[ih] Internet at Sea

[Michael Grant]

>From "Jack Haverty via Internet-history" 
<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>Recently I heard anecdotal reports that the Internet on cruise ships works well - but is reliable only when the ship is far out to sea. When it's in port, or even just approaching port, teleconferencing is unreliable.   My speculation is that traffic loads when near a port include all the land-based users and the network may be overwhelmed.  But that's just speculation, I have no data.
>
I have spent quite a bit of time as passenger on cruise ships these last 
few years.  I don't know when the Internet started becoming available on 
cruise ships but I first used it on-board in 2010 on Holland America.  
Simply put, the service was awful and expensive regardless if the ship 
was in port or not.  It used a geostationary satellite connection using 
a dish on a rocker under a ball.  When the ship moved a lot, the 
internet stopped working.  It was charged by the minute and you had to 
connect like dial-up through the ship's captive web portal and manually 
disconnect when no longer using it.  In 2010, iirc, the cost was 
something like 50 US cents/min and you spent most of your money waiting.

Since then, the geostationary ship internet has gotten much better.  3 
or 4 years ago, I was on a cruise ship which which no longer charged a 
per minute charge but still used the similar geostationary link and you 
still had to "log on" via a captive portal.  We were able to have 
absolutely acceptable video calls part of the time.  I was amazed 
because even with the delay through the geo satellite, the delay was 
unnoticeable. I had to prove to myself using ping and traceroute that we 
were actually using a geostationary link and not Starlink!

In the last year, I have been on cruise ships that now have Starlink.  
They have 12 stationary Starlink pizza box antennae mounted high up near 
one of the stacks (6 on each side).  They run 12 separate Starlink 
connections.  I am going to describe what Cunard does but I suspect they 
are all similar.  Cunard runs a VPN which bonds together the 12 
connections such that if any of them goes down the packet is sent out 
any antenna.  (I don't know which VPN they use nor do I know how they 
bond the links, if it's round-robin or not, sorry!)  The VPN is 
terminated in either Southampton UK or Miami Florida, US depending on 
where the ship is (they change over midway across the Atlantic).  They 
run something like bufferbloat to share the b/w more fairly.  They also 
run a firewall where they block quite a few sites.  I have had to ask 
them to unblock things which they have kindly done.

I understand that Starlink sets the pricing on the ships and that they 
may have installed the system for little or nothing in exchange for 
being able to capture that market.  I don't know for sure though.  I do 
know a lot of cruise ships are installing Starlink now.  My only gripe 
is they charge per device and it's 2x if you want 2 devices, so for my 
wife and I, if we both just want to be able to use whatsapp to find one 
another on-board, it's well overpriced.  They charge about USD $25/day 
per device and have a "special" price where for the cost of 2 devices 
you can have up to 4.

The ships do not disable the satellite internet near ports.  They 
continue to use the satellite network even in port.  This is likely 
because if they were to somehow connect the ship to the port's wifi they 
would quickly saturate it.  It's also likely because several of the 
ship's systems use their satellite internet and for security reasons 
they want that going over their VPN.  I have not noticed much difference 
sitting in port using the satellite internet than at sea, if anything, 
it's better since many people are off the ship.  I suspect what Jack may 
be referring to is when approaching port people saturate the ship's 
internet as they prepare to disembark, like doing research for things to 
do or coordinating with friends and family and such.  I have my doubts 
it has much to do with interference other than maybe if it's Starlink 
that the ship starts to compete with other Starlink users on land using 
the same space based resource in the sky.

Internet in the cabins has also gotten a lot better over the years.  
Cunard has installed Aruba (HP) APs in all the hallways and cabins.  
Rather unfortunately one cruise I was on, the wifi in my cabin would 
literally seize up.  I spent quite a bit of time tracking it down to a 
firmware issue that Aruba had issued a patch for but unfortunately it 
was not possible to update the firmware at sea because they would have 
had to take the entire ship off-line while they did it so it would have 
to wait until next time the ship went in for maintenance.

Every cruise ship I have been on in the last 10-15 years also had 
separate mobile phone and data available via Maritime Telecommunications 
Network (MTN) or other similar companies.  This is only turned on when 
at sea.  At port, they turn off the maritime telecom network and you are 
expected to roam on to the local carrier.

I am fairly certain this uses a separate geostationary satellite and 
separate dish-on-rocker-in-ball antenna from the internet connection.   
Receiving text messages (SMS) has always been free for me and that's 
good because the number of times that's saved me when on-board and 
needing to go through some 2FA to get into something has been plenty.  
However, making and receiving calls, sending texts, and especially using 
the mobile data is scarily expensive.  I have talked with plenty of 
passengers who had no idea and those who had used it unwittingly on 
previous cruises only to gotten home to $1000+ phone bills!  
Unfortunately, unless you are a little bit savvy, it's all to easy to 
just use it because it works.

Ships also seem to have Inmarsat and/or Iridium phones on board but as 
far as I am aware this is  not hooked up to some general system for the 
public.  It seems like this is backup or ship to shore coms for the 
bridge.

All of my experience above is solely from my experiences as a passenger. 
Everything I know here is just from chatting up tech people on board 
ships and my own probing around with tools like ping and traceroute.  
Unfortunately, I never worked in the maritime or satellite networking 
industry myself.

I'd be interested in hearing some of the technical details if someone on 
this list knows more.  It would also be interesting to see a thread of 
the history of internet on air crafts if someone knows about that.

Michael Grant