If VOOM Is "The Fastest Internet At Sea" ...

[jewopaho]

... I'd like to know what the slowest one is. Our loyalty status provides us each with 24 continuous hours of service at no cost, or a commensurate reduction in the price of a package. We opted for the former, and can honestly state that we got our money's worth (we paid nothing). My e-mails showed up six hours into the freebie period, took forever to send, connection to the Internet connection was often over two minutes, and pages loaded with the speed of that sloth in the Geico commercials. One of the hamsters on the wheel must have died. Each time I passed the passenger services desk, there was at least one person, phone or tablet in hand, complaining. A bit of honesty would have saved an awful lot of it. We've cruised dozens of times, are well-aware of the network issues at sea, and know pretty much all the places at the ports where such service is complimentary (and considerably faster). We wouldn't have a problem if the "perk" weren't available at all.

[Merion_Mom]

... I'd like to know what the slowest one is. Our loyalty status provides us each with 24 continuous hours of service at no cost, or a commensurate reduction in the price of a package. We opted for the former, and can honestly state that we got our money's worth (we paid nothing). My e-mails showed up six hours into the freebie period, took forever to send, connection to the Internet connection was often over two minutes, and pages loaded with the speed of that sloth in the Geico commercials. One of the hamsters on the wheel must have died. Each time I passed the passenger services desk, there was at least one person, phone or tablet in hand, complaining. A bit of honesty would have saved an awful lot of it. We've cruised dozens of times, are well-aware of the network issues at sea, and know pretty much all the places at the ports where such service is complimentary (and considerably faster). We wouldn't have a problem if the "perk" weren't available at all.

 

Which ship and which itinerary?

[Blizzard54]

Which ship and which itinerary?

 

 

It really does vary a lot.

[clarky213]

... I'd like to know what the slowest one is. Our loyalty status provides us each with 24 continuous hours of service at no cost, or a commensurate reduction in the price of a package. We opted for the former, and can honestly state that we got our money's worth (we paid nothing). My e-mails showed up six hours into the freebie period, took forever to send, connection to the Internet connection was often over two minutes, and pages loaded with the speed of that sloth in the Geico commercials. One of the hamsters on the wheel must have died. Each time I passed the passenger services desk, there was at least one person, phone or tablet in hand, complaining. A bit of honesty would have saved an awful lot of it. We've cruised dozens of times, are well-aware of the network issues at sea, and know pretty much all the places at the ports where such service is complimentary (and considerably faster). We wouldn't have a problem if the "perk" weren't available at all.

 

I had surf & stream on Ovation last week and it was fine. I managed to watch a soccer game one day without any buffering issues.

I did a speed test and was getting 35mb download speed, 1.5mb upload.

[Clarea]

I had surf & stream on Ovation last week and it was fine. I managed to watch a soccer game one day without any buffering issues.

I did a speed test and was getting 35mb download speed, 1.5mb upload.

Wow, they must not be throttling Ovation like some of the other ships. Most are showing a max of 5Mb down with stream.

[RDC1]

Keep in mind that the speed will vary considerable depending upon what you are doing and your device settings. Any cruise ship has to route the internet through satellites. That means that a normal signal latency in much much longer then the normal 50-100 milliseconds that one normally sees when dealing with a home computer or cell phone on land. For satellite it runs around 600 milliseconds (6/10's of a second) just for a packet of information to transfer and be acknowledged. Depending upon the setup of the devices at each end that can slow things down tremendously, especially for interactive applications. The vendors providing the services have down quite a bit to minimize the impact, but the latency problem is major.

 

As such a ship internet will never be as fast as a good land based system due to a simple thing called speed of light. You can calculate the minimum latency by calculating the altitude of a geosynchronous satellite, and then use the speed of light to calculate how long it would take the electromagnetic signal to travel from the ship to the satellite, then back to a ground station.

[Ned11]

Keep in mind that the speed will vary considerable depending upon what you are doing and your device settings. Any cruise ship has to route the internet through satellites. That means that a normal signal latency in much much longer then the normal 50-100 milliseconds that one normally sees when dealing with a home computer or cell phone on land. For satellite it runs around 600 milliseconds (6/10's of a second) just for a packet of information to transfer and be acknowledged. Depending upon the setup of the devices at each end that can slow things down tremendously, especially for interactive applications. The vendors providing the services have down quite a bit to minimize the impact, but the latency problem is major.

