Internet Whilst at Sea ....

Mikearm

A friend of mine is planning to go slowly around the world on a boat ....... he would like to have internet connection whilst on-board but I can,t think of a way for him to get it. It was thought a Satalite type connection might be OK, so does any one have any ideas ...... ????

Thanks in advance

Mike ..............

OogaBooga

Bloody expensive to get this working whilst en-route. You'd need a special dish (£3/£4k), and the data rate would be horrendous. Most harbours and ports have wifi these days though.

I suggest he takes some good books

MercilessKiller

If its too slow you may get too angry and throw the computer overboard!

ever thought of a book?

CHR15

He should take a look an Inmarsat. That is what we used in the Navy for some years (and still do, mainly for voice but occasionally data too)

Global coverage and reasonably reliable.

The costs used to be scaled, about £6 per minute to connect but the costs decreased the longer you were connected.

Speeds were painful but once you switch off sounds and images it was obviously better than nothing.

There are smaller Inmarsat systems for smaller Leisure crafts but even our Large scale systems had a dish about 0.5m diameter (never actually looked inside the dome but couldn't have been much larger)

http://www.inmarsat.com/Services/Maritime/Leisure.aspx?language=EN&textonly=False

Cerro

You need some form of VSAT technology - though its not usually cheap and its unreliable at best, relying on unbroken LOS from point to point. A company I worked for used it for all its ships, used it for a few Citrix applications too, only problem was when an overhead crane moved the link was lost and so too were the applications... but its pretty much the only option for those at sea.

moonrakerz

You will need a stabilised satellite dish, which will probably set you back from £2500 upwards ! Plus subscription fees, plus £6 + a minute - send a letter !

b33r

If he sticks to the coasts (obviously when not crossing an ocean) will probably be able to pick up mobile reception at a lot of places and connect laptop to phone and go on net like that.