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

[Neal Rhodes]

my bad.    Always call Verizon twice and take the average of the
answers........  nope, data use on-board is $20/mb.  

On Tue, 2010-12-28 at 18:38 -0500, Neal Rhodes wrote:

> 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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