Remote Desktop on Sky Princess?

[killsport]

Has anyone used remote desktop from a Sky Princess (Caribbean) cruise? I have about an hour or two work and I'd love to use my iPad and RDP instead of bringing my laptop. Let me rephrase... my WIFE would like me to only take my laptop, as she (rightly) thinks I'll spend more time on work and less time with her.

Any real-life recent experience is greatly appreciated (either successful or not).

Happy Sailing!

[Rick&Jeannie]

While WiFi in the Caribbean tends to be somewhat better than other itineraries...I would not count on that at all.  Until Princess makes the move to Starlink, WiFi is still something of a gamble.  Anything that graphics oriented is going to (potentially) have significant lag.  It would drive me crazy! (A short trip, I know! 😄)

[jeromep]

RDP is a pretty heavy desktop virtualization protocol.  I think it is more chatty and requires more data than say VNC, which has a number of mitigations built into it to allow for practical remote desktop usage on lower bandwidth connections, and connections with a lot of latency.  We use both RDP and VNC in the office, but we only use VNC for remote desktop connections which come in from outside our network.  We only use RDP when on the LAN, mostly as a way to avoid having to walk to the server room, code in to gain access and then sit in a very noisy and often very cold environment to do work on a server console.

 

That said, the two things working against using RDP is going to be both overall connection speed through ship's WiFi, along with a great deal of latency.  I suspect you'll have some pretty long ping times on ship WiFi, along with low speeds.  This is a recipe for terrible RDP performance, so bad that you might not be able to get any work done.  Oh, and if you are trying to do this through a VPN, forget it.  There are varying reports of VPN capability on ship's WiFi, most are not very good.

 

If your shop had VNC available, or was willing to deploy it, you may get better performance because VNC is lighter weight in terms of how it handles data and how much data it asks for, but, in the end, this is your vacation, I would hope your employer could give you unencumbered time off, because, if they don't, what is the point of vacation time?

Edited February 5, 2023 by jeromep

[killsport]

@jeromep Ironically, my boss will be on the cruise with me. I'll look into having VNC deployed. Didn't know there was that much difference in data transfer, so thanks for that. Really it is just a weekly financial report I need to send out. Takes 1-2 hours. The rest is a 5 minute email check daily, which my iPad / phone will be fine for. Appreciate the advice! I expect the ship to be in port when I need to do the report, so I'll try to buy eSims to use LTE data that might make it palatable. 

[Coral]

58 minutes ago, killsport said:

@jeromep Ironically, my boss will be on the cruise with me. I'll look into having VNC deployed. Didn't know there was that much difference in data transfer, so thanks for that. Really it is just a weekly financial report I need to send out. Takes 1-2 hours. The rest is a 5 minute email check daily, which my iPad / phone will be fine for. Appreciate the advice! I expect the ship to be in port when I need to do the report, so I'll try to buy eSims to use LTE data that might make it palatable. 

You may have better luck in port to use your cellular phone as a hot spot for that 1-2 hours.

[Rick&Jeannie]

2 hours ago, Coral said:

You may have better luck in port to use your cellular phone as a hot spot for that 1-2 hours.

Agreed...as long as you have an "international" plan...(unless it's a US port.)

[Coral]

34 minutes ago, Rick&Jeannie said:

Agreed...as long as you have an "international" plan...(unless it's a US port.)

I paid the $10 Verizon per day fee in Europe to get decent internet.

[TracieABD]

Just got off the Sky and I would go with Coral’s plan and manage it off the ship’s Wi-Fi. Our connection was spotty and slow on the cruise.

Our best connection was in Cozumel- and with ATT there is no additional charge for Mexico.

However, we had almost no service in Costa Maya. 

[killsport]

Thanks all! Buying local cell service via an eSim seems the simplest (Belize, Honduras). Probably cost $20 so not an issue. 

[Rick&Jeannie]

10 hours ago, Coral said:

I paid the $10 Verizon per day fee in Europe to get decent internet.

I always have the AT&T International Day Pass active on my account.  It just automatically kicks in whenever I am outside the US...I don't have to do anything.  (I'd probably forget, anyway!)

[Roberto256]

19 hours ago, killsport said:

Has anyone used remote desktop from a Sky Princess (Caribbean) cruise? I have about an hour or two work and I'd love to use my iPad and RDP instead of bringing my laptop.

I would try for your 1-2 hours between 0300 and 0500.

Best chance of success.

Also good: when ship is in port, and passengers are off the ship.

[woodythebeagle]

We recently did a Caribbean cruise (Ruby Princess) out of Galveston and found the Medallionnet WiFi internet access rather slow and spotty.  The best time seemed to be really early in the morning before the rest of the ship was awake. 

 

As other's mentioned, in port cell data (LTE and some 5G) was much faster and more reliable when in port.  Also, i found using the ships computers in the internet cafe to be faster and more reliable than the WiFi, enough to stream video even.  My only guess would be the internet cafe desktops are hardwired ethernet connections vs the ships WiFI that has to fight with all the metal walls.

[Rick&Jeannie]

4 minutes ago, shadowski said:

  Also, i found using the ships computers in the internet cafe to be faster and more reliable than the WiFi, enough to stream video even.  My only guess would be the internet cafe desktops are hardwired ethernet connections vs the ships WiFI that has to fight with all the metal walls.

IC computers are hardwired...but they suffer from the same bottlenecks as everybody else on board.  WiFi is NOT the bottleneck...it is the satellite pipe.