Starlink Internet could be coming to Royal Caribbean

[recogneyes]

7 hours ago, Matt said:

Starlink on Wonder was absolutely terrible this past week. Speeds and (perceived) latency were really atrocious and it honestly felt like I was on Mariner of the Seas pre-Starlink at times.

I don't know if this is the result of a throttling on the network level, or an upnetwork change.

I heard from multiple guests onboard the Voom rep said it was an issue with Starlink, but for an entire week? Not so sure.

Very disappointing.

We had the same experience on Anthem last week - it was beyond frustrating.  Many times just connecting to "guest Anthem) to the the app or chat feature wasn't even possible.  

[barjpoe]

Any updates?  We're sailing on Radiance is a couple of weeks. Was wondering if smaller capacity ships have fewer less problems the larger class ships sailing at full or near capacity? Or is it across the fleet?

[DublinFC]

47 minutes ago, barjpoe said:

Any updates?  We're sailing on Radiance is a couple of weeks. Was wondering if smaller capacity ships have fewer less problems the larger class ships sailing at full or near capacity? Or is it across the fleet?

Not sure if this has already been stated, but I read that Starlink was to be on all RC ships by April 1st.  I hope its as good as it has been advertised.  We are on Harmony soon and it would be nice for strong internet.  

[twangster]

45 minutes ago, barjpoe said:

Any updates?  We're sailing on Radiance is a couple of weeks. Was wondering if smaller capacity ships have fewer less problems the larger class ships sailing at full or near capacity? Or is it across the fleet?

I suspect we'll have good times and bad times. 

Royal installs many Starlink systems on each ship and aggregates the bandwidth from the individual Starlink systems.  Larger ships install more Starlink systems (20+) while smaller ships install 8 or so.  

Jewel has been a bright spot for most with speeds faster than Oasis class.  Some users complain about frequent drops in WiFi but that is often associated with having things like Apple Private Relay, randomized MAC or Google One's "protection" software enabled.  Some of those systems route some or all of your internet traffic through their cloud to protect you but as you can imagine that can mean problems with captive portal internet services like Voom when they block users or DNS from reaching the ship systems.

At times we'll have a great experience and at times it be an "ugh" experience.  

[twangster]

I just noticed that Starlink has reduced the speeds of the maritime service.

It used to say up to 350 Mbps speed but now says up to 220 Mbps.

https://www.starlink.com/maritime

 

[GatorCruiser]

2 hours ago, DublinFC said:

Not sure if this has already been stated, but I read that Starlink was to be on all RC ships by April 1st.  I hope its as good as it has been advertised.  We are on Harmony soon and it would be nice for strong internet.  

Ehh was just on harmony, don’t get your hopes up 

[Lovetocruise2002]

2 hours ago, DublinFC said:

We are on Harmony soon and it would be nice for strong internet.  

Harmony internet was awful the week of March 11th.

[asquared17]

4 hours ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

Harmony internet was awful the week of March 11th.

rip my future

[DublinFC]

21 hours ago, GatorCruiser said:

Ehh was just on harmony, don’t get your hopes up 

 

20 hours ago, Lovetocruise2002 said:

Harmony internet was awful the week of March 11th.

Well at least I know going in what to expect.  I have to do a little work while I am on board, so we shall see what happens

[jeffmw]

I just got off Wonder and was shocked at how fast the Internet was. 

Perhaps it was because I was used to what it was always like in the past (where, really, it barely worked.) This time around, the speed and consistency were in line with what I would consider typical wifi access. For example, on the old wifi you could send texts and maybe an email, but websites were slow and there was no chance at video. This time I could watch videos on social media, pull up websites, and use the Internet in other ways we'd consider typical.

No one else seems to be reporting this experience, but it was mine for the entire week on the ship. 

[F1guynz]

The Internet had been awful on Quantum. I just lost my last post when saving to royalcaribbeanblog on my iPad. It is so annoying. This was the Speedtest I ran. Hopefully my post will turn up by the morning. It said saving and went blank but then nothing happened.

