Jump to content

Internet on Viking Sky


molemaui
 Share

Recommended Posts

Any experience regarding the internet on Viking Sky?

 

I've had mixed reviews on ship internet. Celebrity Equinox-OK, Uniworld Beatrice-terrible (cruise was so great forgot about bad internet!), Windstar-pretty good.

 

Sailing on Viking soon and am hoping internet speed is at least decent.

 

thanks

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We were on the Sky one month ago. Internet was reliable, rarely dropped, (although it was nonfunctional for one full day,) but it was unbelievably slow. It took fifteen to thirty minutes to download a daily newspaper. Internet on other cruise lines is much faster.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

We had good reception on our cruise. We did not stream, but I was doing some blogging on the trip.

 

Keep in mind you have a multitude of factors that can impact your experience:

 

# of folks logging on at the same time, and what they are pulling down

current reception of ships satellite

where you are sitting on the ship and the location of the wifi repeaters

since it is free, everyone will be loggin on

 

We never stream as we download stuff the the ipad before we leave.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We had good reception on our cruise. We did not stream, but I was doing some blogging on the trip.

 

 

 

Keep in mind you have a multitude of factors that can impact your experience:

 

 

 

# of folks logging on at the same time, and what they are pulling down

 

current reception of ships satellite

 

where you are sitting on the ship and the location of the wifi repeaters

 

since it is free, everyone will be loggin on

 

 

 

We never stream as we download stuff the the ipad before we leave.

 

 

 

The Viking Management is looking for bloggers and have asked everyone to not do it while they are on their ships . Don’t get mad at Viking for poor reception, most of the time it’s the folks who are watching movies or doing games on line without downloading the items prior to boarding .

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There was talk of this on one of the World Cruise threads (roll call maybe?) and it was suggested, and I think this is true, that it's PhotoStream hogging all the bandwidth. It's a notorious data-hog, which is why most people have it set to upload their photos to the cloud on wi-fi only, which is of course what's happening on the Viking ships. It's one of those things that your phone (or iPad) does in the background without you even thinking about it, and perhaps not even caring if it's doing it.

 

One guy said he had already taken nearly 1000 photos and it was taking forever to get them into his PhotoStream, if at all. Multiply that by every person on the ship that has an iPhone and is using it as a camera, and you've got clogged works galore.

 

My friend and I joked that they should explain how to turn that off at the muster drill ;p

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Any experience regarding the internet on Viking Sky?

 

I've had mixed reviews on ship internet. Celebrity Equinox-OK, Uniworld Beatrice-terrible (cruise was so great forgot about bad internet!), Windstar-pretty good.

 

Sailing on Viking soon and am hoping internet speed is at least decent.

 

thanks

 

I'm in the middle of writing a Viking Star review and I've been reflecting a lot on our last cruise which was on Uniworld's Beatrice...and I was just thinking the exact same thing...that cruise was so great that I barely remember how bad the internet was. During our Beatrice cruise, we were still able to update Facebook and use iMessage/Whatsapp etc., everything was just supremely slow. Our Viking cruise was much the same, the internet was slow from around 8AM till late at night. There were periods during the day when it was virtually unusable, usually from all aboard time thru dinner.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

sadly I am very very familiar with the intricate details of internet access at sea by satellite (I built these systems for a 'fleet' and paid the bills for the commercial provider, for several years)

 

a ship at sea is NOT like your house so far as internet connectivity ....... in general everyone on the (VIKING) ship is sharing a line that MIGHT be as big as what you have at home. In other words think of your house system with 500 folks logged on at the same time ......

 

without going into detail, antenna size matters, and smaller ships carry smaller antenna (those golf balls you see are protective domes over a dish that tries to stay pointed at a satellite 22,000 miles over the equator while the ship moves)

 

bottomline is satellite access to the internet for a ship at sea is EXPENSIVE and has PHYSICAL LIMITATIONS due to the equipment and even then is WAY LESS than what most of us have at home.

 

I just came off an OASIS cruise which has VOOM - claimed to be the fastest internet at sea (with HUGE antella) - and we were only marginally successful at streaming a college football game this past November (Iron Bowl ... sad outcome but in the SEASON end ROLL TIDE)

 

WHAT'S MY POINT?????

 

Today, folks on a ship at sea expect a level of internet access that just isn't able to be met by the maritime satellite communications industry ... PERIOD. If you stay with 'low bandwidth' tasks like e-mail and most simple surfing, your response will probably be OK. If you want to STREAM .... well as I said, even on the ship that claims the BEST .... it didn't work.

 

I was involved in putting some of the first internet access at sea on ships back some 15 years ago ....... it was an interesting challenge.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One way to improve reception might be to allocate every cabin a certain amount of data either per day or per cruise. That may reduce the uploading hundreds of pictures on Photostream or downloading lots of movies or videos and slowing down the system.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

....One guy said he had already taken nearly 1000 photos and it was taking forever to get them into his PhotoStream, if at all. ...

 

That is nuts. Anyone that takes a 1,000 photo's has missed much of the cruise. I find it a bit sad when folks are so busy taking pictures and videos they miss the moment. Yea, we take a bunch of pictures, but not non-stop. How many people will actually see many of those thousands of pics. And pray nobody has to watch all those videos. LOL!

 

As to uploading them... wait till you get home. Yes, I do a blog, but I normally upload about 5-10 pics a day, at lower resolution and compose offline, so my time online is usually way less than some people checking email. (nobody here of course)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Besides being free the Sky Internet was always usable. We had a problem the first day and the IT guy replaced the Access Point behind TV and all was good. Never had a problem with E-Mail, Google Voice, Map updates and normal browsing; even streamed SD from home server one night. This was on the Homeland Cruise that had optimum satellite coverage, On the Prinsendam Iceland/Greenland and internet was not available most of the time. This was excusable due to satellite angle near the Arctic circle. Oceania Rivera Med cruise was the worst. Coastal Med has the best satellite coverage but internet was unbelievably slow when available. Azamara Quest Costa Rica not as good as Sky and relatively expensive.

 

I believe (not positive) that Viking is in the process of modifying their systems to use landlines in certain ports. Anyway ports are rarely a problem.. just ask a crew member where the best wifi is They might even give you a marked up copy of the itinerary!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 months later...

FWIW, we were on the Sky for 8 days this past January, in the area of the Mexican Riviera. The internet worked perfectly, even on sea days. I was never bumped off, I never noticed any slowness at all when doing ‘normal’ tasks like emailing and checking Google or other websites, and texts over wifi came in and went out basically instantaneously. Could be we got lucky and were just on a cruise with 900 other passengers who weren’t that interested in steaming!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
 Share

  • Forum Jump
    • Categories
      • Welcome to Cruise Critic
      • New Cruisers
      • Cruise Lines “A – O”
      • Cruise Lines “P – Z”
      • River Cruising
      • ROLL CALLS
      • Digital Photography & Cruise Technology
      • Special Interest Cruising
      • Cruise Discussion Topics
      • UK Cruising
      • Australia & New Zealand Cruisers
      • Canadian Cruisers
      • North American Homeports
      • Ports of Call
      • Cruise Conversations
×
×
  • Create New...