Crew WiFi Slow? 5 Fixes That Actually Work at Sea

Updated 8 October 2026 · crew-wifi, connectivity, ship-life, troubleshooting

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Crew WiFi is slow because forty people are sharing one satellite link that was sized for the bridge and the company's operational traffic first, with the crew getting what is left. You cannot fix the bandwidth. You can change when you use it, what you ask it to do, and how much of your data budget goes to things you never chose to download. Those three levers are worth more than any gadget you can buy in the next port.

If you buy one thing, make it an eSIM for port days. Skip the repeater. I install the Airalo profile over ship WiFi the day before arrival, so it switches on the moment a local network is in range, and I save everything the ship link cannot handle for that session.

Disclosure: the Airalo, NordVPN and Surfshark links on this page are affiliate links. If you buy through them, the site may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

Five fixes at a glance

I have been sailing as an engineer long enough to have used every generation of this problem, from a 512 kbps VSAT shared across the whole crew to a Starlink terminal that still crawls at 21:00 when the entire ship is on video calls. The advice below is what I actually do, in the order I do it. This update adds a ten minute diagnosis routine, a data budget table so you can see where your allowance goes, laptop settings, a port connectivity comparison, and a straight look at which VPN settings survive a satellite link.

Why crew WiFi is slow in the first place

Crew WiFi is slow for three separate reasons, and they need three different fixes. Confusing them is why people buy the wrong thing.

Reason one is the satellite link itself. On a VSAT ship you might be sharing 2 to 8 Mbps across everyone onboard. On a Starlink ship the raw speed can be very good, tens of Mbps, but latency spikes and dropouts still happen when the terminal loses line of sight behind a crane or an accommodation block.

Latency matters as much as speed. A geostationary VSAT satellite sits about 35,786 km above the equator, and a request has to go up and down twice before your answer comes back. Physics alone puts the round trip close to 500 ms, and in practice 600 ms or more is normal. That is why web pages on VSAT feel sticky even when a speed test looks fine: every page needs dozens of small round trips, and each one costs over half a second. Low earth orbit systems such as Starlink fly at roughly 550 km, and a healthy connection typically shows a ping of a few tens of milliseconds. OneWeb, which some operators buy through maritime resellers, sits higher at around 1,200 km and also gives far lower latency than VSAT.

Reason two is contention. Bandwidth is shared. At 21:00 ship time, when the day workers are off and the watchkeepers are on break, everyone hits the link at once. The same connection that gave you 6 Mbps at 05:00 gives you 0.3 Mbps at 21:00. Nothing is broken. There are just more of you.

Contention also comes from the company itself. Most ships split the link, with a reserved share for operational traffic: weather routing, ECDIS chart updates, planned maintenance systems, emails to the office, and on newer ships engine performance data going ashore. The crew network gets what is left, often with a per person cap or a speed limit set by the operator. When the bridge is downloading a chart correction batch, the crew side can slow down even at an hour that is normally quiet.

Reason three is the WiFi itself, which has nothing to do with the satellite. Ship accommodation is steel boxes stacked on steel boxes. An access point in the crew mess does not reach into a cabin two decks down through three bulkheads. Your phone shows one bar, decides the connection is bad, and starts retransmitting, which slows the access point down for everyone else in range.

What the main ship link types feel like from a crew cabin

My verdict from the engine room side: Starlink is the biggest single improvement crew connectivity has had, and on ships that have it most complaints move from "nothing works" to "it is slow at 21:00". It does not end contention, and many operators keep VSAT as a backup, so when the Starlink terminal drops you can be back on 600 ms latency without warning. Speeds and plan details change often, and I have not checked every operator's current crew allowance, so treat the numbers above as typical ranges from ships I know and nothing more precise.

Diagnose it in ten minutes before you spend anything

Test which problem you have before spending money. Run a speed test at 05:00 and again at 21:00, standing in the same place. If the numbers are wildly different, that is contention and no equipment will help. Then run a test in the crew mess and in your cabin at the same hour. If the mess is fast and the cabin is dead, that is a WiFi coverage problem, and a portable router in your cabin genuinely does fix it.

