Wifi on reimagined ships

Can you stream movies or Skype on new wifi?

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I didn't try it, but I'd say no. The speed is little changed from what it was, but the wifi signal around the ship is indeed more pervasive than before and seems more stable.

Phil

Phil,

Is there an iLounge on the ship?

I'm thinking of printing out my Boarding Pass, before we leave Quest in Montreal.

Yes Jackie. There are four workstations and a printer now located in one end of the card room in the Living Room. It's called In Touch.

Phil

It may have been luck and more to do with the improved internal wireless functionality than the external speed but on the recent transatlantic I found it far easier to connect back to my work systems which are bandwith heavier than the usual and I also did not lose connections at the rate I did in the past.

I was not though watching movies or anything like that.

On my recent transatlantic onboard Celebrity Constellation,the wifi system was excellent.

I was able to access the Internet ,use Skype,FaceTime and watch movies on Netflix and Amazon ,send and receive pictures without problem (just like at home).

I was online for the all time,no need to log on and off.

The price for the 13 days cruise was $199 ($139 for Elite level)

Why can't Azamara use the same system ,at the same price????

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That sounds very reasonable.

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Just got off the Journey 2 days ago. We successfully used Viber audio via the Internet and it worked fairly well. The video did NOT work. Did not try Skype. Otherwise we found response times slow and some web sites could not be accessed at all.

Just finished B2B on Quest. Wifi still very slow. The problem, as explained to is quite often is the relay to satellite to Miami back to satellite and back to you on ship. Unrealistic to expect anything more than little improvement (which there was compared to some earlier cruises). Realistically, ship wifi is for updating email. Facebook, etc. Tring to download a newspaper, for example, just chews up your minutes.

Just finished B2B on Quest. Wifi still very slow. The problem, as explained to is quite often is the relay to satellite to Miami back to satellite and back to you on ship. Unrealistic to expect anything more than little improvement (which there was compared to some earlier cruises). Realistically, ship wifi is for updating email. Facebook, etc. Tring to download a newspaper, for example, just chews up your minutes.

Just a small clarification to your comment regarding communications from a satellite to Miami. Am pretty sure there are no ground stations in Miami. Satellites communicate with various ground stations throughout the world depending on where the satellite is located above the equator. The ship communicates with different satellites above the equator depending on the location of the ship in the world.

It takes at least 3 satellites to cover the entire world and they communicate with ground stations below the satellites location in the world. Don't believe communication delay amounts to more than a small portion of a second as the problems with the communications is the band width that the ship purchases. More band width, more money. There are improvements that have come out recently to increase band width for not a lot more money and hopefully that improvement will increase satellite internet speeds as we move forward. Remember, the signal travels at the speed of light or about 186,000 miles per second and with the satellites about 22,000 miles above the earth, the trip of the signal from ship to ground station and back is a little less than 1/2 a second.

Just finished B2B on Quest. Wifi still very slow. The problem, as explained to is quite often is the relay to satellite to Miami back to satellite and back to you on ship. Unrealistic to expect anything more than little improvement (which there was compared to some earlier cruises). Realistically, ship wifi is for updating email. Facebook, etc. Tring to download a newspaper, for example, just chews up your minutes.

I fail to understand why the "luxury" sister of the RCI/X/Azamara cruises has the worst technology of the three. RCI is trumpeting their VOOM as being available on all ships (I don't think that's actually true, though) and I imagine that Celebrity's Xcelerate is the same system with a different name. They couldn't buy two more sets for Quest and Journey?:confused:

(I know it's not like buying a Lionel train set, but you get my idea)

Last week on the Quest I did an internet speed test. Ping was 689 ms. Download at 0.52 Mbps and upload at 0.26Mbps.

As already mentioned this is good for email and Facebook.

We have just completed a 16 night cruise on quest and we Skyped our daughter her every night and the wifi was good all the way through the voyage.

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Last week on the Quest I did an internet speed test. Ping was 689 ms. Download at 0.52 Mbps and upload at 0.26Mbps.

As already mentioned this is good for email and Facebook.

To put this in perspective the typical intra north america latency is of the order of 40 msec. For most applications the latency is transparent to the user after the startup delay. File transfers will appear slower than the upload/download speeds would seem to indicate due to specifics of file transfers and voice applications will be more difficult to use due to the delay causing people to talk over one another.

We felt the wifi was ok. Maybe Skype definitely no major downloads tho...

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Is the Internet service on-board metered by how long one is actually connected to the public internet, or by the connection time to the local WiFi network?

