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How Can Escapees have everything right about RVing except internet at their parks?


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Wa_desert_rat, I really think it is an age gap.

 

Well, there are stupid people of all ages. I'm only a network engineer, so what do I know.

 

You can't get everything you want every time you want it.

 

I think that pretty much describes the age gap.

 

WDR

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is there anyone else on this thread from the Livingston park who is having difficulty with their WiFi? Netflix is one thing. Emails are another.

 

WDR

1993 Foretravel U225 with Pacbrake and 5.9 Cummins with Banks

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Well fellas,

 

Im certainly not trying to rattle cages here. I didnt say that if you were over 60 that you didnt understand the internet. In most cases, I have met people here that are retired and does not depend on it and I suspect that is the case on this forum. So let me ask the question in another way and see if I can get the answer to my original question although I may have worded it wrong. Would anyone disagree that Escapees has the worse internet out of all of the parks they have stayed at? In my situation that is definitely the case. How can they be so good at everything else but dead last with the internet? Im sure posters will say that is not the case. But it is from what I have experienced. Did I just get lucky with staying at close to 20 RV parks in 10 months?

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Well, there are stupid people of all ages. I'm only a network engineer, so what do I know.

 

You can't get everything you want every time you want it.

 

I think that pretty much describes the age gap.

 

WDR

and how does this apply to my question asking why Escapees is the worse when it comes to internet compared to other parks?

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Gr8white, maybe you haven't gotten the answer you want hear. "have not gotten many responses to this question at all." I think you are not asking the right people. We do not make the financial decisions for the private business known as Escapees RV Club. We are only members of a online forum put here by the Escapees RV Club. Some of us are even members of the Club, we can voice our opinions and ask for amenities, but the ultimate decisions are made by an Executive Board of Directors, so we can not answer your question to your satisfaction.

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But SKP parks are not like RV parks in general.

 

The OP is in the Livingston, TX park and if he were an Escapee member (for a paltry $29 for a full year) he'd be paying only $21 a night for an RV park that has amazed him at how perfect the park is.

 

But he's not happy. Because he thinks that for his $21 a night he should get great WiFi too.

 

For $40 a night I'd expect a great park and good WiFi.

 

For $50 a night I'd expect a great park and great WiFi.

 

For $80 a night I'd expect an amazing RV park experience and WiFi that was better than I could get at home.

 

For $21 a night I think I'd settle for a great RV park and deal with my own WiFi.

 

WDR

 

We're currently in a private, for profit park, paying $23 per night on a monthly rate. WiFi is screaming fast, to the point that streaming is not an issue. It simply works.

 

Our home park is usually a Rotary park. Not really a for-profit operation. The prices are similar to what we're paying here. Again, connectivity is fast and reliable.

 

We spent the winter in Apache Junction, paying a lower price, but power was metered. The only issues with the WiFi there were hardware related, as access points would randomly loose connection to the base router, leaving us hanging. A quick switch of access points would resolve it, until it happens again.

 

I've been in remote work camps from Alaska to Baffin Island, and hundreds of points in between. WiFi is a huge issue, and I've seen crews walk off if the service wasn't there. These guys expect Face-Time and Skype over sat links, and they get it. I realize the bill is being paid by a corporate entity with infinitely deeper pockets than Escapees, but budgets still need to be built and met. Escapees members can claim "Special" all they want, and they're right, but the next generation coming up won't be enticed to join by special.

I have been wrong before, I'll probably be wrong again. 

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We stayed at a county park in Oregon. The internet was not working well....so I complained to the park ranger.

 

He said I will get someone out here to help you. So the guy shows up from the County Information Services shop and fixes the problem. Now that is a County that knows how to do things!!!

 

That is/was the best internet we have ever found in our travels. Not sure there are many private or public parks that can provide that level of support in their campgrounds.

 

The issue is in many rural areas are still stuck in last century technology.

