Princess Ship Wireless and Cisco VPN?

[Times Prince]

Ccrain, did you have trouble getting on WiFi on the Emerald? DH and I both did. In fact, except for early in the morning or after 9 at night, we rarely could get a login screen from anywhere on the ship. During the night we had no trouble at all, so it wasn't our iPhones. I'm kind of thinking it's because there are a lot more people with smartphones accessing the Internet. We had no trouble last year on the Ruby, but left the Emerald with over 2 hours of Internet time each...we simply couldn't use it most of the time, and instead started seeking it out in ports.

I was on the same Dec 8-18 Emerald Princess cruise, and we were often able to login using wireless from our Riviera deck cabin located below Cafe Caribe. First day we had some dropped links and so I talked with the "expert" in the Internet Cafe. After looking up my room number he attested "there is no wireless access to your room".

 

Mind you, now, signal strength was always "excellent" as seen by our laptop on the desk in our room. Response time from their system was pretty bad, and there were days when we just couldn't get on the system. Other days were just slow. It is nice to be able to enter your login information and then watch TV or the waves go by waiting...

 

Sea days were dismal. Port days before all-aboard time were usually good, which matches your experience - just too darn many people accessing a limited network.

 

I logged on to a computer in the internet cafe on the morning prior to reaching FLL and it took 30 minutes of connect time just to login, connect to my airline site, and print boarding passes. I apparently was fortunate, as others sat nearby barely able to get off the login screen.

[Coracii]

Do you pay for internet access on your laptop?

 

Yes, whether you access the internet through your laptop or through use of the internet cafe computers you pay the same price for internet access.

[PescadoAmarillo]

Times Prince - Thank you. So it wasn't just us. Our iPhones always indicated full signal strength, but we just couldn't get logged on most of the time. I felt sorry for folks who needed it for work...it was totally unreliable, not just in the normal, expected speed sense, but in availability and dependability. I wonder if Princess has the ability or inclination to beef up their WiFi now that more and more people are using it.

[ccrain]

Ccrain, did you have trouble getting on WiFi on the Emerald? DH and I both did. In fact, except for early in the morning or after 9 at night, we rarely could get a login screen from anywhere on the ship. During the night we had no trouble at all, so it wasn't our iPhones. I'm kind of thinking it's because there are a lot more people with smartphones accessing the Internet. We had no trouble last year on the Ruby, but left the Emerald with over 2 hours of Internet time each...we simply couldn't use it most of the time, and instead started seeking it out in ports.

 

8-10 in the morning and 4-7 at night we had lag trouble, especially at sea when it was a bit bumpy. More trouble on the 2nd leg as opposed to the first leg, but since we were in a suite we always had a good signal.