 

As such a ship internet will never be as fast as a good land based system due to a simple thing called speed of light. You can calculate the minimum latency by calculating the altitude of a geosynchronous satellite, and then use the speed of light to calculate how long it would take the electromagnetic signal to travel from the ship to the satellite, then back to a ground station.

 

 

 

Wow, that has gone straight over my head but I’m sure you’re right. [emoji6]

 

I was on Oasis and never had a problem. It was quick and reliable.

 

 

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[Cotswold Eagle]

 

As such a ship internet will never be as fast as a good land based system due to a simple thing called speed of light. You can calculate the minimum latency by calculating the altitude of a geosynchronous satellite, and then use the speed of light to calculate how long it would take the electromagnetic signal to travel from the ship to the satellite, then back to a ground station.

 

 

RCI is no longer using geosynchronous satellite services on many of its ships, they use the O3b medium Earth orbit constellation, thus cutting the latency on the satellite leg very considerably.

 

 

 

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[gingersvp]

I was on Oasis and had to work remotely half days. I wasn't able to VPN to my work computer but had no trouble with my cloud based services. We were also able to stream videos without any difficulty for my 2 year old.

[Biker19]

RCI is no longer using geosynchronous satellite services on many of its ships, they use the O3b medium Earth orbit constellation, thus cutting the latency on the satellite leg very considerably.

by about 2/3 (200ms vs. 600ms)

[jewopaho]

Which ship and which itinerary?

Liberty, Western Caribbean out of Galveston. Streaming also buffered continually.

[Clarea]

Liberty, Western Caribbean out of Galveston. Streaming also buffered continually.

Disappointing, as Liberty is one of the ships with the faster O3b service.

[Merion_Mom]

Could be that "everyone" on your cruise had an internet package and this overburdened the system.

[cruiserjt]

Just returned from Grandeur Holiday Cruise - Absolutely horrible connections - It does matter what ship, what itinerary - I would see the ads everywhere - "Fastest internet at sea" No excuses - they advertised something they could not provide and I never had a consistent signal for more than 10 minutes for the entire 12 days. Eventually, I went to the internet services in the lobby to use hard wired computer - still painfully slow. Just don't advertise that you can stream and download at great speeds across the entire fleet. Just say some ships, some of the time. It was the greatest waste of money.

[mateu]

Just returned from 2-week cruise in the South Pacific on Radiance of the Seas. Purchased the high-end internet package, but all I ever got was the “end”. 1 mbps upload and 2 mbps daytime download, maybe 3-mbps nighttime download. Definitely NOT worth the cost. Got better service in port on the cellular network (Verizon). :mad:

[Biker19]

Got better service in port on the cellular network (Verizon). :mad:

 

That will likely always be the case - the physics of a satellite connection limits the performance.

 

 

 

 

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[Jasukkie]

Yup, bought it once and doubt I would ever get it again. I have to say I really enjoyed being unplugged. We downloaded some Netflix shows so we had those to watch, no need to stream live.

[Rogueperson]

... I'd like to know what the slowest one is. Our loyalty status provides us each with 24 continuous hours of service at no cost, or a commensurate reduction in the price of a package. We opted for the former, and can honestly state that we got our money's worth (we paid nothing). My e-mails showed up six hours into the freebie period, took forever to send, connection to the Internet connection was often over two minutes, and pages loaded with the speed of that sloth in the Geico commercials. One of the hamsters on the wheel must have died. Each time I passed the passenger services desk, there was at least one person, phone or tablet in hand, complaining. A bit of honesty would have saved an awful lot of it. We've cruised dozens of times, are well-aware of the network issues at sea, and know pretty much all the places at the ports where such service is complimentary (and considerably faster). We wouldn't have a problem if the "perk" weren't available at all.

