Holland America Blog
Safety Officer
Holland America Blog Has Just Posted the Following:
It is not always easy to get on line if the ship sails between mountain ranges. Yesterday we were in Skagway and we docked at the Railroad Dock. Which is a great dock, preferred by all Captains, as it is nicely in the shelter from the prevailing winds. Problem is those mountains also “shelter†the ship from any Satellite connection a lot of times. For the coming days we will not have this issue as we will be more in open waters. Although Glacier Bay in an inside fjord, the mountain ranges slope towards the water which means there is nearly always a satellite in a direct sight line to catch the electronic traffic going in and out of the ship.* As we have no option to hook up to a regular telephone line we have to rely on satellites, which is not always the cheapest or the most satisfactory connection.* But in order to get a connection at all there is a lot of expensive equipment involved. Not everybody realizes that communication with a ship is not as simple as with a land line or with a cell phone which hooks up with every cell phone mast in the area. Quite often we do not have a cell phone mast nearby; most of the time we are our own cellphone mast. That means that an electronic signal sent from a computer on board, first has to go up 30 miles in the sky to catch a satellite. Then that satellite has to send the signal 30 miles down again to the receiving station. Then the signal is forwarded to the company server (More or less in the same way as at home where a signal goes from your computer to a modem or router and back again). Then the signal goes to the server where the webpage is kept that you want to access. A response has to travel the same way back. So if you are surfing on line or connecting to a specific website, there is this constant Ping-Pong to and fro via this whole extended route. […]
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It is not always easy to get on line if the ship sails between mountain ranges. Yesterday we were in Skagway and we docked at the Railroad Dock. Which is a great dock, preferred by all Captains, as it is nicely in the shelter from the prevailing winds. Problem is those mountains also “shelter†the ship from any Satellite connection a lot of times. For the coming days we will not have this issue as we will be more in open waters. Although Glacier Bay in an inside fjord, the mountain ranges slope towards the water which means there is nearly always a satellite in a direct sight line to catch the electronic traffic going in and out of the ship.* As we have no option to hook up to a regular telephone line we have to rely on satellites, which is not always the cheapest or the most satisfactory connection.* But in order to get a connection at all there is a lot of expensive equipment involved. Not everybody realizes that communication with a ship is not as simple as with a land line or with a cell phone which hooks up with every cell phone mast in the area. Quite often we do not have a cell phone mast nearby; most of the time we are our own cellphone mast. That means that an electronic signal sent from a computer on board, first has to go up 30 miles in the sky to catch a satellite. Then that satellite has to send the signal 30 miles down again to the receiving station. Then the signal is forwarded to the company server (More or less in the same way as at home where a signal goes from your computer to a modem or router and back again). Then the signal goes to the server where the webpage is kept that you want to access. A response has to travel the same way back. So if you are surfing on line or connecting to a specific website, there is this constant Ping-Pong to and fro via this whole extended route. […]
Click here to view the article.
