Ask HN: Merchant seafolk, how do you use internet? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Merchant seafolk, how do you use internet?

3 pointsgraderjs4 comments

You are a merchant seaperson (sorry if that sounds weird, I'm not some activist, I've just tried to use gender-neutral words for things where they can apply for a long time, since I was a kid ~~ just seems right), and you spend a long time aboard commercial ships for work. You are a long way from a coast (outside the range of mobile phones, and wifi). How do you use the internet? What is it like? Do you have good bandwidth? Can you browser YouTube and watch videos? Do you use a regular web browser?

How does it work?

Thank you for helping me understand.

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Satelite.

I have 16hours allowance per day. Doesn’t load YT but loads TT with some patience.

Before that, like a year ago, we had 250MB allowance per month(!). God bless whatsapp and sites like HN.

Cool. Sorry but what is TT? (TikTok?)

I'm sure I will have way too many questions, sorry but ...

What's the speed like? Is it always reliable? Do you share among other ships in your vicinity? Can you use a regular browser like chrome, and is there any noticeable slowness or other effects compared to browsing "on shore" (if that's the right word)? Do you find yourself having to make "bandwidth choices" (whatever that is)? What do you think could be improved? Do you connect over like a wifi hub on the ship? Does anyone use any "offline" content, like saving a bunch of pages locally to read later? Do you mostly stay in apps rather than browser? Do apps generally seem to perform better? Do some pages or things just totally fail (you mentioned YT for one)?

Sorry, it's totally ok if you couldn't be bothered to answer, I'm just super curious.

Yes, I can watch a TikTok but I can’t just swipe them endlessly.

The speed is like 5kB/s, maybe, the speed tester is not loading so I don’t know. And last time I downloaded something I don’t remember.

I am on my iPhone now so I use Safari on my laptop I use FF. Everything is slow ofcourse. But sites like HN is fast and even FB is quite fast.

We connect to ship’s wifi hotspot, each crew member has a login/passw. Now it is unlimited (16h per day is not really a limit) but before we had to survive on 250MB per month. You could buy 100MB for 10Eur but rarely somebody used this option. As you would need to spend a lot of money to feed your apetite, might aswell stay on the 250MB.

I hear some ship’s don’t have internet at all, it depends on the owner/manager. Master ofcourse has but not the crew. When near land or in port, we use our mobile bandwidth. EU has a united plan so I use that alot. If in Africa, Indonesia, whatever local ‘businessmen’ sell you local sim cards. :)

I don’t have many apps where there is an web alternative but for reddit I use i.reddit.com, it is habit from the 250MB time but it loads faster than the regular web or the app.

For content download, I have only had offline wikipedia. And since older times we prepare at home with videos, music, books, games etc. We have problems with the internet pretty much everyday. The internet can shut down for a few hours due to “RADIUS server not responding”, the ship’s heading might not be favourable for the connection etc

Thanks, that's awesome. Such a different life :) Sounds like you manage tho, but it is difficult. :) Really cool to hear about it, thank you for sharing! :)

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