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

[ew101]

5 minutes ago, dfish said:

  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.  

My Wife had the Nordstrom web site on her iPad stuck on Turkish Lira since our lovely cruise there.  Clearing cookies fixed it.  

 

IMHO someone needs to remind the cruise lines some of us still need to work (or check on rental properties or our Beanie Baby online shop), and Wi-Fi is a form of onboard revenue.  

[boze9999]

1 hour ago, ew101 said:

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.     

 

Thanks for your tech support @ew101Both Verizon and HAL need this factoid to tell customers and guests why wifi calling won't work. Better yet HAL could find a way to allow VPN routing access for cell phones since they tout it in their literature.

[ew101]

So Wi-Fi Calling was designed for the use case where you are indoors, and the cellular signal is perhaps blocked by walls or metal tinted windows.  So the phone says- oh- the cell signal is yukky (i.e. in my stucco house) but the Wi-Fi is good let's try that.   The assumption is you are on unblocked home Wi-Fi.  (I remember now - some business /lobby "guest Wi-Fi" services block ports also). 

 

Anyhow, you might want to still fight City Hall, but think of alternatives.  If any Voice over Wi-Fi service will work, use that for outbound calls and forward your phone to that for inbound calls.   (Microsoft Teams is all the rage, what about Google Voice?)

 

This ship Internet port blocking thing is evil.  I remember I was sitting in the Internet Cafe on some ship that will remain nameless mid ocean and the hearing the angst of guests complaining to the manager who needed to reach some (secured) web site for some important, time-critical task- check on Mom's medications, etc.  

 

   

[Homosassa]

1 hour ago, ew101 said:

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.  

I was talking about being out to sea where there is no nearby land mass.

 

I am talking about what appears to be a dead area as far as satellite coverage.