Boat Internet Strategy & Implementation
One of the questions many new boat owners ask is “how do I get Internet on the boat”? Designing a network strategy for a boat is another of those tradeoff challenges, like nearly every decision a boat owner makes. What are your priorities? Easy? Flexible? Fast? Anywhere coverage? Cost? Power consumption? In this article, I will discuss some of these tradeoffs and talk about a few concrete ways to design a network. We will cover four different options, in order of increasing complexity but increasing flexibility and speed. Uplink Options The choice all starts with uplink options, i.e. how a gateway device on your boat is connected to the Internet. Unlike your house, where you have fiber or cable to your front door, on your boat, it must be some kind of wireless. You have three options: WiFi, Cellular, and Satellite. WiFi is available in most marinas today. In some cases, it is free. In our home marina, it is not. It is, in fact, quite expensive. It can run as much for a...