 

Even in places like central Washington where we have had fiber since the turn of the century the campgrounds and public facilities are lacking far behind. The local Chamber did a promotional video on our local community and forgot to mention that 1Gbps fiber is available in the area. They could blanket the entire valley with high speed interenet at minimal cost, but the assumption is everybody has access to 1Gbps service in this country.

 

Years ago, the city of Spokane provided free internet in the downtown core. Nobody cared and I believe the city finally dropped the service.

 

Umatilla County, Oregon has free wifi in the developed areas of the county. From Wikipedia...."EZ Wireless of Hermiston officially opened on February 4, 2004, one of the largest known Wi-Fi wide area networks in the United States, covering parts of Umatilla County, Morrow County andBenton County, Washington. Although created to facilitate communications among local police, firemen and EMT workers who immediately respond to possible accidents or terrorist attacks on theUmatilla Chemical Depot, where the U.S. Army maintained a national arsenal of nerve gas, the network can be accessed in some places by the public for free.[3]

 

Does anybody outside of Umatilla County care??

 

There is a competitive advantage to campgrounds. However, for them showing the benefits in the bottom line might be difficult. Remember most people want it wrapped into the campground fee.

 

High Speed internet matters for SOME people, like me, but most don't care or are even unaware of the benefits.

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Not an age gap. I'm mid-50s and have been online since the dark ages. My kid has a part time job selling electronics and comes home all the time rolling his eyes at the 20 & 30 something's who don't understand the basics of online access. What it has actually become is a significant dividing line between the haves and the have nots.

 

Eleven years ago, I took my kids cross country camping for three months. We had online access exactly six nights. I remember because my kids were playing an online MMO and it was the way they connected with friends and "normal" while on the road. Once in a six room motel in Idaho where the son of the owner had set up the system and personally played with our & his set up until he could get us online. We were their first customer who were able and interested in trying out his handiwork. Once on our site in a campground near Gilroy, CA for two nights. One night in a Best Western on the CA coast. One night in a hotel in Sandusky OH. I forget where the final night was. Half those nights we were their beta testers.

 

Things have come a long way since then. I carry my own data plan now and rely on it extensively for many aspects of my financial and personal life. As a telecom engineer, I understand the technology and its limitations. I accept that having internet access is still a complex, expensive proposition whether I provide it or it is provided to me. I consider it an essential service and part of the requirements to do business. I DO NOT rely on anyone to provide it for me. I rarely even attempt to connect on the road anymore other than through my data plan. It's just a waste of time. My personal setup is such that I cannot be without it, so it's up to me to ensure that I have that access at sufficient quality to meet my needs.

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and how does this apply to my question asking why Escapees is the worse when it comes to internet compared to other parks?

1. It could be where you're parked.

2. It could be your equipment.

3. It could be a tree.

4. It could be a pinched cable.

 

I'm not entirely sure why you feel that every SKP park has crappy WiFi. Ask your neighbors if they are having issues. Get an outside antenna. So far no one actually IN the Livingston park has said anything here in this thread. We're all pretty much guessing and, so far, we haven't suggested that the issue might be you.

 

But it might be.

 

How are you posting all these on here if you can't get email?

 

I've been in SKP parks with great WiFi but I prefer to mostly boondock and stay out of RV parks.

 

What have you done to troubleshoot your problem?

 

WDR

1993 Foretravel U225 with Pacbrake and 5.9 Cummins with Banks

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will try a middle ground here and say generational probably does apply as I worked with all young people and their communication, news, music and entertainment source is all tied to the internet. Of course land lines are long gone but even cable tv, cd'd and dvd's are archaic to this crowd. We stopped at a KOA tonight and they gave us two access codes for internet. I didn't care about the cable and neither access code worked. Whatever, using verizon hotspot as usual but something needs to give here.

Dave and Lana Hasper

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1. It could be where you're parked.

