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By far, the most frequent question that we get from other campers is how to set up internet for RV Living. With Brian’s job, having the best RV internet connection is truly the only option. He spends about 80% of his time on video conference calls. Not only does this require a lot of data, but it also requires a strong, stable connection.

In my opinion, it seems like he is always researching RV internet options and how to get the best internet for campers. If you, like so many of our friends, are looking for the best internet options for RV living, check out the information that Brian has put together about our RV internet service:

Our RV Internet Setup

There are 3 main components to the Internet setup we rely on:

• Internet Service Provider(s)
• Tethering Equipment
• Bonding Router

This overview should help give you a basic idea of what you may choose to do to replicate all or a portion of our setup.  Brian does a lot of video conferencing – in some cases, all day long.  As a result, we rely heavily on a solid, stable Internet connection for our jobs.  You may not need this level of reliability or this amount of bandwidth.  We have tried to highlight areas you may choose to reduce complexity/cost.

Internet Service Providers

As any full-time RVer can attest to, this has been one of the most challenging areas.  There has been a lot of trial and error here.  Different providers offer different plans, and plans are constantly changing.  Again, these are the options I use and have been using successfully now for almost a year.

Note: Some of the advice may violate your terms of services for whatever plans you are using and result in your device being “banned” from their network.  Familiarize yourself with your own plans and apply the advice according to your own risk tolerance.

AT&T LTE Tablet Plan

There are tablet plans on AT&T’s network that many people do not know about.  They are truly unlimited without any data caps or throttling.  The plan we have is called Unlimited Your Way.  This plan is $75/month.

Tablet plans are great!  They are usually truly unlimited with no capping, throttling, etc., although, if AT&T detects video streaming, they may bring the quality of that stream down to 480p (standard definition TV quality).

Another AT&T tablet plan for iPads that some people have been successful in getting is around $25/month.  Most AT&T representatives, though, will steer you away from this plan or play dumb about its existence.  I was on it for a month before being bumped into the Unlimited Your Way plan.  Your luck may vary if you want to give it a shot. I will say we’ve been happy with the plan we’re on now.

Visible Plan

Another plan that we use is from Visible.  This plan is available online from www.visible.com.  Data is unlimited; however, they advertise a throttling of 5Mbps.  This speed is sufficient for HD video streaming and is generally sufficient for our needs.  I will point out a couple of things:

1. The network is Verizon’s.  In addition, Visible is owned by Verizon.
2. In addition, to throttling, they will also deprioritize your traffic.
3. We have yet to experience throttling from phone data itself.  The only times I’ve seen throttling is when we tether with the phone.

One of the best aspects of Visible is the price.  The standard plan is $40/month; however, if you can form or join a “party,” you can get it down to $25/month.  It is easy to find these parties online.  Just post in your favorite RV group, tell your friends, Reddit, etc., and you will find people.

Verizon Phone Plan

We use Verizon for our day-to-day phones.  We may change this in the future, but for now, it has been working for us.  The plan we use is the Play More Unlimited.  Data from the phone is truly unlimited with no throttling, caps, etc.  If they detect tethering, that traffic will be throttled after 15GB (more if you select a higher-priced plan).  Admittedly, that is not much data.  We only use this tethering option when the above plans are insufficient for our needs (i.e., weak signal areas where bonding multiple slow connections comes in handy – more on this later).

Calyx Institute

We have used this in the past and think it may be a viable option for some, even though we stopped using their service last year.  You can find them here:  https://calyxinstitute.org/.  The Calyx Institute is a non-profit organization.  If you join as a “Contributor” for $500 and then $400 per year, they will provide a 4G LTE hotspot which now includes service from Sprint and T-Mobile.  The bonus is your “dues” are tax-deductible.  We stopped using them a year ago before they included T-Mobile’s network.  Sprint’s coverage in the areas we were traveling to did not work out for us.  We are considering renewing our membership.

Tethering Equipment/Connecting to the Networks

As mentioned above, there are a variety of options.  This is where it can start to get a bit tricky, depending on your needs.  If you need multiple options, redundancy, increased bandwidth, etc., then having multiple providers is the way to go; however, just one provider may be all you need.  Regardless of which option you go with for the service providers, you will need to share this connection with the devices you want to connect to the Internet.

GL.iNet GL-AR750S-Ext (Slate) Gigabit Travel AC VPN Router

The first device I recommend is the GL-AR750S-Ext from GL.iNet.  At the time of this writing, the cost was $64.90.  If you are using a phone or tablet, rather than tethering your phone to your computer or laptop, plug your phone or tablet into this device.  It will also share out wi-fi connections, which is handy if you want to share out a hotel or RV park wi-fi connection to multiple devices.  This device is very versatile and works great.  Using this device with the Visible or a tablet plan or just with your phone may be all that you need.  For a more advanced “bonding” option, keep reading below.

