Wi-Fi Woes

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Our Wi-Fi Internet service provider in Anacortes is Beacon Wi-Fi, formerly BroadbandXpress (BBX). Due to problems connecting to their service, we haven’t been able to get a dependable Internet connection for more than two weeks. We haven’t been able to even get a connection for the past week! We’ve been working for days to try to resolve the problem…it seems to be a problem with BBX’s equipment…but it has been so time consuming to try to find a solution that we may have to give up for now.

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New WiFi Bridge

WiFi bridge mounted in hanging locker

Rosie checks out the new WiFi bridge mounted in the hanging locker in our forward stateroom. The bridge is the small white box held in place by a black velcro tie.

One of our first maintenance projects after getting settled on the boat was installing a replacement WiFi bridge so we can connect to the Internet. We access the Internet from our boat at the marina using a WiFi connection provided by an account we have with BroadbandXPress (BBX), a local provider of WiFi for the boating community in the Pacific Northwest.

Our previous wireless bridge died over the winter, so we bought a replacement and brought it with us. It is an Air802, model AP-G250, Ethernet to WiFi bridge with a 250 mW radio. Jim mounted it on a bulkhead in the hanging locker in our forward stateroom, and has run cables to a connection box in our main cabin where we use our computers. The bridge works through a previously installed marine antenna—an Air802 ANMA 2412, 12 dBi antenna—which is mounted on our flybridge.