sending large files with voom?

[novicecruiser123]

We are totally new to cruising and considering Royal Caribbean. Our #1 priority is to find reliable internet for my husband to work while on the voyage. He needs to send large work files back and forth via email. Will this be possible on voom on Royal Caribbean? If not, is there any other cruise line or option that we should consider? Thank you!

[twangster]

Large is a little ambiguous.  How large?  

The Voom Surf and stream provides 4 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up.  

I have worked from ships for years and made it work.  It is not as reliable as home service.  A heavy rain cloud can block the satellite signal.  Sometimes satellite internet isn't ideal every second of the day.  

Most email platforms don't allow very large files but maybe his company has some unique need where they have configured their email platform to exceed what "most" people normally send with email.  

Without knowing what he consider "large" it's hard to give more feedback.

[KristiZ]

29 minutes ago, novicecruiser123 said:

We are totally new to cruising and considering Royal Caribbean. Our #1 priority is to find reliable internet for my husband to work while on the voyage. He needs to send large work files back and forth via email. Will this be possible on voom on Royal Caribbean? If not, is there any other cruise line or option that we should consider? Thank you!

Welcome to the boards!

it depends on what he considers a large file, and if timeliness is important, and what region you’re sailing in (for satellite connection). 

[Reigert2008]

37 minutes ago, twangster said:

Large is a little ambiguous.  How large?  

The Voom Surf and stream provides 4 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up.  

I have worked from ships for years and made it work.  It is not as reliable as home service.  A heavy rain cloud can block the satellite signal.  Sometimes satellite internet isn't ideal every second of the day.  

Most email platforms don't allow very large files but maybe his company has some unique need where they have configured their email platform to exceed what "most" people normally send with email.  

Without knowing what he consider "large" it's hard to give more feedback.

Hijacking this, since I just thought of it.  Do you know if VPNs are allowed on Voom? I’ve been thinking of taking a solo cruise and trying to work remotely, but sometimes (rarely) even the hotel network will block a vpn connection.  
 

thanks!

[twangster]

27 minutes ago, Reigert2008 said:

Hijacking this, since I just thought of it.  Do you know if VPNs are allowed on Voom? I’ve been thinking of taking a solo cruise and trying to work remotely, but sometimes (rarely) even the hotel network will block a vpn connection.  
 

thanks!

Depends.

Consumer SSL VPNs are often blocked while if that same provider also has an IPSEC solution it may work.

Corporate VPN like Cisco, Fortinet, Juniper, etc have always worked for me but it is possible that your company uses some sort of VPN configuration that isn't compatible with satellite latency.  Some SonicWall firewalls use OpenSSL which has been problematic IME.  

[Traveler]

36 minutes ago, Reigert2008 said:

Hijacking this, since I just thought of it.  Do you know if VPNs are allowed on Voom? I’ve been thinking of taking a solo cruise and trying to work remotely, but sometimes (rarely) even the hotel network will block a vpn connection.  
 

thanks!

F5 and Cisco works for me almost most of the times . Never tried public one.

[Reigert2008]

31 minutes ago, Traveler said:

F5 and Cisco works for me almost most of the times . Never tried public one.

Thanks!

[Reigert2008]

39 minutes ago, twangster said:

Depends.

Consumer SSL VPNs are often blocked while if that same provider also has an IPSEC solution it may work.

Corporate VPN like Cisco, Fortinet, Juniper, etc have always worked for me but it is possible that your company uses some sort of VPN configuration that isn't compatible with satellite latency.  Some SonicWall firewalls use OpenSSL which has been problematic IME.  

Thanks!  I’ve only had issues with my personal VPN being blocked, and figured the corporate level ones should work.  I was thinking I could just use my personal machine and remotely connect to my work machines, but it’d probably be a better experience for me to lug the work laptop along as well

[novicecruiser123]

size: maybe 10 MB per document. Timeliness is important - wouldn't want to wait more than 10 minutes for something to finish sending. Would be cruising in the Caribbean but open to location - I did wonder if some itineraries (western vs eastern?) offer better reliability for internet than others.

[Reigert2008]

1 hour ago, novicecruiser123 said:

size: maybe 10 MB per document. Timeliness is important - wouldn't want to wait more than 10 minutes for something to finish sending. Would be cruising in the Caribbean but open to location - I did wonder if some itineraries (western vs eastern?) offer better reliability for internet than others.

If it were me, I would probably do a cruise or two and use the internet a bit, but not for work, to see how the service really is.  Of course, each persons job is different and has different requirements, so YMMV.  For me I know there are certain things that I absolutely could not do on a cruise, since it could be time sensitive and internet could be unreliable.  I also know that there are other types of my work that I could easily do from a cruise without issue.  For me, as I’ve been talking to my co-workers about trying to work from a cruise, the expectation is that it’s a “best effort” and I could be not able to work.

if they only way I could go on a vacation required me to be available for a lot of the time during the days,I’m would consider doing a different type vacation where I’d be able to control more of the variables, like a house rental in a neat location or something.
 

on s you’ve done a cruise or two, then you may be able to make the call for yourself.  I’ve done many cruises and am just now really thinking about working from the ship?  You could also find a cruise where you minimize your days away from work, such as a 5 night cruise that leaves 9th Friday, where  you have two weekend days built in. This is just an example and Royal may not have one that fits that.  

when I was in school one night a week, we used to vacation from Friday to Wednesday since class was on Thursday, but that was before we discovered cruising!
 

good luck!

