Is use of a VPN Advisable on Viking?

[rbslos18]

I am currently testing a VPN (Mullvad) on a Viking cruise. The only downsides I have found is initially the Viking Voyager app did not work until I turned off the VPN. Once the app worked and the VPN was turned on, the Voyager app would not display Daily events. 

[CCWineLover]

56 minutes ago, rbslos18 said:

I am currently testing a VPN (Mullvad) on a Viking cruise. The only downsides I have found is initially the Viking Voyager app did not work until I turned off the VPN. Once the app worked and the VPN was turned on, the Voyager app would not display Daily events. 

Interesting.  That happened to me (on my VPN) the past cruises.

Maybe some our our super techies will know.

[WanderingBrit]

59 minutes ago, rbslos18 said:

I am currently testing a VPN (Mullvad) on a Viking cruise. The only downsides I have found is initially the Viking Voyager app did not work until I turned off the VPN. Once the app worked and the VPN was turned on, the Voyager app would not display Daily events. 

The Voyager App is intended not to work unless you're onboard - and using a VPN means you are no longer onboard from a network perspective. I'm guessing that they have a host they attempt to contact that is only reachable from the onboard LAN, and they use that to determine if you're onboard or not. It's sometimes called "Trusted Network Detection" when discussing endpoint protection solutions and the like.

[Mike07]

18 hours ago, WanderingBrit said:

The Voyager App is intended not to work unless you're onboard - and using a VPN means you are no longer onboard from a network perspective. I'm guessing that they have a host they attempt to contact that is only reachable from the onboard LAN, and they use that to determine if you're onboard or not. It's sometimes called "Trusted Network Detection" when discussing endpoint protection solutions and the like.

 

 

Agreed. I'm guessing the ship's events/menus/etc is all locally hosted and a VPN is dropping one to only get access to the outside world. It also would make sense that everything is locally hosted so that if the internet goes down b/c of bad weather or a broken satellite or whatever, you still have access to what's going on with the ship considering many rely exclusively on their phones.

[rbslos18]

I have had no significant problem using a VPN on the Neptune.

[WanderingBrit]

A real time update on the subject from Jupiter, on the North Sea between Iceland and Faroe Islands.

 

Satellite internet is pretty good, and even better when using my VPN client. Some examples;

- the site I use to log my daily rowing errors out when logging an update, unless I switch on my VPN at which point it’s perfect 

- Facebook takes a very long time to load or render, unless I’m using my VPN when it works pretty smoothly 

- uploading images here will always give a server error, or error on one out of several files, unless I use my VPN in which case it’s perfect

- most streaming sites are blocked or down prioritized, unless you use a VPN in which they work surprisingly well

 

First shot: Speedtest on ship WiFi, no VPN

 

Second shot, with VPN established:

 

Download/upload will vary a bit depending on competing traffic, but notice that ping and jitter are better with VPN in place.

 

I am emphatically not a network guy, but I suspect that somewhere in the carrier grade NATting being done by Starlink some routing overhead is being introduced, that the VPN avoids by being essentially a long running session.

 

My reality is that I have a more responsive online experience when my VPN is enabled, across a whole variety of services.

 

YMMV

 

[rbslos18]

On 8/2/2023 at 6:37 AM, WanderingBrit said:

A real time update on the subject from Jupiter, on the North Sea between Iceland and Faroe Islands.

 

Satellite internet is pretty good, and even better when using my VPN client. Some examples;

- the site I use to log my daily rowing errors out when logging an update, unless I switch on my VPN at which point it’s perfect 

- Facebook takes a very long time to load or render, unless I’m using my VPN when it works pretty smoothly 

- uploading images here will always give a server error, or error on one out of several files, unless I use my VPN in which case it’s perfect

- most streaming sites are blocked or down prioritized, unless you use a VPN in which they work surprisingly well

 

First shot: Speedtest on ship WiFi, no VPN

 

Second shot, with VPN established:

 

Download/upload will vary a bit depending on competing traffic, but notice that ping and jitter are better with VPN in place.

 

I am emphatically not a network guy, but I suspect that somewhere in the carrier grade NATting being done by Starlink some routing overhead is being introduced, that the VPN avoids by being essentially a long running session.

