Concern over the internet speed.

[llmthommo]

Hello,

 

I've been scanning over this forum for some weeks now as I'm due to take my first ever cruise on December 14th.

 

Naturally my excitement is proving difficult to contain, but at the same time I have some concerns regarding the speed/stability of the internet connection. Over the Christmas period I am scheduled to fill out an online security questionnaire whilst being vetted for a job. I don't have a date for when the link will be sent to me, but I have an uncomfortable feeling it's going to be whilst I am aboard the Queen Mary 2. Because of this I will be carrying a netbook with me.

 

Unfortunately it's quite a gruelling form and has to be completed within a day of receiving and I've read some pretty disconcerting things about the internet speed and connection whilst at sea.

I appreciate that being able to connect to the internet at all is quite a remarkable feat, but I wanted to know whether you seasoned 'cruisers' think it will be feasible for me to complete the questionnaire within the allocated time frame?

 

Kind regards

 

llmthommo

[sail7seas]

Seeing we don't know approximately how long it would take you to complete it with a high speed connection, it isn't possible to 'guesstimate' how long on a ship's connection.

 

Two things: Most of the ships, if not all, have very slow connections though the speed can vary some by time of day you are connected. Obviously, middle of the night, fewer people are using internet and the speed is a bit better. Think in terms of the days of dial up.

 

Also, you cannot always know for sure you will get a connection at all. In all our cruising, there have been a number of times when we could not connect and waited anywhere from hours to days before we got internet back.

 

I don't want to add anxiety to your situation but am telling you our personal experience after a great many cruises on many ships.

 

Edited December 7, 2013 by sail7seas

[Langley Cruisers]

Is there any other way you can do this, because in my dozen cruises, Internet speed was absolutely awful at best. It sometimes can take 5 minutes or so just to open your web-based e-mail program.

 

To where are you cruising? Could you do this in one of your ports at an Internet café?

[Gunner22aa]

Once you get it find some place at the next port that offers free wifi and do it from there. It will be a whole bunch easier especially if it is (and I assume it will be) a secure site that you are filling out the form on.

[llmthommo]

I believe the previously used paper questionnaire was over 20 pages long.

 

The cruise is transatlantic, Southampton to New York, so unfortunately I won't have access to an internet cafe or other establishment with solid wifi. I'm planning to try and contact the relevant department of my employer on Monday to see whether I can gain access to the portal before or after my voyage.

 

Hopefully some kind of compromise can be reached, but ideally I would like to try and complete it aboard the QM2. During the interview we were told any delay in returning the form would result in a significant delay for our employment.

 

Thanks for the help! :)

[fishywood]

Based on the people I have met on my three QM2 voyages, as well as many others on the Cunard board, it is very common for online business to be conducted on a crossing. But as Cunard very generously gives a free internet package to past cruisers as soon as they have hit three voyages or twenty days the system often runs slow due to overcrowding. Your best bet for uninterrupted service is to avoid the hours from mid-morning to 6PM. Between 6 and 10PM half the passengers are at dinner, so those hours and very early mornings are your best bet. If you aboslutely need three or four straight hours of good connection, set your alarm for before 6AM.

 

I too bring a netbook when cruising. When logging into one's e-mail accounts it is definitely faster to use your own device thanks to all the cookies deposited on it. But once online, the desktop computers in the Internet Centre may be faster and more reliable as they have considerably more RAM than a netbook. Though I have never had a problem with the wi-fi dropping off in my stateroom on QM2. And you will need to disable any auto-updates on your netbook; at the slower onboard speeds they have caused mine to lock up. Bottom line is you needn't worry.

Edited December 8, 2013 by fishywood

[llmthommo]

Based on the people I have met on my three QM2 voyages, as well as many others on the Cunard board, it is very common for online business to be conducted on a crossing. But as Cunard very generously gives a free internet package to past cruisers as soon as they have hit three voyages or twenty days the system often runs slow due to overcrowding. Your best bet for uninterrupted service is to avoid the hours from mid-morning to 6PM. Between 6 and 10PM half the passengers are at dinner, so those hours and very early mornings are your best bet. If you aboslutely need three or four straight hours of good connection, set your alarm for before 6AM.

