Internet and WiFi

Wirie Pro, great piece of kit..

http://www.thewirie.com/the-wirie-products/the-wirie-pro-marine-wifi-3g-4g-system/

We do similar to Pascal, but we use the Pepwave max HD2, has two sims for cell cards, but also has a built in wifi capabilities like the wave.
There is a lot you can do to manage users and also plug in your vsat or landline to manage.
The units are very robust, and even have an app to manage on your ipad.
Unless you are very tech savvy, I suggest getting professional set up.

I agree hotspots suck. We tried to use one in Bahamas last year and could barely get it,to work. We also had the wave wifi extender which also seemed to struggle to work reliably. But more important the marina wifi is awful almost everywhere. So far cradlepoint or a cellular router is much better. We just mounted an external antenna and it boosted our signal.

I have a Ubiquiti Bullet M2 connected to a Linksys home router. The Bullet has an impressive range for connecting to marina wifi. The Bullet configuration is a little tricky but I found some helpful people on the Ubiquiti forum. If you have a hotspot, you can connect the Bullet to the hotspot when marina wifi is not available.

FWIW, we use an inexpensive Wave Stealth USB-powered Wi-Fi adapter from Radio Labs. Then we create a hotspot using "Connectify" on a Win7 laptop or the integrated hotspot capability on a Win10 laptop.

Previously, we used Radio Lab's Wave Magnum unit, but that was only 2.4 gHz and they had no driver for Windows 10, whereas the Stealth also gets the 5.8 gHz frequencies and has a Win10 driver.

This is just for supporting two of us, though; not sure how it would scale.

The furthest measurable access we've gotten, back with the earlier Magnum, was about 1/4 mile, and that was well away from the marina we were in at the time. IOW, the adapters have always been able to deal with the distances associated with marina Wi-Fi... and when the signal sucks, it's the marina's side, not the adapter's fault.

In fact, the marina where we over-wintered this last year had a really grim Wi-Fi system. We had great signal strength and quality at the boat, even from several of their access points, but throughput from their router completely sucked. They suggested it was too many tenants streaming, but nobody in their right mind would have tried streaming in the environment. The also mentioned they were testing a replacement system at another marina they manage. We ended up mostly using our AT&T plan to make a hotspot while we were there.

-Chris

I was going to post a new thread on this topic today, but found this one....my marina stinks too, all of the same problems above. Any new things out there today to make the marina Wi-Fi signal better at the boat other than my own hot-spot? Ole Cleanslate needs to keep it simple stupid as I am not very tech savvy . Would also need to keep it small, what ever it is , if IT exists.

Thanks!

Like Pascal, I use a Mobile service , I have a WiFi amplifier on the hardtop but when connected to the marina there is very little band width. There's no way around that unfortunately.

I tried to get modem only dats plan today and verizon was 80 bucks for 40 gbs. At and t was $50 for 15 but auto charged overages. Who do u use?

https://www.cgcellular.com/

I have Sprint which is now T-going-Mobile..so I will inquire with them about a phone or T-mobile hot spot gizmo/ Jawn. Which I believe is a ''faceless useless cell phone'' basically.

Do you or anyone else have first hand experience with this company?

I had something similar but they were shut down.

Another company I used is now back ordered.