How to test for true Voom.

[cruizinmimi]

The truth about Voom.

I met with a three stripe IT manager on the Liberty and was told only ships built in 2010 or later plus the Enchantment and Freedom will have the O3b service true Voom. Everyone else, it's the high orbit satellite. So, as of now there it is.

Also, when I purchased the Voom package from the cruise planner, it was the surf package (garbage). Surf and stream was not mentioned or offered. So, If you want the surf and stream you need to wait until you board and then get the surf and stream package. I immediately upgraded to the best package and report on its performance later in the cruise.

 

Thank you so much for reporting this information. We found the same thing on last week's cruise on the Liberty.....it is really NOT Voom.

[OuterLimits]

Thank you for confirming it doesn't have Voom. We were going to purchase ahead of time with the discounts.

 

I'm not paying for that crap high-orbit internet. I'd pay if it was actually usable, but I don't want to spend my vacation waiting on web pages and apps to load. I'd rather just use wifi in the ports.

[ewenix]

Well, hopefully a tech savvy person on the Indy can confirm a low ping rate. I will ask the Concierge host to email the Concierge host on the Indy and find out.

 

Isn't the independence doing a TA? It won't have voom speeds. On the RCCL 'Life on board' page it states voom is only caribbean, med, and asia. Then specifically state no voom on TA or repositioning cruises.

 

One thing I have a question about is when you keep stating "true Voom," what exactly are you using as a reference point? I haven't seen anything from RCCL guaranteeing any particular bandwidth or latency with Voom. It says "fastest internet at sea" or "high speed" and streaming. I'm just curious about where you've gotten this sub 300ms reference point.

 

The O3b latency and throughput page states their 3rd party evaluated speed is 150ms using medium earth orbit satellites. The same page has this statement. "It took O3b six seconds to load an Internet page, for example, while it took a terrestrial Internet link four seconds and the GEO VSAT connection ten seconds."

[serialcruiser48]

Isn't the independence doing a TA? It won't have voom speeds. On the RCCL 'Life on board' page it states voom is only caribbean, med, and asia. Then specifically state no voom on TA or repositioning cruises.

 

One thing I have a question about is when you keep stating "true Voom," what exactly are you using as a reference point? I haven't seen anything from RCCL guaranteeing any particular bandwidth or latency with Voom. It says "fastest internet at sea" or "high speed" and streaming. I'm just curious about where you've gotten this sub 300ms reference point.

 

The O3b latency and throughput page states their 3rd party evaluated speed is 150ms using medium earth orbit satellites. The same page has this statement. "It took O3b six seconds to load an Internet page, for example, while it took a terrestrial Internet link four seconds and the GEO VSAT connection ten seconds."

 

High orbit satellite ping rate is 638 ms under ideal conditions, but typically on a cruise ship add router and distribution delays and you see 700-1100 ms ping rates. O3b low orbit satellite on a cruise ship is less than 300 ms with the router and distribution delay. That's the reason for low orbit satellite in the first place, the signal does not have as far to travel hence the lower ping rate.

[Eslader]

Ping rates are mainly important for online gaming. The difference between 300ms and 600ms can be the difference between getting shot or not.

 

They're somewhat important for 2-way streaming -- i.e. skype calls, because they influence how long the delay is between when you stop talking and you see the other person start talking.

 

They're really not very important for loading web pages, because once the command has been sent, received, and responded to, the website will load. There's a delay to start loading, but once the loading starts you'll get pretty similar performance between 600 and 300ms.

 

Keep in mind that ms means "milisecond." If you can really perceive the difference between 2 websites that load 1/3 of a second apart from each other, you're pretty impressive.

 

All that said, it's important to understand that ping is not only influenced by the first hop (which in Voom's case would be to the satellite). If you're on "true Voom," but your ping is routed through a server in Charleston that is having a bad day, you might well get a high ping as a result without it being Royal's fault at all.

 

A more accurate way to find where the slowdown is is to run a tracert rather than a ping. Tracert will show you the time it takes for your signal to get through all of the servers between you and wherever you're pinging.