 

My reality is that I have a more responsive online experience when my VPN is enabled, across a whole variety of services.

 

YMMV

 

Which VPN do you use?

[WanderingBrit]

53 minutes ago, rbslos18 said:

Which VPN do you use?

Private Internet Access PIA. We’ve been able to stream video on demand and upload to YouTube while at sea with it enabled, otherwise impossible.

[FlyerTalker]

9 minutes ago, WanderingBrit said:

Private Internet Access PIA. We’ve been able to stream video on demand and upload to YouTube while at sea with it enabled, otherwise impossible.

 

In addition, PIA has some servers that have supposedly been optimized for streaming.

 

 

[Messybill]

On 8/4/2023 at 1:15 PM, WanderingBrit said:

Private Internet Access PIA. We’ve been able to stream video on demand and upload to YouTube while at sea with it enabled, otherwise impossible.

So what you are doing is working around the Viking block on video on WIFI.  That block is to stop people streaming and hogging bandwidth.  That is something you agree not to do when you connect to the ship's WIFI.   By using a VPN in this manner you are significantly degrading the internet for everyone else.  

[CCWineLover]

On 8/4/2023 at 10:15 AM, WanderingBrit said:

Private Internet Access PIA. We’ve been able to stream video on demand and upload to YouTube while at sea with it enabled, otherwise impossible.

I've wondered how you've been able to upload so many many pictures showing your wonderful trip!  On our trip, we could barely even text, much less send a single picture.  I was thinking too many on our Saturn voyage were face-timing (we could see them in the lounges and restaurants doing so).

[Messybill]

To be clear, pictures are not typically a problem.   You would have to be uploading thousands of pictures in bulk to consume the same bandwidth as one minute of video recorded at 30 frames per second.  

 

Video is a problem, and that includes streaming video of sports, movies, etc. as well as FaceTime and similar video-calling apps.  FaceTime has a voice only option and that is fine - the amount of data used by a voice conversation is trivial compared to video.  

 

For pictures, however, you will receive much more reliable service uploading photos (especially in bulk) by reducing their resolution so that the larger dimension is 1024 pixels.  Such photos will upload many times faster and will display on most websites perfectly well.  Save the originals in case you want to make prints out of them - that's when you need the resolution you get out of most modern DSLRs or cellphones.  I believe there are simple apps on the Apple Appstore that do this resizing for multiple photos at a time.  Since it is a fairly trivial app to write, I would expect that there are similar low-cost or even free apps available for Windows.  

 

Some web services will resize the photos for you when you upload.  This saves space on the website, but since the original is necessarily uploaded to the server before resizing, it does not do anything about the upload bandwidth required.  

 

I'd guess that the real problem is that most people have no idea that there might be a difference in the demands placed on the ship's systems by different types of use.  They have no experience managing the capacity or throughput of a software and hardware system, and they are used to the 100 to 500+ megabit internet that they get at home.   So far, in spite of continuing advances (and Starlink was a significant advance) that type of service is just not available consistently off-shore.  

 

It is our personal experience that when in port we find there is usually much better throughput available by connecting via a phone to the cellular network. 

 

That there is free internet aboard at all is really amazing.   If it were used solely for the purposes it is advertised to support - email, texting, photos etc. (but not streaming video) it would work fine.  Once it becomes overloaded though, all service gets degraded.   Many users' sessions fail or time-out at the same time and are automatically or manually retried, which just makes the situation worse.  The ship's network reaches a tipping point at which there is just no capacity left, and after that just bogs down completely, which just undermines the service for everyone.

 

 

Edited August 8, 2023 by Messybill
typos

[CCWineLover]

19 minutes ago, Messybill said:

To be clear, pictures are not typically a problem.   You would have to be uploading thousands of pictures in bulk to consume the same bandwidth as one minute of video recorded at 30 frames per second.  

 

Video is a problem, and that includes streaming video of sports, movies, etc. as well as FaceTime and similar video-calling apps.  FaceTime has a voice only option and that is fine - the amount of data used by a voice conversation is trivial compared to video.  

