lisiamc Posted April 21, 2023 #76 Share Posted April 21, 2023 2 minutes ago, Riocca said: Could it be the networking within the ships themselves that holds the key to this particular problem? Just seems strange that the original 3 ships bought from RC have a problem whilst the newest ship which had the whole network replaced in dry dock last year doesn’t. Possibly Onwards network was installed with a specification that supports the speeds possible with Starlink. If this theory is correct then it’s probable the networks of the other 3 ships will be upgraded next dry dock This is what I think, too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandma Cruising Posted April 21, 2023 #77 Share Posted April 21, 2023 3 hours ago, Riocca said: Could it be the networking within the ships themselves that holds the key to this particular problem? Just seems strange that the original 3 ships bought from RC have a problem whilst the newest ship which had the whole network replaced in dry dock last year doesn’t. Possibly Onwards network was installed with a specification that supports the speeds possible with Starlink. If this theory is correct then it’s probable the networks of the other 3 ships will be upgraded next dry dock Absolutely no problem on Pursuit on the transatlantic in March. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ECCruise Posted April 26, 2023 #78 Share Posted April 26, 2023 Quest this morning. Virtually unusable. No service big chunk of yesterday. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandma Cruising Posted April 26, 2023 #79 Share Posted April 26, 2023 3 hours ago, ECCruise said: Quest this morning. Virtually unusable. No service big chunk of yesterday. Where is the ship? The issue may be lack of starlink coverage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare uktog Posted April 26, 2023 #80 Share Posted April 26, 2023 If you are near Chinese waters you never used to get service on the old system Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare oddjob16 Posted April 26, 2023 #81 Share Posted April 26, 2023 (edited) 3 hours ago, ECCruise said: Quest this morning. Virtually unusable. No service big chunk of yesterday. I might be wrong,- please correct me,- but I think Quest has not installed Starlink yet. Edited April 26, 2023 by oddjob16 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
excitedofharpenden Posted April 26, 2023 #82 Share Posted April 26, 2023 1 hour ago, oddjob16 said: I might be wrong,- please correct me,- but I think Quest has not installed Starlink yet. Odd, pretty sure it's now on Quest. Added recently. Like in the past couple of months. Phil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare oddjob16 Posted April 26, 2023 #83 Share Posted April 26, 2023 32 minutes ago, excitedofharpenden said: Odd, pretty sure it's now on Quest. Added recently. Like in the past couple of months. Phil Phil, that is probably right. My experience on our TA from Rio to Lisbon on the Pursuit was that coverage became more intermittent mid-cruise. This is probably because when you are in the middle of the ocean you don't have the land based augmentation to support you. All in all we had great coverage and strong signals, but then it would be completely gone for 30 minutes. No big deal.😁 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ECCruise Posted April 26, 2023 #84 Share Posted April 26, 2023 (edited) 3 hours ago, oddjob16 said: I might be wrong,- please correct me,- but I think Quest has not installed Starlink Quest definitely has Starlink and streaming was good 4 days ago. Pretty variable but when it is good it blows the old system out of the water. Edited April 26, 2023 by ECCruise Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ECCruise Posted April 26, 2023 #85 Share Posted April 26, 2023 3 hours ago, Grandma Cruising said: Where is the ship? The issue may be lack of starlink coverage. Between Taiwan and Hong Kong in heavily trafficked sea lanes. But not that far from China coast which could be a factor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare uktog Posted April 26, 2023 #86 Share Posted April 26, 2023 20 minutes ago, ECCruise said: But not that far from China coast which could be a factor. I think that is your answer! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baynanno1 Posted April 26, 2023 #87 Share Posted April 26, 2023 14 hours ago, oddjob16 said: I might be wrong,- please correct me,- but I think Quest has not installed Starlink yet. Technicians came on board towards the end of the Sydney to Perth cruise in February to install Starlink during the Perth to Hong Kong cruise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mercruiser Posted May 6, 2023 Author #88 Share Posted May 6, 2023 Starlink recently launched another 56 satellites 2 days ago. These new satellites are still clustered in the "string of pearls" formation, as shown in the screen capture. I counted 7 of these strings, as I spun the virtual globe on my computer. Apparently, these strings are quite visible in the night sky, if the string goes overhead of your location. Live Starlink Satellite Map Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Host Jazzbeau Posted May 6, 2023 #89 