 

Oftentimes a tracert will expose a major slowdown halfway between you and the destination that is giving you a higher response time. It would be premature to blame Royal for high ping without first tracing the entire route to see where the real slowdown is.

 

And all THAT said, OP's example site to ping is located in Australia, which means your signal from a cruise ship is going to go through a LOT of servers over a very long distance to get there and your ping will therefore necessarily be higher than pinging, say, royalcaribbean.com. Just for fun I ran a tracert from my location to it, and I'm so far at 38 hops and counting.

 

It is also a server for a real-time war game where you drive tanks and try to shoot other people's tanks. OP should be aware that online gaming via a satellite in any orbit is a non-starter because the people running through purely terrestrial servers will always out-shoot you as their latency can be reduced in some cases by an order of magnitude.

Edited May 10, 2016 by Eslader

[Ryansdaddy]

SerialCruiser I'll be on the Liberty the 22nd. I did go ahead and purchase the Voom surf package but my needs were to run a texting app to keep in touch with our kiddo on the ship and to check emails.(Maybe a wifi phone call but doubtful) That's it we need it for nothing else. Should we be good to go??

[RadioRob]

A fellow networking person here I see. :)

[NightOne]

A fellow networking person here I see. :)

 

More than one I am guessing. (but not the OP) :)

[TBone2K]

Also keep in mind that RC can control how much bandwidth (speed) is allocated to what functions. Ping can be affected by not only that, but also how busy the ship's wifi and all the "hops" on the way to the final destination are as well.

 

Bottom line, you can measure certain aspects to determine why something might be slow, but your perception of what you are doing with the internet will tell you if it is "fast enough".

 

If someone is onboard with a laptop or tablet, perhaps try going to dslreports.com and running a speed test. That will give a better idea of how well the internet connection is running. (It might work on a phone as well, but I've never tried).

[Vigilant007]

SerialCruiser I'll be on the Liberty the 22nd. I did go ahead and purchase the Voom surf package but my needs were to run a texting app to keep in touch with our kiddo on the ship and to check emails.(Maybe a wifi phone call but doubtful) That's it we need it for nothing else. Should we be good to go??

 

 

 

Welcome aboard! I'll be on that ship too for that trip.

 

From the way it's all reading the network should work well for that but wifi calls could be dicey.

[Eslader]

A fellow networking person here I see. :)

 

Well that's certainly the career I sometimes wish I'd gone into, yes! ;)

[RadioRob]

I've done a couple of wifi calls back home with no problem on call quality. What's odd though is you can't use the Royal IQ app. It keeps saying connect to Royal Wifi. I am (it's the only way I could be posting this) but since it seeing me still on "cellular" (it shows up as VZW Wi-Fi), it won't let me use the app.

[Vigilant007]

Ping rates are mainly important for online gaming. The difference between 300ms and 600ms can be the difference between getting shot or not.

 

They're somewhat important for 2-way streaming -- i.e. skype calls, because they influence how long the delay is between when you stop talking and you see the other person start talking.

 

They're really not very important for loading web pages, because once the command has been sent, received, and responded to, the website will load. There's a delay to start loading, but once the loading starts you'll get pretty similar performance between 600 and 300ms.

 

Keep in mind that ms means "milisecond." If you can really perceive the difference between 2 websites that load 1/3 of a second apart from each other, you're pretty impressive.

 

All that said, it's important to understand that ping is not only influenced by the first hop (which in Voom's case would be to the satellite). If you're on "true Voom," but your ping is routed through a server in Charleston that is having a bad day, you might well get a high ping as a result without it being Royal's fault at all.

 

A more accurate way to find where the slowdown is is to run a tracert rather than a ping. Tracert will show you the time it takes for your signal to get through all of the servers between you and wherever you're pinging.

 

Oftentimes a tracert will expose a major slowdown halfway between you and the destination that is giving you a higher response time. It would be premature to blame Royal for high ping without first tracing the entire route to see where the real slowdown is.

