Princess wifi and boosting signal

[Loonbeam]

Devices like wi-fire, while you do pick up some antenna gain, mostly gain speed by using multiple channels to the access point. This just ties up more bandwith for you that other people cannot use. Also, it will NOT improve ship to satellite speed, which is the real bottleneck. Unless you are not getting a signal at all, most connections on the ship will already be near the speed of the channel you will get from the satellite. SkyOne for example is around 4.5MBS (although the ship may have multiple connections), which is about 10% of what your home cable modem can do. For the entire ship.

 

I just saw an in-person demo of Wi-Fire and it really boosts the signal. It is under $50 - Amazon sells it. It plugs into a usb port.

[donna5]

Devices like wi-fire, while you do pick up some antenna gain, mostly gain speed by using multiple channels to the access point. This just ties up more bandwith for you that other people cannot use. Also, it will NOT improve ship to satellite speed, which is the real bottleneck. Unless you are not getting a signal at all, most connections on the ship will already be near the speed of the channel you will get from the satellite. SkyOne for example is around 4.5MBS (although the ship may have multiple connections), which is about 10% of what your home cable modem can do. For the entire ship.

 

Well some of the suites are at the ends of the ships and there may not be a repeater close. If you want to get a suite and use the unlimited wifi it would be nice to use the signal on the balcony or whereever. You wouldn't need to roam all over the ship.

 

We know it will not help with the reception from the satellite. But when the ship is getting a good signal, it would help with getting the ships wifi signal, without having to roam the ship for a good spot.

[cleavesteam]

Well some of the suites are at the ends of the ships and there may not be a repeater close. If you want to get a suite and use the unlimited wifi it would be nice to use the signal on the balcony or whereever. You wouldn't need to roam all over the ship.

 

We know it will not help with the reception from the satellite. But when the ship is getting a good signal, it would help with getting the ships wifi signal, without having to roam the ship for a good spot.

In the suites in the back of the ship it seems to work well in the room, but not at all on the deck. Steel bulkheads must do a good job of blocking the signal.

 

I have used wifi in the suites on both the Crown and CB. Internet worked great on the CB, but on the Crown it was down a lot.

[DrivesLikeMario]

On the OP (sister to the Royal) last October, the signal was much better in the mid to aft area cabins - like around the 7088-7082 area. Our friends had an iPhone and a laptop and got MUCH better reception than I got in the Internet Cafe. That was one very, very frustrating experience. I ripped through 300 mins. in no time, mostly just watching a blank screen and waiting for pages to load. Normal load times were 5-10 mins. per page!

 

Next time, I'm taking my own laptop and connecting my Blackberry and using both in my cabin.