 

I too bring a netbook when cruising. When logging into one's e-mail accounts it is definitely faster to use your own device thanks to all the cookies deposited on it. But once online, the desktop computers in the Internet Centre may be faster and more reliable as they have considerably more RAM than a netbook. Though I have never had a problem with the wi-fi dropping off in my stateroom on QM2. And you will need to disable any auto-updates on your netbook; at the slower onboard speeds they have caused mine to lock up. Bottom line is you needn't worry.

 

Thank you, that was a very reassuring read and your tips are duly noted. I certainly don't mind waking up early to take advantage of slightly faster speeds!

[NMLady]

I believe the previously used paper questionnaire was over 20 pages long.

 

The cruise is transatlantic, Southampton to New York, so unfortunately I won't have access to an internet cafe or other establishment with solid wifi. I'm planning to try and contact the relevant department of my employer on Monday to see whether I can gain access to the portal before or after my voyage.

 

Hopefully some kind of compromise can be reached, but ideally I would like to try and complete it aboard the QM2. During the interview we were told any delay in returning the form would result in a significant delay for our employment.

 

Thanks for the help! :)

 

You haven't said how long you have for completing the questionnaire. If you have a couple hours to complete it, and can choose what time of day, you should be okay if you do it very early in the morning. I agree with the person who recommended using the ship's computer rather than your netbook.

Edited December 8, 2013 by NMLady

[llmthommo]

You haven't said how long you have for completing the questionnaire. If you have more than an hour to complete it, and can choose what time of day, you should be okay if you do it very early in the morning.

 

Apologies, I thought I had stated it was 24 hours from when you receive it. My mistake! It's not the 24 hour framework that I find daunting, rather that the physical document used before the upgrade to the electronic form was 20-30 pages. From what I have read on other sites I was under the impression it would prove difficult to traverse so many web pages in that space of time?

 

Or am I underestimating the QM2 wi-fi?

[Sherlock43031]

Based on the people I have met on my three QM2 voyages, as well as many others on the Cunard board, it is very common for online business to be conducted on a crossing. But as Cunard very generously gives a free internet package to past cruisers as soon as they have hit three voyages or twenty days the system often runs slow due to overcrowding. Your best bet for uninterrupted service is to avoid the hours from mid-morning to 6PM. Between 6 and 10PM half the passengers are at dinner, so those hours and very early mornings are your best bet. If you aboslutely need three or four straight hours of good connection, set your alarm for before 6AM.

 

I too bring a netbook when cruising. When logging into one's e-mail accounts it is definitely faster to use your own device thanks to all the cookies deposited on it. But once online, the desktop computers in the Internet Centre may be faster and more reliable as they have considerably more RAM than a netbook. Though I have never had a problem with the wi-fi dropping off in my stateroom on QM2. And you will need to disable any auto-updates on your netbook; at the slower onboard speeds they have caused mine to lock up. Bottom line is you needn't worry.

 

RAM has very little to do with internet speed especially since he won't have multiple tabs open. My netbook has 8g but I used the ships wired PC to simply print a boarding pass and it took the best part of 20 minutes. I can't image ever completing a 20 page questionnaire.

[1025cruise]

If you were at home, how long is it expected to take to fill out this survey? Internet speed on the ship will be very slow, so if it would take you 30 minutes - one hour to do this at home, it will probably take twice as long.

 

If it were me, I'd let someone know that you will be unreachable on a pre-planned vacation for the time period you are gone, and that you will be unable to complete the survey if it arrives during that period.

[llmthommo]

If you were at home, how long is it expected to take to fill out this survey? Internet speed on the ship will be very slow, so if it would take you 30 minutes - one hour to do this at home, it will probably take twice as long.

 

If it were me, I'd let someone know that you will be unreachable on a pre-planned vacation for the time period you are gone, and that you will be unable to complete the survey if it arrives during that period.

 

Not sure with regards to an estimated completion time, I'm going to try and contact them on Monday and I will try getting the information out of them then.

