Starlink Equipped Ships

[loupana]

Currently on Brilliance of the Seas, wasn't expecting Starlink but it's up and running.

My Speed tests from Day one

 

While in Port Tampa at Schooner Bar

 

Still in port but in cabin 8574

 

Later Day one while out at sea in stateroom...

 

 

 

 

 

 

[FlatFooted Freda]

On 12/19/2022 at 8:17 AM, twangster said:

 

On Jewel there are 4 above the VCL and 4 on top of the Sky Bar.  Those are hard to see but I saw them installing them so I knew to look there.

 

 

It helps to have a 360 camera on a stick.  Sky Bar antennas after installation was complete.

 

 

 

VCL:

 

 

On Adventure there are some on the VCL roof and some on the forward most roof above the forward public deck where mini-golf is on her sister ships.  

 

 

They seem to split the locations which I suspect is done for diversity.  If ship heading and angle makes some antennas partially shadowed then hopefully the others have a clear sky.  

 

Given that Jewel has 8 antennas I would have thought they'd do something similar on Vision class.  Maybe the best way to find them will be from another ship across the pier, assuming you are on a taller ship. 

Forgive me for not reading entire thread. Is Jewel equipped with StarLink? We're on JOTS in May, northern Europe. Regardless, how is the connection?

[Crism]

Starlink now on Grandeur.  Too bad the entire day it was 0.04 down and 0.04 up.  Tried on a wired Royal computer and it was 61mbps+.  This ship desperately needs new access points.

[AlohaLivin]

3 minutes ago, Crism said:

Starlink now on Grandeur.  Too bad the entire day it was 0.04 down and 0.04 up.  Tried on a wired Royal computer and it was 61mbps+.  This ship desperately needs new access points.

Grandeur had been pretty bad wifi wise; not as bad as Explorer (which in our experience was the worst ever), but it was still virtually unusable in December! If starlink is there now and it’s still bad, that’s very discouraging.

 

Edited February 8, 2023 by AlohaLivin

[Toddcan]

Scouring this thread for Mariner of the Seas data.. I see the "dishes" are installed, but no one has posted about if it's active, or any samples of the speeds.  

 

Anyone?

[twangster]

Bad news for the state of Starlink Maritime service.

 

The Starlink v2-mini satellites that we supposed to be an interim band aid for many things Starlink but especially the maritime service have suffered a setback.  This will delay Starlink Maritime service getting any better in the near term.  

 

https://spacenews.com/spacex-experiencing-problems-with-first-upgraded-starlink-v2-satellites/

[Carlos A.]

I wonder if they could just switch to O3b back eventually

[twangster]

57 minutes ago, carlosalonsor said:

I wonder if they could just switch to O3b back eventually

 

Yes, in theory, at least for the 1/3 of the fleet that had O3b to begin with.  However once they gave up their slots with O3b it might be impossible to get those back if O3b has assigned them to other customers.  

 

The larger issue is cost which is why they migrated to Starlink.  

 

Keep in mind Royal isn't trying, or even pretending to try, to provide great internet service.  They moved to Starlink to have a supplier that provided a lower cost solution.  To move back to a higher cost provider is probably a much bigger issue compared to the actual technology involved.  

 

We have seen that for their beverage suppliers they had no problem simply saying X brand of beverage is not available.  They could have found a source for X brand but at a higher cost.  Instead of going there they simply said, nope, brand X is not available right now.  

 

Once you consider that an internet provider is just that, one of many potential providers,  Royal is not trying to achieve performance targets with any supplier, beyond cost.   

 

If O3b offered a steep discount to go back to them then maybe it would be an option.  But why would a provider, seeing a competitor fail miserably, offer a steep discount to allow customers to switch back?  That breaks their business model - stable and reliable service at a cost for stable and reliable service.  

 

Royal isn't trying to provide the best, they are trying to provide good enough, at an economical supplier cost.  That's isn't what O3b provides.  They provide solid solutions, but at an appropriate rate for solid and reliable service.  

 

It all comes back to... you get what you pay for.   Which by the way, is probably exactly what RCG stakeholders (investors) want to see then do in their current financial condition.    

 

Edited March 26, 2023 by twangster

[Li_Ras]

Starlink live on Ovation, but don’t think they’ve removed the speed caps just yet.
 

