Cruise Ship Internet Sharing: How I Bypassed the Hotspot Restriction

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Another day, another cruise. 🙂

Our year of travel continues! We just got back from another Caribbean cruise. This was a 7-night vacation on MSC Cruises and we were fortunate to be joined by some friends this time. We also had two “free” cabins through the casino from our quest to gain free cruises last year, so we hooked up our Panama friends with one of them. See, I can be nice sometimes!

It was a great cruise and we all had a fantastic time. However, there was one small wrench in the works. We quickly learned that MSC had put the kibosh on internet sharing.

We don’t spend much time on the internet while on a cruise, but I do like to check my email in the mornings, knock out Wordle, and do 5-6 lessons of Duolingo each day while keeping my streak alive (1,917 days, folks!). Plus, it’s nice to be able to look something up when planning things to do at a port of call.

So, we paid for one device to be able to access the internet (that would be me!). Normally, that’s good enough. And when my wife, Lisa, and our daughter, Faith, need to do a quick Duolingo lesson each day to keep up their own streaks, I just toggle on the mobile hotspot on my phone and away we go. They do their lesson, hop off, and we call it a day. Easy peasy.

Well, easy peasy until this cruise. The old hotspot trick didn’t work for us. They could connect to the hotspot on my phone but they couldn’t access the internet.

Uh-oh.

I don’t know if this is something new that MSC started doing because we didn’t have a problem on our last cruise with them a few months ago. Or maybe it was specific to this ship (our first time on the MSC Seascape). Regardless, internet sharing just wasn’t working. Both of our other groups of friends had also bought the 1-device package and had the same issue.

Now, you can blast me in the comments and tell me that we all should have bought additional WiFi packages instead of trying to do some internet sharing. I get it.

But, it’s also a crazy rip-off for what you get and especially for how little we use it. Plus, when a challenge is presented, I gotta step up my game and overcome it – it’s just my nature. If you say you can’t get past something, the “oh, yeah?!” mentality surfaces and I’m gonna dig into it.

So it was time to put on the old tech hat and figure out what was going on. And guess what – I got it to work. Mission “Internet sharing on the cruise ship” was a success!

Here’s the scoop and how I made it happen…

The Internet sharing problem

Obviously, it’s in the cruise ships’ best interest to get you to pay for their internet package for each device. What a money-maker!

But how do cruise ships even manage to prevent internet sharing? Why wouldn’t turning on the mobile hotspot on your phone work? After all, you’re not installing any software of theirs on your phone that restricts your connection.

Well, the bad news is that you do connect to their WiFi for the internet. And with that connection, there are several different ways that their IT department can attempt to ensure only the specified device can pass through to the internet, thus blocking internet sharing. Here is some technical jargon on some of those nifty little IT tricks:

• Client Isolation (AP Isolation): Many public and hotel-style Wi-Fi networks use client isolation, preventing devices connected to the same Wi-Fi from communicating. This stops direct device-to-device traffic, making it difficult for a normal hotspot to share Wi-Fi.
  
• MAC Address Filtering: Some networks detect and block multiple devices using the same connection. If your phone’s hotspot forwards packets with different MAC addresses, the ship’s network could detect this and block internet access.
  
• TTL (Time-To-Live) Modification: Some networks block hotspot sharing by checking the TTL (Time-To-Live) value in packets. When a phone tethers another device, the TTL decreases by 1. Some networks detect this drop and cut off access.
  
• DPI (Deep Packet Inspection): Cruise ship networks may use Deep Packet Inspection to detect and block tethering traffic. They could specifically target packets that indicate hotspot usage.
  
• VLAN Segmentation: The network might be using VLAN segmentation, assigning different subnets to each user. This ensures that even if a hotspot is turned on, devices connected to it cannot get internet access because they’re not in the right subnet.

My guess is that they’re simply using MAC address filtering, but I was on vacation and didn’t want to dig into it further. Regardless, this presented a small “challenge” that I wanted to see if I could get past.

How I shared my hotspot on the cruise

This isn’t an ethics class so it’s up to you whether or not you want to pay for each device. But after testing several different ideas, I’m proud to say that I made it happen. As a side note, using a VPN didn’t work (this came up quite a bit in my research).

Instead, I was able to use a single free app on my phone to get it to work… Every Proxy. Bear in mind that I have an Android phone and not an iPhone. I’m still rocking an old-school Samsung Galaxy S21… but I’m now eyeing up the OnePlus 13T (if gets released in the U.S.) or possibly the Google Pixel 9a.

Don’t get freaked out scrolling through this either. It might look like a lot, but that’s because I broke it down completely so anyone could do it. It should actually be pretty quick to do and once it’s set up, you’re good to go and don’t need to do all of this again.

STEP 1: First things first. You’ll want to get your mobile hotspot set up on the Android phone that has the WiFi plan with the cruise. This is the host phone that will handle the internet sharing.

If you already have that set up and know the settings, you can skip ahead to Step 2. Otherwise, you’ll need to do this on your phone. It’ll be different depending on your flavor of Android, but I’ll walk you through what it looks like on my Samsung Galaxy S21.

First, open the Settings app on your phone from the apps drawer or through the pull-down notification shade. Once you’re in Settings, look for “Connections” or something similar that deals with Wi-Fi and click on that:

Now find something similar to “Mobile Hotspot and Tethering” and click on that:

Hint: If your screens don’t match up, just click on the search box in Settings and search for “hotspot.” That should get you to the same place.

Then, select the words “Mobile Hotspot” (not the toggle next to it that turns it on or off):

On this screen, there should be a “Network name” and “Password” already listed. You can leave them as they are or change them to what you like. Either way, take note of what they are because that’s how other phones will connect to your hotspot:

That’s it for that part. You can back completely out of that and move on to the next step.

