Want to work remote? Spoiler - you can't on Holland America!

[ew101]

HAL would have to go out of the way to add filters to block VPN (encrypted tunnel) type traffic or any specific web site.   The idea is "plain" (USA) Internet blocks nothing.   It is IMHO not due to bandwidth concerns- VPNs can add a bit of extra overheard- in the range of 20% due to the added packet headers needed.  Note- most (75%+) Internet traffic is encrypted already.  There is no comparison between a typical VPN session (i.e. checking email) vs a streaming movie.  The movie is a lot more bandwidth intensive.   I used to design large work at home VPNs- unless you were doing a lot of video calls it was a light network load.  There was a moment of panic for businesses and network providers when COVID hit and people shifted to work at home.  Traffic went up a little - but it was not from VPN overhead.  More movies and more video calls were a lot of it and gaming.  

 

I can think of one possible explanation - the use of encryption protocols is regulated and varies by country.  So in port in say France, they might have rules. 

 

The early ocean liners and cross country trains had onboard radio rooms and stenographers to take business memos.   Important people went to sea and had to stay in touch.  This is not a new thing. 

 

This is a good question for HAL Customer Service.  

 

    

[BigMattT]

8 hours ago, Yukiie said:

Holland America officially black lists ALL VPNs, Github, etc. - literally any resource he would need to complete his work. Unless you work solely via email (that doesn't require VPN) it would be impossible to work from a Holland America ship.

 

 

Thank you for confirming your experience. We had the same issue.
 

I’m disheartened by the replies that aren’t appreciating a legitimate concern about HAL’s capability to accommodate modern best practices for using guest WiFi networks. These days, using a VPN when away from home & trusted networks is a security best practice that MOST people should be using for their devices.

 

Maybe HAL has an interest in monitoring our internet traffic onboard? Preventing illegal traffic perhaps?

[chengkp75]

11 hours ago, ew101 said:

 I used to design large work at home VPNs- unless you were doing a lot of video calls it was a light network load. 

I'll defer to your professional knowledge here, but from what I read, using a VPN on a satellite internet connection will be significantly degraded, due to latency, not bandwidth.  Also, that satellite internet has a much slower upload bandwidth than download (streaming a movie), and the VPN requires high bandwidth for both upload and download.  Finally, the satellite internet provider uses IP spoofing (no idea what that is), that can prevent VPN connections.  Can you comment?

[Andi Land]

I work for the government and my work from home also requires VPN. When I want to vacation and work at the same time, I take a land trip with reliable internet. I save cruising for true vacation only experiences. I know that doesn’t help OP after the fact but may help with planning future trips. 

[The-Inside-Cabin]

FWIW - I am on the Zuiderdam, inport Hilo, and successfully logged into my Surfshark VPN a few minutes ago....

 

But I would never go on a cruise where good connection at sea was critical - reliability is not great - works now - may not work tommorow.

 

I have been able to Facetime and make wifi calls as well .   Will try zoom later just to see if it works

 

 

Here is the speed check - we have the premium package

 

Edited March 9, 2022 by The-Inside-Cabin

[CruisinShips]

20 hours ago, Florida_gal_50 said:

I'm not a love to disconnect person.  Whatever you like or don't that's everyone's choice.  I would just love not to hear the I love to disconnect comment in these threads.  

Agreed.  It serves no useful purpose to criticize what the OP needs to do so as to make their cruise suit their own needs.

[The-Inside-Cabin]

I am connected, or try to be 24/7 365.......It's more relaxing to me to know what's going on rather than to dread seeing a stream of emails flow in - some over a week old....

 

Then you worry you are missing some thing important    I love being connected...but to each his own...

 

 

[JeannineWW]

There are many VPN implementations.  Some VPNs are used to disguise illegal downloads of copyrighted materials (music, movies, etc.).

 

I help administer a wi-fi network at an RV park.  We do not block VPNs, but a few users need to disable their VPNs to use the network.  Most VPNs work fine.  

[Homosassa]

Before I go on, let me make clear I am not a techie, wouldn't know a VPN if I met one.

 

However, if you are cruising, be very aware of your itinerary and the ocean that you will be traveling to reach different ports.

 

Every time I have been on a cruise on a Southern Caribbean itinerary, no matter the cruise line , we have hit areas where the satellite feed for the TV programs and internet have dropped for a period of time.

 

I am sure the same may happen in other areas.

[Roz]

I started cruising with HAL in 2001 and am still working, so not all HAL passengers are retired. 😁  I would guess that when you're talking about cruises over 14 days, then yes, well over half are probably retired.  I use a VPN to access my gov't. agency's network, but I have to it over an approved, secure internet connection.  I doubt they would approve access to the VPN from a cruise ship.  

