Use of a private VPN (piVPN) on NCL ship internet.

[Pat.D]

This question is mostly for fellow techno geeks:  have you managed to connect thru a private VPN on an NCL ship?  I use piVPN along with the wireguard client to connect securely to my home network.  I know they block most common commercial VPN ports, but has anyone managed to get a similar setup working onboard and if so on which port range? 

 

Thanks!

[pcakes122]

2 hours ago, Pat.D said:

This question is mostly for fellow techno geeks:  have you managed to connect thru a private VPN on an NCL ship?  I use piVPN along with the wireguard client to connect securely to my home network.  I know they block most common commercial VPN ports, but has anyone managed to get a similar setup working onboard and if so on which port range? 

 

Thanks!

I am not a techno geek and I mostly or probably totally have no idea what you're talking about (lol) BUT I do regularly use NordVPN on the ships if that helps.

[Pat.D]

8 hours ago, pcakes122 said:

I do regularly use NordVPN on the ships if that helps.

 

Thanks, that's interesting!  I was told most commercial VPN's were blocked on cruise ships so this is good news.

 

[pcakes122]

10 minutes ago, Pat.D said:

 

Thanks, that's interesting!  I was told most commercial VPN's were blocked on cruise ships so this is good news.

 

I have even used my corporate VPN in the past but that has not been recently.

 

In order to use a vpn you must upgrade to the Premium "streaming" package.

 

 

 

[Pat.D]

6 hours ago, pcakes122 said:

In order to use a vpn you must upgrade to the Premium "streaming" package.

 

Ah yes, this I knew.  I was hoping to use the regular package as the "premium" package is just not worth it speed wise. 

[mast3rn8]

7 hours ago, Pat.D said:

 

Thanks, that's interesting!  I was told most commercial VPN's were blocked on cruise ships so this is good news.

 

I've read a bit about this in the past as well - not all cruise lines block VPN, but yes some do. I was on HAL recently and they definitely block VPN so I was unable to do any work - it was a surprise to me and I  wish I would have looked it up beforehand but now I know.

[pcakes122]

1 hour ago, Pat.D said:

 

Ah yes, this I knew.  I was hoping to use the regular package as the "premium" package is just not worth it speed wise. 

Unfortunately, the descriptions of the lesser packages do specifically state "No VPN" so they probably have some way to block it (not that I would have a clue as to how the do that lol.)

[BirdTravels]

I have no problem connecting through a corporate VPN, but we always have the premium, streaming service for both VPN and wifi calling/voice. 

[pr0pel]

Just a guess but if you setup PiVPN on port 443 at home, you should be able to use it on the ship, at least in theory.

[Pat.D]

7 hours ago, pr0pel said:

Just a guess but if you setup PiVPN on port 443 at home, you should be able to use it on the ship, at least in theory.

 

I was thinking about that, I might try it just to see.  I do know that on RCCL they block VPN's thru deep packet inspection so the port doesn't matter, but RCCL's system is leaps and bounds ahead of anything on NCL ships so I'm hoping their vintage setup may be to my advantage.

[cuddylier]

I was on NCL Sun in December 2022 and had the standard whole cruise wifi package, the premium package was not offered.

 

There is deep packet inspection (DPI) going on, well known VPNs like openvpn were just completely blocked on all ports, including TCP 443. It was possible to access http/https on any port, not just 80/443, which told me it had to be DPI rather than them simply blocking all ports except 80/443.

 

Wireguard sort of worked but was incredibly slow on multiple servers I have a wireguard server hosted on e.g. 0.05Mb/s - it was just my assumption that wireguard doesn't like high latency (NCL Sun latency was 500 - 700ms) rather than it being completely blocked.

 

A TCP VPN like v2ray that pretends to be normal web traffic worked perfectly as expected as it just looked like normal web traffic to the DPI firewall. I was able to max out the full 7Mb/s download and 1Mb/s upload.

Edited January 11, 2023 by cuddylier