Very good wifi on Viking Sea

[Canadian Sunset]

We're currently aboard and enjoying ourselves very much. The staff is wonderful...the food is excellent...and we love the full king size bed. The most surprising fo

 

 

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[Canadian Sunset]

I was cut off by my own ineptitude and wanted to finish commenting on the wifi. It's better than on any other ship, even when extra is paid. They even allow free wifi to the crew, which allows them to stay in touch with their family.

 

 

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[Fitzall]

We were on the Sea in August And also found it excellent

[1stimecruiser]

Thanks for posting about your wifi experience. So glad to hear that it's working so well... we will be sailing on the Sea in 45 days.

 

How's the weather?

[photopro2]

And where are you :)

 

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[CharTrav]

It really is a matter of what Internet service they're connected to. If at sea and going thru satellite it can be pretty slow but tolerable. When we were doing Viking Homelands last Summer, the satellite link was to a provider in Madrid. If in port using or close enough to use the local provider, it then depends on how good they are. If you're doing a cruise now along the New England coast or later in the Caribbean, I'm willing to bet your service is or will be simply stupendous.

 

 

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Edited November 24, 2016 by CharTrav

[Canadian Sunset]

We're on the Cities of Antiquity cruise that left from Rome on November 20. It's been wonderful.

 

 

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[Fpacifico]

We're on the Cities of Antiquity cruise that left from Rome on November 20. It's been wonderful.

 

 

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That's my next one in 2018 fall

[Fpacifico]

Glad that wifi is so good, will need to keep in touch with family on a daily basis in June.

[Missus Makkem]

Sorry but for us using our own device the service was very spasmodic.

Their own computers were much better.

[Canadian Sunset]

I found the wi-fi a touch slow at times, but it did a great job of putting my photos on Faceboook.

[Dauntless]

wifi was poor at best. Personal devices varied. My friend was able to connect through his Kindle but my HP laptop was mostly not successful. This was true through most of our trip, on and off ship. The computers on board worked no better and everyone complains about the speed. I think if you want it to be like home, stay there. Of course, when you have so much time wasted at being unsuccessful, you tend to major in the minors. The silver lining is, good or bad it is included. Sometimes you get what you pay for and most of the other lines charge for this experience. If it was extra, I would have boarded the Complaining Wagon too.

[CharTrav]

I was ok with the service I got even if it sometimes barely got over 1Mbps on the upload. Still, if all you're trying to do is straight email - all text - and not trying to upload big pictures or videos that is more than adequate.

 

The limiting factors to performance are many: the quality of their ISP (satellite vs cellular), the quality of the wifi network equipment onboard ship (what wifi protocol can they support? Old slow 802.11ab or the newer faster with better range and ability to transmit thru walls 802.11n or ac? the distribution of wifi equipment about the ship - 1 per cabin? many per deck? 1 per deck?) and the wifi capabilities of YOUR device or equipment (what wifi protocol does it support?). If the ship's equipment is good and technically up to date but yours is old and behind or the the other way around, the performance you will see will be driven by the least capable of the two. If the quality of the ISP is the pits, that's it.

 

In any case, I found the service adequate to handle normal email. Just don't expect or count on multi media speeds.

 

For those of us who remember pre broadband days, I.e., dial up modems, anything better than that is sheer nirvana. [emoji1]

 

 

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Edited December 6, 2016 by CharTrav

[Dauntless]

I was ok with the service I got even if it sometimes barely got over 1Mbps on the upload. Still, if all you're trying to do is straight email - all text - and not trying to upload big pictures or videos that is more than adequate.

 

 

In any case, I found the service adequate to handle normal email. Just don't expect or count on multi media speeds.

 

For those of us who remember pre broadband days, I.e., dial up modems, anything better than that is sheer nirvana. [emoji1]

 

 

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I left a paragraph out of the quote as I had no idea what you were talking about and all I do is email and some research, no pictures. The ship's computers worked no better than my laptop so I don't think it was just my equipment. I understand about the placement of the ship being a determining factor but as I said, we also had problems on land as well so maybe the Northern European countries just don't always line up with our way of doing things. Not necessarily a bad thing, just an inconvenience, like the type of teas on board! You see what you look for.

[Peregrina651]

I left a paragraph out of the quote as I had no idea what you were talking about and all I do is email and some research, no pictures. The ship's computers worked no better than my laptop so I don't think it was just my equipment. I understand about the placement of the ship being a determining factor but as I said, we also had problems on land as well so maybe the Northern European countries just don't always line up with our way of doing things. Not necessarily a bad thing, just an inconvenience, like the type of teas on board! You see what you look for.

 

We did Midnight Sun in June and had very few problems with the internet in UK or Norway even when we were at the farthest northern point of Norway (where we were told to expect outages). There were one or two ports where things were slower but we were almost always able to connect.

[CharTrav]

I left a paragraph out of the quote as I had no idea what you were talking about and all I do is email and some research, no pictures. The ship's computers worked no better than my laptop so I don't think it was just my equipment. I understand about the placement of the ship being a determining factor but as I said, we also had problems on land as well so maybe the Northern European countries just don't always line up with our way of doing things. Not necessarily a bad thing, just an inconvenience, like the type of teas on board! You see what you look for.

 

 

Sorry - I let the geek in me out of its cage. [emoji6]So wow - if the ship's computers which were operating over a wired LAN (local area network), which typically achieve much higher data exchange speeds than going over a wireless network (aka wifi), were performing just as punky as your laptop - that's not good. But it could also still trace back to the connection you were getting once you connected to the Internet outside the ship. And the slowness there. Which was the final point I tried to make. It may be a case of trying to stuff an elephant thru a straw.

 

 

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Edited December 7, 2016 by CharTrav

[CharTrav]

We did Midnight Sun in June and had very few problems with the internet in UK or Norway even when we were at the farthest northern point of Norway (where we were told to expect outages). There were one or two ports where things were slower but we were almost always able to connect.

 

 

Looking at the Internet service we got when going thru the port connections, the best I saw was in Norway. Russia waa the absolute worst. Maritime satellite stretching back to Madrid was in between.

 

Fyi: the Internet speed I'm getting right now sitting in my room at a 5 star hotel/resort in Southern CA (attending an IT standards meeting) is 5/5. What I get at home is typically 100/100 Mbps (download / upload).

 

 

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Edited December 7, 2016 by CharTrav

[CharTrav]

I left a paragraph out of the quote as I had no idea what you were talking about and all I do is email and some research, no pictures. The ship's computers worked no better than my laptop so I don't think it was just my equipment. I understand about the placement of the ship being a determining factor but as I said, we also had problems on land as well so maybe the Northern European countries just don't always line up with our way of doing things. Not necessarily a bad thing, just an inconvenience, like the type of teas on board! You see what you look for.

 

 

Actually, on second thought, I'm quite sure the internal computer network onboard ship is excellent. A modern ship couldn't operate with an IT network performing at anything less than the best. I really do think the "fault" is the network outside the ship. Like jumping from the rabbit to the tortoise lane.

 

 

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[siggyg]

Our experience on board the Sea with wifi was a bit spotty. We were on Deck 3, aft, and several days the wifi would continually kick us off the network. This was across several devices. When it was stable, things were fine. I think different parts of the ship had better coverage and speed. Our T-Mobile Simple Choice free roaming data coverage was faster most of the time when in port.