 

People have different working requirements and styles, so if the only way someone can take time off from work is by having access to their VPN, I don't see why they should be criticized.

[Roz]

@Homosassa, I've had the exact same experience in the Southern Caribbean.  In fact, that's where I'm headed next week. 

[TiogaCruiser]

23 hours ago, Yukiie said:

My husband is a software developer and works 100% remote so we figured if he could work remotely from a cruise ship that would provide us the opportunity to take much longer cruises than his vacation time would currently allow. We have been on 10+ cruises in the past.

 

Test Cruise: We decided on Holland America Koningsdam for our test cruise. I pre booked the premium internet package at ~$117 for a week.

 

That made me smile. I’ve never met a good developer who didn’t test extensively.

 

Aren’t you glad you tested? 😁

[Yukiie]

7 minutes ago, TiogaCruiser said:

That made me smile. I’ve never met a good developer who didn’t test extensively.

 

Aren’t you glad you tested? 😁

You made me literally laugh out loud and I had to share this with my husband. 👏

 

[Oceansaway17]

well my first thought was they want you spending money in the casino and shops and restaurants.

They seem to wish to not encourage folks to work on ships.

But VPN is secure and so that is not good for folks who wish to use for just email and tiny amounts of work.  

[amyr]

It's been over a decade since I've been on a Princess ship after years of sailing on them, mostly because their food had degraded to the point where it was slightly less than just okay.  BUT!  They have installed a new whizbang Medallion internet system and are now literally advertising that it's so good that you can work from their ships. Could it be true? 🤷‍♀️

 

It probably still doesn't work worth a squat in the middle of the Pacific or Atlantic, but it's given me pause enough to consider taking a peek at their itineraries as I wait for HAL to put out their return from Sydney itinerary in 2024, which is taking foreevvverrrrr.  I'll also be checking their boards to see how it actually works as they ramp up.  Something for the OP to think about if they really want to work from their balcony.

[Mary229]

4 hours ago, Roz said:

I started cruising with HAL in 2001 and am still working, so not all HAL passengers are retired. 😁  I would guess that when you're talking about cruises over 14 days, then yes, well over half are probably retired.  I use a VPN to access my gov't. agency's network, but I have to it over an approved, secure internet connection.  I doubt they would approve access to the VPN from a cruise ship.  

 

People have different working requirements and styles, so if the only way someone can take time off from work is by having access to their VPN, I don't see why they should be criticized.

I would hope anyone who potentially has access to proprietary or other’s personal data would not be working on a public internet, that should be illegal.  If the data needs to be secured then you need to invest in a satellite modem or whatever the current technology is now.   

[Kay S]

1 hour ago, amyr said:

IIt's been over a decade since I've been on a Princess ship after years of sailing on them, mostly because their food had degraded to the point where it was slightly less than just okay.  BUT!  They have installed a new whizbang Medallion internet system and are now literally advertising that it's so good that you can work from their ships. Could it be true? 🤷‍♀️

I sailed Princess last October right after the reopening.  The food was not improved, and the internet was unreliable, going down a couple of times a day.  I was on a California costal, so couldn't blame the  middle of the Pacific Ocean.

[ew101]

11 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

I'll defer to your professional knowledge here, but from what I read, using a VPN on a satellite internet connection will be significantly degraded, due to latency, not bandwidth.  Also, that satellite internet has a much slower upload bandwidth than download (streaming a movie), and the VPN requires high bandwidth for both upload and download.  Finally, the satellite internet provider uses IP spoofing (no idea what that is), that can prevent VPN connections.  Can you comment?

Always good to hear from you.  I did forget about latency.  I have not heard of a problem per se with VPNs and latency, but a VPN would be a bit pokey on a satellite link due to the overhead.    And IP spoofing is the idea that the earth station convinces TCP that yes it already got the return packets next in line and go ahead and send some more even if they are late.   This makes the connection seem faster.  A VPN just is a tunnel or wrapper on underlying traffic. 

 

 IPsec - Wikipedia

 

VPN traffic flow probably has been mostly outbound from the Internet, as you are reading emails as an example, or viewing a web site, vs. typing or uploading data from your laptop.  But it does not have to be.  If you are "on your office VPN" you may have a lot of reading and think time.  Which uses very little to no bandwidth.  

   

Remember also the Internet was designed to be reliable but not secure.  So the assumption is the "Public Internet" is more or less open, and as we have seen security protocols (like SSL or TLS for e-commerce, or VPNs) run over the Internet to secure your traffic or encrypt it.  

 

This all feels still like policy not technology to me.  I remember over the years hotels or Internet service providers would block a TCP port needed for VPNs aka business use.  This was silly at one level- for many years, business use did not mean more use.   UDP Port 500 is often needed for a VPN - this was blocked.  Customers would howl,  or pay the extra for "Business DSL Service" as an example.  

