Skype?

[silvercruiser]

I learned that my Skype isn't available for use with my in-home WiFi via the router and wondered if anyone has been able to use it onboard the ships.

[RickEk]

I learned that my Skype isn't available for use with my in-home WiFi via the router and wondered if anyone has been able to use it onboard the ships.

 

I have heard that, at least on some ships, Skype is blocked because of its bandwidth requirements...

[-Lew-]

I have been successful using Skype on my iPhone on the Grand, Ruby and Island. The only issue I have come across sometimes is a slight audio delay.

 

If you're using Skype on a laptop, you might want to buy an inexpensive headset with microphone.

 

Lew

[Pam in CA]

I learned that my Skype isn't available for use with my in-home WiFi via the router and wondered if anyone has been able to use it onboard the ships.

Skype is a huge bandwidth hog and is blocked on some ships. Some people have been successful but oblivious or uncaring to the fact that they are slowing down the Internet for everyone else using it at that time, costing them minutes and time. Try it but do so knowing you're hogging the Internet.

[-Lew-]

 

Skype is a huge bandwidth hog and is blocked on some ships. Some people have been successful but oblivious or uncaring to the fact that they are slowing down the Internet for everyone else using it at that time, costing them minutes and time. Try it but do so knowing you're hogging the Internet.

Pam,

 

Skype being a huge bandwidth hog is a popular misconception. Each person using internet services reduces the bandwidth available for others to use. This applies to all applications...not just Skype.

 

According to Skype, a one minute voice phone call uses about ½ megabyte of bandwidth. I suggest this compares quite favorably with the amount of bandwidth used by those uploading or downloading photos or other files of comparable size...or just surfing the net. It equates to downloading 25 20KB emails to your laptop email program. A half megabyte of bandwidth per minute is just not that huge.

 

Personally, I have never seen a notice that Skype, or any other application, is prohibited onboard. Since I have been using Skype it has never been blocked onboard any ship I have been on.

 

Lew

[silvercruiser]

Thanks, I'd hate to be a hog, really. I might use it in ports where there's a WiFi availability, but really, I only use it to talk to my grandkids in Sweden and it's not always easy to set up so we're on at the same time. I just like to know it's available, whether I use it or not. With my little netbook it might be terribly slow going.

[wilfros]

Thanks, I'd hate to be a hog, really. I might use it in ports where there's a WiFi availability, but really, I only use it to talk to my grandkids in Sweden and it's not always easy to set up so we're on at the same time. I just like to know it's available, whether I use it or not. With my little netbook it might be terribly slow going.

We leave Grandchildren behind as would love to skype from the cabin to show them the ocean, but I think your last sentence says it all.

 

If you are using something that runs slow, and knowing the connection is, a lot of the time, slower than the old dial-up connections, I would think a decent skype conversations would be worth the price of a cabin on another cruise, from which you will have the face the skype issue all over again LOL

 

We email our Grandchildren each day with small .jpg photos of Grama and Papa here there and everywhere. Prepare our messages (type them out and ensure we have included what we want to say). Then we sign on go to hotmail.com download our messages then send the prepared ones. then we immediately exit.

 

After going through all that we then take the time to read our new messages. this is the only way we have found to concerve the valuable minutes we purchase on the day of embarkation where they add additional minutes so signing up on that day.

 

Enjoy your trip, and as with us, some day, if you are lucky, you will be able to go on a cruise with them (and their parents of course to look after them)..

[remydiva]

Pam,

 

Skype being a huge bandwidth hog is a popular misconception. Each person using internet services reduces the bandwidth available for others to use. This applies to all applications...not just Skype.

 

According to Skype, a one minute voice phone call uses about ½ megabyte of bandwidth. I suggest this compares quite favorably with the amount of bandwidth used by those uploading or downloading photos or other files of comparable size...or just surfing the net. It equates to downloading 25 20KB emails to your laptop email program. A half megabyte of bandwidth per minute is just not that huge.

 

Personally, I have never seen a notice that Skype, or any other application, is prohibited onboard. Since I have been using Skype it has never been blocked onboard any ship I have been on.

 

Lew

 

Skype was blocked on the Emerald TA/Northern Europe May 2011 that I was on.

[Hulagirl]

We were on the Crown TA cruise this past May also. Skype could not be accessed on it either. I was able to use it in Rotterdam when I could use the ports internet connection, which worked well.

