twangster

Something caused the generators to trip. Once they reset the system and brought the engines back online we were resumed our return to Miami. We had been producing exhaust from the two outer stacks for the majority of the trip. After the reset they were using the starboard outermost stack and the two of inner sets of stacks. Nothing was coming from the outer port side stack. I smelled a very faint smell of something I couldn't place. Not electrical but not exhaust either. When I ventured outside it appeared to me without any forward motion our exhaust was hanging in the air and settling slightly which is what I think led to the faint smell. Once we started moving again the exhaust stream was up and away from the ship due to the forward motion. In my cabin emergency lighting came on immediately. Normal lighting returned about 30 second later. The pool deck didn't appear to be completely dark so there must be emergency lighting there as well and around the ship. We had been going at 22 kn for most of the day so we may have been drawing a lot of power. We seemed to settle around 17 kt once we resumed motion. We are back in Miami with plenty of time to spare. Enjoyable cruise minus some Starlink internet woes through the Sargasso Sea of foul sea monsters and terrible internet. I'm beginning to think those sea monsters were wearing Starlink blocker devices as it was bad in the same place on our way to Labadee. "Ye shall have no Starlink internet here".

Where is the ship? The limitation may be due to location.

You don't have one of those VPN "Protect" services on do you? AT&T bundles one, Apple has one now, other companies. Google has one so they can track your every packet. They protect by trying to run a VPN which can cause issues on ships and airplane wifi. You connect then the VPN kicks to protect you. Except it blocks the ship DNS servers.

Sailing elsewhere.

Still there.

Here is the January 21, 2011 introduction of points and two new levels... Emerald and Pinnacle. https://www.royalcaribbeanpresscenter.com/press-release/646/royal-caribbean-upgrades-crown-anchor-society-/ The program's first enhancement is the transition from 'cruise credits' to 'Cruise Points.' The new system to earn tier status when sailing with Royal Caribbean International is based on one cruise point for every night spent aboard one of the cruise line's ships. The more nights members spend onboard, the more points they can earn. Additionally, Crown & Anchor Society members can earn double points when they pay for suite accommodation. Furthermore, two new status levels are being introduced as part of the enhancements to the program: Emerald tier, between the current Platinum and Diamond status levels, and Pinnacle Club, the new top tier. The new progression of Crown & Anchor Society member status is Gold, Platinum, Emerald, Diamond, Diamond Plus and Pinnacle Club. Guests who have a minimum of 100 cruise credits before January 21, 2011, will be the first to be invited to join the new top Crown & Anchor Society member tier. Moving forward, Pinnacle Club status can be achieved with 700 Cruise Points, equivalent to 100 seven-night cruises - or less cruises if members choose to sail in suite category staterooms or on longer itineraries.

The role model is... Super Mario.

Schooner on Anthem once told me: 2 oz rum 1/4 shot lavender syrup Sprinkle of lavender flakes

SpaceX used to have a conventional VSAT service on it's small fleet of ships they use to capture SpaceX stuff after rocket launches. Once Starlink had critical mass SpaceX terminated the VSAT contracts and claims to have realized a 70% reduction in satellite internet expenses. The hardware cost isn't that significant for a business that spends millions a year on legacy internet expenses. They can recover the capital costs pretty quickly so the business case is pretty solid. The legacy satellite providers also charged significant usage fees... $$$$ per GB of transfer. I suspect that is where the real savings come from. It was enticing enough to get Royal to jump before the maritime service was ready for prime time. On the other hand after Harmony caused a SpaceX rocket launch to scrub maybe a deal was negotiated in lieu of going after Royal for that mistake.

She may have some new wayfinder digital TVs around the ship that may not have been present in 2010. LED lighting around the ship. Still has the PitStop bar. Not sure a whole lot has changed since 2010. She has Starlink internet now and from what a friend experienced last week it's one of the fastest internet ships in the fleet. I was on her in October. Great cruise, great crew. No complaints.

O3b and it's beam forming technology that followed a ship was emerging technology in 2014. Starlink's used of phase array antennas and the shear number of satellites in different shells, inclinations and altitudes is also emerging technology. The company's stated purpose is to serve regions that are underserved. If you are in rural anywhere it's a game changer even if it isn't all that for metropolitan and larger populations centers where fiber is becoming more common. When your choice in the middle of nowhere is really weak cellular, nothing or Starlink the solution is fantastic even if it has some challenges at times. As long as Elon doesn't pull a Telsa Home Solar abrupt change of heart it has a lot of potential.

Right now Starlink can only support one hop to a gateway on land. At least in this region. They have started doing satellite to satellite relay but only closer towards the poles. That's how they are now selling Starlink in Alaska and Northern Canada. Once the v2 next gen Starlink satellites start going up it will be a game changer. Those will allow more hops between satellites to reach a gateway on land and that will extend the reach to more of the oceans farther from land. At least that's the Elon promise. The gen v2 satellites are also essential to the Elon vision of low latency Starlink. Starlink is "building the airplane as it flies". It's not nearly complete yet. My gut says it will one day provide excellent service on ships. We just need to be patient until they get there. I am hopeful next summer will see much improved Alaska ship internet. Time will tell.