Here is the full routine I use, in order:

1. Note the WiFi signal first. On Android, the WiFi network details screen shows signal strength. On iPhone, count bars. One bar in your cabin and four in the alleyway already tells you most of the story.
2. Run a speed test in your cabin and write down three numbers: download, upload, and ping. Most people ignore upload, and upload is what kills video calls, because your camera feed has to go up the same congested link.
3. Walk to the access point and repeat the test. If download jumps from 0.3 to 3 Mbps just by standing in the mess, your problem is coverage.
4. Repeat both tests at 05:00 and at 21:00. If the mess is slow at 21:00 too, the problem is contention and the satellite link, and moving around will not help.
5. Look at the ping. Around 600 ms means VSAT. A few tens of milliseconds means a low earth orbit link. A Starlink ship that suddenly shows 600 ms has probably fallen back to its VSAT backup.
6. Check for packet loss. Run a long ping to any reliable address from a laptop for a minute or two. A few percent loss makes calls choppy even when the speed looks fine. Persistent loss at all hours is a maintenance item for the ETO, and it is worth writing down with times.

Ten minutes of this saves you buying a router for a problem that lives 500 km overhead.

The single biggest win: stop background traffic

Most of your data is spent on things you did not ask for. On a slow shared link, background traffic is the difference between a usable connection and a dead one.

Here is what runs without asking you:

• Photo backup. iCloud Photos and Google Photos will happily push a 4K video of the main engine you filmed this morning. That is a few hundred megabytes at satellite speed, which can be an hour of the whole ship's bandwidth. Apple's own camera settings list roughly 170 MB per minute for 4K at 30 fps in HEVC, so a two minute clip of a crankcase inspection is around 340 MB.
• App and OS updates. A phone with 40 apps downloads a few hundred megabytes a week on its own. iOS and Android point updates run into gigabytes.
• Cloud drive sync. Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive sync in both directions the moment they see WiFi.
• Messaging app media auto-download. WhatsApp downloading every video in a family group chat is a classic way to burn a crew data allowance in two days.

To put that 340 MB clip in context: at 0.5 Mbps it takes about an hour and a half to upload, and at the 2 Mbps a whole crew might share at peak it still takes over 20 minutes while slowing everyone else down.

Turn all of it off before you connect. Doing it afterwards means the first sync has already eaten your allowance. On iOS, set the ship network as a Low Data Mode network in the WiFi settings for that network, then switch off iCloud Photos upload over WiFi and disable automatic app updates. On Android, mark the ship network as a metered connection under WiFi network details, which makes the operating system treat it like a limited mobile plan and holds back most background sync. In WhatsApp, set media auto-download to "no media" for WiFi as well as mobile, because most people only change the mobile setting.

Where the settings live

The exact menu names move between versions, so look for these words:

Laptops deserve special attention, because a laptop that has not been online for a month will try to download every pending operating system update the moment it connects. On Windows, setting the ship network as a metered connection tells Windows Update to hold off on most downloads. On a Mac, Low Data Mode on that network does a similar job and pauses most background tasks. Also quit Dropbox, OneDrive or any game launcher before you connect, and start them again in the quiet window.

Do this once and you free up more bandwidth than any other single action on this page.

Where your allowance actually goes

Many crews are on a monthly or per voucher data allowance, and few people know what their habits cost. These figures are typical and rounded, and they vary by app and settings, but the order of magnitude is what matters.

The headline from this table: switching one hour long video call per day to voice saves something like 12 to 40 GB over a month at sea. On a capped allowance that is the difference between running out in week two and finishing the trip with data left.

Time your usage around the ship's rhythm

The fastest connection on the ship is at 04:00 to 06:00, and it is the clear winner by a wide margin. Everyone is asleep, the link is nearly empty, and a download that would fail at 21:00 completes in minutes.

Ship connectivity has a very predictable daily curve. Learn yours and work with it.

If you are on watch at 04:00, you already have the best internet on the ship and you may not have noticed. Queue your downloads before you go up, and they will be done by the time you come off.

Two things shift this curve. The first is ship's clocks. When the ship advances or retards clocks on a long passage, the crew's routine moves with it, and so does the quiet window. The second is your family's time zone. A seafarer from Manila on a ship in the Atlantic will find that the 04:00 window lands at a sensible evening hour at home, which makes it the best time for the one video call a week that really matters. Agree a fixed day and time with your family, and keep peak evening hours for voice and messages.

Day workers have it hardest, because the quiet window falls in their sleep. If that is you, use the 12:00 to 13:00 lunch dip on ships where most people eat in the mess rather than sit on their phones, and schedule big downloads to run overnight so you only have to start them before bed.

