[arboristman]

the dongle is an adapter.its about the size of a digital camera.it also uses a little power cord/adapter.it plugs into the rear serail port,and on the dongle is an Ethernet port.

so really its an adapter to hook your captain 7100 (or any captain) to the internet.
when connected you can receive weather forecasts from around the world and they also plan on adding games.
you can also run iks.iks=internet key sharing.
what this does,is when your connected to the net with your captain is receive info that keep video up.
the advantage is,sometimes(most often) during ecm hits when files go down,the iks keeps tv up.and if it does goes down,its usually only minutes or an hour or two until it is restored.
they sell for around a hundred bucks shipped.but there are no fees to connect to the servers or anything.
it must be the captain dongle,as i understand it,there is info in the dongle the receiver understands to allow you access.