NCL Joy - Starlink

[SliderNc]

Anyone hear anything about Joy getting Starlink while in dry dock?  I'm curious only because I have some deliverables due and a short call while on the cruise.  If not, no biggie, I'll just have to say the connection was unreliable.

[K_S]

It has been said that was one of the upgrades last week.  I suppose we find out in a couple days when she heads back to the US.

Edited February 13 by K_S

[podgeandrodge]

On the Joy. Internet manager confirmed Starlink operational.

[RushFan]

18 minutes ago, podgeandrodge said:

On the Joy. Internet manager confirmed Starlink operational.

Awesome.. Any news if the Thermal Spa is open?  We are on it next week.. 😱

[detroitlions]

7 minutes ago, RushFan said:

Awesome.. Any news if the Thermal Spa is open?  We are on it next week.. 😱

I read some where it would not be. Not 100% sure when it come to these things on NCL

[podgeandrodge]

They sent is an email saying it wouldn't be for the TA

[UKstages]

don't applaud too loudly about starlink. it may be more stable and reliable, but NCL throttles the speed to a ridiculous degree. on my recent getaway journey, average speeds on the standard plan were 2.0 mbps down. as for stability... there were periods overnight when the internet connection would drop frequently... sometimes for as long as an hour. 1 am, 2 am... 4 am, etc.

 

i suspect that starlink is providing major advantages for behind the scenes operations and crew members' business use of the internet, but there is virtually no difference from this passenger's perspective.

[K_S]

32 minutes ago, UKstages said:

don't applaud too loudly about starlink. it may be more stable and reliable, but NCL throttles the speed to a ridiculous degree. on my recent getaway journey, average speeds on the standard plan were 2.0 mbps down. as for stability... there were periods overnight when the internet connection would drop frequently... sometimes for as long as an hour. 1 am, 2 am... 4 am, etc.

 

i suspect that starlink is providing major advantages for behind the scenes operations and crew members' business use of the internet, but there is virtually no difference from this passenger's perspective.

 

Hoping someone onboard will give some form of report regarding the speedtest results they see.  I also wonder how much of a difference between the base and streaming options on the new Joy Starlink system.

[RushFan]

1 minute ago, K_S said:

 

Hoping someone onboard will give some form of report regarding the speedtest results they see.  I also wonder how much of a difference between the base and streaming options on the new Joy Starlink system.

I will be on the ship the 24th and test the crap out of it..   I have both streaming and non streaming accounts so I will post both for comparison.

[UKstages]

 

 

3 minutes ago, K_S said:

Hoping someone onboard will give some form of report regarding the speedtest results they see.

 

ok, well, please understand that my report was in fact an onboard report with real world experience. different ship, but onboard.

 

look, we have no reason to believe that passenger internet would be treated more favorably on the joy than on the getaway, but it is certainly possible.  we do have other reports here on cruise critic, however, and they are about the same... within the 2.0 - 2.5 mbps range.

[SliderNc]

5 hours ago, UKstages said:

 

 

 

ok, well, please understand that my report was in fact an onboard report with real world experience. different ship, but onboard.

 

look, we have no reason to believe that passenger internet would be treated more favorably on the joy than on the getaway, but it is certainly possible.  we do have other reports here on cruise critic, however, and they are about the same... within the 2.0 - 2.5 mbps range.

I believe in your first hand account of your own speeds, but since I'm basically using it for emailing and some minor file transfers, I don't think I need 100mbit speeds.  I can live with 1-2mbit for what I'm doing and just mail it in on the conference call.  Definitely interested to see how much they cap the streaming speeds.

[tqdrivenws6]

5 hours ago, UKstages said:

 

 

 

ok, well, please understand that my report was in fact an onboard report with real world experience. different ship, but onboard.

 

look, we have no reason to believe that passenger internet would be treated more favorably on the joy than on the getaway, but it is certainly possible.  we do have other reports here on cruise critic, however, and they are about the same... within the 2.0 - 2.5 mbps range.

Didn't realize the Getaway had starlink.

 

I had the base unlimited plan on the Breakaway Feb of 2023 and was getting 70+Mb/s download on Starlink. 

 

December of 2023 we were on Escape without Starlink and got speeds like you're referring to.

 

I'll be on the Joy March 9th and can post some speed test results. 