[SpeedNoodles]

The quality of the internet also depends on the ship.

[PG Cruiser]

6 hours ago, SpeedNoodles said:

The quality of the internet also depends on the ship.

… and the room location.  The VOOM agent himself told me that if my room was farther away from the “routers” (I forgot what he called them),  I would have a weaker signal.

[twangster]

9 hours ago, novicecruiser123 said:

size: maybe 10 MB per document. Timeliness is important - wouldn't want to wait more than 10 minutes for something to finish sending. Would be cruising in the Caribbean but open to location - I did wonder if some itineraries (western vs eastern?) offer better reliability for internet than others.

I've emailed my cruise compases to the blog which are sometimes around 10MB PDF files over Voom.

At that size it usually works, takes a few minutes to send but once in a while it gets stuck and I have to resend it.

Satellite internet is never perfect and it's not just like home internet.  I've worked for many years from many different ships.  For the most part it works fine for working remotely but over those years there have been more than one occasion when the ship was passing through heavy rain right when I needed the internet the most and I couldn't work at that moment.  Murphy's law in action.  Satellite internet is not at all like land based internet.

Alaska has terrible internet on ships because of the region and how satellites work that far North.  I'd never try to work on an Alaskan cruise.  

[BrianB]

I don’t know about large files…but, I use Voom to stream movies and shows from Prime Video and Netflix. Also, that’s on the Anthem which is billed as a technology-enhanced ship. I don’t know about the internet on older ships. Occasionally there will be a disruption in the signal…but in my experience they have been minimal. Usually in storms. Except for a couple weeks ago when internet was down across the entire fleet for a day. Everyone on the Anthem who had a WiFi package received a pro-rated refund for the loss…and a little more for the inconvenience. 
When I’m working on something important online…I always save my work to my computer before I send it. I’ve had a connection loss mid-typing and lost some parts of a file before I was able to upload it. 
I would suggest testing the WiFi on your ship by sending a large test file similar to what you would be working with. if it has problems, try breaking it up into different files and sending them. And don’t be surprised by intermittent signal loss.

[PG Cruiser]

23 hours ago, BrianB said:

And don’t be surprised by intermittent signal loss.

Especially if you're moving around.  I don't know why the "Auto-Join" feature on my phone is always being disabled on its own.  So when I'm moving around, I lose the connection to the ship's routers and I have to manually connect again.

[twangster]

I do professional, industrial grade WiFi for a living.  Think of large manufacturing facilities, oil refineries or large open pit surface mining where every vehicle is tracked and reports data about the vehicle and load being carried, all using WiFi.

I also tend to be an Apple user with multiple Apple devices for years so I have a lot of exposure to a variety of Apple devices.  The most fussy devices on the planet for WiFi tend to be Apple devices.  They also can be the poorest performing devices when compared to other devices in the same environment.  It's not unusual for a minor ios update to dramatically change WiFi performance on an Apple device.  In summary, Apple sucks at WiFi.  

Apple isn't the only vendor that makes less than ideal WiFi enabled products.  Many consumer devices don't do WiFi well because they are trying to minimize component size and minimize battery drain in portable devices from laptops to phones.  Both of those design decisions don't lend themselves to the best WiFi experience.  

A ship can be a complex WiFi environment because of the all the metal involved.  For a WiFi engineer it's not a simple environment to deploy a WiFi solution.  Couple that with consumer devices that don't include the best approach for WiFi and you have the opportunity for a bad WiFi experience on board a ship.

That's not even considering the satellite internet on board.

Most people don't understand all the factors at work, they just claim "WiFi sucks".  For some people it may, for others it may not.  It depends.

[smokeybandit]

6 minutes ago, twangster said:

I do professional, industrial grade WiFi for a living.  Think of large manufacturing facilities, oil refineries or large open pit surface mining where every vehicle is tracked and reports data about the vehicle and load being carried, all using WiFi.

 

Penn State University needs to hire you to get a half decent wifi product at Beaver Stadium then.

[twangster]

To improve my chances of having the best WiFi experience in my cabin I don't rely on the poor antenna built into in my very expensive Apple laptop.  Instead I bring a USB WiFi adapter with me that does a much better job connecting to the ship WiFi system.

 

This is getting to be older now and I should probably look to replace it soon but the large external antennas do a much better job seeking out poor WiFi signals in my cabin.  

Since I tend to work on almost every cruise it is worth it to me to carry an external USB WiFi adapter to increase my opportunity for a better overall internet experience.  

I don't need the latest and greatest adapter that does multiple gigabit of throughput because the ship internet connection is capped at 4Mb down and 2 Mb up per user.  So this older and proven adapter works for my needs.

[Dicey]

12 hours ago, Reigert2008 said:

Hijacking this, since I just thought of it.  Do you know if VPNs are allowed on Voom? I’ve been thinking of taking a solo cruise and trying to work remotely, but sometimes (rarely) even the hotel network will block a vpn connection.  
 

thanks!

Yes - we always use PIA VPN onboard and it worked fine.  However, the latency can be significant sometimes.  Should be fine for emails and sending files but I wouldn't rely on it for important video conferences.  

[whitsmom]

We had a VPN (AT&T) on our phone and it kept getting blocked. 

[Dlove707]

Do the files have to actually be sent? Could something like cloud storage and file sharing be used in this situation?

[jticarruthers]

Worked on Harmony over Thanksgiving.

 

Fortinet VPN worked fine, able to get on my network and transfer files slowly but without issue.