A real deployment
Unlike our illustrative composite studies, this is a real West Networks deployment. The client is unnamed and some details are withheld under confidentiality — the architecture and results are as delivered.
The one-liner appears on every site we run: “12–20 Starlinks bonded into one pipe at sea.” This is that story.
The problem
A leading global cruise line carries thousands of guests per sailing, every one of them expecting shore-grade internet — streaming, video calls, uploads — in the middle of the ocean. The traditional answer, VSAT, prices bandwidth like a scarce commodity because on that architecture it is one. No single satellite terminal, LEO or otherwise, delivers shore-grade capacity to a floating city.
The build
- 12–20 Starlink terminals per vessel, physically distributed to keep sky view through superstructure shadowing and heel.
- All terminals bonded with SpeedFusion into a single logical pipe — the ship’s network sees one WAN, not twenty.
- Balance 5000 EC cores in a high-availability pair per vessel, so the bonding layer itself has no single point of failure.
- Cellular joins the bond automatically near shore; legacy satellite remains as a last-resort path.
Why bonding is the whole trick
Individual LEO terminals wander: beams hand off, obstructions sweep past, throughput on any one dish swings minute to minute. Bonded, those swings average out — a guest’s video call rides whichever terminals are strong right now, packet by packet, with no session drops. That’s the difference between “we have Starlink onboard” and shore-grade service.
The result
- 30+ Gbps of aggregate connectivity delivered across the fleet’s bonded terminals.
- Guest experience comparable to a hotel ashore — on vessels that once metered email.
- One architecture, standardized across ships, monitored centrally.
The same pattern scales down: a 72 m charter yacht runs it with 12 terminals; a workboat runs it with two Starlinks and cellular. Sizing is the variable — the bond is the constant. Talk to us about your vessel →