Oasis just passed through heavy rain. My first experience with Starlink and rain like this. This was pretty heavy rain but very localized. The type of rain that would have knocked out O3b and Speedcast completely. During the rain: After the rain and once the skies were blue again: If folks were inside and doing simple texting they'd probably never know it rained. My results over this cruise:

BTW - The move to Starlink isn't to deliver better internet. It's all about switching to a cheaper supplier.

Before the shutdown Princess converted their last old ship to SES/O3b. They also don't use per user speed limits. It works really well. At times over 220Mbps. Royal was an important launch client for O3b with Quantum. However once they saw they could charge the same for Voom S&S and pull the wool over our eyes they stopped converting old ships to O3b. Why would they pay more for something they could market and sell no different than speedcast? In other words they learned they could charge the same for the old, slow and cheaper technology. At Royal it isn't about delivering on the marketing claim of "Fastest Internet at Sea". It's only about money.

The speed limits used in 2013 when Royal ladt did a fleet wide upgrade were good for the time. Home internet was typically 20 to 30 Mbps back them. Fast forward a decade and we've come a long ways over 10 years. Home internet is typically 200Mbps and many have 1Gbps at home. Yet Royal is still stuck in 2013 ways with the slowest internet at sea while other mass marketing lines have zoomed past Royal. Granted Starlink isn't fully operational. Only time will tell if Royal will attempt to retake the title of fastest internet at sea once Starlink is more complete.

Dec 20 - 8 pm After leaving Labadee it wasn't the best Voom on Oasis. On our way back to Miami on Oasis. Looks like we are retracing our route through the Sargosa Sea of bad internet. Dec. 21 6:30am This morning things are looking better on board. Where we had terrible iinternet on our way south it's now pretty usable albeit still with a 9x4 per user speed limit. This morning I've been able to stream from several sources, ESPN+ (which wouldn't stream last night), Netflix (which buffered last night) and Plex local TV stations from home (which failed last night). On board it's WiFi 5 using 20Mhz channels. On my balcony: Position It feels like we had an issue like a bad modem or antenna and they've fixed it.

So why is all this techno geek stuff important? If I am right it means there is a theoretical aggregate bandwidth of 15 x 350Mbps = 5.2 Gbps on Oasis. It make take more deployment of additional Starlink satellites to realize that potential throughput but if it is true, it means there are great things ahead for the Voom user experience.

For Oasis I have observed that there are 15 IP addresses that I have used at various times. Running several tests these addresses repeat in a random fashion. 98.97.168.194 98.97.170.217 98.97.172.99 98.97.173.134 98.97.173.212 98.97.174.221 98.97.175.9 129.222.80.107 129.222.80.247 129.222.82.93 129.222.82.225 129.222.83.32 129.222.83.45 129.222.83.60 129.222.83.83 Since there appears to be 16 Starlink antennas on the ship it seems likely that each of these IP addresses represents one antenna and that antennas connection to the internet. One antenna IP address is missing if there are 16 antennas. It's possible one antenna is a cold spare or it's dedicated to another function such as bridge internet, crew internet or internet for the ship and all the IOT devices on the ship. By dedicating one antenna to this role they have a static IP address so it's easy to create HQ VPN tunnels or HQ firewall rules for this function. Unknown if these will change over time. All of these IP addresses resolve to customer.atlagax1.pop.starlinkisp.net which suggests they are in Atlanta, GA. All of my speedtest.net tests have used Atlanta based speed test servers. All of these addresses trace back to Atlanta. So it seems Oasis VIA Starlink appears to be connecting to the internet in Atlanta.

Found 16 Starlink antennas on Oasis. There are 12 in a semi-circle along the edge of the CK/SL roof. There are 4 on the roof above the suite sun deck, 2 on the port side and 2 on the starboard side.

