Ocean-going cache makes waves

ApplianSys is pleased to announce that a renown superyacht management and charter company based in Europe has deployed a CACHEBOX solution to optimise at-sea VLAN internet service for crew and guests of luxury yachts.

The company’s commitment to service sees their yachting crews work 2-month blocks at a time. So having web access is vital for simply staying in touch with family and enjoying downtime in the middle of an ocean. But once away from port, crews and guests quickly experience slow, often unusable internet speeds.

In navigating the entire Mediterranean Sea, one such luxury yacht relies on VSAT connectivity, paying €30k each month for 20Mbps. However the reality of service means actual throughput can vary enormously – as little as 1Mbps –  depending on the yacht’s location, as well as time of year. Once the cruising season begins, that VSAT connection gets squeezed by other yachting and cruising internet traffic.

Unfortunately for the crew, another issue compounds the problem – software updates. Updates to devices in use on the yacht – such as Apple and Microsoft – often completely saturate the connection. Multi-gigabyte files for every device on the yacht get randomly downloaded – hogging the precious limited bandwidth.

And these files often come from very slow servers, so consume bandwidth for a very long time. That latency can simply become too much for the connection, rendering it useless to staff or guests.

But after a quick demonstration of CACHEBOX, the company was sold on the solution, immediately ordering a CACHEBOX130 for the superyacht.

CACHEBOX offloads much of the slow data that hogs bandwidth by caching a local copy and serving that to the yacht’s users – without impacting bandwidth. And because updates and web content are served from within the yacht’s LAN, they are delivered at lightning speed – so problems upstream are avoided.

Offloading updates frees up valuable bandwidth, giving crews a much faster web experience – wherever they may be.

“Impressed by the boost in internet availability and faster content that CACHEBOX delivered, the company contacted other yacht companies struggling with the same problems – putting them in touch with us, so their crews and owners could also benefit,” said CACHEBOX Consultant David Zangouras.