[UKstages]

3 minutes ago, tqdrivenws6 said:

I had the base unlimited plan on the Breakaway Feb of 2023 and was getting 70+Mb/s download on Starlink. 

 

that is astonishing.

 

i reckon the only way i would ever get 70 mbps on any NCL internet connection would be to have an improper relationship with the captain.

 

 

[SliderNc]

46 minutes ago, tqdrivenws6 said:

Didn't realize the Getaway had starlink.

 

I had the base unlimited plan on the Breakaway Feb of 2023 and was getting 70+Mb/s download on Starlink. 

 

December of 2023 we were on Escape without Starlink and got speeds like you're referring to.

 

I'll be on the Joy March 9th and can post some speed test results. 

My family is also on this cruise!

[BirdTravels]

11 hours ago, K_S said:

 

Hoping someone onboard will give some form of report regarding the speedtest results they see.  I also wonder how much of a difference between the base and streaming options on the new Joy Starlink system.

Not from the Joy, but we were recently on another NCL ship with Starlink.  When you have hundreds/thousands of users trying to share the bandwidth over a small, underpowered satellite, you won't get great results. And, as predicted, as more people/ships use the system, the bottle necks will be the space/ground interface where the space segment has to get to/from the real internet. 

 

I ran a check using a couple of different apps around the same time. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 14 by BirdTravels

[K_S]

11 hours ago, UKstages said:

 

 

 

ok, well, please understand that my report was in fact an onboard report with real world experience. different ship, but onboard.

 

look, we have no reason to believe that passenger internet would be treated more favorably on the joy than on the getaway, but it is certainly possible.  we do have other reports here on cruise critic, however, and they are about the same... within the 2.0 - 2.5 mbps range.

 

Sorry.  I probably didn't word my response correctly.  I was meaning onboard the Joy, specifically, and maybe for this TA repositioning happening right now. 

 

I wasn't belittling your experiences.  Likewise, it seems three of us will be on the Joy for the March 9 sailing.  I suppose if all three of us are doing a speedtest at once, we might skew the results.  Ha!

[detroitlions]

7 hours ago, BirdTravels said:

Not from the Joy, but we were recently on another NCL ship with Starlink.  When you have hundreds/thousands of users trying to share the bandwidth over a small, underpowered satellite, you won't get great results. And, as predicted, as more people/ships use the system, the bottle necks will be the space/ground interface where the space segment has to get to/from the real internet. 

 

I ran a check using a couple of different apps around the same time. 

 

 

 

 

 

Folks are misinformed when it comes to Starlink. When they set up the ship its not one dish for the whole ship its more like 11 dishes for the ship. The whole throttling idea is not true either the ship does not control the connection. The ship also does not use the same link as the passengers. Each ship pays around $60000 for the set up and the passengers end up paying that as you know. Oh and by the way most of the ping test apps are not very accurate the best ones are made by the access point your pinging too. Try it at home connect to router directly do a ping test then use one of the free speed test apps and look at the differences. 

[detroitlions]

Folks should just google Starlink for cruise ships they will find better info on it than word of mouth. 

[UKstages]

i have.

 

i don't need to google to know that the starlink connection is as slow as molasses.

 

the reason for it is open to discussion.

 

but speed tests are quite reliable.

 

the cruise line can absolutely throttle the connection; the cruise line controls the distribution on the ship and it has absolutely nothing to do with the starlink product. the cruise line can make full capacity (or any download speed) available to select staff or senior officers and even select individual passengers (if it so chooses). if they wanted to, they could provide tiered service, with diamond and ambassador latitudes members getting faster speeds, for instance.

 

if you read the RCCL forum, you'll see that people were getting outrageously fast speeds (for service at sea) of 100 mbps or higher when starlink was first introduced (ships at or near full capacity). then RCCL throttled the service, much as NCL has done and folks are getting 2 mbps or less.

 

starlink gets the bandwidth to the ship; how NCL chooses to distribute that bandwidth is entirely up to NCL.

 

what starlink will do, as i understand it, is prioritize data delivery, so that certain commercial customers might get faster speeds than others or variable speeds. i'm willing to bet that cruise lines, though, are priority customers, just by the sheer size of the contracts.

 

but, again, that has no bearing on which speed(s) a particular cruise line will choose to deliver to its guests and crew.

 

Edited February 14 by UKstages

[detroitlions]

16 minutes ago, UKstages said:

i have.