Pro Tip:  Under the advanced setting, you can change what is called a TTL.  TTL is tech-speak for Time to Live.  Amongst other uses, different providers use this information for different purposes, including detecting tethered devices.

GL.iNet GL-B1300 (Convexa-B) Home AC Gigabit VPN Router

The GL-B1300  is a bigger brother to the GL-AR750S-Ext mentioned earlier.  This device, at the time of this writing, was $83.  You can get some more advanced features for a little bit more money, including wireless mesh routing, which will allow you to easily expand your wi-fi coverage if you need to with additional devices.

Load Balancing/Bonding Router

This is where things get fun.  You have a few different options here:

• Router Load Balancing
• Speedify Channel Bonding
• OpenMPTCP Channel Bonding

Before getting too involved in this section, it is important to understand a couple of terms used here:  Load Balancing and Channel Bonding.  Without getting too technical, the differences here are significant.  Load Balancing works by balancing the load between multiple Internet connections based on the types of activities you are doing.  Have multiple people browsing the web?  Then, load balancing will “balance” the connections between each connection to provide an optimal connectivity experience for users.  In this case, each connection is still separate, but the “load” is split across each based on how busy each individual connection is.

Channel Bonding goes deeper.  Channel Bonding will “balance” the entire stream of traffic at the individual packet level of your connection.  Even if you are just one person streaming a video or downloading a large file, channel bonding will balance the load.  Quite literally, you will get the benefit of all connections acting as one pipe.  Have 3 slow connections, each giving about 2Mbps?  Then, by bonding, you will get up to 3 x 2Mbps or a 6Mbps pipe.

Three options are presented below.  We have personally used the Router Load Balancing, Speedify, and the OpenMPTCP options.  They each have their own pros and cons.  I will say, the latter option is not for the technical faint of heart.  Those who are more technical may also feel our explanation was less than ideal; however, we tried to keep it brief/simple. Speedify provides a great, easier bonding experience for less tech-savvy people, but it does cost a bit more.

Router Load Balancing

For router load balancing, we started off using the MOFI4500-4GXeLTE-SIM4-COMBO 4G/LTE Router.  This router served us well when using plans that entailed just a SIM; however, the best options with unlimited data usually entailed finding some provider off eBay, a “friend,” or finding resellers.  The reseller market for us was a nightmare.  There were many shady companies.  Some only lasted a month or less!  This was incredibly frustrating and resulted in extensive downtime that we could not afford. While the Mofi does allow some tethering options, the ability to load balance with tethered devices was problematic.  We had higher hopes for this device (and still do).  We may still use it yet as another tool in our tool bag.

Speedify Channel Bonding

Speedify, https://speedify.com/, is a great tool for true channel bonding.  The only caveat to this tool is it is CPU/memory intensive.  You will want a dedicated computer with a decent CPU and a good amount of memory.  Our mistake here was buying a cheap, mini-PC like this one https://amzn.to/2QFFOIh).  It just could not cut it.  We recommend spending at least $500 on a good computer if you want to go this route. 

Essentially, what you will do with this option is plug the GLi.Net router(s) using ethernet (i.e., network cables) connections.  If you run out of ethernet ports, you can use something like this USB ethernet adapter to create more.  Yes, you can tether a phone or tablet directly to the computer via USB as well; however, those GL.iNet routers provide the option to change that TTL setting I mentioned earlier.  You can do this via the PC, but it’s a bit more difficult, in my opinion, to do so.  Plus, if we want to carry those GL.iNet routers with us when we travel away from our rig, we can.

OpenMPTCP Channel Bonding

Open MPTCP is an open-source tool.  It does require a bit more technical know-how, but it is not that difficult.  You will still need a PC, but it does not have to be as powerful as the one that something like Speedify requires.  In our case, that cheap PC I mentioned earlier works fine.

You will also need to create a VPN using a Virtual Private Server (VPS) for the channel bonding to work.  We set one up with Vultr.  The cost is about $5 per month.  The benefit of the VPN is that it encrypts traffic across the various connections, which stops the Internet providers from monitoring your traffic.

Installation is simple.  In our case, we use a bootable thumb drive plugged into the PC, changed the boot priority, and we were up and running.  The web interface is relatively simple and intuitive.  Pretty much all you do is follow the wizards for basic functionality.

Our Setup

In the end, we have up to 4 different Internet connections we can use at any time, including our AT&T Tablet Plan, Visible, and our 2 phones.  Most of the time, we do not need to use our phones.  The AT&T and Visible are usually enough for us to average anywhere from 25-40Mbps depending on where we are and the quality of the signal.  If we want to get crazy, we can use our Verizon phones.  We have seen over 80Mbps pumping through our setup.  If need be, we can also use one of the GL.iNet routers and share out an RV park wi-fi connection and add it to our pipe instead of using one of our cell phones.

We hope this overview helps you figure out how to get the internet in RV working smoothly.  If you want more information, please feel free to reach out! And be sure to check back in as we will update how to have solid wifi for RV.