Port calls: use the shore network for the heavy work

The other rhythm worth learning is the port call. Coastal coverage often improves near the terminal, and many ships lift restrictions in port. If your ship allows personal SIMs, an eSIM data plan bought before arrival turns a two hour gangway wait into your real internet session for the week. I install the Airalo profile over ship WiFi the day before, so it is already sitting on the phone ready to switch on the moment a local network is in range. That is where I do everything the ship link cannot handle.

I am deliberately not quoting eSIM prices here, because they change by country and by month and any figure would be stale before you read it. What has stayed true for years is the pattern: a few GB on a regional eSIM for a port call costs less than most ships charge for the same volume over satellite, and it runs at shore speed.

Two practical points. First, an eSIM only works if your phone supports eSIM and is carrier unlocked, so check that at home before you join. Second, install the profile while you still have a working connection and leave data roaming off for that line until you are alongside. Installing an eSIM needs internet, and the moment you arrive is the worst time to discover the ship link will not load the QR code page.

Fix the WiFi side, which you can actually control

Cabin WiFi problems are usually about distance and interference, and both have cheap fixes.

Move toward the access point. This sounds obvious and people still do not do it. Standing in the alleyway outside your cabin, or in the mess, can be the difference between 1 bar and 4 bars. Signal through a steel bulkhead drops hard.

Use 2.4 GHz when you are far from the AP, and 5 GHz when you are close. 2.4 GHz is slower at close range and travels much further through obstacles. If the ship broadcasts both bands as separate names, connect to the 2.4 GHz one from your cabin and the 5 GHz one when you are sitting in the mess. This one change fixes a lot of "my cabin has no internet" complaints.

Get your phone off the shared WiFi when you are not using it. A phone hunting for a weak signal keeps talking to the access point and slows down everyone in range. Switch WiFi off when you go to bed.

Forget networks you no longer use. If the ship has several access points with different names, a phone remembering all of them can keep jumping between a weak one and a strong one. Forget the weak ones and connect to the one that serves your cabin best.

A cabin router with a directional client mode helps, when the problem is coverage. It connects to the ship AP from a better position, for example clipped near the cabin door or a porthole, then rebroadcasts a strong local signal for your devices. It recovers what the bulkheads were eating, and the ship's total bandwidth stays exactly where it was.

The travel routers I see most often in cabins are the small GL.iNet units, and they suit this job well: they have a repeater mode that connects to the ship network as a client, they can run a VPN for every device behind them, and they handle captive portal logins on most ships. The useful side effect is that the ship's network sees one device, so on ships where a voucher is tied to one device, your phone, laptop and tablet can share it. Check whether that is allowed before you do it. Our portable router guide covers the models and settings in detail.

Check what the ship actually permits first. Some operators forbid personal routers on the crew network, and on a few ships plugging one in gets you a conversation with the ETO. Ask before you install anything.

Make each app use less data

Every app has a setting that decides how much bandwidth it wants, and the defaults assume you have fibre at home.

Video calls are the big one. A standard video call to family uses roughly 0.5 to 1.5 Mbps in each direction. Voice only uses around 0.05 Mbps. On a congested ship link, voice connects and holds when video will not even ring. WhatsApp voice, Messenger voice and Signal voice are all workable at speeds where video is hopeless. Tell your family in advance that voice at sea is a technical decision, so nobody thinks you are hiding a bad mood.

When even voice breaks up, switch to voice notes. They are recorded on your phone and uploaded whenever the link allows, so a 0.3 Mbps evening with dropouts still delivers them. A back and forth of voice notes with your partner feels closer to a conversation than a call that freezes every ten seconds. Some versions of WhatsApp also have a "use less data for calls" option under Storage and data. If your version shows it, turn it on for the ship.

Streaming needs the same treatment. Set YouTube playback quality to 144p or 240p manually, because auto quality will keep trying for higher and buffer forever. The YouTube app also has video quality preferences in its settings, where you can set data saver as the default on WiFi so you do not have to change it for every video. For anything you plan to watch properly, download it in the quiet window instead of streaming it live. Our guide to watching Netflix onboard covers the download workflow in detail, and it applies to Spotify and podcast apps too.