 

i don't need to google to know that the starlink connection is as slow as molasses.

 

the reason for it is open to discussion.

 

but speed tests are quite reliable.

 

the cruise line can absolutely throttle the connection; the cruise line controls the distribution on the ship and it has absolutely nothing to do with the starlink product. the cruise line can make full capacity (or any download speed) available to select staff or senior officers and even select individual passengers (if it so chooses). if they wanted to, they could provide tiered service, with diamond and ambassador latitudes members getting faster speeds, for instance.

 

if you read the RCCL forum, you'll see that people were getting outrageously fast speeds (for service at sea) of 100 mbps or higher when starlink was first introduced (ships at or near full capacity). then RCCL throttled the service, much as NCL has done and folks are getting 2 mbps or less.

 

starlink gets the bandwidth to the ship; how NCL chooses to distribute that bandwidth is entirely up to NCL.

 

what starlink will do, as i understand it, is prioritize data delivery, so that certain commercial customers might get faster speeds than others or variable speeds. i'm willing to bet that cruise lines, though, are priority customers, just by the sheer size of the contracts.

 

but, again, that has no bearing on which speed(s) a particular cruise line will choose to deliver to its guests and crew.

 

If there throttling speeds that is not starlink equipment they would have to add that. I do not know why they would. And the ship has its own dedicated connections you not sharing operations connection.

[podgeandrodge]

Onboard Joy.

 

1.8 Mbps download is best I've got so far. Less than 1 Mbps a lot. Ok for basic surfing just about but your 150 minutes would be wasted quick loading stuff so you'd really need unlimited.

[UKstages]

1 minute ago, detroitlions said:

If there throttling speeds that is not starlink equipment they would have to add that. I do not know why they would.

 

it doesn't have to be starlink equipment. it's probably not. many people believe NCL left the wifi infrastructure on the ship untouched. again, starlink is new to NCL... starlink gets the bandwidth to the ship;  what happens after that is of no interest to starlink.

 

4 minutes ago, detroitlions said:

I do not know why they would.

 

because they wish to sell two different packages... one "regular" package and one allegedly suitable for streaming. so they can reserve capacity for senior officers and business use of the internet by select staff members. so they can reserve the right to offer better faster connections to VIP customers.

[detroitlions]

1 minute ago, UKstages said:

 

it doesn't have to be starlink equipment. it's probably not. many people believe NCL left the wifi infrastructure on the ship untouched. again, starlink is new to NCL... starlink gets the bandwidth to the ship;  what happens after that is of no interest to starlink.

 

 

because they wish to sell two different packages... one "regular" package and one allegedly suitable for streaming. so they can reserve capacity for senior officers and business use of the internet by select staff members. so they can reserve the right to offer better faster connections to VIP customers.

All this also depends on which package NCL purchases from Starlink they have many confusing packages. I think that may be some of the reasons folks are reporting different experiences.

That and the point that the access points are all over the ship and there may be dead spots. 

[detroitlions]

11 minutes ago, podgeandrodge said:

Onboard Joy.

 

1.8 Mbps download is best I've got so far. Less than 1 Mbps a lot. Ok for basic surfing just about but your 150 minutes would be wasted quick loading stuff so you'd really need unlimited.

Did you board yesterday? How are the changes on the Joy?

[SliderNc]

1 hour ago, detroitlions said:

Folks are misinformed when it comes to Starlink. When they set up the ship its not one dish for the whole ship its more like 11 dishes for the ship. The whole throttling idea is not true either the ship does not control the connection. The ship also does not use the same link as the passengers. Each ship pays around $60000 for the set up and the passengers end up paying that as you know. Oh and by the way most of the ping test apps are not very accurate the best ones are made by the access point your pinging too. Try it at home connect to router directly do a ping test then use one of the free speed test apps and look at the differences. 

I disagree.  Starlink provides the internet, just like they would for a home user.  After it hits the router, it is connected to NCL's internal network/wifi, which they have full control over and can easily throttle connections and rate limit.  We do this with our warehouses all the time for my company where we are in remote areas with no internet provider except satellite.  We rate limit devices that are not essential on the network/wireless for business so as not to use up the bandwidth that is there for organizational purposes.  I do it at home on my mesh wifi as well (not Starlink) and limit how much my daughter can use when both my wife and I are working from home and need the bandwidth.