3.2mbps down/1.5 up with an 80ms ping

[Biker19]

8 hours ago, Li_Ras said:

Starlink live on Ovation, but don’t think they’ve removed the speed caps just yet.

I would turn that around and assume the ships that currently have higher limits will be capped to Ovation like speeds.

[A&L_Ont]

6 minutes ago, Biker19 said:

I would turn that around and assume the ships that currently have higher limits will be capped to Ovation like speeds.

Sadly, I agree. I wish they would bring back the two types of Internet packages. 

[twangster]

Anyone else who does IT can probably relate....

 

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/spacex-starlink-outage-caused-by-expired-ground-station-certificates/

[slackerau]

I am currently on Ovation of the Seas. 

 

Internet has not been great so far. They have not removed any of the speed caps, Internet in the rooms is extreamly poor and the assistance on the ship is next to not existent. 

 

However, their issues at the moment don't appear to be to be related to the internal network and devices and not so much the internet. 

 

At the moment they are advising there is no issues on board however you should not have to turn your wifi off and on ever 10 or so minutes to get access to the internet (Wifi stays connected, however loose the ability to get a public IP on the connection so internally (chat etc) it works but no external internet until you disconnect the Wifi and reconnect. 

 

It's not like they have cheap networking equipment onboard, digging into the network they are running fortinet core at least. 

 

In some main areas of the ship (where I was told to go and work from as that would give me the best chance of success) I get ok reception (Currently sitting in the Music Hall level 3):

 

 

 

However pings when you head back into the rooms (I am mid ship deck 6 at the moment) and speed drops, pings increase to 2,000 - 3,000 to google DNS, packets drop, and many DUP packets received. 

 

While I get that services in Cabins is always worse then in the public areas of the ship (as they are geared for mass connectivity) but there are other issues with the tracing and the way they have the network flow by the looks of it. 

 

FYI just my comments.

[twangster]

27 minutes ago, slackerau said:

I am currently on Ovation of the Seas. 

 

Internet has not been great so far. They have not removed any of the speed caps, Internet in the rooms is extreamly poor and the assistance on the ship is next to not existent. 

 

However, their issues at the moment don't appear to be to be related to the internal network and devices and not so much the internet. 

 

At the moment they are advising there is no issues on board however you should not have to turn your wifi off and on ever 10 or so minutes to get access to the internet (Wifi stays connected, however loose the ability to get a public IP on the connection so internally (chat etc) it works but no external internet until you disconnect the Wifi and reconnect. 

 

It's not like they have cheap networking equipment onboard, digging into the network they are running fortinet core at least. 

 

In some main areas of the ship (where I was told to go and work from as that would give me the best chance of success) I get ok reception (Currently sitting in the Music Hall level 3):

 

 

 

However pings when you head back into the rooms (I am mid ship deck 6 at the moment) and speed drops, pings increase to 2,000 - 3,000 to google DNS, packets drop, and many DUP packets received. 

 

While I get that services in Cabins is always worse then in the public areas of the ship (as they are geared for mass connectivity) but there are other issues with the tracing and the way they have the network flow by the looks of it. 

 

FYI just my comments.

 

On Q class I am accustomed to propping my cabin door open to use the internet.  I keep an empty water bottle on hand for just this purpose.  Perhaps there is more steel in these cabin doors.  On Anthem, Ovation, Odyssey and Quantum this has been an issue I've experienced.  On a Quantum cruise the access point was outside my cabin door and I had them verify it was working it was so bad in my cabin.  

 

On my home I have wifi LED light bulbs on the outside of my garage.  I put an outdoor rated access point in my garage for such devices.  With my steel garage door closed the signal level from my LED light bulbs drops significantly and that is from a lightweight garage door with only 3m between access point and wifi light.  WiFi signals just don't penetrate steel very well at all.  

 

The only solution is what they did with Wonder - access points inside each cabin.  

[Biker19]

10 hours ago, slackerau said:

They have not removed any of the speed caps

Welcome to CC.

Not sure why you assumed they would/will.

Performance should get better once you get closer to the US mainland.

Edited April 17, 2023 by Biker19

[twangster]

One item of interest with Starlink for Apple users - my iCloud files were challenging to access over Starlink.

