StarLink Internet now being throttled down to nearly unusable speeds

[twangster]

15 minutes ago, WAAAYTOOO said:

So, Mr Webbot…

1. How do I know if I have such an issue ?

2.  How do I fix it ?

a.  Apple user

b.  Device ignorant - no idea what DNS is or how/where’s to find it

 

I think I’m ok here since I have no trouble logging on/off….just wondering

Apple can be sneaky and decide to make something a default during a seemingly minor update so while you are okay right now, here is how to disable, or look for private relay in settings:

1. Open the Settings app, then tap your name.
2. Tap iCloud, then select Private Relay. 
3. To turn Private Relay on or off, tap Private Relay.

 

[WAAAYTOOO]

14 minutes ago, twangster said:

Apple can be sneaky and decide to make something a default during a seemingly minor update so while you are okay right now, here is how to disable, or look for private relay in settings:

1. Open the Settings app, then tap your name.
2. Tap iCloud, then select Private Relay. 
3. To turn Private Relay on or off, tap Private Relay.

 

Yippee !  Thank you !

[WAAAYTOOO]

Hmmmm.. iCloud is “grayed out” so it doesn’t respond when I tap it.  I guess I don’t have it enabled….whatever that means….

[AshleyDillo]

It looks like they're trying to inform folks how to do this if they're having issues. This was on the back of the VOOM paper left in the cabin on Wonder.

[Lexster]

4 hours ago, AshleyDillo said:

It looks like they're trying to inform folks how to do this if they're having issues. This was on the back of the VOOM paper left in the cabin on Wonder.

Along these lines, I suspect this may be why some people say the chat function doesn't notify them in a timely manner. Almost every phone is very aggressive in killing apps when not in use so they can say they have longer battery life and the Royal app is not likely classified as a messaging app, so most phones are going to kill it quickly. Folks will likely have to go in and tell their phone to unrestrict the Royal app. Heck, even on my Samsung phone, I had to specifically unrestrict Telegram or I'd get delayed messages and it IS a messaging app.

[Jglad]

On Oasis now (March 19-26) and speed in our balcony room (deck 8, mid ship) and everywhere else has been essentially unusable.  Often the download speed is less than 1M and upload never gets anywhere near 1M.  4.1M download is the best I’ve ever recorded.

I just spoke with the voom internet desk and the guy had zero solutions.  It’s just very slow overall.   DO NOT plan to work on an RC ship as there’s a good chance you’ll experience the same thing.  Or you’ll get lucky.  Who knows.  Streaming anything is impossible. 

 

[Carlos A.]

Just got off Freedom and had the same experience, It's UNUSABLE, at least you could do a Speed Test, int FOS they've blocked Fast.com and Speedtest.net, why? I just can't understand why.

The Voom internet desk manager had zero options besides the paper shown above, but al least he agreed with me, restricting the speed doesn't work at all. I've been on FOS before/after Starlink and I can say that now it's just garbage.  

[Lexster]

No doubt they've blocked the speed test sites to prevent folks from posting proof of the slow speeds.

[jupiter03]

Just got back from Allure and people were complaining about internet also. My experience is that my cabin in the very front of the ship on deck 11 had decent internet for downloads (~ 8 mbps) and terrible for uploads (<1). I also had good internet speeds in the windjammer. However, the internet was pretty much non-existent while waiting for every show I went to (aquashow, comedy show, theater). I did notice that my internet worked again in the middle of a show. At first I thought they must be blocking the internet in these venues, but maybe it's related to the number of people who were trying to use the internet at any one time. The comedy club is tiny though, so I don't know.

The best speed I got was 14.3 mbps on deck 15 near the solarium on the last sea day. (see attached)

I suspect the in-cabin internet speed depends on how close you are to the wifi routers and I may have been lucky to be near one, as I heard others complain how the internet was useless for them.

[twangster]

It's almost like the problem isn't the satellite provider... 

