Internet Connection Choices while RVing

It hasn't been many years since I was tickled pink to find a pay phone where I could, if I was very lucky, hold an acoustic coupler tightly to the mouthpiece and pick up my email.

If I was even luckier, I might find a dial-up connection in a campground where I could actually get on line and "surf" for  the 10 or 15 minute period that was allowed before turning the connection over to the next camper in line.  And there was always a line.

It's different today.  I can sit comfortably in my motorhome, connected to any of several choices, and surf to my heart's content.

The challenge now is deciding which connection to choose.

Right now, my choices include my "Internet capable" cellphone connected via Verizon's National Access, or a wi-fi connection when one is available.

If you listen to RVers discuss Internet Connections around a campfire or in a message forum, you are likely to hear many "best choices" as people tell what was best for them.

But those choices aren't available to all RVers everywhere.  What may work beautifully in cities and near major highways, may not work at all along the country-side or boondocked in the dessert.

A lot of factors determine which is best for any individual RVer, with location being the most important, and cost, surprisingly, the least important.

The least expensive... a wi-fi card that comes (standard, at no extra cost) with most laptops today, can, when fast and high-quality connections are available, be an excellent solution, while the most expensive... a satellite system... can be too cumbersome for RVers who move often.

One of the most important factors is speed... and it can be the hardest to determine.  The advertised speed estimates most often show speeds that, while technically possible, are not often achieved in real world situations.

To get an idea of actual speeds of the different choices, I've collected real-life speeds and put them into the following table for comparison:

Internet Connection Speed Comparisons