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64kbps @ 40,000 ft.
jumpstop writes "The NYT Technology section reports that 64kbps is now available on business jets. Sure, you can read your email and surf the web, but can you blast away at Wolfenstein?"
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Wow so this could bring a new kinda mile high club.. Cyber Sex at 40,000 feet ;)
I would also like to announce that 56mph is now available in my house.
Also, as a special favor, I am offering 92 degrees Celsius to any interested parties.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Every fucking business trip I take I have to travel in the least expensive class. But then again, I am working for the government.
And I still cannot get first post:-(
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
not if your latency still sucks
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
SPEED demons, the kind who like corporate jets that do 500 knots at 40,000 feet, are reaching the point where they can cruise the Internet at that altitude as well -- and at speeds comparable to a deskbound computer's.
This month Honeywell, the satellite service provider Inmarsat and the French electronics company Thales demonstrated a system in which fliers with laptops can be linked, by an Ethernet LAN or wireless connection, to an antenna on top of the fuselage, allowing speeds of up to 64 kilobits per second.
Laptop users need a network card or a wireless modem. The system, called Swift 64, is fast enough to handle streaming video or video conference calls using standard equipment.
The first market is corporate jets, but the builders hope to sell the system to airlines, too. The companies did not give a price but said it would depend partly on how much equipment was already on board. Many planes already have some satellite communication gear for passenger seat-back telephones and for the cockpit crew to use to communicate with the airline or maintenance base.
Boeing has a competing product that is in service on 11 corporate planes, and Lufthansa is hoping to offer it on a Boeing 747 late this year or early next year. Boeing and Lufthansa have not worked out how they will charge customers. Communications experts say they could charge by the minute or the bit.
A spokesman for Connexion by Boeing, the subsidiary that produces the system, said it would allow the use of palmtop-based e-mail service in addition to laptops, and speeds far higher than the Swift 64 system, 20 gigabits per second.
Tenzing Communications, a Seattle company partly owned by the European plane maker Airbus, also provides a slower satellite-based service on a handful of airlines.
Honeywell's demonstration plane, a Cessna Citation, a twin-engine business jet that carries two crew members and as many as eight passengers, carries an antenna about the size and shape of a surfboard.
Planes with long over-water routes often carry satellite antennas; older antenna models are steered mechanically to keep them pointed toward the satellite as the plane banks, climbs and descends. The one on the Honeywell plane is steered electronically. On a recent demonstration flight from Dulles Airport near Washington, the antenna was pointed at a satellite in orbit over Brazil that transmitted back to a ground station in Connecticut.
On the demonstration flight, a user of a Dell Latitude CPx found that the Web site of the Federal Aviation Administration popped up on the screen so fast that the system's performance was nearly indistinguishable from that of a desktop in a corporate office.
Such speed offers white-knuckle fliers new possibilities: for example, it took no time at all to download a 238-kilobyte aviation safety manual.
Hate to break it to you guys, but the dot-com days are over. How many of the slashdot crowd can afford to take a spin in a "business jet" ?
Anybody have the direct link to the story? Don't wanna sign up. :p
Maybe a copy and paste would be nice.
Fight Crime - Shoot Back!
That's RighT BizNatcheS
I can join the mild-high club.
www.whitehouse.com
nothin' but business.
no your Quake clan can all travel together, or have a moving lan party. pretty sweet.
Do we *REALLY* need to be that connected? I know I don't.. airline trips are sort of nice I get to pull away from the internet for a few hours atleast.. god damned.
w00t
We're all spoiled now a days. I remember blasting away at quake I and II, Starcraft and wonderful games over an unstable 36.6 dialup. I still managed to win some despite the lag.
Ignorance kills, complacency kills, hatred kills, but usually not the ones guilty of them.
the lower ping time yeilded by the faster connection doesn't make up for the lack of skill by thinner blood
:)
though i could get my pr0n a bit faster than on my dial up
mile high club takes on a new meaning with online porn
Does the whole plane have a 64k connection?
Or are we all going to have to share it between us?
And what happens when the 15 year old in row 27 loads up Gnutella and uses _all_ the bandwidth?
My Journal
thx
I can download the latest Slackware ISO!
Grandpa, what was the net connection on planes like back in your day?
Well kid, in my day, we had to settle for 64kbps
Wireless networks on planes? Should open up a lot of opportunities for would-be corporate spies...a whole ad-hoc, heterogenous "network neighborhood" to plunder...and frequent flier miles to boot!
:wq
yes! yes, it could
"On a recent demonstration flight from Dulles Airport near Washington, the antenna was pointed at a satellite in orbit over Brazil that transmitted back to a ground station in Connecticut. "
I imagine the ping your looking at will be from plane to satellite would be horrible. I know a few people with direct PC service get relivitly high pings that it makes playing online games horrible.
Though playing a flying game online with other people while your riding in a plane could be cool.
Or perhaps renting a jet to fly to a lan party while holding one on the jet during the trip would also be cool. too bad the only ones who would be able to afford this for a while is the PHB's and higher.