 

I keep a "Numbers" spreadsheet on my iCloud drive for all my cruising, points, prices, cabin numbers, etc.  It's my master cruising spreadsheet.  Over time it's grown to a whopping 2.1 MB.   "Numbers" is Apple's equivalent to MS Excel.

 

It was impossible to access my spreadsheet with my M1 MacBook Pro over Starlink.  It would not open normally and I couldn't manually download it.  After hours I'd have 117 kB of the 2.1 MB.  I had to open it in a web browser at icloud.com and save it manually as an excel file which then became orphaned from the version on iCloud.  This defeats the whole concept of iCloud drive.  

 

It never got better over 15 nights on Radiance.  Somehow either Starlink or Apple don't like each other.  I never had this issue over the old Voom providers.

 

Now back home I'm having to merge my changes manually into my master iCloud file.  PITA.   

 

YMMV.

 

Edited May 9, 2023 by twangster

[Ret MP]

On 4/16/2023 at 8:33 PM, twangster said:

 

On Q class I am accustomed to propping my cabin door open to use the internet.  I keep an empty water bottle on hand for just this purpose.  Perhaps there is more steel in these cabin doors.  On Anthem, Ovation, Odyssey and Quantum this has been an issue I've experienced.  On a Quantum cruise the access point was outside my cabin door and I had them verify it was working it was so bad in my cabin.  

 

On my home I have wifi LED light bulbs on the outside of my garage.  I put an outdoor rated access point in my garage for such devices.  With my steel garage door closed the signal level from my LED light bulbs drops significantly and that is from a lightweight garage door with only 3m between access point and wifi light.  WiFi signals just don't penetrate steel very well at all.  

 

The only solution is what they did with Wonder - access points inside each cabin.  

As I've said many times in here and others, I'm an IT geek wannabe.  So, excuse my ignorance.  I don't remember what cruise or ship I was on but in one of the closets, there was a Wifi repeater <(for lack of a more official name) with a couple of about 4-inch antennas.  Isn't that the norm now, each cabin has a dedicated Wifi repeater.  That was my understanding that that is what was going to happen/promised.  I don't know.  This tech stuff is hard to keep up with.

 

[Biker19]

3 minutes ago, Ret MP said:

Isn't that the norm now, each cabin has a dedicated Wifi repeater?

While that may be true on some newer ships (I think from Sprectum on), it's far from norm on older ones. When RCI switched to Starlink, they didn't upgrade the internal network of the ship - that may be coming, eventually.

Edited May 9, 2023 by Biker19

[twangster]

8 minutes ago, Ret MP said:

As I've said many times in here and others, I'm an IT geek wannabe.  So, excuse my ignorance.  I don't remember what cruise or ship I was on but in one of the closets, there was a Wifi repeater <(for lack of a more official name) with a couple of about 4-inch antennas.  Isn't that the norm now, each cabin has a dedicated Wifi repeater.  That was my understanding that that is what was going to happen/promised.  I don't know.  This tech stuff is hard to keep up with.

 

 

I know Wonder has Aruba 303H access points in each cabin.  Edge class on Celebrity does as well.  

 

Odyssey does not.  Same Q class Voom experience as other Q ships (shoe in the door).  

[Ret MP]

1 minute ago, twangster said:

 

I know Wonder has Aruba 303H access points in each cabin.  Edge class on Celebrity does as well.  

 

Odyssey does not.  Same Q class Voom experience as other Q ships (shoe in the door).  

"Aruba 303H access points",  LOL, is that another name for "repeaters"?

[twangster]

2 minutes ago, Ret MP said:

"Aruba 303H access points",  LOL, is that another name for "repeaters"?

 

Technically speaking an access point is different from a repeater.  Access points are better.  

[jencruzin]

Never had problems using google docs.

[SE fla]

Odyssey April Transatlantic it worked fine for me. 

[BND]

Worked great on EN a few weeks ago.  I was able to watch you tube videos, uninterrupted, no buffering, etc.  We also made two wifi calls, one to our mortgage co as we were in the middle of getting the title co everything for our house that we were selling and had a contract for.    

[twangster]

Screenshot of a YT video posted by Royal Caribbean Blog dot Com 

 

They toured Icon in the shipyard recently.  During a cabin tour they caught this shot of an access point within a cabin.

 

 

Looks like a Cisco 9105AXW.

 

Royal seems to have settled on Cisco wireless going forward.