Internet

[ACT I]

We have Marina WiFi with 5 bars and very close to tower. But everything takes forever to bring up. I mean 5 minutes! Who uses T-Mobile and loves it or hates it? Who uses Starlink and hasn’t gone broke ($) yet?

[Cheyne]

WiFi at a marina is very dependent on the service provider. Also the equipment they are using. Our marina's equipment is ancient and sucks very hard.

We use Google Fi which runs on T-Mobile. It is okay, but I would hate to rely on it day to day. At our marina Google Fi/T-Mobile is at best 1 bar. We just use Wifi calling.

Starlink might as well be free as far as I'm concerned. $150 a month and I no longer have to rely on my phone or marina WiFi. Since we are moving all the time we never have to guess if we might or might not have connectivity. Since we both work from our boat full time this just can't happen. We have had Starlink on the boat for almost 3 years. Now we have a mini coming to replace our orginial Starlink that we took from our house to the boat.

Cheyne

[YachtBoyRMK]

Originally Posted by ACT I

We have Marina WiFi with 5 bars and very close to tower. But everything takes forever to bring up.

How many bars you have is only a measure of the signal connection between device and router, NOT your broadband speed (bandwidth to your modem). Do a speed test using something like Ookla www.speedtest.net. Internet speed and quality of your WiFi connection are two separate and unrelated things.

[deblen]

How many other boaters are leaching off the marina's WIFI at same time as you?
There is only so much bandwidth on a WIFI pop.
If you get up at midnite,you will probably get faster data-that is if the rest of leachers are not downloading stuff all night
This article uses a water pipe analogy.https://www.techtarget.com/searchnet...tion/bandwidth
I like to use a multilane highway,but same principle.
Your data bits,coming & going,must fit in the spaces between other folks data bits. Each lane of a highway will only carry so many cars(bits).

Cheers/Len