[CurlerRob]

On 3/8/2022 at 4:08 PM, Yukiie said:

The internet speed was decent - you could do some low quality video calls or stream stuff from YouTube. The limiting factor was the black listed sites.

I understand your concern regarding the blocked sites/VPN, but I would suggest that you were also  fortunate in experiencing "decent" internet speed - my personal experience, and that of posters on other cruise line boards suggests that shipboard internet quality continues to be inconsistent at best.
 

On the 2019 WC, the (premium) internet was abysmal - MIA or so slow as to be unusable for many days. I documented over 20 days where I couldn't even load the free NYT website - many in geographical areas where I would have expected reasonable connectivity. The service was so poor that it prompted a personal apology from the then-CEO when he joined the cruise.
 

In general, shipboard satellite internet is inherently inferior to commercial shoreside services. It is affected by latitude (angle to the satellite), signal obstruction (think fjords) and the cruise line's policy on how to apportion a limited resource (bandwidth) - leading to such delights as "throttling". 
 

By all means, raise the issue with HAL - it's the only way that they may be encouraged to offer high-quality service, even if it's at a high cost to those who require or want it. However, I'd encourage you to conduct some further "testing" and research across other lines - depending on the speed you need to be productive, the blockages may be the least of your issues on a longer trip. Whether it's blockages or the need for reliable videoconference connectivity, I'm not sure any of the lines are in a position to provide service comparable to that which we experience at home.

 

Best of luck! 🍺🥌

[CurlerRob]

On 3/8/2022 at 4:08 PM, Yukiie said:

The internet speed was decent - you could do some low quality video calls or stream stuff from YouTube. The limiting factor was the black listed sites.

Dup removed.

Edited March 10, 2022 by CurlerRob
Duplicate.

[boze9999]

I am still working too and have a lot of booked cruises in 2022. My biggest problem with the internet is blocked wifi calls in or out. I never had a problem on HAL pre-covid while on the sea or in port, but now (even with Premium) they won't go through whether we're on sea or in port. HAL says it's Verizon's problem - yet when I'm in port connected on wifi, the Verizon wifi calls go through....

[ew101]

6 hours ago, boze9999 said:

I am still working too and have a lot of booked cruises in 2022. My biggest problem with the internet is blocked wifi calls in or out. I never had a problem on HAL pre-covid while on the sea or in port, but now (even with Premium) they won't go through whether we're on sea or in port. HAL says it's Verizon's problem - yet when I'm in port connected on wifi, the Verizon wifi calls go through....

https://ratil.life/verizon-wi-fi-calling-firewall-config/  It looks like the Verizon Wi-Fi calling feature opens a VPN tunnel (port 500) to tunnel the calls securely.  If that port is blocked by HAL policies, no calls.     

 

[ew101]

I did a little more poking around.  This whole VPNs and port blocking thing seems semi common at sea.  One reason for it- the lines might want to block certain sites or traffic types by port number - the ship uses a limited, slow, shared satellite link with significant (.5 seconds or more) extra latency (per packet round trip delay) vs being on fiber or 5G at home.  As ChengKP pointed out, on older satellites, uplink can be slower than downlink.  This is laws of physics stuff.  

 

 

There are some work arounds - there are lots of flavors and types of VPNs.  One, an SSL VPN, looks to the Internet and any firewalls or policies like encrypted web site traffic.  Since many ordinary web sites use this port, often 443, it is harder to say- oh they are on a VPN- let's block them.   

 

Visitors to certain countries face site and traffic type blocking.    

 

Soon, newer satellite types - see Starlink- have lower latency (lower orbits) and better performance.  Having these dishes "roam" - they work best in one spot now- is under development.  These might be good on a cruise ship.    

[dfish]

It sounds like the internet service has improved since my cruise last September.  It was barely usable.  I was blocked from access to the Department of Health website from my state and my email was blocked from sending.  I could receive.  Websites I could reach came up in Spanish, including the HAL website.  Fortunately, I can read Spanish somewhat.  And, yes, I am still working and needed to do a few minutes worth of work each day.  

[ew101]

17 hours ago, Homosassa said:

Every time I have been on a cruise on a Southern Caribbean itinerary, no matter the cruise line , we have hit areas where the satellite feed for the TV programs and internet have dropped for a period of time.

 

This is often more related to rules or contracts - what we call in the tech world "Digital Rights Management"- so the NFL might say - ok you can show a game on your ship, but the rights to show the game in the port of (Miami) are for the local TV station or a cable company.  And when the ship is docked it is in the city limits.   The same might apply for the Internet.