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
A spokesman for Connexion by Boeing, the subsidiary that produces the system, said it would allow the use of palmtop-based e-mail service in addition to laptops, and speeds far higher than the Swift 64 system, 20 gigabits per second.
Gotta hate this... pay big bucks and you get sweet speeds on a figgin' plane, while the unwashed masses down here still have crappy 56k in many places! Damn capitalist pigs!
I wonder if they'll charge big bucks for access, like they do with the phones on the planes?
--
Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
Cox Communications announced it will be dropping 'hard lines' in favor of the new long range 64k wireless network. "64k outa be enough for the neightborhood."
And you thought those seat-back telephones were expensive...
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
is, do you really think that sombody who could afford this is actually any good at Wolfenstien?
The flying hamster of DOOM rains coconuts on your pitiful city.
Anyone else notice that the article states that Boeing offers a 20Gb/s connection on 11 business jets and soon 747s?!?
<sarcasm>wonder how they accomplish THAT!</sarcasm>
"A spokesman for Connexion by Boeing, the subsidiary that produces the system, said it would allow the use of palmtop-based e-mail service in addition to laptops, and speeds far higher than the Swift 64 system, 20 gigabits per second. "
--minuo
If airlines can get a faster connection even while in air why can't us land users get a similar speed? Also, wasn't there some baud rate limit on phone lines set by the FCC? Is that why phone lines can't go faster than 56K?
However, I use bots.
Sure, you can read your email and surf the web, but can you blast away at Wolfenstein?
No, but you can Slashdot the nonstop from Atlanta to New York!
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
Hey, where are the karma whoring posts for how to bypass the free registration at NYTimes.com?
In case you're interested, you can always go to asahi.com to view the stories registration-free. This story can be found here.
So we can set up 802.11b networks on airplanes, but we can't use cell phones.
not if your latency still sucks :)
The blurb didn't state which Wolfenstein or which 64 kbps. For all we know, it could be referring to "Castle Wolfenstein" for the Apple II family. The Apple II's disk drive operated at a maximum sustained speed of (you guessed it) 64 kbps (with any OS more recent than Apple DOS 3.3 such as Diversi-DOS, ProntoDOS, or ProDOS).
Will I retire or break 10K?
Sheesh! People are computing faster than I am, even at 40k feet. Our neighborhood still has the same copper that was put up in the early 60's. No connections over 31.6 :-(
Well... duh. Of course you can blast away at Wolfenstein. You're right there next to the satellites, so your latency is nil.
;)
(oh, btw...
fifth sigma, inc.
But seriously... it costs like $3/minute to make US calls how much will it cost per minute/kb used?
An airplane traveling at 50% of light speed in a straight line towards the broadcast satellite should be able to provide access speeds of up to 128 Kbps. Faster even, if you include the effects of time dilation.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
We needed "communications experts" to tell us that?
here
Communications experts say they could charge by the minute or the bit.
Why not the flight? Or the day. I'd pay $15 to have a solid net connection on a 5 hour flight.
I'm looking at this from a passenger point of view, but I think we're eventually going to see (and need) net connectivity in the air.
And it should be cheaper then they think. Why go for a wired network in the plane at all? Pulling cables through a pre-existing airplane has to be expensive. A decent WAP which can handle 64 users at the same time and cover the entire cabin gives you a lan at ~$5-700 installed. Couple that with pre-existing antenneas, get a decent switch, and violla, you have internect connectivity in an average craft for a few thousand bucks.
Wi-fi is already becomming the standard at airports (even though current coverage stinks). Why not partner with one of the many wi-fi providers popping up? I don't subscribe to any of them, but if I found out that my subscription to boingo would keep me connected at the airport, in the plane, and the hotel when I landed, I'd sign up in a second.
The Internet is generally stupid
Sure, you can read your email and surf the web, but can you blast away at Wolfenstein?
:)
Probably not, considering that Wolfenstein wasn't multiplayer. Try Doom
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
Man, if I only got 64kbps at my office, I would be talking to our network admin! 64 kbps reminds me of the days of sharing a 56k dial-up internet connection among 30 people. Now that was slow...
can you blast away at Wolfenstein?
:)
And if you did, would you get arrested or attacked by the passengers for wielding a weapon?
Maybe arming pilots with a plasma rifle would be a good thing. Or maybe they just need Jabber:
SkieHighPil0t: Help! We're being hijacked!
Sl33pyGrndCtrl: Thanks, SkieHighPil0t, but I'm away from my computer right now. Leave a message!
Blog,Twitter
I have had 87564 kb/s in my bat plane for years.
YAWN
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
This has already been achieved using the GlobalStar constellation:
r es s27.html
http://www.qualcomm.com/press/pr/releases2001/p
We played Wolfenstein on 2400 baud modems back in the day, what would stop us from playing on 64k? =)
If you're talking about RTCW on the other hand....
=)
....and at second page, it is written that usage of RF stuff is dangerous to plane saaaaaaaaaaaaaeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.....