2. It could be your equipment.

3. It could be a tree.

4. It could be a pinched cable.

 

I'm not entirely sure why you feel that every SKP park has crappy WiFi. Ask your neighbors if they are having issues. Get an outside antenna. So far no one actually IN the Livingston park has said anything here in this thread. We're all pretty much guessing and, so far, we haven't suggested that the issue might be you.

 

But it might be.

 

How are you posting all these on here if you can't get email?

 

I've been in SKP parks with great WiFi but I prefer to mostly boondock and stay out of RV parks.

 

What have you done to troubleshoot your problem?

 

WDR

Ok I will stop asking the question because I have done so several times and a very small few has answered it but most havent. Wa_ dessert, if you scroll back through a few of my replys I said that I have asked others in this park and they say it is their biggest complaint. I have asked the staff and they say it is the biggest complaint that they get. I wont repeat myself any longer. It is what it is.

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Ok I will stop asking the question because I have done so several times and a very small few has answered it but most havent. Wa_ dessert, if you scroll back through a few of my replys I said that I have asked others in this park and they say it is their biggest complaint. I have asked the staff and they say it is the biggest complaint that they get. I wont repeat myself any longer. It is what it is.

Ok... we can't fix it. It is what it is. I've never been there so I have no idea. Seems that not being able to email would be about as bad as it can get.

 

That is definitely a rural area so it's possible that there are ISPs in the area that you could sign up for your own account. I don't know what WiFi router you're using but you might want to get it to scan and see what other access points it sees. There are some local ISPs but I can't see from here (1500 miles away) which ones offer WiFi access.

 

https://local.yp.com/Service/DishLATINO-Sitio-Oficial/12505919

 

http://www.eastex.com/

 

One of those might be able to help you. I have an outside antenna on a Ubiquiti Titanium Bullet router that helps me get signals from farther away than a standard WiFi router. Scanning and finding something that looks like an ISP's AP would be the best bet.

 

I have found that RV parks in general have crappy WiFi and I generally use tethering on a cell phone (with an amplifier and an outside antenna).

 

WDR

1993 Foretravel U225 with Pacbrake and 5.9 Cummins with Banks

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I have 5 full bars so I have great reception but do not have a good speed. I got "page cannot be displayed when I tried to open this website 3 times in a row. Finally it went through. I do have my wifi and luckily it works great here. The reception is not the problem. The speed is so bad that it wont open up pages at times. I meant for this post to answer a simple question that has turned into 5 pages worth of responses that really didnt answer the question.

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Does anyone know what the backhaul availability is in the Rainbow's End area? Not being there, I have no idea whether it's the worst RV park WiFi around or not, but I can say we've found some really poor systems, especially in rural locations where the backhaul options are pretty limited. My wife and I use 25-30GB/month with little streaming except a few YouTube videos now and then, and determined quite awhile ago that providing our own data service was the only way we could consistently have reliable service at reasonable speeds. Of the 16 parks we've stayed in so far this year, only two had what I consider acceptable WiFi service with at least a 2Mb/s download speed. And both of those parks had less than 25% occupancy when we were there. Four of the parks offered no WiFi service at all, and one had mediocre service available at the office only. Pricing ranged from $13.50/night to $56/night, with no statistical correlation between price and WiFi performance. The cheapest park (an SKP owned park) being the one with WiFi at the office, and one of the $50/night parks with no WiFi at all.

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I'm not sure what RV magazine I write for, but, for your information, I'm about to turn 68. Staying current with technology doesn't have anything to do with age; it's an attitude.

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I meant for this post to answer a simple question that has turned into 5 pages worth of responses that really didnt answer the question.

Your question was "How Can Escapees have everything right about RVing except internet at their parks?"

 

This specific question was answered by at least six people.

 

1. It's expensive to install;

2. It's expensive to maintain;

3. Rural areas have very little backhaul capability;

4. It's not a big priority;

5. We don't know.... we aren't there and they haven't told us.

 

Maybe you just didn't ask the right question.