[shellbeachjim]

Pam,

 

According to Skype, a one minute voice phone call uses about ½ megabyte of bandwidth. I suggest this compares quite favorably with the amount of bandwidth used by those uploading or downloading photos or other files of comparable size...or just surfing the net. It equates to downloading 25 20KB emails to your laptop email program. A half megabyte of bandwidth per minute is just not that huge.

 

 

With all due respect, that's half a meg for each and every minute of usage. Normally you download the email once per session, not once a minute. Text-only emails are substantially smaller than 20KB. 25 emails would be about a days worth of email for me (which includes spam). I don't send many emails with pictures (which can burn your minutes if you have a slow connection) so I wait until I get home. Also your figure is for voice only, not for video. I'm sure that number is quite a bit higher for video. I'm with Pam, I think it's a bandwidth hog.

[t60]

snip..We email our Grandchildren each day with small .jpg photos of Grama and Papa here there and everywhere. Prepare our messages (type them out and ensure we have included what we want to say). Then we sign on go to hotmail.com download our messages then send the prepared ones. then we immediately exit...snip

 

We prepare messages (text only) and then just cut and paste into email to save minutes.

 

On out next cruise though, I´ll prepare my daily reports with pix off line, convert to PDF doc, then send as an attachment to friends so they can follow our travels

 

Sandy in Spain

[-Lew-]

 

Also your figure is for voice only, not for video. I'm sure that number is quite a bit higher for video. I'm with Pam, I think it's a bandwidth hog.

Video was not mentioned in the OP. As I mentioned above, I use the Skype app on my iPhone. I use it for voice only as I was unaware until quite recently that video was even an option using Skype on the iPhone.

 

I would agree that Skype video has to use more bandwidth than voice only and would never use it onboard. But I stand by my statement that at ½ megabyte of bandwidth per minute (8⅓ KB per second), Skype voice is well within what many would consider reasonable usage.

 

I have been told by Internet Cafe personnel onboard the Grand that they do not block Skype. At times I have had problems simply attempting to login to a ship's wifi and suggest that Skype video isn't being blocked, the network just can't handle it. Just a thought...

 

Lew

[-Lew-]

 

On out next cruise though, I´ll prepare my daily reports with pix off line, convert to PDF doc, then send as an attachment to friends so they can follow our travels

Sandy,

 

If your camera's photos are in JPG format, I think you'll find that converting them to PDFs will not reduce the size of your files at all. Even zipping a JPG in an attempt to reduce its size doesn't accomplish much. JPGs are a compressed format so these files are already as small as they can be.

 

A better option would be to export the files from your photo program at a lower resolution just for emailing. Check the photo size before and after export to see if you're accomplishing what you desire.

 

Lew

[silvercruiser]

Yes, I meant to say VIDEO. Doubt if we'll ever cruise together though, since these three little girls are all under the age of 5 and I'm 80! And they're grandchildren, not great-grandchildren. Don't know where my daughter gets the energy to keep up with them, since she's 43. I still can't get over the technology that allows me to have video chats with people half a world away.

[Loonbeam]

This has been covered pretty extensively in prior threads, but ship engineers have the capability and permission to block VOIP ports if they feel performance is an issue. As with many things Princess this leads to inconsistent behavior.

 

Also, I just did a test run. A 2 min call with skype came in at about 5.9 MB at lowest quality based on my bandwith monitor. Yahoo voice at 5.2, google talk at 5.4. So 1/2 MB per minute seems awfully low. It's worth noting that a lot of the traffic appears to be packet overhead more than data, voice applications seem to do a LOT of handshaking. So I wonder if their estimate is data only not overall capacity use. BTW at max quality? 29 MB. And I doubt most people know how to turn quality down.

[Kamloops50]

I learned that my Skype isn't available for use with my in-home WiFi via the router and wondered if anyone has been able to use it onboard the ships.

 

 

I have used Skype on board without a video feed. At home my whole in house uses Wifi for internet and Skype with video works great . Should remember that older Wifi ( like A or B standards) might not work properly.:cool:

[-Lew-]

 

Also, I just did a test run. A 2 min call with skype came in at about 5.9 MB at lowest quality based on my bandwidth monitor.

Your test results prompted me to go back to the Skype site to see if I could find accurate bandwidth data as the number I quoted above is 18 months to 2 years old.

 

It appears bandwidth requirements have increased substantially as Skype has been upgraded over the past few months. Voice call requirements are listed as between 30 and 100kbps. Video calling requires 128 to 300kbps.

 

I've attached a screenshot of a chart on the Skype site.

 

I stand corrected and apologize for quoting outdated information...

