[ale] Slightly Off Topic - Linux/Internet aboad Royal Carribean?

[Neal Rhodes]

My apologies if this already was covered this week. 

Anybody know the real deal regarding internet services aboard Royal
Carribean ships?   Apparently their staff doesn't.   I'm getting roped
into going on cruise with in-laws this summer.

What protocols are supported? are any protocols specifically blocked?
(SSH?  SMTP? Skype? VPN?) how is billing allocated? If I have laptop and
smartphone, can they share the billing account? How does the minutes
billing start/stop?  Do I have to run my smartphone in Airplane mode the
whole dang trip to avoid getting billed?  Similarly do I have to turn
off wireless on the notebook?   (Can do that under Vista, but Ubuntu
doesn't appear to know how to do that on HP notebook.  Hah - thought I
couldn't work Linux in here somewhere!)

Of course the parrot on the other end of the chat window helpfully
notes: To use our WI-FI access, you'll need:

        A laptop
        Windows operating system
        802.11b Wireless networking capability

So, smartphones not supported?   IPads not supported?  Macs not
supported?   Does not supported mean they don't know, or do they take
specific evil steps to make sure those devices won't work? 

What's the bandwidth like?    I can generally get ssh to work over a
poor 1xRTT phone connection with a taut piece of string... but would
bandwidth support Skype, or are they wise to that?     I'm guessing that
thousands of people are sharing a single satellite connection and I can
do long division. 

What's the coverage like?  Are there big holes en-route, and only
coverage in port, when you are off the ship anyway?   We'd be talking
about Baltimore to US Virgin Islands roughly. 

Thanks. 

Neal



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