Ruby's Dry Dock -- what's happening?

[TechPotato]

The most important this is not the Ocean Medallion (feeding all of the passengers' locations and data into an AI seems like the good intentions part at the beginning of a SiFi drama just before the robot spiders or angels start hunting everyone) .

 

The important part is will they upgrade to MedallionNet? My wife wants to go on the transpacific next fall but Princess will not tell us if the SES/O3B internet will be up by then. I can't go on a ship without it (currently i can only cruise Royal Caribbean).

[Haboob]

The most important this is not the Ocean Medallion (feeding all of the passengers' locations and data into an AI seems like the good intentions part at the beginning of a SiFi drama just before the robot spiders or angels start hunting everyone) .

 

The important part is will they upgrade to MedallionNet? My wife wants to go on the transpacific next fall but Princess will not tell us if the SES/O3B internet will be up by then. I can't go on a ship without it (currently i can only cruise Royal Caribbean).

 

FWIW, Emerald has had PrincessCONNECT up and running since June -- that's the name of MedallionNet

on a non-***** ship. Several other ships (Coral?, Grand?) are up and running, too. Be careful of how far

north or south the voyage goes, though, having the equipment does no good if you can't see the satellites.

[satxdiver]

SHARE replaced Sabatini's on the Emerald, Ruby and one more ship I cannot remember. The cost is $39/pax. We tried it last November when they lowered the price to $29 as a special on that cruise. We like so many others were not all that happy with the food. The food is good and the service was great (there were only two tables occupied) but the 6 courses with only 2 choices for each course was a disappointment. The portions are small since there was 6 courses something like appetizers. There are a few on CC that seem to like SHARE but it is not being installed on any more ships which should tell you something.

[satxdiver]

OceanMedallion is eventually coming to all the Princess fleet. It is a small round piece the size of perhaps a quarter. It replaces the seacard used today. It will allow you to enter your room, leave/return to the ship, locate your travel partners, purchase drinks etc. It allows the ship to do a quick check to verify that everyone is aboard. It is now operational (perhaps not totally) on the CB which we will be boarding in November. The device is passive in that it does not radiate a continual signal but rather only replies to signals.

[caribill]

OceanMedallion is eventually coming to all the Princess fleet. It is a small round piece the size of perhaps a quarter. It replaces the seacard used today. It will allow you to enter your room, leave/return to the ship, locate your travel partners, purchase drinks etc. It allows the ship to do a quick check to verify that everyone is aboard. It is now operational (perhaps not totally) on the CB which we will be boarding in November. The device is passive in that it does not radiate a continual signal but rather only replies to signals.

 

It only verifies that the ***** is aboard. The passenger might not be.

[jlp20]

...I don't suppose that's the new internet that many of the ships are getting?

No, the new internet is separate, but is usually installed at same time..

[TechPotato]

FWIW, Emerald has had PrincessCONNECT up and running since June -- that's the name of MedallionNet

on a non-***** ship. Several other ships (Coral?, Grand?) are up and running, too. Be careful of how far

north or south the voyage goes, though, having the equipment does no good if you can't see the satellites.

Everything that I have read says that PrincessConnect is the WiFi but that MedallionNet is the new internet using the O3B's MEO (medium earth orbit) satellites from SES. It doesn't matter how fast the connection is, the old internet uses GEO (geosynchronous equatorial orbit) satellites that are 36,000 km away so internet is really slow just due to the speed of light.

 

The new system uses dual moving dishes to track two moving satellites at a time and needs serious refit. It gives always-on internet that outperforms most people's home service.

[Haboob]

Everything that I have read says that PrincessConnect is the WiFi but that MedallionNet is the new internet using the O3B's MEO (medium earth orbit) satellites from SES. It doesn't matter how fast the connection is, the old internet uses GEO (geosynchronous equatorial orbit) satellites that are 36,000 km away so internet is really slow just due to the speed of light.

 

The new system uses dual moving dishes to track two moving satellites at a time and needs serious refit. It gives always-on internet that outperforms most people's home service.

 

Close but no cigar.

