Wired Internet?

[Searayace]

Last year we did the Panama Canal from Florida and I was determined to watch the Vancouver Canucks playoff run on the Zuiderdam, and being a bit of a techie/hockey fan I bought a new laptop, had my slingbox set up at home (sends your tv cablebox signal to your laptop or Ipad/phone anywhere there is wifi) and then bought a large internet package. I tried a test run on board and somewhere in the Carribean, close to 75 of us gathered around my laptop to watch the Canucks lose their final game to Los Angeles in the bar next to the Pinnacle grille, it was a lot of fun. I was very surprised at how seamless the video feed was we never had a problem with streaming the signal from my home cable box. I had researched the blogs about where signals were stronger on the ship, I also found that my Ipad did not have half of the reception capability as my laptop. I also found it very difficult to log off with the iPad unlike the computer which was a breeze, I probably wasted at least 30 minutes of purchased wifi time trying to shut down the ticking Internet clock, they admitted that IPads are difficult to log off. I still wonder why the cellular wifi was so good?, was it because it was so cost prohibitive not many people took advantage of it? I know the slingbox has very good video compression abilities to match slow download speeds. I am preparing for another Zuiderdam trip in two weeks and am trying to remember if the TV in the room had a HDMI connection does anyone know? Or was it the component plugs?

Cheers,

Glen

 

 

Sent using the Cruise Critic forums app

[WayneFougere]

Wifi is fine in our room but not needed as often as I thought. We encountered serval strong land network signals along the way (at which point I switched off wifi and ran 3G or 4G). Logging off the wifi on an iPad is easy (the page that opens on start up has a log off button. As long as you keep that page open, it was easy for me. My problem is REMEMBERING to log off!

 

The TV in our room has HDMI but don't know about other rooms. Plenty of other connections as well.

[Searayace]

Thanks i thought there was an HDMI plug on the TV, As for logging off on your ipad i am assuming If you stick with safari for your Internet it probably is much easier to log off, however, if you use an app like I did such as sky wire or the google app (3rd party) after several pages into your search you can easily lose the login page since another page does not open like safari, you have to refresh back to the beginning login page and sometimes you may search farther than the apps cache capability, and then the login page is gone and at the prices for Internet ticking the frantic search to log off begins.

 

 

Sent using the Cruise Critic forums app

[WayneFougere]

I suggest you do what I do. Sign on with Safari, minimize it, use other apps, open safari again and log out, minimize safari and reopen when you want to sign on again, repeat ad infinitum or until your time runs out.

 

I'm quite impressed by the Internet response time. If I have time, I'll download a network speed test app. It seems much faster than I would expect. I'm certain that the wireless hub (or whatever) in the room helps.

[Searayace]

That makes more sense, and is good advice thanks, I will try to remember to give the speed test a try on our next trip, on the Zuiderdam in 10 days time. Also Sky fire not sky wire in previous post.

Cheers,

Glen

 

 

Sent using the Cruise Critic forums app

[jtl513]

If I have time, I'll download a network speed test ap .

Here's one you don't need to download, just run: http://speedtest.net

[sapete]

If that was the case then you have pretty lousy internet speed at home.

 

Scott & Karen

 

Let's see, since it appears that you have never been on a Vista class ship and not on the Zuiderdam since the upgrade how would you know the speed or the capabilities of the newly-upgraded system, which was indeed almost as fast and my very good land service.

[Charles4515]

Let's see, since it appears that you have never been on a Vista class ship and not on the Zuiderdam since the upgrade how would you know the speed or the capabilities of the newly-upgraded system, which was indeed almost as fast and my very good land service.

 

After many years of slow Internet on ships many will be pleasantly surprised at recent improvements on ships that have had their wifi upgraded. I was on Ruby Princess last December and the wifi was almost zippy. Ditto on Allure of the Seas. Not as fast as home but on both ships the service was improved enough that using it was not frustrating.

[WayneFougere]

I'm no expert but my results have exceed warnings from others who have used onboard Internet in the past. I downloaded an App for testing speeds. I have no idea what the results mean but for the curious, here are some results from today (Zuiderdam, heading back to Vancouver).