Solstice Internet Access Questions

[nc6365]

It's great to have WiFi everywhere on the ship. Questions:

 

1) how fast are the speeds? dial-up? a decent DSL speed? super-fast?

2) are there any long outages? 1 or more hours?

3) Will I be able to connect to work VPN? Some hotels/coffee shops I have visited block such access, wondering if that's the case with on-ship WiFi

 

Thanks, please let me know what your experiences have been with above questions.

[Denny01]

1) how fast are the speeds? dial-up? a decent DSL speed? super-fast?

- When we had access, it was OK. better than dialup but not as good as DSL. I would write my emails before getting on line, upload/download and read downloaded ones offline. Worked OK.

2) are there any long outages? 1 or more hours?

- I had some issues on our Transatlantic, but when I had problems, it seemed better at the itnernet area itself. So I'd walk over if I had to gt connected right then. No extened non-access.

3) Will I be able to connect to work VPN? Some hotels/coffee shops I have visited block such access, wondering if that's the case with on-ship WiFi

- No problems getting on my office and personal email sites. Didn't surf much at all - I didn't use the internet except to check important office emails and family ones.

 

One suggestion. To cut down on the ton of 'general' emails, what I did was get a new gmail (or any other one) address for that specific cruise. Gave it to family/friends I planned to communicate with, and gave it to my work assitant with the directions to forward me any important 'must reads' (without huge attachments!) that I needed to see, or be aware of when I got back. that way I didn't have the huge amount of emails to slog through when I got back and maybe miss an important one - it was forwarded to me so I could either respond then or when I got back. I really kept work to a very minimum, but as we all know, there are 'must respond to's' at times.

 

Denny

[Bellfree Bat]

1) how fast are the speeds? dial-up? a decent DSL speed? super-fast?

Seemed to be dial-up speed to me

2) are there any long outages? 1 or more hours?

Yes, there could be. On the W.Caribbean sailing last month,t the service was down more than up all week. Apparently there was a satellite issue in the area.

3) Will I be able to connect to work VPN? Some hotels/coffee shops I have visited block such access, wondering if that's the case with on-ship WiFi

Have not tried to connect to VPNs so do not have an answer to this one.

[Murphy]

I was on the May 23rd sailing. I brought my mini with me and couldn't get a WiFi log on until the 3rd day. Being in port or at sea didn't seem to matter... the 3 or 4 times I did get on the speed seemed to be satisfactory for my email checking needs. Didn't seem to lock up or take forever to load. I had 180 minutes available to me and I think I ended up using about 40 mins max since I could never get on.

[SunFunCruiser]

Does anyone remember what the wifi cost?

[totalsolutions]

On a sliding scale from $0.65 / min to $99 for 235 mins.

VPN I think is out of the question. Even skype was blocked.

 

Supplied by Apple as were the TV systems. Free access to Apple store, and Celibrity site.

[AtTheJob]

After just getting off the ship this weekend, here's what I found.

 

1) how fast are the speeds? dial-up? a decent DSL speed? super-fast?

faster than dialup as per everyone else - best was about 150k down and 90k up. (tested at speakeasy.net/speedtest atlanta location)

2) are there any long outages? 1 or more hours?

Only experienced 2 outages of no more than 20min/ea.

3) Will I be able to connect to work VPN? Some hotels/coffee shops I have visited block such access, wondering if that's the case with on-ship WiFi

-Definitely blocking in place. Logmein, and my other business VOIP service did NOT work. I asked for support about Logmein and was told that it should work and was NOT being blocked. Fernando in the new "iLounge" was very helpful and worked with the Miami support office all week to try to make it work. He called me on FOUR different days to help him test it and credited me for my minutes used. I spent about $230 on internet for almost 11 hours of use. I require logmein to run my business and was told that it may be an issue because they just replaced all of the pc's in the internet cafe with Macs and renamed it to the "iLounge" - It never did get resolved.

However - I did manage to tunnel through their firewall - With this I could use Logmein and my VOIP again - Please message me directly if you need this info as I don't want it blocked for when we travel with them again in the future.

(Never had problems w/business voip or logmein on Princess, NCL or RC...)

 

Hope this helps!

 

...Ryan

[geodesist]

First-time cruiser; considering buying internet time to occasionally check work e-mail. First, are computers with internet connection often available in public area so we wouldn’t need to bring our own?

Second, would we need to buy a separate package for our children, who are in another cabin with a different reservation number, or could we share one package?

Third, how reliable is the internet connection?

Thanks in advance.

[Tom-n-Cheryl]

On our 5/30 sailing the internet (onboard connectivity) was not the best. Strong signal (4-5/5), yet issues logging in. Went to the internet manager 3 times. Used all of our first 90 free (elite) minutes by the 4th or 5th day. Never could log on again (several attempts) the rest of the cruise.

 

Tom

[lowfreq]

I am planning a NCL cruise and have read allot of conflicting information about VPN access on board. I am about as technical as it gets so if I need to perform a workaround such as odd ports, encryption, etc. I can do so, but I need to be able to access my machines from on board.

 

I'm not sure how to direct message on this board as I would love to ask At The Job about his experiences in more depth.

 

Thanks for any help!

 

Lowfreq