 

GEO vs MEO does affect "latency", but not bits-per-second. GEO adds around a half second of delay

to a connection (very much like listening to an echo); MEO adds only a quarter second. You don't want

to try to play "Call of Duty" over either. ;)

 

It has been possible to buy enough bits-per-second to provide full-up video streaming afloat for a long

time, but the problem has been the cost of that much bandwidth. Charging $100 or $200 for a week of

internet at sea makes folks grit their teeth and say "It's vacation". Charging $1,000 or $2,000 for that

week makes them say "Are you out of your everluvin mind?!?"

 

SES solved that problem by flying satellites with 10 steerable dish antennae, each of which can be

pointed at a different ship so SES can re-sell the exact same bandwidth 10 times. Voila!

 

*BUT* those satellites fly in MEO and cannot peek as far over the Earth's curvature as can the

GEO's. That means that where on Earth a ship sails now effects it's cost of satellite uplinks ...a lot.

And that is why Princess is now having fits coming up with a one-size-fits-all-voyages internet policy.

[TechPotato]

GEO vs MEO does affect "latency", but not bits-per-second. GEO adds around a half second of delay

to a connection (very much like listening to an echo); MEO adds only a quarter second. You don't want

to try to play "Call of Duty" over either. ;)

 

It has been possible to buy enough bits-per-second to provide full-up video streaming afloat for a long

time, ...

I won't repost the physics limiting GEO satellites speed from the MedallionNet thread but, because of the number of elements needed to make a page) at 50 mb/s a typical web page (wsj.com was used) it takes 5 seconds to load on normal home internet, 12 s at O3B level latency and about 40 s at GEO latency.

 

It would be extremely frustrating to do a remote service on someones computer when every keystroke and mouse movement has a several second delay before you see the change.

[shrewsdog]

There's a nice video on youtube discussing Ocean Medallion.

The bottom line is that it still isn't 100% working on the Regal, and they won't deploy it everywhere else until all the bugs are out. Other youtube videos discuss a recent partial rollout on the Caribbean Princess. Even if it is working fully in the initial deployment (in the 100's of staterooms) new problems can crop up as they scale up to the full ship. In the meantime they are installing the hardware to support it on a number of the ships to be ready for a rapid rollout once it's ready. We were on the Regal during a 'preview" of ***** in June, but not one of the small group to actually get a medallion. They did have the better internet backbone working for everyone, and gave us (Platinum Captains Circle) free unlimited use as part of the preview. It would be nice if they did the same on other ships as we are taking a 5-day LA-Cabo RT on the Ruby Oct 22. The internet performance was much better. I'm sure the fees they charge are a good revenue source for Princess and free will be an anomaly. I would appreciate a better pricing plan (like a flat daily or voyage charge some other lines offer) rather than the current minutes based one. This is really expensive when you factor the slow rates and poor connectivity of the current systems on the ships. This is perhaps my major gripe (of very few) with Princess.

[Colo Cruiser]

wondering if anyone has information regarding Ruby Princess dry dock this Fall?

 

Already an active thread on your question...

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2682948

[Annmarie58]

To get totally off the Wi-Fi subject

We were on the last sailing before dry dock, Just returned yesterday and the head waiter told us they are also adding a coffee shop on lido like the one on international café . They were preparing for dry dock but it was not disruptive

And true they only offered 3 by the glass Cab sav's :( But they were ok!

[Haboob]

I won't repost the physics limiting GEO satellites speed from the MedallionNet thread but, because of the number of elements needed to make a page) at 50 mb/s a typical web page (wsj.com was used) it takes 5 seconds to load on normal home internet, 12 s at O3B level latency and about 40 s at GEO latency.

 

It would be extremely frustrating to do a remote service on someones computer when every keystroke and mouse movement has a several second delay before you see the change.

 

That's not how satellite latency works.

 

For example, say you want to transfer a file (i.e. a webpage or first chunk of a movie), that it takes

1 second to transmit the bits, and that the ground portion of the trip has a ping time of 35ms.

 

Direct, the first byte will arrive 0.035 sec and the last 1.035 sec after you hit "go".

Via MEO, the first byte will arrive 0.235 sec and the last 1.235 sec after you hit "go".

Via GEO, the first byte will arrive 0.585 sec and the last 1.585 sec after you hit "go".

 

Regardless, it still takes the same 1 second for the bits to come in, they just get there later.

Think of being the Alps and instead of listening to the person next to you, listening to his echo.

