[josephg]

> I have a friend who did similar tunneling a while ago. It also works on cruise ships.

Hah I was just about to say the same thing! I just got home from a ~3 week cruise. Internet on the ship was absurdly expensive ($50/day). And its weird - they have wifi and a phone app that works over the internet even if you don't pay. Google maps seemed to work. And my phone could receive notifications from apple just fine. But that was about it.

I spend some time staring at wireshark traces. It looks like every TCP connection is allowed to send and receive a couple packets normally. Then they take a close look at those packets to see if the connection should be allowed or blocked & reset. I'm not sure about other protocols, but for TLS, they look for a ClientHello. If preset, the domain is checked to see if its on a whitelist. Anything on their whitelist is allowed even if you aren't paying for internet. Whitelisted domains include the website of the cruise company and a few countries' visa offices. The cruise app works by whitelisting the company's own domain name. (Though I'm still not sure how my phone was getting notifications.)

They clearly know about the problem. There's some tools that make it easy to work around a block like this. But the websites for those tools are themselves blocked, even if you pay for internet. :)

If you figure out how to take advantage of this loophole, please don't abuse it too much or advertise the workaround. If it gets too well known or widely abused, they'll need to plug this little hole. And that would be a great pity indeed.

[walthamstow]

$50 a day for internet is criminal, I don't care if you're at sea or in outer space.

[immibis]

Your sea communications literally do go to outer space. That's why it's so expensive.

[sodaclean]

10 years ago that was a valid excuse.

[bugglebeetle]

Starlink does not cost $50 per day

[mh-]

What does a Starlink installation cost (upfront and ongoing) to service 3000-5000 daily users at expected speeds?

Don't forget to price in the costs of installing and maintaining a WiFi network that works consistently in a metal ship whose interior is composed from prefab metal modules. (Hint: every cabin, every space, has one or more APs).

I haven't done the math, and I'm sure they profit on the offering, but I doubt it's as egregious as these replies make it sound.

(I thought about this a bit when I was on a cruise that offered Starlink this past summer.)

Edit: also don't forget that everyone gets free WiFi, it's just that internet access is restricted for guests who don't pay. So it does need to support the ship's full complement and passengers.

[josephg]

Presumably they maintain all those wifi access points regardless of whether or not anyone buys the wifi package. That lets the cruise app work. And the staff use wifi too.

I’m sure servicing thousands of people via starlink is expensive. But the cost is amortised over the number of people using it. Thousands of users should make internet access cheaper, not make it more expensive.

They also don’t provide “normal” internet speeds. I was usually getting about 20kBps - which is painfully slow. I tried to have a zoom call on the one day I paid for internet, and every minute or two we would get a latency spike of 10+ seconds. Those latency spikes went away on other days, but the speed never improved much.

The ship I was on is apparently quite old by modern standards. Maybe they don’t have enough starlink satellites installed or something. (It was definitely starlink). But if that’s the case, it makes the price they’re asking all the more outrageous. For $50/day I could probably bring my own starlink satellite on board and it would come out cheaper.

[mh-]

That is very different to my experience using it on the ship we were on. I was able to stream TV shows in full quality with no issues, took phone calls from work a few times over WiFi too.

I have never used Starlink otherwise and, frankly, expected much worse service - especially on a cruise ship.

I'd definitely be unhappy paying $50/day for what you described. But I paid less (there was a discount for buying a package ahead of time for my family's devices) and got better service it sounds like.

[mlhpdx]

IIRC the cost of Starlink for ships is actually very high. Starts at $5k per month for a commercial vessel I think. Can’t imagine what it is for a passenger ship, but Musk is making his money to be sure.

[dzhiurgis]

So $1 per passenger-month or 3 cents. Network and access points were likely there already.

Starlink hardware (aka community hub) is $1.25M. Actual bandwidth cost is 75k per gbps per month.

[danabrams]

For enterprise mobility venues like a commercial aircraft or a cruise ship it costs far more.

[catgirlinspace]

Perhaps they allowed Apple Push Notification service so their own app can receive notifications?

[pbhjpbhj]

Allowing inbound messages is pressure on people to buy service so they can respond. I'd guess it was for evil marketing reasons.

[josephg]

Ah yeah that makes sense. They have messaging built into their app so you can message friends and family while onboard the ship. I didn't use it - but of course, if they block APNS, messages wouldn't be able to show up on the lock screen.

[CGamesPlay]

I bet there some IT team at the cruise line that leaves these back doors in their systems deliberately as an “on-board activity” for their hacker customers.

[josephg]

Hah! Well it worked for me! It kept me entertained for the better part of a day.

I never figured out a way to route internet on my phone through my laptop. But it was probably for the best. It was lovely spending a few weeks with no internet connection on my phone, in arms reach away at all times.

[toast0]

> Though I'm still not sure how my phone was getting notifications.

Almost all of these special pricing/zero-rating schemes will include platform push in the zero rated traffic. Can't use anything without it, and most of the platforms have public pages describing how to identify their traffic, because there's lots of networks that want to allow it.