 

WDR

1993 Foretravel U225 with Pacbrake and 5.9 Cummins with Banks

1999 Jeep Wrangler, 4" lift and 33" tires

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Doc.....I dont think I am wrong in saying that its selfish to stream in RV parks. We still have a stick and bricks home and do whatever we want on the internet when we are home as we have unlimited high speed data . When we are in RV parks we dont stream and dont play youtube videos out of a sense of courtesy to others in the park...plain and simple.

 

I agree that in a family situation with kids and their tablets the streaming is most likely second nature and they are not being selfish but ignorant of the situation. Some education wouldnt hurt in this situation.

 

I also agree that bandwidth has increased largely in part to the ads and high def photos and videos that load uninvited as soon as you start to surf the web. It would be nice if more of it could be screened.

 

Because we are snowbirds and from another country we cant subscribe to the devices and plans that you people in the US can. It is very difficult and expensive to get good wifi from a hotspot which is basically what we are left with using. That is why we need half decent wifi at the occasional RV park in your country. We also take our tablets to McDonalds and wherever we can find a good signal simply so that we can be in touch with our families back home. Its not even a case of watching movies for us but talking to our children and aging mothers.

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Ok thanks for all of your responses gentleman.

I get the feeling you believe you are right in expecting good to great internet access in the RV Parks you visit, and don't want to believe what others are telling you that, that isn't a realistic expectation.

 

To answer you earlier question:

 

Well fellas,

 

Im certainly not trying to rattle cages here. I didnt say that if you were over 60 that you didnt understand the internet. In most cases, I have met people here that are retired and does not depend on it and I suspect that is the case on this forum. So let me ask the question in another way and see if I can get the answer to my original question although I may have worded it wrong. Would anyone disagree that Escapees has the worse internet out of all of the parks they have stayed at? In my situation that is definitely the case. How can they be so good at everything else but dead last with the internet? Im sure posters will say that is not the case. But it is from what I have experienced. Did I just get lucky with staying at close to 20 RV parks in 10 months?

from my experience, "Yes you got lucky, or you parked in the RV park at the right spot, or the time of the year that not a lot of people were hogging the bandwidth, or yes you got lucky".

 

In our travels, we usually try to use the public (read that the RV Parks) WiFi signals and have found that most of the time they work OK for a while, and then we see problems like you describe. Long wait times for pages to load, connections time out, etc. We usually give up and go back to our MiFi and don't worry about the RV parks WiFi. Our experience is not limited to RV Parks. For example a local very large hospital my wife has been in about 4 times in the last 3 years offers "guest" WiFi. I am pretty sure they limit the number of connections they allow on the guest access, sometimes we can get connected and then for a while we can't connect. It is what it is. We also get what we pay for.

 

You were asked what troubleshooting have you done? Other than talking to other RV'ers I don't recall that you have mentioned any specifics about your troubleshooting. Have you taken your computer to other parts of the park to see if you get better access? It could be that while you have 5 bars to to the WiFi repeater right next to your RV, that its connection to the router going to the internet has difficulties. I doubt that Escapees has an onsite tech or even an on call tech to come assist with problems. I would guess that the system is installed and unless some part of it totally fails, not much is done about it.

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I have read through this topic and did not plan to post anything here, but then I read through a news letter from a park I have stayed at and it had a snippet about guests and there internet usage. This park is a high end park that caters to full time and long time RV'ers, as well as vacation type RV'ers. The park has several locations in the Pacific Northwest (CA, OR and WA).

 

Here is what they put in their newsletter:

 

"Wi-Fi

We are continuing to upgrade our Wi-Fi capabilities at every resort. The limiting factor at every resort is getting a connection to the internet that has enough bandwidth. We are putting a new cable service in at Redding and have updated our DSL lines at Eugene, Clarkston and Lincoln City. The truth is that our biggest challenge is too many people using multiple devices and downloading or streaming videos and movies. Over Presidents Day weekend we checked on the software that controls our Wi-Fi Service at one of the resorts. The resort was full and that means 92 sites were occupied. But we had over 400 devices connected to our internet service! All were guests of the resort. We discovered that multiple users were trying to download movies, play video games on-line, and stream TV shows.

