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Installation of Satellite
Internet .. part 3 |
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The final project is to create a professional cable passage through the trailer wall. Because the walls are about 2 inches thick an "S" cable must be made to pass through the wall to allow clearance for the interior and exterior fixtures. |
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Make sure the holes will match the exterior fixture. Check and double check because these are going to be 3/4" holes. It would be nice to know that there are no electrical cables behind this wall. |
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The holes are drilled, plugs removed then the foam is removed to create a passage from the exterior to interior holes. |
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Pilot holes are drilled in the exterior and interior walls for the fixture mounting screws.
You can clearly see the blue and red markings for the cables. Red for transmit and blue for the receive cables. |
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Carefully tighten the cable to the exterior (shown) and interior fixtures without over tightening. |
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Use Marine Goop to seal behind the exterior fixture before the final screws secure the fixture to the wall. |
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Completing the cable connection to the exterior fixture. Careful to match the blue (receive) cable to the blue male thread and the red (transmit) cable to the red male thread. |
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The final project is professionally completed by connecting the DW6000 modem to the transmit and receive cables then using Cat5 cable to connect to the Linksys WRT54G wireless router. The router |
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sits about two feet from my computer so I have used a Cat5 cable to connect to the router while Gwen sits at her computer station with her laptop and accesses the router wirelessly at 54Mbps. We can both access the Internet at the same time because the router networks our computers. Of course we have password protected our router to be sure others in the resort don't get free wireless access to our network. |
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| January 28, 2006: Update ... today I installed the DW7000 modem replacing the DW6000 modem which was originally supplied. This modem should be faster and has other features to make the system work better. So far, it's not working as well as the DW6000 so I hope things improve shortly. It is identically the same physical size as the DW6000, has the same 5 led lights and connects to the system with the same wires. This new system should have up-to 1 meg download and up-to 200K upload speeds. On my first test, it did not perform as well as the DW6000 for speed but I think it must "fine-tune" itself. If you are considering the purchase of a Direcway system, the DW7000 is the only modem offered now. I'll mention any improvements over the DW6000 as I see them. |
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February 9, 2006: It has been a struggle since upgrading to the DW7000 modem. The first modem installed perfectly but then degraded to a trickle in only an hour. I spent many hours on the phone with Direcway support with courteous support people. We finally decided after about 5 days that a new modem was needed. This decision was made on Thursday of last week. On Saturday night, the first modem began working perfectly with no adjustment on my part. I almost |
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| called Direcway to stop the replacement on Monday but glad I didn't. The first modem stopped working at 9pm on Monday night. The replacement modem arrived on Wednesday, yesterday, and I installed it last night. It has been working perfectly now for a bit more than 12 hours. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will continue to work properly. The first three speed tests gave me 980+K download and 140-180+K upload. I can definitely see the difference over the DW6000. |
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| February 15, 2006: Update .. this DW7000 modem has worked flawlessly since it's installation about a week ago. This gives me confidence in the satellite Internet system again since the second install went extremely easy and I can see that this was not my misunderstanding of the instructions but a flaw in the first modem.
Also, I'm not sure I ever reported on the ease of taking down and setting up the system. During our Oregon Coast trip I got plenty of practice. Take down is about 10 minutes and setup averaged about 15 minutes depending upon weather conditions and figuring where to set the tripod to avoid obstructions such as trees. The OPI meter was virtually worthless. I fooled with it for 3 hours my first time before calling Glenn. He reported that it can't be trusted and others were also having problems. I stopped using it and used Gwen's laptop computer instead to identify signal strength. I could do this at the tripod because we have a wireless router network. If you don't have a wireless network, you must use the "screamer" method where your partner yells out the window the signal strength. This method worked perfectly and quickly for us so we never tried the OPI meter again. If someone tells you it is manditory or that a "bird-dog meter" is needed, they are just looking for more profit..
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Return to Part 1 |
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