 

And all THAT said, OP's example site to ping is located in Australia, which means your signal from a cruise ship is going to go through a LOT of servers over a very long distance to get there and your ping will therefore necessarily be higher than pinging, say, royalcaribbean.com. Just for fun I ran a tracert from my location to it, and I'm so far at 38 hops and counting.

 

It is also a server for a real-time war game where you drive tanks and try to shoot other people's tanks. OP should be aware that online gaming via a satellite in any orbit is a non-starter because the people running through purely terrestrial servers will always out-shoot you as their latency can be reduced in some cases by an order of magnitude.

 

 

 

I think simply put there's any number of reasons why there maybe high ping on a small city floating in the water with limited resources.

 

I'd have to imagine that there's some level of packet prioritizing, and shaping to keep the network from being saturated.

 

The ping rates that everyone keeps talking about for "true voom" could be under best network conditions which probably means one person using the network. Just as an example, Verizon LTE can peak up to 80MB when, but more likely I'll get around 20+ sustained. It's still "true LTE" but environment and congestion will change performance.

[OuterLimits]

So much misinformation in this thread from armchair netadmins. Everything serialcruiser48 said is true and accurate.

 

Ping rates are mainly important for online gaming. The difference between 300ms and 600ms can be the difference between getting shot or not.

 

It's very important for non-gaming as I'll explain below.

 

They're somewhat important for 2-way streaming -- i.e. skype calls, because they influence how long the delay is between when you stop talking and you see the other person start talking.

 

Online gaming and VoIP are both UDP and don't have ACKs and a connection to maintain. They are fire and forget, which is why you get weird stutter in Skype and FaceTime when there are network issues. Yes, VoIP will work with higher latency and you will notice this latency.

 

They're really not very important for loading web pages, because once the command has been sent, received, and responded to, the website will load. There's a delay to start loading, but once the loading starts you'll get pretty similar performance between 600 and 300ms.

 

Keep in mind that ms means "milisecond." If you can really perceive the difference between 2 websites that load 1/3 of a second apart from each other, you're pretty impressive.

 

This is where you are very very wrong. A page doesn't load from a single packet. To load a web page, you are initiating a TCP connection, which is an actual connection. Two computers agree across the internet, by sending messages back and forth to each other, to maintain a connection for the duration of the conversation.

 

First, the client (your phone/laptop/whatever) sends a SYN. Then the server sends back a SYN-ACK, and then you send back an ACK. Read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_Control_Protocol

 

Every one of those 3 setup would be subject to this 700ms round-trip. That's just to set up the connection! Then, typically, packet sizes are 1500 bytes, not including overhead. This leaves you with about 1200 bytes per packet. Do you think a web page fits inside 1200 bytes? 1.2kb? Absolutely not. Every piece of that web page must be sent 1 packet at a time, with an ACK going back for every one. If it doesn't get an ACK from the client within a short period of time, it stops sending and waits for an ACK or a retry. This is how TCP works.

 

Now complicate this, by adding that web pages aren't one file. That connection process? It must happen for every resource on the page. Every image, every script, every css file, etc. This all adds up to an excruciating internet experience at sea.

 

We aren't talking about the difference of half a second to load a page. We're talking about minutes. You are just dead wrong, unfortunately.

 

And all THAT said, OP's example site to ping is located in Australia, which means your signal from a cruise ship is going to go through a LOT of servers over a very long distance to get there and your ping will therefore necessarily be higher than pinging, say, royalcaribbean.com. Just for fun I ran a tracert from my location to it, and I'm so far at 38 hops and counting.

 

That address is on a geo-located CDN that he gave. I pinged it from the US and got a US IP with a 50-56ms ping.

 

OP should be aware that online gaming via a satellite in any orbit is a non-starter because the people running through purely terrestrial servers will always out-shoot you as their latency can be reduced in some cases by an order of magnitude.

 

Eslader should be aware that he totally misunderstands TCP/IP.