Some more per-app settings worth changing on day one:

• Browsers: turn on data saver in Chrome or use a reader mode. Blocking autoplay video removes a surprising share of page weight.
• Email: switch off automatic image loading and set attachments to download on demand when you open them.
• Maps: download the port area offline before you need it, which is covered in offline maps for shore leave.
• Social apps: disable autoplay video in Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. Autoplay is the single greediest default on a phone. Instagram and Facebook both have a data saver or "use less mobile data" option that is worth enabling even on WiFi.
• Podcasts and audiobooks: set them to download only on the schedule you choose, at the lowest quality that still sounds fine for speech.
• Music: Spotify and similar apps let you choose low quality for streaming and separate quality for downloads. Download playlists at normal quality in the quiet window and stream at low quality only when you must.
• Netflix and other video apps: choose standard download quality. On a phone screen the difference from high quality is small and the file is much smaller.

Messaging apps on a slow link

Most crews use whatever their family uses, so the choice is often made for you. On a slow link the differences that matter are small. WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram all deliver text and voice notes reliably at very low speeds, and all three let you switch off automatic media downloads. Telegram also lets you set auto-download by file size, which is handy for big family groups: allow photos up to a small size and block videos. Whatever you use, mute the busiest groups and download their media manually, because a group where people share videos every hour is the quietest way to lose a day's allowance.

What about a VPN?

A VPN will usually make a slow crew connection slower, and there are still two reasons to use one.

The overhead is real. Encryption adds bytes, and the extra round trip to a VPN server adds latency, which hurts most on a high latency satellite link. On a bad evening, a VPN can be the thing that stops a call connecting at all.

The two good reasons are these. First, some ships block or throttle specific services, and a VPN routes around that. Second, port WiFi in a terminal building or a seafarers' centre is genuinely worth protecting, because you have no idea who else is on that network.

If you use one, pick a server geographically close to the ship's satellite gateway, which is often in a different country from your position, and use WireGuard over OpenVPN where the app offers it. NordVPN's WireGuard-based NordLynx protocol is a reasonable default for a low-bandwidth link. Turn it off when you need every last kilobit for a call home.

My verdict: both work on ship links when you use the WireGuard option and a nearby server. If you run several devices or a cabin router, Surfshark is the simpler choice, because one plan covers every device without counting. If you mainly protect a phone and a laptop on port WiFi, NordVPN is the one I reach for. Prices for both change with promotions, so I am not quoting figures here.

Three settings make a VPN far less painful on a satellite link. Use split tunnelling so only the apps that need it go through the VPN and your WhatsApp calls take the direct path. Turn off "always on" while you are on the ship and turn it on for port WiFi. And if the VPN keeps dropping, the cause is usually the satellite handover or the captive portal, which our guide to a VPN that keeps disconnecting on ship WiFi walks through. We compared what holds up onboard in the guides to VPNs for cruise ship crew and VPN setups that survive Starlink maritime.

Captive portals, vouchers and the "connected, no internet" problem

A lot of "the WiFi is down" complaints on ships are login problems. Most crew networks use a captive portal: you connect, a login page appears, you enter a voucher code or credentials, and the system lets your device through for a time or data limit.

Three things break this regularly. First, your phone's private MAC address. iPhones and Android phones use a randomised hardware address per network by default, and some phones change it periodically. The ship's system sees a new device and asks for the voucher again, or refuses it because it is already in use. Turn off Private Wi-Fi Address on iPhone, or set the MAC to the device MAC on Android, for the ship network only. Second, the voucher has run out of time or data and the portal is waiting for a new one. Third, a VPN set to always on tries to connect before the login page loads, and the portal never appears. Switch the VPN off, open a plain http address in the browser to bring the login page back, log in, then switch the VPN on. Our guide on why port WiFi captive portals block your VPN covers the details.

Also read the voucher terms. Some limit you to one device at a time, some count data in both directions, and some expire after a fixed number of days whether you use the data or not. Knowing which applies on your ship tells you whether to burn the remaining data before it expires or save it.

Things that will not help, and cost money

Some purchases sound like fixes and are not, so save your money for the ones that are.

A WiFi extender that repeats the ship signal. A basic repeater halves throughput because it receives and retransmits on the same radio and channel. On a link that is already at 0.5 Mbps, that is a bad trade. A dedicated client bridge with separate radios is a different device and does work, but the cheap plug-in repeaters from the mall usually make things worse.

A better phone. Your phone's modem is not the bottleneck. A ten year old handset connects to a congested satellite link at exactly the same speed as a new flagship. The one exception is WiFi band support: a very old phone with only 2.4 GHz is fine in a far cabin and a little slower in the mess, and that is all.

