LIVE from Radiance Apr. 21, 2023 - The Panama Canal - Canal au Niveau de la Mer

[perfect match]

@twangster, I finally managed to put life’s responsibilities aside for long enough to get back here and finish reading this awesome review! Thank you very much for doing it.
 

Your pictures, as always, were wonderful and thanks to you I finally managed to learn to use some of the features on my iPhone camera! My photography skills, while improved are still nowhere close to yours though! Now if you want to talk about horizons that aren’t perfectly straight I’d win that award for sure. I don’t like my crooked horizons any more than you like yours. I think they mean that I’m more than slightly off kilter myself since I know that the horizon is not! 😂

 

I really do need to prioritize putting a Panama Canal cruise on our itinerary.  I know we’re going to love it when we finally get to go.

 

Thank you also @little britain for your contributions on this thread! I always enjoy seeing the same cruise from two different points of view. Your input here was much appreciated!

[little britain]

@perfect match thanks for the mention!!! Appreciated x

[cruiser999]

On 4/16/2023 at 8:29 AM, twangster said:

Radiance has been upgraded to Starlink satellite internet but it's unclear how that's going to work out for us.  A number of countries in Central America haven't approved Starlink yet so the closest gateway cities are relatively distant.  

 

I am anticipating some challenges keeping this live along the full itinerary but am hoping for cellular backup to help in places.  

Twangster, did you use a vpn to access you workplace when on the cruise and if so did you figure out the gateway ground station being used by starlink when cruising the Panama Canal. I am worried about geofencing being in play and not being able to access my workplace vpn in the US.

 

[twangster]

9 hours ago, cruiser999 said:

Twangster, did you use a vpn to access you workplace when on the cruise and if so did you figure out the gateway ground station being used by starlink when cruising the Panama Canal. I am worried about geofencing being in play and not being able to access my workplace vpn in the US.

 

 

Through the canal and when we near South America we used Starlink gateways in Columbia.  This did cause some alerts from my email provider because I appeared to be connecting from a foreign and unusual source.  

 

As we cruised up the west coast the Starlink gateway was in Mexico city.  It wasn't until we were near California did we use a Starlink gateway in an American city.  That was the final night.  For most of the cruise we were connected to non-US Starlink gateway cities.

 

I have the ability to VPN to my home office where I have a enterprise grade firewall.  This worked fine for me because I have it set to allow VPN from anywhere.  If your employer restricts access from foreign countries that could be a problem for you.

 

I'm on Radiance now having left out of Tampa yesterday.  As we approach the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico nearing Cuba we are still using Atlanta as our Starlink gateway city.  As we continue towards Costa Maya I am expecting we may switch to Mexico City for our Starlink gateway.

 

In the past I have been able to connect two VPN sessions, one to my home office and then I could VPN to another destination that would see my connection coming from my home office.  This approach does cost some overhead from double tunnels but it can get around any geo restrictions.  Not all VPN applications work well or play nice with each other on the same computer so it's definitely something that can be hit or miss depending on what software is being used.

 

I have also used a second laptop to connect to my home VPN and then used an ethernet cable to connect a work laptop through my personal laptop.  With my personal laptop VPN'd to home and the work laptop sharing my personal laptop's connection, the work laptop looked like it was at home so it was able to work just like it does when it is physically at my home.  Traveling with two laptops it a bit of a pain but it does open up some additional options to work around geo restrictions.

[cruiser999]

57 minutes ago, twangster said:

 

Through the canal and when we near South America we used Starlink gateways in Columbia.  This did cause some alerts from my email provider because I appeared to be connecting from a foreign and unusual source.  

 

As we cruised up the west coast the Starlink gateway was in Mexico city.  It wasn't until we were near California did we use a Starlink gateway in an American city.  That was the final night.  For most of the cruise we were connected to non-US Starlink gateway cities.

 

I have the ability to VPN to my home office where I have a enterprise grade firewall.  This worked fine for me because I have it set to allow VPN from anywhere.  If your employer restricts access from foreign countries that could be a problem for you.

 

I'm on Radiance now having left out of Tampa yesterday.  As we approach the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico nearing Cuba we are still using Atlanta as our Starlink gateway city.  As we continue towards Costa Maya I am expecting we may switch to Mexico City for our Starlink gateway.

 

In the past I have been able to connect two VPN sessions, one to my home office and then I could VPN to another destination that would see my connection coming from my home office.  This approach does cost some overhead from double tunnels but it can get around any geo restrictions.  Not all VPN applications work well or play nice with each other on the same computer so it's definitely something that can be hit or miss depending on what software is being used.

 

I have also used a second laptop to connect to my home VPN and then used an ethernet cable to connect a work laptop through my personal laptop.  With my personal laptop VPN'd to home and the work laptop sharing my personal laptop's connection, the work laptop looked like it was at home so it was able to work just like it does when it is physically at my home.  Traveling with two laptops it a bit of a pain but it does open up some additional options to work around geo restrictions.

thanks for this detailed information on starlink and its gateways.

 

I just had a thought that I could setup my own vpn to my home as I use the firewalla gateway. and then connect to my laptop and use the anywhere connect from that to my workplace systems. As you say it will be a using multiple vpn's but all my traffic is text as I am a unix admin and maybe some teams sessions.