 

I've done a couple of wifi calls back home with no problem on call quality. What's odd though is you can't use the Royal IQ app. It keeps saying connect to Royal Wifi. I am (it's the only way I could be posting this) but since it seeing me still on "cellular" (it shows up as VZW Wi-Fi), it won't let me use the app.

 

The "VZW Wi-Fi" that appears at the top of your phone is showing that you are connected to Verizon's Wi-Fi calling. That has nothing to do with the name of the Wi-Fi access point you are connected to.

 

Royal Q only works on Quantum class ships. It's telling you "Connect to Royal WiFi" because you're not on a Quantum ship and it assumes you're at home, since your network you're connected to isn't a Quantum class ship, even if the access point is named Royal WiFi. You could name your home router "Royal Wi-Fi" if you wanted.

 

If you were on a Quantum class ship and connected to Voom via Royal Wi-Fi, you'd still see "VZW Wi-Fi" at the top if your phone was successfully able to connect to Verizon's wifi calling servers, and you'd be able to use Royal Q.

Edited May 10, 2016 by OuterLimits
Clarified ACKs in TCP conversation and Royal Q clarification

[Eslader]

Eslader should be aware that he totally misunderstands TCP/IP.

 

 

Rather than acting like a jerk, how about you explain it to me then?

 

Because *everything* OP said is not correct. By OP's statement, the *only* thing that could possibly explain a 600ms ping is that Royal is screwing people by putting them on the wrong satellite. That's entirely BS and if you really know as much as you claim, you'd know that.

[Ryansdaddy]

Welcome aboard! I'll be on that ship too for that trip.

 

From the way it's all reading the network should work well for that but wifi calls could be dicey.

 

Hey Very cool! Hopefully if I need to make a call it will work ok.

 

Thanks Radio Rob. I'm hoping mine works smoothly too if I make a call.

 

 

Outer Limits do you have any thoughts on making a call with WI-FI with just the surf package? Like I said this will probably not be needed. Mostly need the surf package for email checking and the Whats-App for texting within the ship

[OuterLimits]

Rather than acting like a jerk, how about you explain it to me then?

 

Because *everything* OP said is not correct. By OP's statement, the *only* thing that could possibly explain a 600ms ping is that Royal is screwing people by putting them on the wrong satellite. That's entirely BS and if you really know as much as you claim, you'd know that.

 

I literally just explained everything above, piece by piece. And he is right. 600+ms ping means high-orbit satellite, non-"real" Voom aka o3b.

 

On land with terrestrial copper/fiber (including under the sea fiber), you can't have that kind of latency with o3b. They have gigabits per second of capacity per ship.

 

Traffic shaping would not induce that kind of latency. The only explanation is the high-orbit satellite, as OP said.

 

Please re-read my point-by-point explanation of how TCP/IP works above.

[OuterLimits]

Hey Very cool! Hopefully if I need to make a call it will work ok.

 

Thanks Radio Rob. I'm hoping mine works smoothly too if I make a call.

 

 

Outer Limits do you have any thoughts on making a call with WI-FI with just the surf package? Like I said this will probably not be needed. Mostly need the surf package for email checking and the Whats-App for texting within the ship

 

Surf vs Surf+Stream is too new for us to know what they're really doing. We don't have enough data points. OP has Surf+Stream, so we know his issue isn't related to Surf.

 

They say VoIP and streaming will only work on Surf+Stream. What we don't know is, are they just throttling to achieve that, or are they actively blocking VoIP/streaming.

 

I suspect the latter, with deep network inspection like a cell carrier would do (like T-Mobile who offers free streaming, etc). The reason I suspect this is that VoIP calls are very-very low bandwidth, even compared to loading a typical media-rich web page.

 

A voice FaceTime call uses next to no bandwidth. We're talking about probably 64-150kb/sec. I think they're actively blocking VoIP to create a reason to "upgrade", but I don't know for sure, since we don't have enough info from informed cruisers yet on the new packages.

 

If you had just Surf though, I'd be interested to know if you could just connect to an un-blocked VPN and use your FaceTime or whatever like normal from there. Probably a pain, but could be worth it.