Oh wait.  I think I said that when they first talked about moving to Starlink.  

[Lexster]

1 hour ago, twangster said:

It's almost like the problem isn't the satellite provider... 

Oh wait.  I think I said that when they first talked about moving to Starlink.  

Satellite internet sucks, period. When you have thousands of people in such a small space potentially trying to access the same uplink, it's going to be slow. The technology just doesn't exist to be better than it is.

[twangster]

32 minutes ago, Lexster said:

Satellite internet sucks, period. When you have thousands of people in such a small space potentially trying to access the same uplink, it's going to be slow. The technology just doesn't exist to be better than it is.

And yet the internet doesn't suck on some other cruise lines.  Hmmm.  

[Carlos A.]

38 minutes ago, Lexster said:

Satellite internet sucks, period. When you have thousands of people in such a small space potentially trying to access the same uplink, it's going to be slow. The technology just doesn't exist to be better than it is.

FOS had satellite internet a few years ago and didn't sucked as much as it does now with starlink... 

[HeWhoWaits]

21 minutes ago, twangster said:

And yet the internet doesn't suck on some other cruise lines.  Hmmm.  

We're taking a trip on Holland America in April. I'll report back on how the internet goes for me on that 17-nighter.

[Lexster]

22 minutes ago, twangster said:

And yet the internet doesn't suck on some other cruise lines.  Hmmm.  

Which ones? I've never gone on other cruise lines.

[twangster]

9 hours ago, Lexster said:

Which ones? I've never gone on other cruise lines.

Princess for example.  Princess doesn't employ per user caps that throttle bandwidth.  

[Lexster]

3 hours ago, twangster said:

Princess for example.  Princess doesn't employ per user caps that throttle bandwidth.  

Well, I would say keep in mind that StarLink is used as a widespread consumer product whereas I'm not sure if MedallionNet is used by anyone other than cruise ships.

[steverk]

15 hours ago, twangster said:

It's almost like the problem isn't the satellite provider... 

Oh wait.  I think I said that when they first talked about moving to Starlink.  

That would mesh with my recent experience.  On my recent Allure sail. It was unusable when I was in a crowded venue, like the theater. It was ok when I wasn't,  such as my room or diamond lounge. This indicates the access points were overloaded. Internet won't be quick when your access point is overloaded!

[RCVirgin22]

Glad that this affect me in absolutely no way. When I take a vacation I block out the rest of the world and enjoy why I'm there in the first place, everything I left will still be there when I get back. 

[BigKarl]

35 minutes ago, RCVirgin22 said:

Glad that this affect me in absolutely no way. When I take a vacation I block out the rest of the world and enjoy why I'm there in the first place, everything I left will still be there when I get back. 

Now I am Disappointed!  Does that mean that my two "Adult" children will be there when I return?

[RCVirgin22]

Unless you changed the locks, shut of the water and electric while gone then probably so. 

[D Alt]

I don't know about all this throttling but when I was on Rhapsody last week, the internet was stellar the whole trip for the most part.  I was live streaming the whole time. 

[twangster]

9 hours ago, Lexster said:

Well, I would say keep in mind that StarLink is used as a widespread consumer product whereas I'm not sure if MedallionNet is used by anyone other than cruise ships.

MedallionNet is powered by SES/O3b, the satellite provider that Royal dumped to migrate to Starlink.  Also, the maritime service from Starlink is not residential.  Royal has implemented a commercial Starlink service that uses multiple antenna and modems to aggregate bandwidth up to 5Gbps on larger ships.   

Where I work we have over 8,000 users that use around that throughput on a daily basis.  But we don't cap or police users to low bandwidth limits like Royal does that are known to be problematic for WiFi users.  