 

Lew

[IECalCruiser]

Your test results prompted me to go back to the Skype site to see if I could find accurate bandwidth data as the number I quoted above is 18 months to 2 years old.

 

It appears bandwidth requirements have increased substantially as Skype has been upgraded over the past few months. Voice call requirements are listed as between 30 and 100kbps. Video calling requires 128 to 300kbps.

 

I've attached a screenshot of a chart on the Skype site.

 

I stand corrected and apologize for quoting outdated information...

 

Lew

The current version of Skype does appear to be somewhat of a "Bandwidth Hog". With the limited bandwidth available on the satellite internet available on Princess ships I feel it is justified for Princess to block Skype (or other Bandwidth Hog programs) if necessary to allow everyone reasonable speeds. Save your Skype for ports where the land based internet can handle the demand and rely on email onboard.

[77Network]

The current version of Skype does appear to be somewhat of a "Bandwidth Hog". With the limited bandwidth available on the satellite internet available on Princess ships I feel it is justified for Princess to block Skype (or other Bandwidth Hog programs) if necessary to allow everyone reasonable speeds. Save your Skype for ports where the land based internet can handle the demand and rely on email onboard.

 

Why is that so many people think it is ok for princess to block applications rather than upgrade their system to handle the needs of the passengers?

It’s not like high speed internet is some fad that is going away in a couple of years.

[Loonbeam]

This would imply its as simple as adding a larger cable. Adding satellite bandwith is neither cheap nor easy.

 

A given antenna array can support X bandwith channels. To add more, you need to install an additional full array. In addition, you need hardware and software to combine, manage and and route those connections (you can't have part of a packet stream on one satellite and some on the other. And since the easiest way to do that is to assign a user session to a given satellite, if someone uses Skype on that channel, everyone else assigned to that channel suffers. I'm sure Princess gets a better deal, but at current rack rates, you would be looking at about $200,000 in installation per ship, not including additional usage fees and upkeep costs. Conservatively I would estimate Princess would need to up rates about 44% to pay for that.

 

Also remember, while users pay per minute, Princess pays per MB. The fairest way to do this would be to charge based on usage as well, but that's an expensive and complicated accounting system to implement for an amenity.

 

Why is that so many people think it is ok for princess to block applications rather than upgrade their system to handle the needs of the passengers?

 

It’s not like high speed internet is some fad that is going away in a couple of years.

[jotabecu]

I have not used Skype but MagicJack on several ocassions.

I also feel that in the long haul perhaps it is best for Princess to try and accomodate passengers with a larger bandwith to play with.

[IECalCruiser]

I have not used Skype but MagicJack on several ocassions.

I also feel that in the long haul perhaps it is best for Princess to try and accomodate passengers with a larger bandwith to play with.

How much per MB are you willing to pay for that privilege? Because of the bandwidth demands of video streaming and other applications, almost all major cell phone providers have dropped unlimited data plans and are charging based upon MBs used. Smart phones, tablet PCs, netbooks and the rest have been so successful that they are straining the infrastructure on land and at sea. When onboard we should be willing to share the resource.

[Loonbeam]

I broke out the calculator.

 

Assuming they stayed per minute and tripled bandwith to accommodate streams, AND assuming a 50% profit margin, it would cost about $75 for 30 to 40 minutes depending on what kind of a deal they get..

 

That doesn't cover the cost of extra equipment BTW.

 

 

 

(

I have not used Skype but MagicJack on several ocassions.

I also feel that in the long haul perhaps it is best for Princess to try and accomodate passengers with a larger bandwith to play with.

[rdsqrl]

Why is that so many people think it is ok for princess to block applications rather than upgrade their system to handle the needs of the passengers?

 

It’s not like high speed internet is some fad that is going away in a couple of years.

I think it's okay because a new satellite to handle increased demand/bandwidth/whatever the technical term, would cost big bucks and I don't want to pay higher cruise fares to pay for it, just so some people can chat away on their computer to relatives and friends that they can just as easily email or send a postcard to. But then I'm a cranky Luddite.

[Charles4515]

Why is that so many people think it is ok for princess to block applications rather than upgrade their system to handle the needs of the passengers?

It’s not like high speed internet is some fad that is going away in a couple of years.

 

A ship is at sea, it is moving and it gets it's internet from a satellite. There is no wire running from land to the ship. Nor are there cell towers relaying. As for the speed, because the packets are being sent over long distance from radio signals and back up there is a delay and a lot of latency which slows down the speed. I suspect most would not pay what they would charge if they upgraded their system.