A "speed booster" app. These do nothing. Some inject ads and consume the data you are trying to save.

More expensive crew WiFi vouchers, in some cases. On many ships the voucher buys you data volume and leaves your priority unchanged. Buying double the gigabytes at 21:00 gives you double the gigabytes at the same crawling speed. Read what the package actually promises before you top up.

A personal satellite terminal, unless the company has approved it. Some crew have asked about bringing a portable Starlink terminal onboard. Running your own terminal on a commercial ship touches on company policy, flag state rules and the terminal's own terms of service for maritime use, and on most ships the answer from the Master is simply no. Ask before you buy, and assume the answer is no until you have it in writing.

The honest limits of all this

None of this creates bandwidth, and you should know exactly what these fixes can and cannot do.

If your ship gives the crew 2 Mbps shared between thirty people at peak hour, careful settings will get you working text messaging, voice calls that mostly hold, email with small attachments, and downloads that finish overnight. They will not get you a stable video call at 21:00, a live football match, a large software update during dinner hour, or cloud gaming. The gap between those two lists is the physics of the link, and no amount of configuration crosses it.

The three real cons of managing a slow link this way are worth stating plainly. First, it takes discipline. You are living on a schedule set by other people's sleep patterns, and being awake at 05:00 to send photos gets old. Second, turning off background sync means you have to remember to sync manually, and people lose photos this way when a phone goes over the side. Make a habit of a manual backup in the quiet window once a week, or in port on the eSIM. Third, on some ships the restrictions are administrative, and no setting on your phone overrides a firewall the company configured ashore.

If your ship's link is genuinely broken and the problem goes beyond normal busy hours, say so through the right channel. Persistent packet loss, a terminal that drops out every time the ship turns onto a certain heading, or an access point that has been dead for a month are maintenance items, and they get fixed faster when the ETO has a written record than when all they hear is corridor complaints. Write down the time, location in the accommodation, speed test result and ping. That is a report someone can act on.

It is also worth knowing that crew connectivity is now a recognised welfare issue. The Maritime Labour Convention, 2006 as amended in 2014 and 2016, has been updated over the years, and amendments adopted in 2022 that came into force in December 2024 ask that seafarers have access to ship to shore communication, including internet where available, at a reasonable cost. How that is applied depends on the flag state and the company, and I would not read it as a promise of fast WiFi, but it gives the crew's welfare committee a reasonable basis for raising the subject.

Who should not bother with all this

If you are on a modern ship with a well provisioned Starlink installation and light crew usage, most of this is unnecessary. Turn off photo auto backup, and get on with your life. Our honest look at Starlink maritime for crew covers what that setup actually feels like day to day.

If you are only onboard for a two week trip, do not spend money on a router you will use twice. Buy an eSIM for the port calls and accept that the sea days will be quiet.

And if your ship still runs a low bandwidth VSAT with a strict per person allowance, be honest with yourself about video calls. Plan around voice, write longer messages, and put your energy into the port call instead. There is more on that trade-off in what to expect from internet on bulk carriers.

More for crew: VPN for ship WiFi, offline maps for shore leave, cheap calls home from port, apps for marine engineers, digital tools for chief engineers.

FAQ

Why is crew WiFi slower at night than in the morning?

Because bandwidth is shared and almost everyone is online in the evening. The satellite link delivers the same capacity all day, so when thirty people use it at 21:00 instead of three people at 05:00, each person gets a fraction of what was available earlier. This is the reason a download that fails at night completes in minutes before breakfast.

Will a portable router make my crew WiFi faster?

It will fix weak signal in your cabin, and it will not increase the ship's bandwidth. If the crew mess is fast and your cabin is dead, a router positioned in a better spot recovers signal that the bulkheads were blocking. If the whole ship is slow at the same time, a router changes nothing, because the bottleneck is the satellite link rather than the WiFi.

Does a VPN slow down ship internet?

Yes, usually. Encryption adds overhead and the detour through a VPN server adds latency, which is already high over satellite. Use one when the ship blocks a service you need or when you are on untrusted port WiFi, and switch it off when you want maximum speed for a call home.

How much data does a video call to family actually use?

A standard video call uses roughly 0.5 to 1.5 Mbps in each direction, depending on the app and resolution, while a voice only call uses around 0.05 Mbps. That is a difference of ten to thirty times. On a congested crew network, voice calls connect and stay up in conditions where video will not start at all.

What is the first thing I should change on my phone?

