Starlink on Beyond, a disappointment.

[mahdnc]

6 minutes ago, gardengalaz said:

Good Morning from St. Maarten ... Day 4 aboard the Beyond!  At present, we are docked in St. Maarten and it's about 10AM.  Just ran a speed test ... download 82.37 mbps and upload is 33.53 mbps!!!  I don't know if my numbers are that good at HOME!   So, seems like the world of internet at sea is greatly improved with StarLink.

 

Those are excellent numbers for ship internet speeds. For comparison, here are speeds I measured at an airport lounge at SYD:

Edited November 30, 2022 by mahdnc

[NutsAboutGolf]

4 hours ago, jean87510 said:

Ask those medical professionals about 12 to 16 hour shifts let alone residents hours and oncalls.  Everyone doesn't have the luxury you have to just shut off.  And good for you.  But you can't compare your work to others.  Some of our jobs don't work like that.  We have to be available.  I know you don't understand this and believe me be glad you dont.  Yet we still have great times on our cruises.  It's just how it is until my husband will retire in a few years.

 

For many pax who work, being able to occasionally work from the ship not only saves vacation time but can save a lot of time trying to fix issues

[TravelingCircusof5]

16 hours ago, gardengalaz said:

It's 10PM on Day 3 here aboard the Beyond and the current download speed is 41.53 mbps and upload is 6.84 mbps.  Truly, no issues with the internet at all (at least SO FAR, LOL!!)

Is that “premium”? I wonder if they slow it down for Basic? I don’t want to do a lot on my tech while we cruise, but i do want texting and receive calls if needed. 

[FourNines]

47 minutes ago, TravelingCircusof5 said:

Is that “premium”? I wonder if they slow it down for Basic? I don’t want to do a lot on my tech while we cruise, but i do want texting and receive calls if needed. 

We are also currently on board the Beyond. 
Basic internet using Starlink’s service, is less than 1Mbps down and unusable up.

If decent internet is a requirement, you’ll need to upgrade to the premium service. Having said that, text and calls using basic internet is ok (short of texting huge video files).

Edited November 30, 2022 by FourNines
Added to comment.

[intr3pid]

Has anyone with basic wifi tried using a VPN?  Did it change the speed limits the system would impose?

[intr3pid]

6 hours ago, gardengalaz said:

Good Morning from St. Maarten ... Day 4 aboard the Beyond!  At present, we are docked in St. Maarten and it's about 10AM.  Just ran a speed test ... download 82.37 mbps and upload is 33.53 mbps!!!  I don't know if my numbers are that good at HOME!   So, seems like the world of internet at sea is greatly improved with StarLink.

The ships don't use satellite internet when in port. Any local cellphone network is faster and cheaper.  The numbers you are seeing are likely the 4G/5G cellphone network speeds.

[gardengalaz]

It's about 6:30PM here on the Beyond and we're back at sea.  Just ran a new speed test and here's the results:

[NJRonbo]

4 minutes ago, gardengalaz said:

It's about 6:30PM here on the Beyond and we're back at sea.  Just ran a new speed test and here's the results:

That's an excellent download speed!

[NutsAboutGolf]

1 hour ago, NJRonbo said:

That's an excellent download speed!

 

Even the Upload speed is incredible for a cruise ship

[intr3pid]

1 hour ago, gardengalaz said:

It's about 6:30PM here on the Beyond and we're back at sea.  Just ran a new speed test and here's the results:

Do you have a sea day on the itinerary?  Looks like Beyond was still among the islands an hour ago:

https://www.cruisemapper.com/?imo=9838395

 

Would love to see a good speed when there is nothing much nearby.  Our December holiday trip has 7 sea days, and a good Starlink speed might just make the package worth splurging for.

[gardengalaz]

1 hour ago, intr3pid said:

Do you have a sea day on the itinerary?  Looks like Beyond was still among the islands an hour ago:

https://www.cruisemapper.com/?imo=9838395

 

Would love to see a good speed when there is nothing much nearby.  Our December holiday trip has 7 sea days, and a good Starlink speed might just make the package worth splurging for.

Yesterday was a sea day and the results I published here were download 24.96 mbps and upload 4.76 mbps.

 

At present, we are sailing between St. Maarten and St. Thomas, it's about 11PM and the current speed test results are:  

[gardengalaz]

1 hour ago, intr3pid said:

Would love to see a good speed when there is nothing much nearby.  Our December holiday trip has 7 sea days, and a good Starlink speed might just make the package worth splurging for.

Well we have had nothing but consistent, reliable and fast internet which is VERY different than every other experience we've ever had aboard a ship. We feel that this internet experience has RUINED us for any other Celebrity ships until they move the whole fleet onto Starlink ... and a week after we get home from this cruise, we'll be boarding the Solstice for an 8-day Mexican Riviera.  We're already preparing ourselves for a frustrating internet experience there!!

Edited December 1, 2022 by gardengalaz
Fixed a typo.

[FourNines]

5 hours ago, intr3pid said:

The ships don't use satellite internet when in port. Any local cellphone network is faster and cheaper.  The numbers you are seeing are likely the 4G/5G cellphone network speeds.