 

They have said that social networking (including things like WhatsApp) + web browsing + email will work fine as-is on Surf.

[Eslader]

I literally just explained everything above, piece by piece. And he is right. 600+ms ping means high-orbit satellite, non-"real" Voom aka o3b.

 

On land with terrestrial copper/fiber (including under the sea fiber), you can't have that kind of latency with o3b. They have gigabits per second of capacity per ship.

 

Traffic shaping would not induce that kind of latency. The only explanation is the high-orbit satellite, as OP said.

 

Please re-read my point-by-point explanation of how TCP/IP works above.

 

Except that he's not pinging to a server that's guaranteed to route only through o3b. He's pinging to a game server. And since he only pinged and didn't trace the route, he has no clue where that 600ms latency came from. If the signal is held up by borked equipment in Chicago, that's not an indication that Royal defrauded OP.

 

For what it's worth, I never addressed traffic shaping at all, so perhaps you're just responding to the wrong person.

[OuterLimits]

Except that he's not pinging to a server that's guaranteed to route only through o3b. He's pinging to a game server. And since he only pinged and didn't trace the route, he has no clue where that 600ms latency came from. If the signal is held up by borked equipment in Chicago, that's not an indication that Royal defrauded OP.

 

For what it's worth, I never addressed traffic shaping at all, so perhaps you're just responding to the wrong person.

 

He pinged a server as an example. He said he also pinged Google's public dns (8.8.8.8). He didn't say that this was the only host that was slow. He said everything was slow as you know what and he used this as a test to show the latency.

 

Yes, I would also like a traceroute, but "borked equipment in Chicago" doesn't make everything go to high-orbit satellite pings.

 

Occam's Razor, my friend. When you are on a cruise ship and your ping is 600+ms, you are on high-orbit satellite. It's not some government conspiracy to artificially delay your packets otherwise. The speed of light is a constant we cannot (currently) exceed.

Edited May 10, 2016 by OuterLimits
Spelling

[Vigilant007]

Except that he's not pinging to a server that's guaranteed to route only through o3b. He's pinging to a game server. And since he only pinged and didn't trace the route, he has no clue where that 600ms latency came from. If the signal is held up by borked equipment in Chicago, that's not an indication that Royal defrauded OP.

 

For what it's worth, I never addressed traffic shaping at all, so perhaps you're just responding to the wrong person.

 

 

 

Tracert would definitely be the best way to see where the actually traffic issue is coming from. I'd be happy to run tests in a couple weeks.

 

As far as traffic shaping I mentioned that they maybe doing that. Big network providers have been know to use various things like packet shaping to find specific traffic and deprioritize it. 600 is still high though.

 

Do we know if his ping changed since he switched to Surf + Stream

Edited May 10, 2016 by Vigilant007

[johnjen]

You know, being an IT guy, I'm thankful we've got other IT guys who are looking out for everyone here, and I deeply appreciate that. OP is right on for providing everyone with some interesting details.

 

But, realizing I'll be on vacay relaxing - I won't have really any desired time to wireshark or ping packets going up and down to a bird, worried about azimuth or elevation, or worried if I'm up in Iceland beyond a bird's known azimuth and elevation.

 

Instead, if the thing doesn't work or I sense it's being throttled down, or, we're subjugated to scintillation or the bird's footprint is being blocked by the return of Christ, a giant inbound asteroid, the return of Niburu and doomsday is upon us, I'll just tell the front desk I simply want my money back.

Edited May 10, 2016 by johnjen

[OuterLimits]

Tracert would definitely be the best way to see where the actually traffic issue is coming from. I'd be happy to run tests in a couple weeks.

 

As far as traffic shaping I mentioned that they maybe doing that.

 

I'll be on it in September. I hope real-Voom is active by then. If not, I'm not paying for it. It's unbearable.

 

Last time, I did use Royal Caribbean's website for free through the Wi-Fi on high-orbit satellite, to look at excursions. I'll likely try that again, and I'll do a traceroute and ping to their site if nobody has done it by then. I'll be on a western Caribbean route.