[TaylorTravels]

On 3/8/2023 at 8:34 AM, Captain Cruise said:

From super fast speed to almost no speed, Royal Caribbean and Celebrity is slowly but surely throttling down the internet speeds they provide to guests. At frst, we were seeing speeds exceeding 200M download and many people, myself included, realized that we could work on the ship productively. That is seemingly coming to an end. ON Wonder, the speed have been cut down to around 1M from the initial rollout of 200M. Other ships , such as Grandeur, Mariner, and Indy have been reporting the same scenario. Right now, here on Vision, we still have 200M, although overnight the speed may have been cut as we are now seeing a 25M cap. 

These issues, intentionally implemented, are starting to impact the most loyal guests who work from the ships on a daily basis.

Could the throttling and wifi issues have anything to do with RCCL adopting Zscalers Zero Trust at the beginning of March? I am not an IT person but the addition and the throttling seem to coincide. Any thoughts? 

[twangster]

2 hours ago, TaylorTravels said:

Could the throttling and wifi issues have anything to do with RCCL adopting Zscalers Zero Trust at the beginning of March? I am not an IT person but the addition and the throttling seem to coincide. Any thoughts? 

If they adopted ZTNA 10 years ago I could see the correlation but the ZScalers are for corporate use cases and wouldn't be used for guest traffic. 

Royal has throttled for a long time.  Back in the day of slow internet speeds it was thought to be a manner to create fair access.  Over the past 10 years or so networking experts have stopped recommending per user throttling especially for WiFi users since it tends to create RF congestion in the radio spectrum and actually makes it worse.  

The bigger part of the equation is that Starlink, well..., basically sucks right now.  Even for rural residential users who loved it at first are now loathing the slower Starlink speeds at higher costs.   

The next generation of Starlink v2-mini satellites was supposed to create some relief but they are having issues with the ones that just launched a few weeks ago.  They've stopped raising them to their final orbit and are looking to throw away several of them.  Pretty significant technology failure costing millions and further delaying any fix for the current poor performance.  

https://spacenews.com/spacex-experiencing-problems-with-first-upgraded-starlink-v2-satellites/

Terrible timing for a company that has a frustrated customer base:

https://futurism.com/starlink-internet-connection-problem

https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlink-speeds-continue-to-fall-in-the-us-canada-amid-network-congestion

 

[TaylorTravels]

1 hour ago, twangster said:

If they adopted ZTNA 10 years ago I could see the correlation but the ZScalers are for corporate use cases and wouldn't be used for guest traffic. 

Royal has throttled for a long time.  Back in the day of slow internet speeds it was thought to be a manner to create fair access.  Over the past 10 years or so networking experts have stopped recommending per user throttling especially for WiFi users since it tends to create RF congestion in the radio spectrum and actually makes it worse.  

The bigger part of the equation is that Starlink, well..., basically sucks right now.  Even for rural residential users who loved it at first are now loathing the slower Starlink speeds at higher costs.   

The next generation of Starlink v2-mini satellites was supposed to create some relief but they are having issues with the ones that just launched a few weeks ago.  They've stopped raising them to their final orbit and are looking to throw away several of them.  Pretty significant technology failure costing millions and further delaying any fix for the current poor performance.  

https://spacenews.com/spacex-experiencing-problems-with-first-upgraded-starlink-v2-satellites/

Terrible timing for a company that has a frustrated customer base:

https://futurism.com/starlink-internet-connection-problem

https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlink-speeds-continue-to-fall-in-the-us-canada-amid-network-congestion

 

It all just really sucks. We have been working from the cruise ships and it has been awesome. Now we are looking at cancelling in April and May because we can’t take the chance that the internet doesn’t work. We barely squeaked by in February. Do you see this problem resolving by September? I know nobody really knows but RCCL is going to have to do something? Go back to the previous system or stop selling Starlink as something it’s not. I hope they get something figured out because they are going to lose the cruisers who cruise monthly because they can work from the ship. 

