Hey there! My husband and I have transitioned to traveling full time by doing sits while working remotely. We disclose this on our profile and also make sure to mention it to the owners, mostly for two reasons: 1) we believe that’s good for the pets, we spend more time in the house, so we can give more attention to the pets; 2) we need at least one dedicated workspace and good stable WiFi.
Nevertheless… we had our fair share of less than ideal internet connections, so here’s my question: If excellent WiFi is a must for you, how do you go about verifying the WiFi quality of a sit before agreeing to it?
We have started considering sending links with internet speed tests to the owners as just asking “is your WiFi good?” has not worked well in the past for us (spoiler alert, not everybody uses internet in the same way and not everybody requires the same bandwidth we need).
We’ve actually not experienced this but it was something we worried about. We are heavy internet users both work online - we just ask what speed the internet is and is it unlimited.
Yes, we did that in Japan after it kept happening to us on sits and paid stays. But at the end of the day, it’s not something we want to contemplate moving forward because we are trying to travel on a budget and those devices and plans can get pricey.
If so, then you definitely should discuss with HOs. It’s pretty straightforward to tell them what minimum speed you need and if they’re like, duh, then you probe further. Some folks know right away since they telecommute, too. Or say you need to Zoom, do your interview / chat via Zoom and you’ll know right away whether they have a fast enough connection.
My last sit, they upgraded their internet service right before I sat, because I told them what I needed. I mention that in my sitter profile, for starters. I need high speed to telecommute.
The video chat before confirming a sit is a good indicator of the owner’s Internet connection. If the call is lagging and freezing I’ve asked owners right away what is the speed of their connection. The worst connection I had was surprisingly in Switzerland, where a young couple was using a mobile hotspot for their Internet and the connection kept dropping.
Lots of rural areas in the UK have very poor Internet and mobile signals. Not the residents fault. Parts of Lincolnshire for example has no real infrastructure. I have very fast speed wifi as I live near a big city. I don’t need it for work, so it doesn’t matter to me, but don’t pick a rural sit and expect it to be fast. I am in North Yorkshire on a sit in a big property and it keeps dropping out, Scotland was the same last month.
There’s bad internet sometimes even in places that aren’t rural. Like my husband and I were looking at a vacation property in the Vegas area and it happened to be two houses down from where good internet existed. They just hadn’t extended coverage past that point yet.
And in the San Francisco Bay Area, I once lived on a hillside with craploads of housing and the cell signal sucked as soon as you drove up the hill. Sometimes, I’d pull over to finish my call before the signal dropped off.
At one office I worked at, you’d have to stand in different parts of the building to get a good signal, depending on which provider you had. The building management wouldn’t allow the installation of dishes past a certain number and we’d hit it. This was in a building shared by Twitter in San Francisco.
We are sitters and home owners. In our sit listing we state what our wifi speed is as we know it is important to sitters who work from home. As sitters the wifi speed is not an issue as we are retired. As long as there is some…
We are in the same situation as you. We mention in our application that we need stable wifi strong enough for video calling.
During the call with the owners we check whether there is any lagging, disruption,… and occasionally we ask for a speedtest.
We’ve been ‘lucky’ most of the times, but once, in London, the Internet kept going. Owner said: “Oh yes, they’ve been working on it further up the street since last week” They probably didn’t tell us, scared that we would cancel last minute…
Yes, I had a similar construction problem in London, messing with my internet. I was able to work through it, but was ready to get a hotspot, if needed.
We also ask them what type of internet they have. Internet reliability can vary drastically whether it’s cable, DSL, microwave, satellite, or fiber. Cable, microwave, and satellite are the least reliable in my experience.
Yes. At home, my husband and I — both telecommuters — have redundant internet, plus a whole house generator, so we’ve made it nearly impossible to be without online access. We also have internet in our RV, if we need to evacuate in case of a natural disaster or such.
In case of disasters, I think you would need satellite communications. When cell phone towers still work, they get overloaded. And they won’t last very long (a few hours or so) after electrical power is gone. There were problems with this during the wildfires on Cyprus and Maui.
Yup, it’s satellite in the RV. It doesn’t work well if you’re in say a forest, LOL. You’ve got to stay in the open. But that’s also why f/t RVers who telecommute often have redundancies with their cell carriers / hotspots.
We work remotely too and it’s definitely our main concern. We write in our application that we need stable, reliable internet. We then address this in follow-up communications if the owners didn’t respond specifically to this point. Sometimes they would send us a screenshot of a speedtest, bless them. For Airbnb’s we look for the mention of ‘internet’ or ‘wifi’ in reviews. We also ensure that we each have different phone providers that we can use for hot-spotting if necessary. This gives us a 3-way chance (1. HO’s connection; 2. my phone provider in emergencies; and 3. my husband’s different phone provider in emergencies).
At times it has been frustrating and stressful, especially if it’s a longer sit. In worst cases you would have to leave the house during the day and seek connection elsewhere, like a library or mall … or buy data for hotspotting from yet another provider that does get signal in your area. Luckily this hasn’t happened too often, but it’s always a concern.
I’ve not had to do this on a sit, but I did when road tripping cross country before getting an RV with internet: If you belong to a hotel chain rewards program, you might consider dropping in and using their wifi in a pinch, even if you’re not staying there. I stay with them enough that they cut me breaks.
I’ve had a number of sits where they have the T-Mobile 5G wifi service which I think is just a glorified cellular hotspot. Often the signal is poor but I have found that if I move the device to a different room or near a window the signal improves greatly. The owner thanked me later because they had been having trouble too.
Another time I had a signal that would drop with annoying frequency. I suspected there might be a problem with the router so I picked up a $25 basic unit from Walmart and swapped it in. That took care of the problem. The owner offered to reimburse me but I told them to consider it a welcome home gift.
Hi Guys,
I’ve not had issues so far but I’ve sat for a lot of work from home people.
I used to own an internet support company many years ago. The internet can slow down drastically depending on how many people share the local hub and how many of these are using it at the same time.
Thick walls are the enemy of most routers as the signals bounce off thick walls. You need a mesh system, a repeater or a powerline set-up to help compensate for signal loss in parts of a property.
They probably didn’t tell us, scared that we would cancel last minute…