I'm hoping to delay it until I'm off the QM2 or at least get an 'extension' for the deadline, but communication has been so poor so far that I'm not too hopeful!

[kitty9]

Another problem you will have is with connectivity. Oftentimes during crossings, Internet can be lost for hours. And, because downloads are SO slow, it could take 2 minutes or longer just to download a single page and many times, downloads can be lost. Your task will be daunting, to say the least.

[BlueRiband]

Having made two round trip transatlantics on QM2 I can say that the internet is not nearly as bad in the middle of the Atlantic compared to Caribbean. One doesn't encounter a huge density of ships in an area where almost every passenger as an internet capable device in their pocket. As others have said you will be best off to avoid the after breakfast and before dinner hours. Your speed will depend on how many others are trying to use the satellite connection.

 

A few weeks ago we had a poster who wanted a cruise line with solid, reliable, true high speed internet connections. We had to tell him it doesn't yet exist.

[Cruisin' Chick]

About 50 weeks ago, we were on a Hawaiian cruise RT from Los Angeles. We had bought an Internet package to placate our teen so that she can Facebook with her friends if she gets bored and so that I can occasionally check my email (I had left my email with our emergency contacts, but with a caveat that I don't know how accessible the Internet will be). Because we were in the middle of the eastern Pacific for some days, that affected how much time the ship could get satellite coverage (how the signal gets sent) so sometimes the signal was very slow or almost impossible to deal with. Other times I was able to check my sites almost easily. It does help if you can use the computer late at night when there's fewer passengers on the 'Net (even though there's also crew members in their area using the computer too).

 

I can sympathize with you because in the 90s, my hubby was waiting for word on promotional interviews at his workplace, a governmental entity. At that time, a worker would be sent a postcard when interviews are being scheduled and you had a short window of time (maybe a few days) to contact personnel to get a slot. As I was pregnant, we wanted to get in a vacation before the baby came as we didn't know when the next opportunity came. We finally scheduled a 3-day cruise over Easter weekend, thinking that surely nothing would come in the mail that Friday or Saturday. Plus hubby asked his brother to check our mail for that specific of mail (even though he wasn't all that trustworthy). Fortunately, nothing came at that time.

 

Months later, that same issue came up, but we weren't going anywhere, or he wasn't going for that interview, but one of hubby's co-workers had a month long vacation scheduled in his native Vietnam. So he gave hubby the contact info, and sure enough, the interviews opened up. Hubby called up the home where he was staying and gave him the info. The guy set up a phone interview (probably at a great cost of $$$). The guy got the job in a desired department. Unfortunately when my hubby tried to get over there a few years later as a promotion, this guy, when asked about hubby, said oh, he's good (not exactly a raving rec, especially considering he wouldn't have gotten the job w/o hubby's help:().

 

Hope it works out for you that they give you an extension for after your return.

[lifes-a-beach]

Perhaps you should them that you have made an effort to establish the security of the connectivity aboard ship and that your efforts have met with negative results. In the absence of verifiable encryption algorithms you consider the transfer of such data a security risk and as such must insist on completing the document before your departure.

 

You know, baffle them with bull.

[peety3]

Internet "speed" ought to be split out into two distinct parameters: bandwidth (how many bytes can arrive per second) and latency (how long it takes those bytes to travel from origin server to destination netbook, or vice versa). Because the at-sea link is satellite based, your traffic has to go up to a satellite and then back to the ground, and that applies in both directions (getting a form involves all of the packets that make up the form, plus several acknowledgements back to the server along the way). It can be as bad as 250ms each way if it's using geosynchronous satellites (the reason that your home DirecTV/Dish antenna gets aimed is because the satellites orbit far enough away that they don't appear to move in the sky, but that's 22,300 miles up). Home internet connections are probably on the order of 1-4ms to nearby sites and perhaps 40-65ms if you try to access something across the US from your home.