[twangster]

19 minutes ago, TaylorTravels said:

It all just really sucks. We have been working from the cruise ships and it has been awesome. Now we are looking at cancelling in April and May because we can’t take the chance that the internet doesn’t work. We barely squeaked by in February. Do you see this problem resolving by September? I know nobody really knows but RCCL is going to have to do something? Go back to the previous system or stop selling Starlink as something it’s not. I hope they get something figured out because they are going to lose the cruisers who cruise monthly because they can work from the ship. 

Royal didn't sell Starlink as anything.  They announced they were migrating to Starlink.  That's all they've "promised".  

If you book a hotel do they say who their internet provider is?  

I've done my share of working from cruise ships.  All the way to becoming Pinnacle.  That's a decent amount of cruising.  My remote work efforts were always built around moving most meetings to port days so I could use cellular as a backup because many times internet wasn't great, or a rain cloud moved through at the (not so) perfect time.  My work activities let me time shift as long as the work got done.  Not all remote work is compatible with cruising and/or satellite internet on land or at sea.  Royal has never promised internet availability 24 x 7, not before, and not with Starlink.  

[TaylorTravels]

1 hour ago, twangster said:

Royal didn't sell Starlink as anything.  They announced they were migrating to Starlink.  That's all they've "promised".  

If you book a hotel do they say who their internet provider is?  

I've done my share of working from cruise ships.  All the way to becoming Pinnacle.  That's a decent amount of cruising.  My remote work efforts were always built around moving most meetings to port days so I could use cellular as a backup because many times internet wasn't great, or a rain cloud moved through at the (not so) perfect time.  My work activities let me time shift as long as the work got done.  Not all remote work is compatible with cruising and/or satellite internet on land or at sea.  Royal has never promised internet availability 24 x 7, not before, and not with Starlink.  

I disagree. Read the press from RCCL about upgrading to Starlink. They sell it as being superior to Voom Surf and Stream. Thousands of people enjoyed fast speeds and now many people are complaining. We worked prior to Starlink and it was better than Starlink is now. You seem so quick to side with Royal. Work or just vacation, $223/ week for internet is not cheap and needs to deliver an adequate service. I don’t need to know what provider Marriott or Hyatt uses. I just know it works 99.9% of the time. That can’t be said about RCCL internet. 

[HeWhoWaits]

49 minutes ago, TaylorTravels said:

I disagree. Read the press from RCCL about upgrading to Starlink. They sell it as being superior to Voom Surf and Stream. Thousands of people enjoyed fast speeds and now many people are complaining. We worked prior to Starlink and it was better than Starlink is now. You seem so quick to side with Royal. Work or just vacation, $223/ week for internet is not cheap and needs to deliver an adequate service. I don’t need to know what provider Marriott or Hyatt uses. I just know it works 99.9% of the time. That can’t be said about RCCL internet. 

Just for perspective on pricing. Going on a 17 night Panama Canal trip on Holland America in just over two weeks. I paid $211.60 for the 17 nights. The current price offered is $251.99 - still a bargain compared to Royal.

[PL8SWPR]

 

Has anyone had any luck getting Royal Caribbean to refund the internet charge if it is unusable once you get on board?

My wife is a bit of a worrier when it comes to the kids at home, even though their ages are 17+ and internet is how she can sleep easy.   So, we always have at least a one device plan and have not had too many issues with Internet.  Most of the time in Jan on Mariner it was pretty good.

[twangster]

15 hours ago, TaylorTravels said:

I disagree. Read the press from RCCL about upgrading to Starlink. They sell it as being superior to Voom Surf and Stream. Thousands of people enjoyed fast speeds and now many people are complaining. We worked prior to Starlink and it was better than Starlink is now. You seem so quick to side with Royal. Work or just vacation, $223/ week for internet is not cheap and needs to deliver an adequate service. I don’t need to know what provider Marriott or Hyatt uses. I just know it works 99.9% of the time. That can’t be said about RCCL internet. 

