Internet Connections On The Road

It’s easier than ever to stay in touch.

On our trip around North America this past summer we used the internet connections at many campgrounds to access our e-mail. Many times this was successful, and some other times it was frustrating getting connected since the campground had just installed the equipment and was not familiar with its use.

When we travel, we often use our PCMCIA card and cell phone to connect to our Toronto dial-up service through many local Primus numbers across Canada or through long distance from the USA. Our Bell Mobility cell phone service is enabled with the NorthAmerican Plan, so there are no long distance or roaming charges involved. This always worked as long as cell phone service was available in the area, but downloading or uploading large files was dreadfully slow. Using this method, our SPAM filtering worked like a charm to eliminate unwanted messages. Unfortunately, you still have to download all the messages before the SPAM filter can weed out the trash. In some instances, we thought that we might be on the system for too long a time and aborted the email download before it was finished. Bad move – the next time we connected, we had to download the same messages again since the system did not realize that we had already done a partial download.

In some campgrounds, email service was available through a computer in the laundry room. At one of these in Calgary, we inserted toonies into a coin slot to get online. Since this machine was enclosed in a bullet-proof metal case with no slot to insert a floppy, we could not offload the mail and take it back to the motorhome before composing replies – we had to stay online the whole time. One day more than 2,000 SPAM messages came in along with the good stuff (since my email address is published in the magazine each month, I’m sure it’s been sold to every SPAMer worldwide). Thankfully we had a high speed hook-up on that particular day, but it still took too much time to eliminate the SPAM before we could even think of replying to the important messages. When there is only one computer in the laundry room, and other RVers are waiting for you to get off the line so that they can access their personal mail, you don’t want to dawdle. Most RVers who don’t have their email addresses published every month get by just fine using a Yahoo or Hotmail email account to keep in touch on the road. These services support SPAM filtering.
...
(Read the full article in the magazine)