[ale] Slightly Off Topic - Linux/Internet aboad Royal Carribean?

[Neal Rhodes]

Mike, thanks for the response.   The plot thickens slightly. 

Indeed both Royal Carribean and Verizon agree that the ships involved
have CDMA tower support on-board.    They also indicate that one can
switch one's domestic smartphone data plan to a Global Access data plan
for the 10 days involved and just pay the pro-rated $69/month for
unlimited data on-board.   (as opposed to the $29 domestic data plan. )
>From there it would seem to be just a downhill slide to turning on the
wifi hotspot on the Android phone.   At least then you aren't paying
minutes every time the smart phone hits an Imap server.    I'll need to
call again in a couple of days and see if I still get the same answer. 

I wonder if the ships have two separate data sources to support cell
phone and on-board internet, or if it all comes out of the same pipe.
How would they prioritize? 

When we were on Roatan, EVERYONE, hotel staff included, used Skype
rather than the local phone system.   I actually made a deal with the
hotel manager to bring and set up a wireless router for him as long as I
got to use it while we were there.    There are internet "cafes" which
exist solely to make phone calls.   

While we're on cell/internet, I've been testing a Wilson Sleek cell
repeater.   It does seem to provide about 16-20dB improvement in cell
signal with the little rubber duckie antenna.   Their prior devices have
been a pain to connect, with different adapters for each phone.   The
Sleek definitely makes that easier - it couples right through the back
of the phone, and functions as a cradle.   Much less crap to deal
with.  

I haven't taken a trip to the real boonies to see how it works with a
bigger trucker antenna. 

Neal


On Tue, 2010-12-28 at 14:06 -0500, Michael H. Warfield wrote: 

> On Tue, 2010-12-28 at 12:48 -0500, Neal Rhodes wrote:
> > My apologies if this already was covered this week. 
> > 
> > Anybody know the real deal regarding internet services aboard Royal
> > Carribean ships?   Apparently their staff doesn't.   I'm getting roped
> > into going on cruise with in-laws this summer.
> 
> > What protocols are supported? are any protocols specifically blocked?
> > (SSH?  SMTP? Skype? VPN?) how is billing allocated? If I have laptop and
> > smartphone, can they share the billing account? How does the minutes
> > billing start/stop?  Do I have to run my smartphone in Airplane mode the
> > whole dang trip to avoid getting billed?  Similarly do I have to turn
> > off wireless on the notebook?   (Can do that under Vista, but Ubuntu
> > doesn't appear to know how to do that on HP notebook.  Hah - thought I
> > couldn't work Linux in here somewhere!)
> 
> > Of course the parrot on the other end of the chat window helpfully
> > notes: To use our WI-FI access, you'll need:
> 
> >         A laptop
> >         Windows operating system
> >         802.11b Wireless networking capability
> 
> > So, smartphones not supported?   IPads not supported?  Macs not
> > supported?   Does not supported mean they don't know, or do they take
> > specific evil steps to make sure those devices won't work? 
> 
> I have not been on Royal Caribbean per se but have been on Princess, and
> Carnival and a few others.  Most of them use a service that is also used
> by many hotels.  It's purely an applications layer gateway at the ship
> head-end router you authenticate with using a browser.  If the link to
> their home office is down it will give you a very specific error making
> it very clear it's not in contact with the mothership.  Firefox works
> perfectly fine.  The one I've seen most (Princess, Carnival, and
> numerous hotels) is Nomadix.  You'll immediately recognize them by the
> green logo during the sign-on process.  There are several other
> providers but I've never had any problems with any of them and Linux
> except one off-the-wall outfit in a hotel in Hilton-Head many years back
> (I had to have my wife log in and then I hijacked her mac address and
> everything worked fine even with two of us on the same MAC - lamers).
> 
> I have had zero problems using Linux and I've even routed IPv6 out 5
> cruise ships while at sea (and recently an aircraft in flight).  I've
> had no problems with ssh or VPNs but you are NATed at will have to deal
> with the evils of NAT.  So if you want IPsec you better be IPsec NAT-T
> enabled.  If you want IPv6, 6in4 and 6to4 are just not going to cut it
> and you have to go with OpenVPN, Teredo/Miredo, TSP, or some other UDP
> based protocol.
> 
> Looks like Royal Caribbean gets a pretty good rating...
> 
> http://www.cruisemates.com/articles/onboard/connected.cfm#axzz19QtpVx2V
> 
> According to this site, Royal Caribbean provides cell phone access on
> all their ships.
> 
> http://cruisediva.com/communication_at_sea.htm
> 
> That's is PROBABLY the same as Princess and Carnival in that it's GSM
> based.  If you are on a CDMA/TDMA service you are probably SOL unless
> you get an international phone.  My Sprint smart phones don't work on
> them.
> 
> > What's the bandwidth like?    I can generally get ssh to work over a
> > poor 1xRTT phone connection with a taut piece of string... but would
> > bandwidth support Skype, or are they wise to that?     I'm guessing that
> > thousands of people are sharing a single satellite connection and I can
> > do long division. 
> 
> Bandwidth is not bad, all things considered, but can be a bit spotty at
> times.  I wouldn't go downloading anything huge while at sea.  You are
> on a satellite link after all when away from port so latency will suck.
> Some ships will have better connectivity when in port but I wouldn't
> guarantee it.  OTOH, the bandwidth on the Delta flight (domestic
> terrestrial) I was on last night from Boston back to Atlanta was
> surprisingly good, including IPv6 (they often play tricks with IPv4 like
> intercepting web images and compressing or degrading them to improve
> speed).
> 
> I think you can just about forget about Skype even in low bandwidth
> mode, just because of the variable latency and jitter.  Video mode would
> be totally out of the question.
>  
> > What's the coverage like?  Are there big holes en-route, and only
> > coverage in port, when you are off the ship anyway?   We'd be talking
> > about Baltimore to US Virgin Islands roughly.
> 
> It's satellite.  Latency, in particular, is going to suck with the huge
> up-link/down-link round trips.  Once in a while I experienced some
> drop-out but very rarely and very short duration.  Most of the time, the
> coverage is solid even if bandwidth and latency are suboptimal.  Like I
> said above, some ships in some ports may have better bandwidth when in
> port.  But no guarantees.  Depends on the facilities they have installed
> in that port or arrangements they have made with contractors.
> 
> >  
> > 
> > Thanks. 
> > 
> > Neal
> 
> Regards,
> Mike
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