[Haboob]

⋮

they are also adding a coffee shop on lido like the one on international café

⋮

 

(y) :D

[TechPotato]

Regardless, it still takes the same 1 second for the bits to come in, they just get there later.

Think of being the Alps and instead of listening to the person next to you, listening to his echo.

That's not how the web works.

 

The average number of elements on a typical web page is 120 (depending on the type of page - news and social media sites tend to be more, information pages a bit less). Well designed sites use optimization so that some requests happen in parallel, but others deliberately wait for all of the ads to load before loading any content that might have people navigating away (yes, use an ad blocker).

 

The numbers that I gave before are from actual tests performed by The Wall Street Journal to test the effect of latency on loading wsj.com.

 

While streaming uses a different protocol (eg. RTSP) and your numbers are correct for the actual one-way stream (not counting control packet latency issues), the actual pages to browse and find your stream will take substantially longer.

 

It's more like having that person on the alps tell you his phone number one digit at a time, and only after you confirm the previous digit, each only listening to the other person's echo.

[Haboob]

That's not how the web works.

 

The average number of elements on a typical web page is 120 (depending on the type of page - news and social media sites tend to be more, information pages a bit less). Well designed sites use optimization so that some requests happen in parallel, but others deliberately wait for all of the ads to load before loading any content that might have people navigating away (yes, use an ad blocker).

 

The numbers that I gave before are from actual tests performed by The Wall Street Journal to test the effect of latency on loading wsj.com.

 

While streaming uses a different protocol (eg. RTSP) and your numbers are correct for the actual one-way stream (not counting control packet latency issues), the actual pages to browse and find your stream will take substantially longer.

 

It's more like having that person on the alps tell you his phone number one digit at a time, and only after you confirm the previous digit, each only listening to the other person's echo.

 

::chuckles::

 

Methinks you'd be happier with an ad-blocker on and a more selective choice of websites, even at home.

 

Sympathies.

[Haboob]

That's not how the web works.

 

The average number of elements on a typical web page is 120 (depending on the type of page - news and social media sites tend to be more, information pages a bit less). Well designed sites use optimization so that some requests happen in parallel, but others deliberately wait for all of the ads to load before loading any content that might have people navigating away (yes, use an ad blocker).

 

The numbers that I gave before are from actual tests performed by The Wall Street Journal to test the effect of latency on loading wsj.com.

 

While streaming uses a different protocol (eg. RTSP) and your numbers are correct for the actual one-way stream (not counting control packet latency issues), the actual pages to browse and find your stream will take substantially longer.

 

It's more like having that person on the alps tell you his phone number one digit at a time, and only after you confirm the previous digit, each only listening to the other person's echo.

 

::chuckles::

 

Methinks you'd be happier with an ad-blocker on and a more selective choice of websites, even at home.

 

Sympathies.

 

Maybe I better unpack that.

 

I wasn't talking about the WSJ's editorial content, I was talking about any site who expends great effort

with JavaScript and SOAP-requests to deliberately slow down delivery of content to the user. Such is

annoying even not when compounded by time-of-flight issues to a satellite and back.

[Pamster]

Ruby's is in or going in to Dry Dock this month..... do any of you know what's going to be done?

We are on Ruby Nov10-17. I have noticed on the deck plan that there is a restaurant called Share and no Sabatini's, which is hard to believe. What is Share? So fill me in!

Think I read somewhere that Ruby is leaving the US, Alaska & Caribbean to go Down Under....is this true?

 

SHARE is the Curtis Stone restaurant. It has been on Ruby for years.

[caribill]

To get totally off the Wi-Fi subject

We were on the last sailing before dry dock, Just returned yesterday and the head waiter told us they are also adding a coffee shop on lido like the one on international café . They were preparing for dry dock but it was not disruptive

 

Could be it is the "Coffee and Cones" that is on the Caribbean Princess. This added coffees to the soft serve counter.

[Mamadetres]

Are the kid’s club areas getting a face lift during dry dock? Any idea when the new bar menu will be rolled out on the Ruby?

[jshyshka]

Share has been around for awhile now and we have gone several times and love it - Crown grill on the other hand we find just average at best ... met several people on our Star 12 day Alaska Cruise last week that also said they loved it and wished they would continue the roll out ... to each their own :-)

 

 

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