STEP 2: Install the Every Proxy app on the Android host phone (the one that will be providing internet sharing). It looks like this in the Google Play Store:

STEP 3: Open the Every Proxy app and then toggle on HTTP and SOCKS:

STEP 4: Time to turn on your mobile hotspot. Just pull down the notification shade on your phone and toggle on “Mobile Hotspot.”

If you don’t see that in the Quick Settings Tiles on your phone (be sure to swipe to the left if there are multiple tile screens), you can get to it through Settings like in Step 1 and just click the toggle on the “Mobile Hotspot and Tethering” screen rather than clicking on the words.

IMPORTANT: You might notice that my phone is not in Airplane Mode (and that I also have Mobile Data turned off). A lot of phones will not let you do any internet sharing if Airplane Mode is turned on. We use Mint Mobile for our cell service (an awesome service, btw). Because that’s a pre-paid MVNO, we don’t need to worry about any overseas data charges surprising us later. If you’re not sure if that’s the case for you, you’ll want to be careful here before turning Airplane Mode off.

STEP 5: When you first opened Every Proxy, there was only one IP address that was exposed for HTTP and SOCKS. Now that you’ve turned on your mobile hotspot, a second one is added (I had to turn my phone to landscape to be able to read it). The address should be the same for both HTPP and SOCKS (the port number will be different though):

The new address is what you’ll need in the next step as well as one of the port numbers (depending on what works on the connecting phone).

STEP 6: Have someone set up and connect to your mobile hotspot from their phone who wants to access the internet. They should see your hotspot listed as an available WiFi connection. The name of that network and the password they connect with are the same as what was configured in Step 1.

Once you click on it, it should move to the current network section and you’ll want to click on the settings cog to the right of it:

That’ll let you change some settings. You’re looking for an option to change proxy settings. On the Samsung Galaxy phones, you need to click “View more” to get to that:

You’ll then see an option to put in the IP address and port number that was listed in Every Proxy in Step 5. I didn’t mess with it much, but the SOCKS one didn’t work for me, so I used the HTTP IP address and port number.

Save that information and back out.

Now, hopefully, the magic happens! At this point (be patient – it might take a minute), you should start seeing the number changing under Received and Sent in the Every Proxy app on the host phone:

And the connecting phone should eventually show Connected:

And guess what, folks – that phone should now be able to piggyback off the internet connection of the host phone to access the internet! Internet sharing at its best!

When the connected person is done using the hotspot, toggle off the hotspot on the host phone and toggle off HTTP and SOCKS in Every Proxy. That’s it.

The next time you want to connect the phone, just toggle on Every Proxy and the mobile hotspot on the host phone again. If the IP address changes in Every Proxy though (it did this once for me), you’ll need to repeat Step 6 to update the address in the connected phone’s WiFi connection settings.

But that’s all there is to it – not too shabby, right?

Why does this work for internet sharing?

So what’s the difference between just using your phone as a regular hotspot or using something like Every Proxy for internet sharing?

Every device has a unique hardware identifier called a MAC address (Media Access Control address). When you use a regular mobile hotspot, your phone shares its internet connection directly with connected devices. Each device keeps its own MAC address, and when a connected phone accesses the internet, its requests pass through the host phone and then go out to the internet. Life is good.

Except that many networks can detect tethering. One way they do this is by noticing multiple MAC addresses using the same connection – one from the host phone and another from the connected device. Some networks block or limit tethering when they see this.

Proxying works differently. When a connected phone accesses the internet through something like Every Proxy, the host phone takes that request and sends it out as if it came from itself. This means the network only sees the host phone’s MAC address, making it appear as though a single device is connected. When the internet replies back, the host phone relays the response to the connected phone – no sweat.

This helps bypass network restrictions that block regular hotspots.

However, there are a couple of trade-offs to be aware of:

• More strain on the host phone – Since it’s handling all traffic for connected devices, it can heat up and drain the battery faster.
• Slightly slower speeds – Because the host phone has to process and forward every request, browsing may feel a bit slower on connected devices. In our case, it wasn’t really noticeable, but it’s something to keep in mind.

Will the Internet sharing trick work from an iPhone?

I’m not an iPhone expert – in fact, I try to know as little as I can about them. But I do know that Apple loves its walled garden and staying in control. That’s a double-edged sword for sure. It generally provides the potential for a safer environment. However, it also means much less flexibility.

In the case of this internet-sharing trick, I started digging around to see if there was an app similar to Every Proxy in the App Store for iPhone. I couldn’t find anything, but as I said, my expertise in this area isn’t great. So I turned to artificial intelligence, of course!

When I asked ChatGPT about this, it told me this:

Limitations on iPhone
• iOS does not allow setting up a Wi-Fi hotspot while simultaneously using Wi-Fi for internet (no native repeater mode).
• These proxy apps mostly work if your iPhone is the internet source (e.g., on cellular data).
• If you’re trying to extend Wi-Fi internet via a hotspot on an iPhone, you may need a third-party Wi-Fi bridge device instead.

I can’t tell you if this is accurate but I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the case. In a nutshell, it seems that an iPhone can hotspot off an Android phone, but it can’t be the host (the one doing the internet sharing).

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I can’t tell you whether or not you should go this route. I’m sure with the WiFi package there were probably 576 pages of template terms and conditions that no one ever reads before accepting. I don’t remember if there were T&Cs or if internet sharing was even a part of it if so.

However, I saw a challenge and took it on. What you do with this information is up to you.

Hopefully, this little experiment was worthwhile regardless of knowing what can be done with just the slightest amount of effort. And more importantly, Lisa and Faith didn’t lose their Duolingo streaks and that’s the most important part of the story! 😉

Plan well, take action, and live your best life!

Thanks for reading!!

— Jim