 

For pictures, however, you will receive much more reliable service uploading photos (especially in bulk) by reducing their resolution so that the larger dimension is 1024 pixels.  Such photos will upload many times faster and will display on most websites perfectly well.  Save the originals in case you want to make prints out of them - that's when you need the resolution you get out of most modern DSLRs or cellphones.  I believe there are simple apps on the Apple Appstore that do this resizing for multiple photos at a time.  Since it is a fairly trivial app to write, I would expect that there are similar low-cost or even free apps available for Windows.  

 

Some web services will resize the photos for you when you upload.  This saves space on the website, but since the original is necessarily uploaded to the server before resizing, it does not do anything about the upload bandwidth required.  

 

I'd guess that the real problem is that most people have no idea that there might be a difference in the demands placed on the ship's systems by different types of use.  They have no experience managing the capacity or throughput of a software and hardware system, and they are used to the 100 to 500+ megabit internet that they get at home.   So far, in spite of continuing advances (and Starlink was a significant advance) that type of service is just not available consistently off-shore.  

 

It is our personal experience that when in port we find there is usually much better throughput available by connecting via a phone to the cellular network. 

 

That there is free internet aboard at all is really amazing.   If it were used solely for the purposes it is advertised to support - email, texting, photos etc. (but not streaming video) it would work fine.  Once it becomes overloaded though, all service gets degraded.   Many users' sessions fail or time-out at the same time and are automatically or manually retried, which just makes the situation worse.  The ship's network reaches a tipping point at which there is just no capacity left, and after that just bogs down completely, which just undermines the service for everyone.

 

 

Thank you so much!  This is THE BEST explanation I have seen.  Very informative and understandable. 
so much appreciated!!

[uktog]

I find Facetiming in restaurants and public areas on ships an uncalled for spoiler of the overall ambience.  Some even consider it bad manners especially in restaurants and I have seen on other lines staff approach guests asking them to move somewhere less intrusive if they are making such calls.  I applaud this approach.

Do Viking staff do likewise?  I hope they do

[WanderingBrit]

Bandwidth isn't the problem, latency appears to be. There are several websites that would not accept posted forms, uploads, or render in a timely fashion when using "plain" shipboard WiFi, but which worked perfectly with my VPN enabled.

 

I believe that overly "chatty" sites (from an HTTP(s) perspective) suffer particularly. Ironically I could seldom get viking.com to render correctly unless I enabled my VPN.

[longterm]

On 7/6/2023 at 1:18 PM, CCWineLover said:

Interesting.  That happened to me (on my VPN) the past cruises.

Maybe some our our super techies will know.

It makes complete sense that it wouldn't work, and here's why:

 

Viking Voyager won't work unless you're on the ship; if you are going on a cruise in a week and try to use the app while in your house, the app will load, but you won't be able to use it for anything.

 

It's because the way that the app "knows" you're on the ship; when you connect to the ship's wifi, you're assigned a temporary IP address (a number, think of it like a phone number); the phone number's one that the ship's network has generated for you, and is one that it recognizes. These temporary ("dynamic") IP addresses most often start with 192, but there are a few others as well.

 

(Incidentally, almost all wifi networks do the same thing (the Viking ships do); you're assigned a temporary IP address when you join the network--either if you're using wifi or if you're connected by ethernet cable. It uses a protocol called "DHCP" which assigns these IP addresses; there is a way to get a "static" (permanent) IP address, but unless you want to use your computer as a server and allow connections from the outside world, you wouldn't have a use for it--and Internet providers charge for static IPs. When you leave a Viking cruise, the same IP addresses will get assigned to the next passengers.)

 

When you use a VPN, you go out to a server somewhere (let's say it's in Dallas, for example); that server assigns you a temporary IP address; it's NOT one that the Viking network recognizes as a "local" IP address. So, in the computer mind of Viking's network, you're not local--and therefore, Voyager won't activate.

 

The other benefit of a VPN is that traffic back and forth through the VPN server is encrypted.

 

Personally, I don't worry too much about a hacker on a Viking ship, even though I'm in the IT business and have been managing a server network for almost 25 years. I know I'm going to hear from those who will disagree, but on a Viking cruise, I'm not too worried about it--if I were at a Starbuck's or in a public library, I'd definitely be using a VPN though.

Edited August 10, 2023 by longterm