 

I don't know the exact detail of the free internet via the crown and anchor society, but is it possible that the free internet is surf only, which is severely throttled? The surf and stream is already painfully slow, BUT, even on the older Grandeur of the Seas, I was actually still able to stream video off their surf and stream (albeit really slowly). Its not the same as the newer O3B ships, but it is actually better than it previously was before where it was useless for pretty much everything.

[Clarea]

I don't know the exact detail of the free internet via the crown and anchor society, but is it possible that the free internet is surf only, which is severely throttled? ... .

Our experience has been that the free C&A internet is Surf & Stream.

[audome78]

Our experience has been that the free C&A internet is Surf & Stream.

 

On Freedom last week, it was either. I took the discount for the 1 device, cruise length (6 days) C&A discount for Surf only.

 

Worked great- I was even able to stream You Tube videos. Of course, with the average age of the guests on this cruise, I thought we were on a HAL cruise, so the demand might not have been too great.

 

Suffice it to say, it really depends on the ship, the location, and the number of users. It is really hit or miss.

[ProvoAggie]

I was on the Liberty a couple of weeks ago and the internet speeds depended a lot on where you were on the ship. I couldn't use it at all in my room. Down near Studio B I was able to stream WatchESPN. If I was in the public areas on deck 4 and 5 it seemed to work just fine. It also worked okay in the Windjammer. Most of the problems I saw though had to do with coverage on the ship.

[MrYellowDuck]

One of the staff was lamenting the low speed of the Internet on Radiance a couple of weeks ago; they likened it to being in the bad bits of the Caribbean. Around New Zealand it maxed out at around 1.5 mb/s but managed nearly twice that near Australia. Not fast enough to stream anything for most of the trip but capable of downloading a few shows overnight ready for watching the next day.

[Biker19]

Around New Zealand it maxed out at around 1.5 mb/s but managed nearly twice that near Australia. Not fast enough to stream anything for most of the trip but capable of downloading a few shows overnight ready for watching the next day.

You can get a good resolution video stream at about 1 Mbps - the trick is to have it steady, which is tough to get over a sat connection on a moving ship.

[Rogueperson]

Just returned from Grandeur Holiday Cruise - Absolutely horrible connections - It does matter what ship, what itinerary - I would see the ads everywhere - "Fastest internet at sea" No excuses - they advertised something they could not provide and I never had a consistent signal for more than 10 minutes for the entire 12 days. Eventually, I went to the internet services in the lobby to use hard wired computer - still painfully slow. Just don't advertise that you can stream and download at great speeds across the entire fleet. Just say some ships, some of the time. It was the greatest waste of money.

 

I was fortunate enough to sail on Grandeur twice last year.

 

In February, the internet was slow, but I could stream video, but it was nowhere near the speed of the Anthem when I was onboard her. I watched enough shows on most of my streaming services if i kept the quality low. I was able to stream Hulu and Netflix. I was not able to stream Xfinity as it wanted a much faster connection and it was obvious. The passenger base was a much older crowd. They were not the type to need internet.

 

In July, the internet was way more unpredictable. It was a younger crowd and so i assume there was a higher demand for the bandwidth. I could not do nearly the same as I could when i was on-board in February. I had hoped that in March during the dry dock, they would have upgraded, but they did not. I had to theorize that it was the same bandwidth but higher demand that caused speeds to plummet at certain points. It was a lot more frustrating and considering I paid more in July than in February, I was annoyed.

[tullers]

Keep in mind that the speed will vary considerable depending upon what you are doing and your device settings. Any cruise ship has to route the internet through satellites. That means that a normal signal latency in much much longer then the normal 50-100 milliseconds that one normally sees when dealing with a home computer or cell phone on land. For satellite it runs around 600 milliseconds (6/10's of a second) just for a packet of information to transfer and be acknowledged. Depending upon the setup of the devices at each end that can slow things down tremendously, especially for interactive applications. The vendors providing the services have down quite a bit to minimize the impact, but the latency problem is major.

 

As such a ship internet will never be as fast as a good land based system due to a simple thing called speed of light. You can calculate the minimum latency by calculating the altitude of a geosynchronous satellite, and then use the speed of light to calculate how long it would take the electromagnetic signal to travel from the ship to the satellite, then back to a ground station.

Don’t forget that weather, terrestrial & solar, can wreak havoc as well.