[twangster]

19 minutes ago, F1guynz said:

The Internet had been awful on Quantum. I just lost my last post when saving to royalcaribbeanblog on my iPad. It is so annoying. This was the Speedtest I ran. Hopefully my post will turn up by the morning. It said saving and went blank but then nothing happened.

Yikes.  That's bad.  Where was the ship at the time?

[FloatyBoaty]

1 hour ago, F1guynz said:

The Internet had been awful on Quantum. I just lost my last post when saving to royalcaribbeanblog on my iPad. It is so annoying. This was the Speedtest I ran. Hopefully my post will turn up by the morning. It said saving and went blank but then nothing happened.

It was really awful once we were a day out from Brisbane when I was on March 14-27 as well (over to New Zealand). The crew did have a "Starlink test day" on the crew wifi when we were in one of the NZ ports. The wifi did not improve after that and not sure whether it was ever set up for passengers while I was onboard. Crew said it was supposed to be operational the 28th.

[F1guynz]

Hi, like @FloatyBoaty mentioned this was when we were one day out of Brisbane.

‘We are now on day 2 and it has improved a lot and it is usable again.

[twangster]

Global Starlink outage recently due to expired certificates.

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/spacex-starlink-outage-caused-by-expired-ground-station-certificates/

As a relatively new company it's going to take a few years for these sorts of things to work themselves out.  Certificate management is the bain of many IT shops. 

[smokeybandit]

Expired certificates, hah.

Such a simple thing, yet anyone in the IT world has experienced it at least once

[billdauterive]

4 hours ago, twangster said:

Global Starlink outage recently due to expired certificates.

[Matt]

Starlink on Mariner has been good all cruise but today it was  

[smokeybandit]

38 minutes ago, Matt said:

Starlink on Mariner has been good all cruise but today it was  

 

Much better than the 3 I got in December

[Al Miller]

On Anthem in February and was great in my room and spotty around the ship. Like in the Pub... forget it! Sorrento's, just 30 feet away... super fast. The vagaries of bouncing wireless signals around a big metal tub I guess.

[twangster]

Radiance

Voom specialist states no ships have removed the speed limits. 

Apparently all their HQ communication is delivered over Voom. 

[FionaMG]

This is Anthem right now (on our way to Port Canaveral from NJ).

I don't know what any of it means but haven't had any issues with the internet so far (touch wood).

[WAAAYTOOO]

9 hours ago, FionaMG said:

I don't know what any of it means

I’m with you !

[BB1]

I didn't want to jinx myself so I waited until we got off Allure today. The internet worked perfectly all week.

[DublinFC]

20 hours ago, BB1 said:

I didn't want to jinx myself so I waited until we got off Allure today. The internet worked perfectly all week.

Hoping the internet on Harmony is working well in a few weeks

[asquared17]

30 minutes ago, DublinFC said:

Hoping the internet on Harmony is working well in a few weeks

i’m on harmony right now and it’s been near perfect. no drops in service, speeds are really good (i notice mostly when uploading pics for my liveblog) and we have yet to have issues. 

hopefully this doesn’t jinx myself…

[Ampurp85]

I had near perfect internet on Freedom a couple of weeks ago........until Nassau. There were no issues once we docked but when we got within a certain distance, the internet completely bonked out, even the TV stopped showing certain channels and would freeze. 

[Hockeyman55]

We sailed on Wonder last week and the internet was pretty decent, had a few moments where some web sites would take a little bit to load but for the most part it didn't make me want to pull my hair out . I was even able to stream game 6 of the Panther vs Bruins game on my phone with no issues 

[OCSC Mike]

24 minutes ago, Hockeyman55 said:

We sailed on Wonder last week and the internet was pretty decent, had a few moments where some web sites would take a little bit to load but for the most part it didn't make me want to pull my hair out . I was even able to stream game 6 of the Panther vs Bruins game on my phone with no issues 

I believe I read that every cabin on Wonder has its own access point so I guess that should help for in cabin connectivity.

P.S. No issues b/c the stream was good or b/c you were rooting for the Panthers?

