Part 3 – Internet for a boat
This is part 3 of “Internet for a boat.” In case you missed it and want to follow along in order, be sure to check out part 2 here or start at the beginning.
While it would be fantastic to be able to maintain a reliable and free WIFI connection to serve as an internet gateway for all your devices on board, it simply isn’t realistic. Unless you spend your time moving from one marina to the next, you will find that you will be out, moving around and at anchor much more often – that after all is the point of cruising!
Tangent: I really don’t understand why some people choose to live aboard their boat and stay tied up in a marina for months (or years) on end. During our early travels we found this to be especially common at marinas on the ICW. Given the sacrifices one makes to live on a boat, it doesn’t seem worth it to me. If you’re not really cruising, it makes more sense to have a land based dwelling you call home and a smaller boat to take out for days on the water. Feel free to leave a comment and help me understand what I’m missing.
To fill the large gap of obtaining internet connectivity without using someone else’s WiFi, there are two options. The first option is to get a direct satellite connection for internet. I explored this option to some extent and found two main themes – it is expensive and it is still very slow (read more about it in the overview to these posts). For example there is a package from Iridium that is around $5000 for the hardware and if you commit to a monthly bundle of 1GB it will only cost you $1000. But don’t worry you will be browsing the information super high speed at up to 128kbps, which is about twice the speed of dial-up. Remember dial-up!? I wonder if it comes with a CD-ROM with 1000 free hours on AOL? On the high end, there is an option from KVH. Their cheapest model starts around $13,000 and with another $1000 per month for 1GB. For the added expense, you may reach speeds of up to 2mbps, about what you might get on a 3G connection. Land based network providers are moving into the 5G space now, so you will only be 2 generations behind the curve. Oh, and the KVH option doesn’t have good coverage in the Southern hemisphere, so many people recommend having the Iridium package as a backup. What a deal! My level of sarcasm has basically reached its peak so I will just say that direct satellite connectivity is not an option for us given what the current marketplace offers. So unless Google’s Project Loon or SpaxeX’s Starlink Internet Satellites come to the rescue soon, we have to look at other options.
The 2nd option for internet without WiF is to leverage existing cellular networks. This can be as simple as getting a 4G LTE capable device from the country you are cruising in and tethering to it’s hotspot. While this is the simplest approach, it has a few flaws. The first is that a single cellular capable device has relatively low transmit power, meaning you most likely need to be very close to a tower or shore to get a reliable signal. The second flaw is that it is a single device with a relatively small CPU acting as a hot spot with no failover. It is also not truly filling the role of making your one and only boat network the gateway to the internet. Instead, each device that needs access will have to tether to the WIFI hotspot provided by the device. This is not ideal as it is not unifying the internet gateway which ideally would be provided by a single network with wireless access.
To improve on the range and strength of cellular communication, I decided to purchase a cellular booster and marine antenna. The Cellular booster that has the most power, highest rating and best reviews is The Drive 4G-X. This model is ideal as it is meant for mobile deployment. It has a variable range specified for input voltage, so it can be powered directly from the DC panel and hidden out of view and doesn’t get finicky about slight changes in voltage. The unit comes with two small antennas – one for external mounting to pick up cellular bands and a second to place inside your vehicle to re-broadcast the cell signal. It works very similarly to the WiFi booster I mentioned in the previous post in that it takes the external weak cell signal and amplifies it and rebroadcasts through the indoor antenna. Then to transmit data back to the cell tower that is very far away, it takes your device’s signal, and amplifies it many times over to extend the range.
The indoor antenna that is included works with the router (more on that in the next post), however the outdoor antenna is way too small and weak. Instead I purchased a separate 4G omni-directional marine antenna from Wilson Electronics along with 100’ of LMR400, which is a very low loss cable designed to allow longer runs of wire without dropping signal gain over greater distances. If you were installing this on an RV it might not be needed, but we definitely needed two long runs. The first run is connected to the cell antenna which is mounted at the top of the dinghy davit and runs down through the davit, into the engine compartment, inside the hull between the walls and terminates at the booster behind the DC panel. The second run goes out from the booster through the boat and is connected to the standard indoor antenna which sits at our electronics hub right in front of the router. The most difficult part of this process was getting the correct connectors and crimpers for the custom lengths of LMR400 we ran.
With the cellular booster in place, the last crucial step is actually determining what signal to amplify. As previously mentioned, using a single device has many limits and is not a good backbone to a cellular based internet provider. Instead, the key is to integrate the cellular functions into the networking hardware itself. The router we purchased and recommend actually has two subscriber identity module (SIM) slots. By purchasing data only SIM cards (they don’t have to be data only, but no voice will ever be needed or used in this configuration) and installing them in the networking hardware, you have a fully encapsulated system that allows for easy swapping, maintenance, or troubleshooting. To get the additional benefits of the cellular booster, simply place the indoor booster antenna next to the cellular antenna panels on the networking hardware.
Tangent: From what I have read, the biggest complaint regarding most cell boosters is that your phone must be very close to or directly next to the indoor / receiving antenna to notice a stronger signal. While this may be true, we have not seen any problems given the setup I detailed as the indoor antenna is positioned directly under the cellular antennas from the network hardware housing the SIM cards and acting as a cellular activated device.
Up next, I’ll discuss the heart of this setup – Internet for a boat – Part 4
