFiOnboard external aerial because we wanted to see if we needed it or not, and so far we haven't. We can even stream TV catchup and suchlike. But I am very confused by EE's measurement of data traffic. We burned up an EE 6Gb/90 day PAYG SIM card in 4 days whereas our monthly use at home is just under 11Gb average - we weren't doing anything different on the boat. Did we really use half our average monthly data in 4 days? Hmmm.

Now facing the inevitable problem of the 30 day expiry of SIM cards. I am nostalgic for the days when a PAYG SIM card lasted until you had used up the minutes/texts/data. With irregular use of the boat we are finding SIM cards can expire before we have used up the data. We bought a Vodafone £20 card so we could see how their network compared to EE, then our plans changed, and the thing expired before we had used any of it! The only way we can get 90 day cards now is from Amazon dealers selling off old EE stock.

For anyone who is thinking about all the options for onboard communication this is an excellent summary of the position as at August last year: http://mvdirona.com/2015/08/communications-at-sea/ The author works full time for Amazon Web Services living onboard the boat "Dirona", currently at St. Helena for refuelling.

 

[Deleted User YDKXO]

Thanks TwoHooter. Thats interesting because my EE card seemed to use data at a faster rate than my Vodafone card and as you say, the need to buy data monthly even if you haven't used your monthly allowance is a borderline scam IMHO

Thanks also for the link to the Dirona site. Actually I have been following their exploits through their occasional articles in Passagemaker magazine. Their N52 is a lovely boat and I guess must be on your radar for an upgrade!

 

[TwoHooter]

Thanks TwoHooter. Thats interesting because my EE card seemed to use data at a faster rate than my Vodafone card and as you say, the need to buy data monthly even if you haven't used your monthly allowance is a borderline scam IMHO. Thanks also for the link to the Dirona site. Actually I have been following their exploits through their occasional articles in Passagemaker magazine. Their N52 is a lovely boat and I guess must be on your radar for an upgrade!

I'd love to chat about Dirona and the Hamiltons' circumnavigation and so on but I recently put up a thread on the East Coast forum complaining about thread hijacking so if I get into Nordhavn stuff here I'll probably be drowned at dawn or something next time I go to Snape