I read it again, still no reference to a guarantee of 24 x 7 service.  

Just because I don't agree with you doesn't make me a defender of Royal.  I have repeatable slammed Royal's practice of throttling speeds per user.  I've pointed out time after time that Royal is technically inept for doing so and that is an old and abandoned practice. 

All Royal has stated is that they desire to leverage Starlink to provide a better guest experience while never stating a specific performance target to measure "better".   Maybe we both can at least agree that Royal failed to provide a better experience.  However in Royal's defense Starlink has misled a lot of their customers.  For the most part the only customer's staying with them are the ones that have no other choice.  Royal sort of falls into that category because Royal is a financial disaster right now and they can't afford a decent provider.  

As far as hotel internet, as a former frequent business traveler I've encountered so many bad hotel internet experiences I used to carry my own hotspot with me.  The company had no issue paying for it because they knew hotel internet sucks often.  

[AshleyDillo]

9 hours ago, PL8SWPR said:

Has anyone had any luck getting Royal Caribbean to refund the internet charge if it is unusable once you get on board?

We got 30% back on our VOOM package on Wonder, as did anyone else who asked for a refund.  It wasn't automatically given; you had to ask for it.

[Pattycruise]

10 hours ago, PL8SWPR said:

 

Has anyone had any luck getting Royal Caribbean to refund the internet charge if it is unusable once you get on board?

My wife is a bit of a worrier when it comes to the kids at home, even though their ages are 17+ and internet is how she can sleep easy.   So, we always have at least a one device plan and have not had too many issues with Internet.  Most of the time in Jan on Mariner it was pretty good.

My first week on Anthem they gave me back $36 -on a package for 2.
I did have a guest person "line leader"-who questioned everyone before they could get to the actual desk-tell me that I would have to accept the internet as it was or I would hae to cancel it altogether to get my money back".  I should have taken her name and complained.  I  told her she was wrong, wish I saw her again so I could tell her!! LOL
The second week on Anthem (back to back) they gave me 40% back on my package for 2, without me asking, but I had been there mumerous times complaining.  

[twangster]

The Starlink v2-mini news is getting worse.  They had planned to launch more v2 mini this week.  Instead they pulled the v2 and launched more v1/1.5 variants.  Whatever is causing the v2-mini satellites they already launched to be problematic must be pretty serious if they are pulling them from the current launch schedule and not sending any more up.  

That's going to slow down any technology leaps for the maritime service meaning Starlink maritime service is likely going to suck a little longer.  

[KevinJ]

This topic brings back nightmares, my last five years when I was working was doing WIFI support. I'd totally agree with @twangster about how difficult it is to manage a large WIFI installation. The things that customers would do and them complain when service was terrible was what I dealt with day to day. Glad I'm retired. On Wonder last week my wife and son had allot of issues. My son was having a terrible time watching some streaming shows and was quite frustrated. I watched Matt's live stream sitting in the same bar, the stream would pause and buffer frequently. Matt indicated he was using his cellular data to ensure adequate internet access

[MO & LO on the go!]

We have Starlink at home and experience a lot of this on a daily basis, just not quite as severe.  We sometimes get buffering on our youtubeTV because it slowed down so much.  We see speeds fluctuate from 30-300MB and we aren't moving.  Also depends on the weather.  Starlink is also mostly geared to the northern area so far so I imagine the satellites are not as plentiful near the equator (as mentioned it's still being built).  Starlink is not amazing but when it is all you can have......it's AWESOME compared to other options.  I imagine as they continue to build the service it will get much better.  I live in an area where lots of people have it and they are throttling heavier users and charging more than other less heavy use areas.  With the newer satelittes (when they do it) going up it will get much faster, more reliable, and handle more capacity and I am sure that will help sailing starlink!  On our cruise on Oasis in January 2023 I found it way better than Voom but did have some times it just flat out SUCKED!

[twangster]