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

[Michael H. Warfield]

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
-- 
Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 985-6132 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
   /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/          | (678) 463-0932 |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
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