That has not been our experience on this trip.

We stayed onboard during our stop in St Maarten and we were connected through Starlink the whole time we were here. This was verified through a speed test.

[intr3pid]

1 hour ago, FourNines said:

That has not been our experience on this trip.

We stayed onboard during our stop in St Maarten and we were connected through Starlink the whole time we were here. This was verified through a speed test.

So, either they are keeping your Starlink connection alive and adding local network capacity in ports, or they are switching ship's own communications to the local network in ports and freeing up more capacity for you.  This is why the speed in ports seems to be 3x-4x that out at sea.

[intr3pid]

3 hours ago, gardengalaz said:

Well we have had nothing but consistent, reliable and fast internet which is VERY different than every other experience we've ever had aboard a ship. We feel that this internet experience has RUINED us for any other Celebrity ships until they move the whole fleet onto Starlink ... and a week after we get home from this cruise, we'll be boarding the Solstice for an 8-day Mexican Riviera.  We're already preparing ourselves for a frustrating internet experience there!!

We will be on Eclipse all the way on the other side of the planet.  It looks like Starlink is available down under just like it is in the Caribbeans, so X the fingers.

https://www.starlink.com/map

 

So, even if the ship is outfitted with it, it may not be available depending on where you are sailing.  This will be the case for us in Antartica in January 2024.

 

[gardengalaz]

Day 5, St. Thomas, 9:33AM  Speed Test:

 

[Honolulu Blue]

9 minutes ago, gardengalaz said:

Day 5, St. Thomas, 9:33AM  Speed Test:

 

Thanks for sharing.  Those speeds remind me of home (though the latency there is much lower).  It would be nice if they could sustain this and have similar throughput on all their ships. 🙏

Edited December 1, 2022 by Honolulu Blue

[mahdnc]

37 minutes ago, gardengalaz said:

Day 5, St. Thomas, 9:33AM  Speed Test:

 

 

Very nice.  I hope you are enjoying, St Thomas, too!

[gardengalaz]

3 hours ago, mahdnc said:

 

Very nice.  I hope you are enjoying, St Thomas, too!

Thanks!  It's been a frequent feature of many of our previous cruises, so we're staying onboard and enjoying a relatively quiet ship.

[rmalbers]

On 11/30/2022 at 3:37 PM, intr3pid said:

The ships don't use satellite internet when in port. Any local cellphone network is faster and cheaper.  The numbers you are seeing are likely the 4G/5G cellphone network speeds.

That's what I was going to say.

[intr3pid]

So, this is on board the Eclipse in the middle of Tasman Sea using premium internet:

 

 

 

Starlink on Eclipse:

https://www.cruisemapper.com/news/11190-celebrity-eclipse-internet-spacex-starlink-satellite-network

 

[NutsAboutGolf]

51 minutes ago, intr3pid said:

So, this is on board the Eclipse in the middle of Tasman Sea using premium internet:

 

 

 

Starlink on Eclipse:

https://www.cruisemapper.com/news/11190-celebrity-eclipse-internet-spacex-starlink-satellite-network

 

 

Has the wifi been down at all?  Those wifi speeds are still at least twice as fast what I typically see on other X sailings without starlink

[intr3pid]

19 hours ago, NutsAboutGolf said:

 

Has the wifi been down at all?  Those wifi speeds are still at least twice as fast what I typically see on other X sailings without starlink

Pretty consistent so far.  Haven't seen any drops. 

 

The ping is sometimes longer - as expected with satellite internet - but we have been able to do FaceTime/WhatsApp calls.  The overall impression is that the speed is very much the 5G network speed when close to land and still pretty decent when in the middle of the ocean.

Edited December 22, 2022 by intr3pid

[twangster]

RCI installs multiple Starlink antennas on their ships and load balances sessions across them.  On the smaller ships like Jewel of the Seas they have installed 8 Starlink antennas.  On Oasis of the Seas they installed 16 Starlink antennas, at least that I could find.  There were a couple of mounting brackets ready but with no antenna mounted. 

 

On Oasis if I repeated a linux curl command to reveal my public address the results displayed 15 different public IP address in the course of 5 - 10 seconds.  Each new session from my laptop went through a different Starlink antenna.  All the public IP address were based in Atlanta, GA.

 

They install multiple antennas so they can aggregate bandwidth and achieve diversity.  The standard "consumer" Starlink maritime system is currently limited to 350Mbps.  It's unknown if that limitation applies to the business grade service in use on cruise ships.  

 

They tend to place the antennas in two different groupings based on the class of the ship, some forward, some midship or aft.  On Oasis 12 Starlink antennas are in a semicircle along the edge of the Suite Lounge/Coastal Kitchen roof line.  The other 4 Starlink antennas are forward on the roof above the Suite Sun Deck, 2 on each side of the ship.

 

My assumption is that X isn't going with a single Starlink antenna per ship either. 

 

As I've researched and tested various Starlink related items I've learned not to rely on conventional wisdom with Starlink maritime service.  It is emerging technology with few details published for this application.  Not everything they do with the consumer residential, RV or maritime Starlink service applies to this type of deployment.   

 

Edited December 22, 2022 by twangster