We really need the cooperation of our customers so that everyone can have fast internet access. We respectfully ask that all of our customers limit their use of the Wi-Fi to surfing the internet, doing their banking and business, and getting weather and news ... and of course communicating with friends, family and loved ones. We are also experimenting with issuing only two passwords per RV at one of our resorts. Most people do not realize that if they connect to the Wi-Fi and later are not actively using the device often there is still search activity going on in the background that consumes bandwidth. We are committed to giving the best Wi-Fi service possible and to upgrade our bandwidth wherever possible ... but please pass the word along that streaming videos, movies and TV programs or playing video games affects all the neighbors.

Another hint for those of you who have your own internal Wi-Fi or wireless printers: Often those devices are communicating within your coach on the same frequency that our Wi-Fi system uses. In most cases your devices are programmed to pick up the strongest signal (which is your own network) and therefore the park Wi-Fi gets blocked. I witnessed that just a few weeks ago at our Redding Resort. A customer was using his Apple computer. He could get a great signal outside the coach but once he went inside he could not connect. We discovered that he had several other devices that he connected to within his coach that were broadcasting on the same radio frequency. By turning off the other devices he was able to get a clear and fast Wi-Fi connection."

 

I just thought it was interesting to get a "Park" perspective included in this discussion.

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I just thought it was interesting to get a "Park" perspective included in this discussion.

 

That was an outstanding description of the issues facing RV parks. 92 sites and over 400 connected devices. So 4+ devices per site. Not hard to see how difficult it is to address this demand, especially in a rural environment where options may be very limited.

Mark & Teri

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We also routinely see 4+ devices per site that is using service. That is not very hard to do.

 

Right now I am at a private business that I installed the customer and factory floor wifi at. I have multiple devices connected: two phones, two tablets, two laptops. Yes, they are all being used, by two people.

 

Fortunately, at this location there is good 10mbps service available. This easily handles the two customer APs, the factory AP, and the office area. The factory restricts connectivity or there would be 25+ phones connected (only supervisors can have cell phones). This is just an example of the issues.

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I meant for this post to answer a simple question that has turned into 5 pages worth of responses that really didnt answer the question.

 

Since no one here has been able to answer your question, why not go straight to the source for your answer? Just take a 10 minute walk to the Escapees headquarters and talk to the owner.

Everybody wanna hear the truth, but everybody tell a lie.  Everybody wanna go to Heaven, but nobody want to die.  Albert King

 

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When everyone in an RV park has a laptop, a tablet and a cell phone on and connected to WiFI just the handshake between the individual devices and the router uses resources. Latency (the built-in delays caused by hardware and distance) contributes to the problem. Add to that updates to apps and operating systems that stream large amounts of data at unpredictable times.

 

But if you're long-term at an RV park then there are steps you can take to mitigate these issues.

 

Many ISPs - especially in rural areas - have WiFi that covers a large geographical area. The cost for connecting to these ISPs varies but is practically guaranteed to be less than adding data to your cell system account. Usually around $50 a month for what amounts to a home connection. I tried to encourage the OP to see if one of these was available but I suspect he misunderstood my recommendation.

 

The bottom line is that you are responsible for your own connection to the Internet. There is usually enough of a choice available to find something that will work. It may be expensive, it may be slow. But expecting them to revamp their system to suit you seems, to me at least, to be unreasonable.

 

But we're an RV group. We can move.

 

WDR

1993 Foretravel U225 with Pacbrake and 5.9 Cummins with Banks

1999 Jeep Wrangler, 4" lift and 33" tires

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As post 100 in this thread in a very short time it seems this indeed is a......White HOT subject to RV'ers!!!!

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