Internet good enough for remote work on the Zaandam?

[rmilller]

We're looking at taking a Panama Canal cruise in January that goes from San Diego to Ft Lauderdale. (15 day)

Due to a personnel shortage, I would need to have my laptop and be available to log into work should the need arise.  This would require good, strong internet.  (either Premium or Stream package for the day)

It's OK if it doesn't work in-cabin (we'd have an inside cabin).  I can find a spot to work just about anywhere there's a table.
Our past experiences with ship wifi have been pretty abysmal, but those were using the Surf (Have it All) package in previous years.

Any recent experiences using the Premium or Stream package on the Zaandam, in public areas of the ship?  I hear it has Starlink now.
 

[CruiserBruce]

It all depends on the strength of the signal and the demand at the time. Have spent 2 14 day cruises on Zaandam in the last year. The Starlink system is a really significant improvement over the old system, but there is no absolute guarantee that you will be able to do everything you want.

[1025cruise]

There are too many variables to say for certain. Ship location as it relates to the satellites, wifi system on board, other utilization at the time you need it. I have always said that if decent internet is a requirement for you to take your cruise, that you might need to rethink your vacation.

[Mary229]

If you are not requiring zoom or similar and simply logging in I would expect the same reliability you would have in any residential neighborhood 

[Mosaic]

Zaandam Starlink is very good. Keep in mind that the high price packages do not give you faster speeds---just more access to websites.  We were able to stream in our room easily with a router and external wifi antenna.  But the cabins are more difficult than the pubic areas because of the metal doors.

[REOVA]

If you don't need to be on at a specific time (meetings, etc) you should be OK since its never 24/7 reliable. While the new system is much better than before, there are still drop spots and bandwidth bottlenecks at times, although less than before. 

[Caribbean Chris]

Had no problems on Zaandam a year ago in an outside cabin on Lower Prom Deck.

 

However, I’m an early riser and for years now have had no issues logging on at 5 or 6 a.m. to take care of personal and work emails.

 

Speed sometimes slows during high demand times when a lot of passengers are using it at once. 

[Hlitner]

I think the single word answer to the OP's question is, MAYBE!  When folks have privately asked us a similar question, we always respond that if you can live with "maybe" than go for it!  Always keep in mind that many factors can combine to cause onboard Internet to go down and sometimes to stay down for days!   If you can take the chance, then all is good.

 

Hank

[FlyingCruiser2]

If work requires VPN, they do have lots of ports blocked and it might not work.

[robotpony]

I plan to work remotely at some point, but Starlink wasn't good enough in its current form for my job. I haven't sailed the Zaandam, but on the NS and Konningsdam with the streaming package I wasn't able to:

 

- get Zoom to work reliably

- get my VPN to connect (required to access email and most services remotely)

 

In port, cell data was enough to get most things done. 

 

I suspect that the conduit is fast enough, but that the IT policies are blocking VPN and other ports (and/or limiting certain types of traffic). If your business is mostly email and you don't need a VPN (I wouldn't recommend this), then it could suffice.

 

Youtube and other entertainment services worked well enough, which is what the package is really intended for. If HA ever adds a business package I would consider it (and work might pay for it). 

Edited October 6 by robotpony

[WriterOnDeck]

I've had consistently good luck using my VPN (PIA) from HAL ships, where I live about 9 months a year. The thing to remember is you can't sign on to the Navigator or wifi with the VPN activated. Sign in, and THEN open the VPN. Works for me. If for some reason you get disconnected from WIFI, you have to sign off the VPN to get back on.

[ORTravelGal]

On 10/5/2024 at 12:09 PM, Mosaic said:

Zaandam Starlink is very good. Keep in mind that the high price packages do not give you faster speeds---just more access to websites.  We were able to stream in our room easily with a router and external wifi antenna.  But the cabins are more difficult than the pubic areas because of the metal doors.

@Mosaic When you mention router & external wifi antenna, are these items you brought? If so, do you have a link you can share? Thank you!

[Sharon in AZ]

I was able to join a Zoom meeting last month on the Zuiderdam. I had the HIA internet and upgraded to the premium plan once onboard. I was in an inside cabin, deck 7 aft, and this was in the evening after a port day Quebec City to Boston. I was pleasantly surprised. 

[Mosaic]

7 hours ago, ORTravelGal said:

@Mosaic When you mention router & external wifi antenna, are these items you brought? If so, do you have a link you can share? Thank you!

We had been on the Zaandam the previous year through the Panama Canal and the internet was horrible.  So I made efforts not to repeat. We could barely send a text from the Neptune lounge.  So I brought aboard a Network analyzer program and found that the cabins are Faraday cages. I could calculate (and map) the signal strength and signal to noise ratios for any location.  If I left the cabin door open the signal was very good. Closed, very poor.  I have a Gl Net Router---AX3000 that boosted the signal strength greatly---more than double---for both an iPad and Lenovo Laptop.  They both have poor antennas. After many many horrible internet sailings it worked flawlessly with that booster and Starlink for 28 days to the Amazon this year. Used a VPN off and on also.  Do not tell anyone, but I was able to stream on the Balcony. Should have I? No, lol, but I did test it there a few times.

[POA1]

It really depends on what you mean by "work."  Email, file transfers, Wi-Fi calling, and most VOIP audio calling are fine on Starlink with Premium.  If you're trying to do a bunch of high-bandwidth stuff, like a 60 Head MS Teams meeting inside of an AWS or Azure session, then you'll struggle.  Even though Starlink is fast, you're still sharing the connection.

[rmilller]

No meetings, just work.  I need to be able to use Slack for alerts and potentially async communication if someone needs to fix a problem and I'm the go-to person.  
Even better if I could access my work website through my VPN to debug a code issue and check in a fix.  Doesn't take that much bandwidth as all the actual compute is happening either on the local machine or in the cloud, it's just needing communication between the two to be unblocked.

To give an idea, I can work on an airplane just fine with their $8 paid wifi as it's not blocking any ports or sites needed for work, nor blocking my VPN.