For those that seek a better understanding how Starlink works go to starlink.sx in a browser on a laptop or desktop computer (doesn't support mobile devices). This site is an unaffiliated simulation of the Starlink satellites flying in the sky. Zoom in, right click on a location to set a simulated earth station and you'll see the satellites that would be serving that location along with the gateways on land that would be used. Oasis is arriving into Labadee right now. From here we are leveraging gateways in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Florida. Each ship to satellite to gateway path is a different length and constantly changing as the satellites fly overhead. This explains the variable latency or delay that a ping test displays. Each line is taking a different path through different satellites and gateways. ping 4.2.2.3 PING 4.2.2.3 (4.2.2.3): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=0 ttl=51 time=123.460 ms. <- one satellite/gateway path 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=1 ttl=51 time=131.023 ms. <- 2nd satellite/gateway path 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=2 ttl=51 time=63.672 ms <- 3rd satellite/gateway path 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=3 ttl=51 time=114.756 ms <- 4th satellite/gateway path 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=4 ttl=51 time=57.871 ms <- 5th satellite/gateway path 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=5 ttl=51 time=302.609 ms <- 6th satellite/gateway path 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=6 ttl=51 time=312.364 ms 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=7 ttl=51 time=106.913 ms 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=8 ttl=51 time=314.867 ms 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=9 ttl=51 time=213.740 ms 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=10 ttl=51 time=85.836 ms Each ping is through a different antenna mounted on the ship. There are several antennas on the ship. Each independent path has a different IP address. IP addresses being used by Oasis right now below are associated to gateway cities, some in the DR, some in PR and some on the mainland. 129.222.83.60 129.222.83.45 98.97.175.9 98.97.168.194 98.97.172.99 129.222.80.107 98.97.174.221 98.97.173.212 129.222.82.93 129.222.82.225 This explains why my VPN session only lasts for a few minutes then drops - that path is no longer available because the satellite it was using has gone out of range. I can reconnect my VPN and it works fine until that satellite flies out of range then it disconnects. Rinse, lather, repeat. For general internet browsing and streaming it's great. For working remotely from a ship that requires VPN back to corporate Starlink may not work very well. SSL VPN may work better than IPSEC VPN, it depends. YMMV.

Not going to lie... this is the worst internet day I've ever experienced on a Royal ship. Like Carnival 2012 internet bad at the moment. Can't post pictures. VPN won't stay connected if it does connect. Variable light clouds in the sky. Sunny at the moment. Some areas of blue sky, some passing light clouds but not raining. Flat seas. We are taking the Northern/Eastern route above and outside of the Bahamas to reach Labadee. Must be no Starlink gateways out this way so we are relaying way too far back to the mainland. I think if we had taken the Straits of Florida to get there we'd have better internet. 24° 06.95 N 74° 48.72 W There will be no working remotely this cruise. I did a lot better back in October on Jewel before they moved her to Starlink. 0.22 Mbps down 0.79 Mbps up. 622ms according to Speedtest. 129.222.82.225 - SpaceX Starlink ping 4.2.2.3 PING 4.2.2.3 (4.2.2.3): 56 data bytes Request timeout for icmp_seq 0 Request timeout for icmp_seq 1 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=2 ttl=51 time=432.418 ms Request timeout for icmp_seq 3 Request timeout for icmp_seq 4 Request timeout for icmp_seq 5 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=6 ttl=51 time=441.069 ms 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=7 ttl=51 time=460.260 ms Request timeout for icmp_seq 8 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=9 ttl=51 time=438.348 ms 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=10 ttl=51 time=429.577 ms 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=11 ttl=51 time=419.385 ms Request timeout for icmp_seq 12 Request timeout for icmp_seq 13 Request timeout for icmp_seq 14 Request timeout for icmp_seq 15 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=16 ttl=51 time=437.568 ms 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=17 ttl=51 time=414.761 ms ^C --- 4.2.2.3 ping statistics --- 19 packets transmitted, 8 packets received, 57.9% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 414.761/434.173/460.260/13.118 ms

I suspect we will all endure some issues until SpaceX gets Starship flying and the next gen Starlink v2 satellites go up. Those should help to interconnect everything together and eliminate some of these poor performance issues. By mid-2023 it should start to work better... I hope.

Bad patch of the ocean right now. ping 4.2.2.3 PING 4.2.2.3 (4.2.2.3): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=0 ttl=51 time=297.987 ms 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=1 ttl=51 time=313.433 ms Request timeout for icmp_seq 2 Request timeout for icmp_seq 3 Request timeout for icmp_seq 4 Request timeout for icmp_seq 5 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=6 ttl=51 time=396.928 ms Request timeout for icmp_seq 7 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=8 ttl=51 time=440.882 ms 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=9 ttl=51 time=328.279 ms 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=10 ttl=51 time=354.751 ms Request timeout for icmp_seq 11 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=12 ttl=51 time=301.006 ms 64 bytes from 4.2.2.3: icmp_seq=13 ttl=51 time=322.723 ms ^C --- 4.2.2.3 ping statistics --- 14 packets transmitted, 8 packets received, 42.9% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 297.987/344.499/440.882/47.304 ms 98.97.173.134 98.97.175.9 129.222.83.60 129.222.83.83 98.97.172.99 24° 47.08' N 75° 20.32' W

On Jewel there are 4 above the VCL and 4 on top of the Sky Bar. Those are hard to see but I saw them installing them so I knew to look there. It helps to have a 360 camera on a stick. Sky Bar antennas after installation was complete. VCL: On Adventure there are some on the VCL roof and some on the forward most roof above the forward public deck where mini-golf is on her sister ships. They seem to split the locations which I suspect is done for diversity. If ship heading and angle makes some antennas partially shadowed then hopefully the others have a clear sky. Given that Jewel has 8 antennas I would have thought they'd do something similar on Vision class. Maybe the best way to find them will be from another ship across the pier, assuming you are on a taller ship.