 

I'd pay for real high speed but I'm not paying for what I had on Navigator last year.

[Ryansdaddy]

Surf vs Surf+Stream is too new for us to know what they're really doing. We don't have enough data points. OP has Surf+Stream, so we know his issue isn't related to Surf.

 

They say VoIP and streaming will only work on Surf+Stream. What we don't know is, are they just throttling to achieve that, or are they actively blocking VoIP/streaming.

 

I suspect the latter, with deep network inspection like a cell carrier would do (like T-Mobile who offers free streaming, etc). The reason I suspect this is that VoIP calls are very-very low bandwidth, even compared to loading a typical media-rich web page.

 

A voice FaceTime call uses next to no bandwidth. We're talking about probably 64-150kb/sec. I think they're actively blocking VoIP to create a reason to "upgrade", but I don't know for sure, since we don't have enough info from informed cruisers yet on the new packages.

 

If you had just Surf though, I'd be interested to know if you could just connect to an un-blocked VPN and use your FaceTime or whatever like normal from there. Probably a pain, but could be worth it.

 

They have said that social networking (including things like WhatsApp) + web browsing + email will work fine as-is on Surf.

 

 

Well I have 11 days to find out. I have android where my son and wife both have Iphones. The whats-app application would be used so the 3 of us can text among one another as well as sending texts back home to check on things. You can also make calls on Whats-app which I will test and see if it works. My wife and son have WiFi calling available on their Iphones so we may test it just to see if it works and how spotty it is or if it works flawlessly. Im not hugely tech savvy so a lot of the whole bandwith/ping/UDH/ACKS and whatever else i missed is kind of like reading Chinese:) to me.

Edited May 10, 2016 by Ryansdaddy

[NightOne]

 

This is where you are very very wrong. A page doesn't load from a single packet. To load a web page, you are initiating a TCP connection, which is an actual connection. Two computers agree across the internet, by sending messages back and forth to each other, to maintain a connection for the duration of the conversation.

 

First, the client (your phone/laptop/whatever) sends a SYN. Then the server sends back a SYN-ACK, and then you send back an ACK. Read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_Control_Protocol

 

Every one of those 3 setup would be subject to this 700ms round-trip. That's just to set up the connection! Then, typically, packet sizes are 1500 bytes, not including overhead. This leaves you with about 1200 bytes per packet. Do you think a web page fits inside 1200 bytes? 1.2kb? Absolutely not. Every piece of that web page must be sent 1 packet at a time, with an ACK going back for every one. If it doesn't get an ACK from the client within a short period of time, it stops sending and waits for an ACK or a retry. This is how TCP works.

 

Now complicate this, by adding that web pages aren't one file. That connection process? It must happen for every resource on the page. Every image, every script, every css file, etc. This all adds up to an excruciating internet experience at sea.

 

We aren't talking about the difference of half a second to load a page. We're talking about minutes. You are just dead wrong, unfortunately.

 

That address is on a geo-located CDN that he gave. I pinged it from the US and got a US IP with a 50-56ms ping.

 

Eslader should be aware that he totally misunderstands TCP/IP.

 

 

 

Since you are so authoritarian on the subject on the subject of TCP I will just point out that TCP doesn't use packets it uses SEGMENTS. Those segments are encapsulated in IP Packets at layer 3 but then those get stuffed into layer 2 PDUs (whether those be Frames, Cells, HDLC, etc.) All of which get transmitted as bits at layer 1.

 

Also, you are not ACKing on every single segment due to the variable TCP window sizing that is part of the protocol.

 

BTW, even if we were talking about IP packets here, the maximum header size is 60 bytes so a 1500 bytes IP packet would have 1440 bytes of data per packet. (not the sloppy 1200 guess)

 

Finally, maybe you should look into the HTTP protocol because as of version 1.1 it does not require that you create a separate TCP session for each element on the same page. In fact you can open a persistent connection:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_persistent_connection

 

Page design plays a factor in this of course.

 

We talking networking now? Maybe you are not the authority on TCP/IP either. :)