Share Posted May 6, 2023 1 hour ago, Mercruiser said: Starlink recently launched another 56 satellites 2 days ago. These new satellites are still clustered in the "string of pearls" formation, as shown in the screen capture. I counted 7 of these strings, as I spun the virtual globe on my computer. Apparently, these strings are quite visible in the night sky, if the string goes overhead of your location. Live Starlink Satellite Map You obviously know a lot more about the Starlink network than I do – will these new satellites help plug a gap in the existing coverage that affects cruise itineraries? Or is this just another step in the eventual goal of universal Starlink coverage? [PS – just sent you an email about Svalbard. Didn't want to take this thread Off Topic by replying on that topic here.] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mercruiser Posted May 6, 2023 Author #90 Share Posted May 6, 2023 (edited) 12 hours ago, Host Jazzbeau said: You obviously know a lot more about the Starlink network than I do – will these new satellites help plug a gap in the existing coverage that affects cruise itineraries? Or is this just another step in the eventual goal of universal Starlink coverage? [PS – just sent you an email about Svalbard. Didn't want to take this thread Off Topic by replying on that topic here.] In general, Starlink is launching a new group of 50-ish satellites every week or two, for a year-to-date total of 14 launches and 671 satellites. This is an impressive launch rate. The total number of operational satellites is 3988. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starlink_and_Starshield_launches#Starlink_Launches To discuss the effect of new satellites on cruise itineraries, I'll divide this into three topics. 1) The disparity between Onward (very good 95+ Mbps) and the other Azamara ships (much lower Mbps) will not be solved by more satellites. This is most likely a problem with the networking configuration on ship. The solution will only be found by putting some skilled IT professionals on board to do a root-cause analysis. All Azamara ships should be capable of 95+ Mbps with the existing satellite deployment. 2) The mid-ocean coverage will be improved with new satellites. All of the lunches since June 2021 have been the v1.5 satellites which include "Lasers for inter-satellite communication". These lasers are needed for mid-ocean communication far from a ground station. The v1.0 satellites do not have lasers. 3) Polar latitudes (> 60 degrees north or south in this discussion) are only improved by satellites placed in polar orbits. Polar orbits are the ones with an Orbital Inclination of 97.6 degrees. There are currently 230 satellites in polar orbits out of a total of 3988 operational satellites. The most recent polar launch (last month) was No. 80 (see chart below) with 46 satellites. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starlink_and_Starshield_launches#Starlink_Launches These 230 polar satellites are not enough to provide consistent coverage. This can be visualized on https://satellitemap.space/# by looking at Fairbanks, AK. There are many times when there are no satellites in range of Fairbanks. Field reports on Youtube by Alaska residents indicate that the service is fast when it works, but will drop out completely for many minutes until another satellite is in range. I don't think polar coverage will ever be as good as the lower latitudes, simply due to the fact that there are relatively few paying customers in polar regions. This will limit the number of polar launches. Edited May 6, 2023 by Mercruiser 2 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
federalexpress Posted May 6, 2023 #91 Share Posted May 6, 2023 45 minutes ago, Mercruiser said: In general, Starlink is launching a new group of 50-ish satellites every week or two, for a year-to-date total of 14 launches and 671 satellites. This is an impressive launch rate. The total number of operational satellites is 3988. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starlink_and_Starshield_launches#Starlink_Launches To discuss the effect of new satellites on cruise itineraries, I'll divide this into three topics. 1) The disparity between Onward (very good 95+ Mbps) and the other Azamara ships (much lower Mbps) will not be solved by more satellites. This is most likely a problem with the networking configuration on ship. The solution will only be found by putting some skilled IT professionals on board to do a root-cause analysis. All Azamara ships should be capable of 95+ Mbps with the existing satellite deployment. 2) The mid-ocean coverage will be improved with new satellites. All of the lunches since June 2021 have been the v1.5 satellites which include "Lasers for inter-satellite communication". These lasers are needed for mid-ocean communication far from a ground station. The v1.0 satellites do not have lasers. 3) Polar latitudes (> 60 degrees north or south in this discussion) are only improved by satellites placed in polar orbits. Polar orbits are the ones with an Orbital Inclination of 97.6 degrees. There are currently 230 satellites in polar orbits out of a total of 3988 operational satellites. The most recent polar launch (last month) was No. 80 (see chart below) with 46 satellites. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starlink_and_Starshield_launches#Starlink_Launches These 230 polar satellites are not enough to provide consistent coverage. This can be visualized on https://satellitemap.space/# by looking at Fairbanks, AK. There are many times when there are no satellites in range of Fairbanks. Field reports on Youtube by Alaska residents indicate that the service is fast when it works, but will drop out completely for many minutes until another satellite is in range. I don't think polar coverage will ever be as good as the lower latitudes, simply due to the fact that there are relatively few paying customers in polar regions. This will limit the number of polar launches. My experience on Pursuit earlier this year supports that. We cruised to the Falklands and Chilean Fjords. Sometimes speed was astonishing, up to 90MB, other times nothing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mercruiser Posted May 6, 2023 Author #92 Share Posted May 6, 2023 4 minutes ago, federalexpress said: My experience on Pursuit earlier this year supports that. We cruised to the Falklands and Chilean Fjords. Sometimes speed was astonishing, up to 90MB, other times nothing. I'm very glad to hear that Pursuit is in the 90+ club, along with Onward. Some of the earlier Pursuit reports in this thread were much slower. Perhaps Azamara is making progress on correcting the slow speed problems. I'm booked on the Chilian Fjords cruise next year on Quest. I hope they have Starlink up to speed by then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandma Cruising Posted May 6, 2023 #93 Share Posted May 6, 2023 1 hour ago, federalexpress said: My experience on Pursuit earlier this year supports that. We cruised to the Falklands and Chilean Fjords. Sometimes speed was astonishing, up to 90MB, other times nothing. We had very good speeds on Pursuit across the Atlantic 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mercruiser Posted May 6, 2023 Author #94 Share Posted May 6, 2023 (edited) Here are the newly launched polar orbit satellites in their "string-of-pearls" configuration, over Antarctica and northern Russia. Right now, they are at a low altitude of 380 km. Over the next while, they will propel themselves up to an altitude of 590 km and spread out evenly to form a spread-out string of satellites that completely circles the earth. Once these are in their final position, Starlink's polar reliability will improve Edited May 6, 2023 by Mercruiser 1 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnnyswitzerland Posted May 6, 2023 #95 Share Posted May 6, 2023 Amazing info. Thank you so much, @Mercruiser. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ECCruise Posted May 12, 2023 #96 Share Posted May 12, 2023 Continues to be spotty on Quest. Highest speeds in 3 weeks +/- 1.5 mps. Lowest, not including outages, less than .25 mps, like this very minute. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mercruiser Posted May 17, 2023 Author #97 Share Posted May 17, 2023 I'm participating in a similar thread on Princess. It appears that Princess has their network configured to limit the download bandwidth for any one user to about 2 - 4 Mbps. The Princess passengers generally view this as a significant improvement over the previous system. In contrast, Azamara appears to be providing a much greater 90+ Mbps, when conditions allow. Of course, I have to acknowlege that Azamara is only providing 90+ Mbps on some of the ships. Others, like Quest are much slower. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
outtoseacruise Posted May 18, 2023 #98 Share Posted May 18, 2023 19 minutes ago, Mercruiser said: I'm participating in a similar thread on Princess. It appears that Princess has their network configured to limit the download bandwidth for any one user to about 2 - 4 Mbps. The Princess passengers generally view this as a significant improvement over the previous system. In contrast, Azamara appears to be providing a much greater 90+ Mbps, when conditions allow. Of course, I have to acknowlege that Azamara is only providing 90+ Mbps on some of the ships. Others, like Quest are much slower. It's the same way on Royal, some ships get incredible speed and others are not much better than before. Most people will think the throttled speed is an improvement. Those of us that need it to be able to work while onboard know better. Both Princess and Royal like to brag saying they have the fastest internet at sea when it really is throttled. In June I will be on MSC and Royal in the Western & Eastern Mediterranean and will see how it compares to Enchanted Princess in July. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wander58 Posted May 18, 2023 #99 Share Posted May 18, 2023 We are currently on the Pursuit and the internet has been excellent. 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
needingwifi Posted June 10, 2023 #100 Share Posted June 10, 2023 Any update on the wifi on the Journey? Wondering if they have fixed the starlink issues by now... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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