The distinction is important. A mobile device (tablet, smartphone, etc) can be connected to the WiFi network (in technical terms, 'associated with the Access Point') without being connected to the internet. The internet connection (via satellite up-link, ground stations, etc) is what's in short supply when at sea, and thus expensive. The local connection to the ship's WiFi network is not. Does Az have the meter running on the WiFi connection, or on the connection through the satellite gateway?

Why is this distinction important? An example: my Lumix camera can transfer the pictures it's taken to my iPad over WiFi. At the end of a day ashore, I connect them both to the WiFi network, and with a couple of clicks, I can view the day's photos on the iPad (then share with traveling companions over dinner, etc). The image transfer from camera to iPad is entirely local: it does not use any internet bandwidth at all (no bits to/from the satellite). Will the WiFi infrastructure on Azamara support that without charging me for "internet" use?

We just came back from two weeks aboard the Viking Star. All passengers enjoyed unlimited internet access 7/24. It was surprisingly speedy - quite sufficient for Skype or Facetime calls. Internet speed slowed down a bit at the end of the day when everyone returned from shorex activities, but that's to be expected with 900+ passengers sending e-mails and pix back to the kids at home.

I do the same with our Nikon and Sony cameras, using the cameras wifi to transfer images to our iPads. I have also done this whilst on AZ, because I link to the cameras own wifi signal from the iPad, I do not connect to the ship's wifi and consequently there is no effect on our internet minutes.

Provided you are connecting to your camera in the same way, I.e. Direct to the camera and NOT onto the ships wifi connection you should be fine.

Steve

^^

Steve,

Thanks for the reply.

For reasons known only to the firmware developers at Panasonic, I've never had much luck using the Lumix camera as an AP (access point). It's not reliable, drops connections, garbles the image transfers, etc. Hence my question about how Azamara meters network connections. In theory, having my camera and iPad connected to the ship's AP should not use up any "internet minute$", since the data transfer between camera and iPad does not use any internet bandwidth.

Azamara needs to reimagine their internet offering and move to a bandwidth-usage measure (i.e. MB or GB transferred over the satellite link). Charging customers by 'time connected' dates from the dial-up era. Billing based on the amount of data transferred is certainly how they are getting charged by their satcomm provider.

Oh that's a nuisance ! I can highly recommend the Sony and Nikon though for their AP technology :):)

I can't see any way around the problem with your camera as when you connect to AZ's wireless it will be expecting your logon details. May be worth a discussion with the internet person when you've borded to see if there's a workaround.

... when you connect to AZ's wireless it will be expecting your logon details.

That's what I was afraid of. Too bad that the reimagination didn't extend to the networking infrastructure. Having been on the Viking Star for two weeks, we became spoiled by their ubiquitous WiFi. I think I have a workaround for my camera-iPad-iPhone problem -- I'll take my own (tiny) AP.

My guess is the wifi on Azamara works the same as Celebrity which has a login/logoff procedure which starts and stops your billing. Turning on and connecting to the wifi does not start your billing and turning off or disconnecting from the wifi does not stop your billing, you must login/logoff.

Perhaps a usage based billing would be preferable (similar to what cellular data does) but I am sure it would require significant effort on the part of Azamara.

As an aside I was looking at the pricing model for RC and they apparently have two different prices for streaming and general internet access. So it looks like RCI is trying to determine the best model.

My guess is the wifi on Azamara works the same as Celebrity which has a login/logoff procedure which starts and stops your billing. Turning on and connecting to the wifi does not start your billing and turning off or disconnecting from the wifi does not stop your billing, you must login/logoff.

Can anyone with first-hand experience on the refitted Az ships confirm if Scott/Shelly's guess is accurate?

Thanks.

Can anyone with first-hand experience on the refitted Az ships confirm if Scott/Shelly's guess is accurate?

Thanks.

Yes on the reimagined ships you have to log off or the minutes keep running. Only if you have an unlimited package can you try and stay logged on (though it will still sometimes kick you off)

The new wifi was better. We usually stay in one of three rooms, one of them was a wifi black spot. On our transatlantic we were back in that room but this time we had no issues logging in and out and the connection was good. We are however using it for emails and documents not images, games or videos.

How much do the internet packages cost? Thanks.

How much do the internet packages cost? Thanks.

Hello dreadpirate,

Here's a link to the webpage with the internet package pricing.

https://www.azamaraclubcruises.com/booked-guests/onboard-packages/internet-packages