I'm not a sailing expert, but why would maritime operations be using the unlicensed 2.4 GHz ISM frequencies unless they were using WIFI protocols? In that case they would be visible to the tool Donald was using.
WIFI on a cruise ship
- Thread starter Donald
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2.4GHz has a lot of stuff on it because it is unlicensed. Some cordless phone (remember those), bluetooth, baby monitors, and I'm sure some walkie talkie etc use them. Obviously it won't be for mission critical stuff like navigation but simple stuff could easily be crowded with it.
I know some Shure wireless mics can use the 2.4GGhz band. The cruise ship does have many of those. But the best Shure wireless mics use other frequencies.
I see their WIFI is all Cisco. I know Unifi will try and figure out the best channel for each WIFI access points. And then on a daily basis make changes. I assume Cisco can do that also.
The 2.4Hhz band goes farther and through walls better.
WIFI 6E introduces 6Ghz. I saw WIFI 6 but not 6E on the cruise ship.
And just because the ship is a huge super expensive ship does not mean everything is designed properly. To me some of their onboard apps did not seem to be designed very well. When they were likely to have high usage, 5 PM to make a dinner reservation they gave errors and one had to retry several times or pick a different dining room or a different time to eat. So either not enough capacity to handle the load or not holding the presented options until one was chosen. Someone else selects first and you get an error.
Whatever the reason, basically poor amount of testing.
Probably the applications are written overseas and not tested well.
Whatever the reason, basically poor amount of testing.
Probably the applications are written overseas and not tested well.
That becomes a reason not to use it in a situation with limited space and high density of users.
The "walls" of a ship are metal, are they not?
Most of the ship is steel.
They are certainly using 2.4Ghz. But only channel 1 & 11.
I believe WIFIMAN would find non WIFI on 2.4Ghz. It finds wireless mics at church.
A quick estimate is in one cruise the passengers paying for WIFI have paid for all the WIFI hardware on the ship. The ship itself needs satellite broadband for business purposes. Passengers just need some additional bandwidth.
Likely first kick at the application and unfortunately you have to self host(private cloud) on a cruise ship for obviously reasons so auto scaling is limited to what they deploy compared to cloud services.
I have been sailing on Princess for a few years. Their apps have had various problems all along.
There are still quite a few things being made that don't support 5Ghz. Wireless cameras, Smart thermostats, etc.
OK, so if I understand you correctly, the "free" WIFI only works on a local ship intranet (if you can think about it that way). if so exactly what's available on the shipboard intranet.
On Princess Cruises you can order room service, make dinner reservations, sign up for shore excursions and look at your bill. Basically stuff the ships on board computer handles. Some of that can also be done on your TV in the cabin.
You can also try and get some help with things like errors making a dinner reservation via CrewChat. But they never responded when I asked for help.
Oddly at the end of each week they send you a copy of your bill to your email. But unless you can connect via cell at a port you cannot get email through the free ship WIFI.
Donald
No but you said 2.4 is "pretty much dead". There are a lot more things that use wifi besides just phones and tablets still being made today that don't support 5.8ghz.
A lot of the ordinary stuff that people would do on a cruise are only available through an app now. I think the one Princess has is called MedallionClass. That can be accessed via their shipboard Wi-Fi even if there's no internet plan. I would think that the app is optimized to reduce the amount of bandwidth needed for that. It's just passing along small packets of data and not large pieces of data.
Princess MedallionClass
The MedallionClass app puts everything at your fingertips – On-demand services, family and friends locator, ship navigation, interactive fun, and more. For customer support, please contact: [email protected]
apps.apple.com
Princess MedallionClass - Apps on Google Play
Princess Medallion app puts everything for your next cruise at your fingertips.
Probably 10 years ago, I had a project for an unnamed cruise ship line based out of Scandinavia... we were developing an information system that synced data between ships and corporate headquarters. The bandwidth was pretty limited while underway. If I remember right, it was less than a meg per second down and half that back to shore.
Those things are, in a word, junk that is not ready for the future. People need to shop more carefully. 2.4 may be still OK for now for casual use around an isolated house, but it should not be brought into a commercial situation.
2.4Ghz is not dead and these devices aren't junk. It is not ideal for high bandwidth applications like a phone, tablet or PC, but there are many low bandwidth IOT, monitor and control devices, etc that still use and will continue to use 2.4 Ghz.
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