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  #1  
Old 12 Dec 2008
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Broadband Access in Central & South America
I'm planning a long trip through Central and South America next year. I am a "vlogger" and take videos while I am on the road (YouTube - AtlasRider's Channel).

I would like to upload videos while I am on the road and so I am wondering about the broadband capabilities of the net cafes in Central and South America. Is it mostly dialup and the idea of uploading a 200MBs of video is ridiculous, or do they have broadband in many places?

Without broadband I think I may just mail back CDs that I burn while I am on the road and then have a friend upload them back home. So, another question would be, how costly would sending thin envelopes back to the US be? I make a lot of videos so this would be done on a weekly basis. I have heard the reliability of the mail being questionable, so I may even send two copies to increase my odds.

Any idea? Thanks
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Old 12 Dec 2008
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I think you will find that internet is widely available and Broadband in most place in South and Central America, unless you are well off the beaten track. These days most backpacking hostels seem to have Broadband wireless connection.

As for sending stuff home, you could use DHL or whoever, but don't bank on any kind of reliable postal service.
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Old 13 Dec 2008
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You're going to have trouble uploading multi-hundred-megabyte files. Internet access is everywhere but it's rarely fast and it's rarely reliable. Expect that the upload will take many hours and the network will completely drop out for brief periods several times in that span.

Depending on how you upload the files, you'll be ok if you use some sort of upload tool that can resume uploads automatically whenever it senses that the network connection is up. It may take several days to get a 200MB file uploaded but it will work eventually. Get private rooms in hostels (which almost always have wifi) or look for hotels that have wifi (less common in budget places) so you can go out (or fall asleep) and leave your laptop dutifully pushing the bits. But you really do need something that is tolerant to network interruptions without a human to press the resume button, otherwise what would normally be an overnight upload will take days.

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Old 13 Dec 2008
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This hostel which I'm staying in had heaps of dropouts until I went downstairs and discovered the reception was better. In Australia you never get free internet anywhere, here it is great
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Old 13 Dec 2008
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Originally Posted by PocketHead View Post
This hostel which I'm staying in had heaps of dropouts until I went downstairs and discovered the reception was better. In Australia you never get free internet anywhere, here it is great
Heh, same in the US. Funny that it's easier to find wifi in the developing world than the developed world.

I found (in Mexico and Central America) that wifi interference was only half the problem; with great frequency various places along the trunk upstream would breakdown. With even more frequency, somebody next door would start a torrent download and either bog down the connection to near-uselessness or destabilize the router (it's amazing to me that home router hardware still has trouble with bittorrent). This effect will be much worse when flooding the router with a large upload rather than downloads.

I often had trouble getting my pictures uploaded to flickr, and tended to queue them up until I stayed at a place that finally had reliable internet.

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Old 13 Dec 2008
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Heh, same in the US. Funny that it's easier to find wifi in the developing world than the developed world.

I found (in Mexico and Central America) that wifi interference was only half the problem; with great frequency various places along the trunk upstream would breakdown. With even more frequency, somebody next door would start a torrent download and either bog down the connection to near-uselessness or destabilize the router (it's amazing to me that home router hardware still has trouble with bittorrent). This effect will be much worse when flooding the router with a large upload rather than downloads.

I often had trouble getting my pictures uploaded to flickr, and tended to queue them up until I stayed at a place that finally had reliable internet.

Jeff
Yeah true uploads are the real killer especially if they're on ADSL(a for a-symmetric) and even more so but only in rare cases, satellite.

It's very annoying staying in a hotel and being asked for your credit card to use the net, then they debit you (in aus) $20 for 24 hours, sure it's fine if you're there for work but otherwise pretty stupid and way over the top for travelers.
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Old 14 Dec 2008
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more common and often faster
I'm in Argentina now and during the 6 months of traveling, I've had good broadband access on average, every other day. IF you look for it, you can find a hotel that has it in nearly every city, especially in colombia, argentina, and chile.

In central america there were internet cafes in the smallest of towns with pretty good and stable access. Non private access is much better in central/south american than in the US where most of the internet is in people's houses.

Hell, in Chile/Argentina, practically every gas station has fantastic and super fast Wifi.

I back up my photos to my webserver (few hundred megs/shot) and haven't had any problems.

If you're really obsessed with getting videos out on a schedule, you could buy/rig an external antenna for your laptop. Sometimes in hotels the signals aren't very good.
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Old 15 Dec 2008
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Wow, lots of great feedback. Thanks everyone!

@daveg

I would like to do uploads on a weekly basis. So perhaps an external antenna is something to look into. I plan on putting a wifi locator device on my bike. Basically I can just ride around until I find a strong signal without having to stop get the laptop out and check. Sounds like a good theory, we'll see how it works out in practice, lol.

I just got a new camera that shoots in HD. The quality it awesome! So that makes my uploading problem even worse when a 4 minute video takes up 300MBs. So I'm leaning towards burning CDs and shipping them back home every week or two weeks. Then having a good friend upload them.

We'll see, you guys have given me more stuff to think about. Thanks!
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