 

All of that is a long-winded way of saying that you can expect high latency aboard the ship. This would make interactive stuff absolutely painful, such as online gaming - you'd get shot to smithereens long before you could see the enemy and shoot back. However, once a particular packet stream gets going, it can probably achieve a reasonable bandwidth. So, things like getting the form may be a little slow to start, but after it's flowing it shouldn't take long, and the same in reverse.

[YubaSutter]

Is there any other way you can do this, because in my dozen cruises, Internet speed was absolutely awful at best. It sometimes can take 5 minutes or so just to open your web-based e-mail program.

 

To where are you cruising? Could you do this in one of your ports at an Internet café?

 

Other than London and NYC, there are no ports on this transatlantic.

[Keith1010]

My experience is that often if you use the internet early in the morning or in the evening that the speeds are better than later in the daytime or the afternoon.

 

Keith

[calliopecruiser]

I'm not sure what you mean by "online security questionnaire".......Are you able to download it, fill it out off line, and then upload it with your answers (still within the 24 hour limit), or do you actually need to fill it in while you are online? Find out if you have the option to do the former, because downloading it and then filling it in off-line would be easier (and probably cheaper).

 

On my transatlantic last year I found the speed more than adequate (though I was not on Cunard) - I was pleasantly surprised after being warned about how slow it would be. I agree that it may have to do with timing - I typically used the computers in the late evening.

[chengkp75]

Internet "speed" ought to be split out into two distinct parameters: bandwidth (how many bytes can arrive per second) and latency (how long it takes those bytes to travel from origin server to destination netbook, or vice versa). Because the at-sea link is satellite based, your traffic has to go up to a satellite and then back to the ground, and that applies in both directions (getting a form involves all of the packets that make up the form, plus several acknowledgements back to the server along the way). It can be as bad as 250ms each way if it's using geosynchronous satellites (the reason that your home DirecTV/Dish antenna gets aimed is because the satellites orbit far enough away that they don't appear to move in the sky, but that's 22,300 miles up). Home internet connections are probably on the order of 1-4ms to nearby sites and perhaps 40-65ms if you try to access something across the US from your home.

 

All of that is a long-winded way of saying that you can expect high latency aboard the ship. This would make interactive stuff absolutely painful, such as online gaming - you'd get shot to smithereens long before you could see the enemy and shoot back. However, once a particular packet stream gets going, it can probably achieve a reasonable bandwidth. So, things like getting the form may be a little slow to start, but after it's flowing it shouldn't take long, and the same in reverse.

 

The other fact involved is that the passenger internet is just the "leftover" from the ship's bandwidth. The ship's systems are online 24/7, which again makes speeds slower during the day when all departments are making reports back and forth, and POS stations are making transactions.

[Underwatr]

If you can download the form, complete it and upload it I don't think you'll have any issues as long as you can make your connections between around 10 PM and 8 AM. If you have to remain connected through the duration of completing the form I strongly recommend that you find an Internet cafe in a port of call and complete the form there.

 

Of course there is some data security risk with any wireless connection...

[llmthommo]

Thanks for the advice everyone.

For those who asked about the nature of the questionnaire, I believe it has to be completed online, hence my anxiety about the connection speed/stability.

 

My employer is within the public sector so I'm going to ring first thing tomorrow morning, explain my predicament to them and hope they sympathise!

Otherwise I will have to surrender myself to the mercy of QM2 internet :p

[lannp]

The internet connection mid-ocean has improved over the years but........you are at the mercy of satellite service so there's no way of telling how good it will be. I definitely can tell you that really early in the morning or late at night is your best time. You used to be able to predict how slow it would be by the number of users on the ship's computers but now with IPADs, laptops, etc. you have no idea how many people are logged in from their cabins, etc.

Good luck!

[Sherlock43031]

Thanks for the advice everyone.

For those who asked about the nature of the questionnaire, I believe it has to be completed online, hence my anxiety about the connection speed/stability.

 

My employer is within the public sector so I'm going to ring first thing tomorrow morning, explain my predicament to them and hope they sympathise!

Otherwise I will have to surrender myself to the mercy of QM2 internet :p

 

if possible go to the location and explain in person.. you might get lucky and they will point at a terminal and say have at it.