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Getting free internet on a cruise, saving $170

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Getting free internet on a cruise, saving $170

#51

Post by remram »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #13
jasonjayr wrote: post #9

I imagine one of the ships officers will be tipped off by the IT team about the unusual number of free-internet activation attached to your booking id, and either give your room a visit to knock it off, or just bill some multiple of the $170 anyway. It sounds like it should only be used only a few times per booking, and this is going to hit at least 4/hour for multiple hours a day, so it will stick out like a sore th…

> imagine one of the ships officers will be tipped off by the IT team If it’s any of the major cruise lines there almost certainly isn’t anyone in IT paying that much attention.

Since the cruise ship is named, there is a good chance someone at the company (even without technical skills) will notice this article and tip off IT this way.

Re: Getting free internet on a cruise, saving $170

#52

Post by asadm »

duxup wrote: post #45
asadm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you LOVE your work and just want a change of scene while doing what you love.

Just seems like a lot of expense that by working you're decreasing the value. Also depends on who you're traveling with / anyone. I've been on trips with the "I have to work" folks, it's a pain, they're not really "there" you end up trying to schedule around them. Then they just show up unaware / uninvolved in whatever is going on.

i think you needed to set expectations. on every trip, i reach a point where i don't have any social-interaction points and so i go back to my cave and code.

Re: Getting free internet on a cruise, saving $170

#53

Post by kennethrc »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #27
jotux wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Went on a cruise last summer, the internet on board was starlink. It was advertised at $30/day.

It's interesting to contrast Starlink on airlines vs Starlink on cruises. AFAICT, all the airlines rolling out Starlink have made it free on their flights. Which implies cooperation from Starlink -- either Starlink has made "free" a condition of their service, or they've just priced it cheap enough to make free a reasonable option for airlines. There's no good reason why Starlink for cruise ships should be priced sig…

It seems as it would average out, but I wonder if the equation between " ~2500 people for a 7-14 days" vs. " ~175 people for 2-5 hours" incurs more "costs" for the former?

Re: Getting free internet on a cruise, saving $170

#54

Post by McAlpine5892 »

Doohickey-d wrote: post #28

This is actually quite common: I've been on ferries, at airports, even hotels, which give you some amount of time for free, often anonymously. So just a mac address change gives extra internet. New Android versions make it especially convenient, with a "Wi-Fi non-persistent MAC randomization" option in the developer options, meaning you can just "forget" the wifi network and connect again with a fresh mac address. In…

> but port 53 wasn't blocked, so a commercial VPN resulted in unlimited internet

The VPN would have to accept a connection over 53 though, right? This also seems like a great way to possibly bypass VPN blocking via DPI, which I've been hit with before on airlines when going over 443.

Re: Getting free internet on a cruise, saving $170

#55

Post by bentcorner »

bredren wrote: post #17

I used a travel router on my recent trip to Argentina and found it quite useful. It will be a permanent part of my travel kit. Some cooler uses: - streaming HDR video from closed MacBook running Amphetamine to Vision Pro via Moonlink - Having a working HomePod mini in the hotel room. The hotel internet did not like multiple devices off the router. It didn’t reject it outright but it throttled or nerfed it. Individual…

> The hotel internet did not like multiple devices off the router. It didn’t reject it outright but it throttled or nerfed it.

Curious - what tools would they use to detect this, and what could someone do to work around this?

Re: Getting free internet on a cruise, saving $170

#56

Post by seszett »

Doohickey-d wrote: post #28

This is actually quite common: I've been on ferries, at airports, even hotels, which give you some amount of time for free, often anonymously. So just a mac address change gives extra internet. New Android versions make it especially convenient, with a "Wi-Fi non-persistent MAC randomization" option in the developer options, meaning you can just "forget" the wifi network and connect again with a fresh mac address. In…

> port 53

I haven't needed it for... probably 15 years, but in the past (before 3G was common, and all you could rely on was WiFi hotspots) I have used iodine[0] as an IP over DNS tunnel.

My uni friends were always impressed, and it really helped me a few times. The throughput was never great though, but enough for some basic browsing.

Edit you have to be prepared ahead of time though, and it's the main reason I bought my three-letter domain back then (shorter domain means higher throughput as payload is a higher percent of the query response).

[0]https://github.com/yarrick/iodine

Re: Getting free internet on a cruise, saving $170

#57

Post by TrackerFF »

Internet on any ship is expensive as soon as you're out in maritime area - where data transfer is done via satellite services. So it is not necessarily because a captive market, where the cruise liners can fleece you. They pay crazy prices to the telecom/ISPs.

So if you're getting free internet out at seas, it is really at the cost of the ones actually paying the bills - or in this case, the cruise liner.

Re: Getting free internet on a cruise, saving $170

#59

Post by kennethrc »

bredren wrote: post #17

I used a travel router on my recent trip to Argentina and found it quite useful. It will be a permanent part of my travel kit. Some cooler uses: - streaming HDR video from closed MacBook running Amphetamine to Vision Pro via Moonlink - Having a working HomePod mini in the hotel room. The hotel internet did not like multiple devices off the router. It didn’t reject it outright but it throttled or nerfed it. Individual…

I have Wireguard (and OpenVPN off TCP/UDP 443 as backup) on a router connected to residential symmetric 1G fiber. Among the many uses for that means I can watch the NFL (et al.) when abroad just as if I were home; there's WG/OPVN clients for the FireSticks I carry when travelling.

Re: Getting free internet on a cruise, saving $170

#60

Post by [deleted] »

Doohickey-d wrote: post #28

This is actually quite common: I've been on ferries, at airports, even hotels, which give you some amount of time for free, often anonymously. So just a mac address change gives extra internet. New Android versions make it especially convenient, with a "Wi-Fi non-persistent MAC randomization" option in the developer options, meaning you can just "forget" the wifi network and connect again with a fresh mac address. In…

[deleted]
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