[twangster]

Last week a land genie was at sea on Wonder and reported the 4 Mbps Voom cap was raised to 9 Mbps after St. Thomas.  

[twangster]

During the Icon preview tour posted by Matt I caught a glimpse of an access point in an Icon cabin they toured.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arcmBdCs6lk

It appears Icon will have access points in each cabin.  They appear to be Cisco 9501AXW access points.  

 

[Xaa]

Nice! Good catch @twangster.

It's off topic, but what are your thoughts on Destination Dispatch for the elevators?  I like the idea, but I'm ignorant having never used one.

[twangster]

15 minutes ago, Xaa said:

Nice! Good catch @twangster.

It's off topic, but what are your thoughts on Destination Dispatch for the elevators?  I like the idea, but I'm ignorant having never used one.

In broad terms it's a good idea.   There will be a learning curve on a cruise ship.   Some will take a longer time to get it.  

[Xaa]

Indeed, I worry about the clientele understanding the system.  I imagine my parents and how many iterations it would take.

I'm hoping they provide some education like maybe a TV screen on a loop demonstrating how to use it and tips like each person choosing the destination or entering groups if their controller accommodates that.

We'll know soon enough.

Back to the Starlink conversation...

[Geezer Of The Seas]

I fully get Internet at sea isn't going to be our sticks n' bricks broadband on land. Pricey for the service sure, but for surf and texting was more than adequate. 3 different RCCL ship classes, 2 before Starlink, 1 after. The service on Mariner in our cabin was the  worst. Told the suite  concierge about it; 3 hours later we found a wired  WAP installed in an ethernet port at the desk. Helped immensely. I chalk up the service quality on the older vessels  to the technology available at the time. Wonder of the Seas was the best experience though not blistering fast. Fastest speeds we saw onboard and underway was 3.7 MBPS, the best was on Perfect Day, 9.79 MBPS down. Newer  ship, better, infrastructure  I suppose, and considering the trip was 363 passengers short of a "head in every bed", the bandwidth available seemed to be for the most part, up to the task; was able to reliably stream Sirius XM from my phone from anywhere on the ship and Perfect Day.

[ScottD]

5 hours ago, Xaa said:

Nice! Good catch @twangster.

It's off topic, but what are your thoughts on Destination Dispatch for the elevators?  I like the idea, but I'm ignorant having never used one.

I've used it in a hotel a few years ago...definitely takes some getting used to. You just type in the floor you are going to and it will tell you what number elevator to stand in front of. When it gets to you, you jump in and it takes you to that floor. It does suck if you aren't paying attention and miss the number it flashes, then you're either guessing or re-entering the number and waiting  

[Matt]

Internet on Anthem during our Norway cruise has been good to okay. 

Problem has been the WiFi network, which drops the connection until you re-enable your WiFi and reconnect. I even had @twangster and @smokeybandit attempt to assist with troubleshooting. 
 

Of course, fjords aren’t great at maintaining a satellite connection either. 

[twangster]

7 minutes ago, Matt said:

Internet on Anthem during our Norway cruise has been good to okay. 

Problem has been the WiFi network, which drops the connection until you re-enable your WiFi and reconnect. I even had @twangster and @smokeybandit attempt to assist with troubleshooting. 
 

Of course, fjords aren’t great at maintaining a satellite connection either. 

Sounds like a visit to the Voom desk is in order. 

[ZBrady]

I've looked all over for a document that I remember seeing somewhere on the forum but can't find it - figured this would be the place to ask. 

Essentially, there was a step-by-step guide for a setting specific to iOS devices that could be toggled on/off to make sure VOOM was operating properly. 

Is that still relevant and if so does anyone have that document on hand?

[twangster]

32 minutes ago, ZBrady said:

I've looked all over for a document that I remember seeing somewhere on the forum but can't find it - figured this would be the place to ask. 

Essentially, there was a step-by-step guide for a setting specific to iOS devices that could be toggled on/off to make sure VOOM was operating properly. 

Is that still relevant and if so does anyone have that document on hand?

 

it's also included in more recent cruise compasses.  

https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/cruise-compass