Starlink and Working Remote

[nascartony20fan1]

We are considering a cruise on several different RCCL ships? How is the Starlink speed in the caribbean? If working remotely, is there a ship that is better for internet than others? Thanks so much for any recommendations or tips. 

[firefly333]

28 minutes ago, nascartony20fan1 said:

We are considering a cruise on several different RCCL ships? How is the Starlink speed in the caribbean? If working remotely, is there a ship that is better for internet than others? Thanks so much for any recommendations or tips. 

Imo the newer the better the wifi. newer equipment. There is a thread below about grandeur wifi, the oldest smallest ship. Their wifi not so good. Any oasis ship has good wifi, though I've read the new wonder has something like a router in each cabin so you can stream wirelessly. Wonder being the newest sailing right now, not surprising it's the best. Prices are high. Allure for instance was perfectly fine or oasis. 

[mike123abc]

Newer ships tend to have better placement of the wifi access points around the ship to give good signal in most locations.  Older ships you may have to hunt down a place with good wifi if you do not have it in your cabin (some cabins are too far from the nearest AP and have poor reception).  Do not expect it to work well in crowds on any ship since the local AP gets overloaded (promenade, theater when full, etc).

[Crism]

Grandeur is rough, Radiance in January was rough (Starlink but the wifi routers onboard couldn't handle the speed...it was BAD), Voyager was fine as long as you weren't in your cabin. Jewel is fine depending on your cabin with common areas being fine. Freedom is fine overall.

 

Newer ships, better wifi router placement.

[klfrodo]

As I understand it, when they built Wonder of the Seas, they put wifi routers/access points in each cabin. Therefore, connectivity and speed has been much more steady.

[PompeySailor]

14 minutes ago, klfrodo said:

As I understand it, when they built Wonder of the Seas, they put wifi routers/access points in each cabin. Therefore, connectivity and speed has been much more steady.

Can confirm 

Router in closet where the safe is

Currently on Wonder as we speak 9/6/23

I never normally stream, but on here YouTube all day with no buffering is a breeze 

 

 

To add

Last month on Indy my daughter worked remotely all week

Wifi also very good on Indy 

Edited September 7, 2023 by PompeySailor

[nascartony20fan1]

14 minutes ago, PompeySailor said:

Can confirm 

Router in closet where the safe is

Currently on Wonder as we speak 9/6/23

I never normally stream, but on here YouTube all day with no buffering is a breeze 

 

 

To add

Last month on Indy my daughter worked remotely all week

Wifi also very good on Indy 

Thanks. We have been on Wonder several times, but are looking for a different ship with decent internet so we can work. I will check out the itineraries for Indy. 

[nascartony20fan1]

30 minutes ago, klfrodo said:

As I understand it, when they built Wonder of the Seas, they put wifi routers/access points in each cabin. Therefore, connectivity and speed has been much more steady.

Thank you. Looking for a ship other than Wonder though. We have done Wonder several times. I wish they would add the access points in the cabins on other ships. 

[twangster]

Starlink on Royal was pretty dreadful at the start of the migration but it's night and day better now.  

 

Keep in mind that older ships are getting their infrastructure updated over time.  They are moving from older vendors like Meru to Cisco as their standard WLAN vendor so it's not just a firmware upgrade.  This will however take time and in typical Royal fashion it's not discussed publicly.  They aren't waiting for dry docks to get this upgrade done. 

 

When done it's likely the older ships may work better than ships that are 5 to 10 years old including Quantum class and the first four Oasis class.  

 

At the same time Starlink has reached the 5,000 satellite mark which is vastly better than even one year ago.  

 

The point is - it's evolving rapidly.   Both Starlink's performance and global reach as well as ship technology are changing quickly.  Yes nine months ago it sucked on this ship or that ship but like investing, prior performance may not be indicative of future results.  It should be much better every month to month.  

 

 

 

[PompeySailor]

I got my dates wrong

Indy was May 2023

The best results we have seen across all the fleet we have recently sailed 

I went back through history and on May 18th we were somewhere near Cococay 

 

 

[BND]

Starlink has worked great for us.  No interruptions and smooth streaming.

[nascartony20fan1]

44 minutes ago, BND said:

Starlink has worked great for us.  No interruptions and smooth streaming.

Which ship? In the Caribbean? 

[BND]

1 minute ago, nascartony20fan1 said:

Which ship? In the Caribbean? 

Enchantment, Jewel and yes in the Caribbean.

[nascartony20fan1]

2 minutes ago, BND said:

Enchantment, Jewel and yes in the Caribbean.

Sounds like the older ships may be better right now. Older Oasis class hasn’t worked for us lately. 

[ARandomTraveler]

Starlink on Symphony last November worked great. High speeds all the time, no matter where we were on the ship. We even streamed football games.

 

Starlink on Spectrum last month, terrible. But that was more of an issue with the Chinese government than the actual wifi signal. 

[Tatka]

We had a very good quality of Wi-Fi on Enchantment (March) and Liberty (May) and not so good on Anthem (January). Oh Anthem it was strange. Connections dropped fast and you had to reconnect often. It was especially strange as Anthem used to be my go to ship for work.

[jean87510]

11 hours ago, nascartony20fan1 said:

We are considering a cruise on several different RCCL ships? How is the Starlink speed in the caribbean? If working remotely, is there a ship that is better for internet than others? Thanks so much for any recommendations or tips. 

suggest looking online other than cruise critic to see how others do this.  It's what we did.

[Sunshine3601]

2 hours ago, Tatka said:

We had a very good quality of Wi-Fi on Enchantment (March) and Liberty (May) and not so good on Anthem (January). Oh Anthem it was strange. Connections dropped fast and you had to reconnect often. It was especially strange as Anthem used to be my go to ship for work.

We were on Anthem last January and had same issue but when we were back on Anthem March into April, it worked great.

 

I think they had network issues to work on from January since Starlink was still new to that ship.

 

Let's all remember weather can definitely impact satellite signals too

 

My friend uses starlink for their lakefront home in Maine and she has constant issues with starlink on rainy days.

[nascartony20fan1]

5 hours ago, jean87510 said:

suggest looking online other than cruise critic to see how others do this.  It's what we did.

Where do you suggest I look? Where did you find answers? 

[jean87510]

1 hour ago, nascartony20fan1 said:

Where do you suggest I look? Where did you find answers? 

Sorry.  I can only tell you to do a search outside of this forum.