Mark the ship network as metered on Android or enable Low Data Mode on iOS for that network, then set WhatsApp media auto-download to nothing on WiFi. Those two changes stop most unrequested downloads. Photo backup over WiFi is the next one to switch off, because a single 4K video can consume a meaningful share of the ship's daily traffic.

Is it worth buying a bigger crew data package?

It depends on what the package sells. On ships where the voucher buys volume rather than speed, a bigger package gives you more gigabytes at the same slow rate during peak hours. Check the wording before you top up, and if the package does include a priority tier, that is the one worth paying for.

How much data does a one hour video call use at sea?

At 0.5 to 1.5 Mbps in each direction, one hour of video works out to roughly 225 to 675 MB each way, so about 0.45 to 1.35 GB in total. One hour of voice at around 0.05 Mbps is roughly 22 MB each way, about 45 MB in total. On a capped crew allowance, one evening of video can cost what a month of daily voice calls would.

Why does my phone say connected but no internet on ship WiFi?

Usually the captive portal login has not finished, the voucher has expired, or your phone changed its private MAC address and the system no longer recognises it. Open a plain http page to bring the login screen back, and turn off Private Wi-Fi Address on iPhone or set the MAC to device MAC on Android for the ship network only, so your voucher stays attached to the phone.

How can I tell if my ship is on Starlink or VSAT?

Look at the ping in a speed test. A geostationary VSAT link cannot go much below about 500 ms because of the distance to the satellite, and 600 ms or more is normal. A Starlink connection typically shows a few tens of milliseconds when it is healthy. If you see 600 ms, you are on VSAT or the ship has fallen back to it.

Does WhatsApp work on slow ship WiFi?

Text and voice notes work on almost any crew link, because they are small and are sent whenever the connection allows. WhatsApp voice calls usually work at speeds where video fails. Video calls are the first thing to break at peak hours. Switch media auto-download off and WhatsApp becomes one of the lightest apps on the phone.

Which VPN works best on slow ship WiFi?

Pick one that offers a WireGuard based protocol, because it has less overhead and reconnects faster after a dropout than OpenVPN. NordVPN's NordLynx and Surfshark's WireGuard option both qualify. Choose a server close to the ship's satellite gateway, and use split tunnelling so only the apps that need the VPN go through it.

Can I use my own SIM card at sea?

Only within range of shore masts, which usually means close to the coast, in port, or in narrow straits. Far offshore there is no terrestrial signal. Some ships carry an onboard maritime roaming cell, and data on those networks can be very expensive, so check your carrier's maritime rates before you switch on roaming. For port calls, an eSIM bought in advance is usually the cheapest option.

Why do my large downloads keep failing halfway?

Satellite links drop for seconds at a time, when the ship turns, when a crane blocks the dish, or when the system switches satellites, and many apps restart a download from zero after a break. Start large downloads in the 04:00 to 06:00 window, use apps that resume interrupted downloads, and break big jobs into smaller ones.

Will Starlink fix crew WiFi for good?

It improves the raw capacity and the latency a great deal, and most crews notice the difference within days. It does not remove sharing, company firewalls, or data caps that the operator sets on the crew network. A Starlink ship with forty people on video at 21:00 can still feel slow, so the habits on this page still pay off.

Verdict

Treat the link as a shared resource with a timetable, and it becomes usable. The order that works is this: kill background sync first because it is free and immediate, then shift your heavy usage into the 04:00 to 06:00 window, then fix cabin coverage only if a speed test proves coverage is the actual problem. Switch evening video calls to voice or voice notes, and keep updates, backups and streaming downloads for the port call. Spend your money on an eSIM for the next port and leave the repeater on the shop shelf.

About the author

I am a working marine engineer and I have spent years living on the other side of these connections, on bulkers and container ships with everything from a 512 kbps VSAT to a current Starlink installation. Everything here is what I do on my own phone in my own cabin. The Airalo, NordVPN and Surfshark links are affiliate links, as noted at the top, and the other products mentioned are named because crew actually use them, with no arrangement behind it. Where something does not work I say so, which is the only reason this site is worth reading. If crew WiFi is slow on your ship, start with the settings you control and the clock, because that is where the honest gains are.

Related reading

• How Seafarers Stay Connected at Sea: A Marine Engineer's Honest Guide
• Best Portable WiFi Router for Ship Cabin: Honest Picks
• Internet on Bulk Carriers: What to Expect

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