We arrived at the fort last Sunday, and picked up a free cable modem at the front desk (approx $100 deposit). The cable modem has a single plug-in for one laptop to be hard connected to the modem. They give you a short length of cat5 LAN cable to make the connection. If you plug this in and connect it to your laptop, your first web site connection will redirect you to a page where you need to accept the conditions of your internet connection. Once you accept, you don't get this form again unless your modem powers off. After that, you surf the internet without interruption, for free. The speed is OK for anything but movie viewing. Web pages come up fine, email is fine. Even streaming audio works with few lag times. Youtube videos buffer nearly the entire video before playing. Netflix plays with low quality and periodic pauses to catch up. If you only want to run your laptop off this connection, then you are all set (though a longer LAN cable would make the experience more tolerable).
If you want to add WiFi, and to be able to connect other laptops, ipods, ipads, a roku streaming or apple tv box, etc, then you need to add a WiFi router to the setup. I left my router at home, but found an inexpensive Netgear router at the local WalMart - $30. I plugged the LAN cable into the router, turned it on, and then connected to the WiFi signal from my laptop. I connected to the router setup page (following the instructions with the router), it auto configured the connection and got a valid internet connection from the campground supplied modem right away. After that, I was able to connect to the internet over wifi from any device in the camper. Every once in a while, internet devices would not seem to be able to access the internet. I would then go to a web site on my laptop and find that the modem was waiting for me to confirm my acceptance of the internet access contract. Once I accept, the other devices can access the internet again.
In my opinion, this is a much better setup than any free wifi offering I have seen at other campgrounds - where you are lucky to get a signal at your site, never mind inside your camper. If you remember to bring your router from home, you get wifi, and it is free. I used my cell phone hotspot the last time we were here (when the internet connection at Fort Wilderness cost $10/day), but the cell connection inside the camper is poor here, and the kids use up the data cap pretty quickly when I share it with them.
If you want to add WiFi, and to be able to connect other laptops, ipods, ipads, a roku streaming or apple tv box, etc, then you need to add a WiFi router to the setup. I left my router at home, but found an inexpensive Netgear router at the local WalMart - $30. I plugged the LAN cable into the router, turned it on, and then connected to the WiFi signal from my laptop. I connected to the router setup page (following the instructions with the router), it auto configured the connection and got a valid internet connection from the campground supplied modem right away. After that, I was able to connect to the internet over wifi from any device in the camper. Every once in a while, internet devices would not seem to be able to access the internet. I would then go to a web site on my laptop and find that the modem was waiting for me to confirm my acceptance of the internet access contract. Once I accept, the other devices can access the internet again.
In my opinion, this is a much better setup than any free wifi offering I have seen at other campgrounds - where you are lucky to get a signal at your site, never mind inside your camper. If you remember to bring your router from home, you get wifi, and it is free. I used my cell phone hotspot the last time we were here (when the internet connection at Fort Wilderness cost $10/day), but the cell connection inside the camper is poor here, and the kids use up the data cap pretty quickly when I share it with them.