64kbps... time travel back to the era of kilotonne 'portable' pcs with glowing green screens... imagine if you will.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
If you're not taking off your Depends, you can't be doing it properly.
..of coke to enjoy the boring trip (shit I'm really bored of flying all the time).
I just flew back from Dayton to LA on a nice Delta jet, but in coach. The lil GTE AirFones proudly screamed at me "NOW, HIGHER DATA RATES!" Flipping through Sky magazine, I found that top speed is 9600bps.. rock! Now I can play LORD in the air!
(legend of the red dragon... fuck yeah)
This is so stupid. Like everyone mentioned above, the only people using this will be tight assed business execs. All these morons (mostly sales people, truly the bottom of the workplace barrel) do is check e-mail 19 hours a day anyway , they could manage that with only a 2400 baud modem and not notice the difference.
Me and my brok ass hard core gamers are never going to fly on an "executive" type jet anyway, so what difference does it make if you might get pings of 678 on Wolfenstein.
Actually, I heard that the 64kbps is the net of the 56kbps you get going west against the jetstream over the Pacific and 72kbps going with.
but can you blast away at Wolfenstein
:)
not if your latency still sucks
I think that was the point of him mentioning a multiplayer online game.
Hell, why not mod parent up to +5 insightful. geez
Two issues on my mind...
;-)
Firstly, let's think realistic (and this is not a flame). Most of the people who will use a laptop on a flight.. a high percentage of them will be using it for business purpose most likely. If a person is traveling frequently with their laptop, shouldn't their company provide them a cell phone that's 3G supported? Then they could just run a link from the phone to the laptop and voila, instant internet. Which leads to the next point. Why bother paying the extra fee for using 64kbps all the time? If anything the airline companies should consider doing a "frequent surfing miles?" Yes, I know, that's a horrible way to put it, but you see where I am getting at?
Secondly, as far as I know, wouldn't an internet connection have some sort of an interference with the radars? I'm assuming it's a satellite internet connection, but there are probably a bunch of issues the airline companies will be coming upon with this whole new addition.
Second thought might not be so valid, but bleh.. I have to be critical
"The ones who dont do anything are always the ones who try to pull you down" -- Henry Rollins
While this is all cool and good, if these satellites provide coverage pretty much anywhere for airplanes, couldn't us slashdotters figure out a way to acquire the laptop PC card and any antenna(s) needed to use this bandwidth at home? I obviously don't know how hard (if even possible) this would be, but hey, if nothing else, it sounds like there is potential here for good-quality wireless Internet for the masses back on good 'ol planet Earth. Maybe even a reasonable end to Internet for rural areas?
I'm finally going to get to join the mile-high club!
That sounds delicious. I think I'll make it this weekend. You rule, Recipe Troll!
when launched, opposed to the $17/hour they were considering before 9/11
What they think about @ /.
"....should we call this...."
- good read
- must read
- interesting read
- fun read
- amusing little read
Of course, this means they think we need to be talked to like a child at bedtime.
Now they even have faster than dial up connections at 40,000 feet on jets, and I STILL cant get any service faster than 36kbps in NC on the outskirts of nowhere.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
I alway leave my AirPort card on. One time, I was playing The Sims on a plane, with the card left on by accident. I didn't notice any sort of problems (turbulance, etc.) on the plane, and anyway, they heat things up in microwaves in planes which would cause much larger problems. Of course I turned the card off as soon as I realized it was turned on...
:-(
(For the record, you cannot leach off of 802.11b networks in the air. The distance is too great, I guess
That's almost twice the speed of my the connection I have on my desktop! That's progress for you
Honeywell's demonstration plane...carries an antenna about the size and shape of a surfboard.
Instead of carrying around an extra structure on the outside of the plane, why not just embed the antenna into the largest -existing- structure...
THE WINGS.
(or perhaps the fuselage)
Since the fuel is stored in wings, are safety reasons keeping this from happening?
(ie, RF+fuel=BOOM)
It seems to me, with my really dorky sense of humor, that Rockford-in-the-sky-with-diamonds is funnier. But hey, I'm a loser who comments on the taglines so what do I know? :-)
but can you blast away at Wolfenstein?"
I think not. I would bet that this is a pretty high latency connection to the internet. Thus, playing pretty much any kind of action game would be useless.
room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
(they always break you eventually)
Hell, anyone with a modern web browser has the software installed. Then again, GSM mobile phones encrypt their traffic (I think, correct me if I'm wrong), so maybe it isn't seen as a problem.
Nope. Not unless you want to be taken into custody for using a terrorist training program.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
I still think that's proportionately not as cool as my 19.2 Kbps paraglider setup. =] No link yet, but when I get it working you'll be able to watch my flights real-time, along with what meager telemetry you can get out of a 35-pound nylon and Kevlar aircraft.
Anyone know where I can get a super-compact frame grabber? Maybe I'll put my helmet-cam online too. =]
You thought people talking on their cell phones was bad, imagine if the pilot starts surfing the web while flying? Shit.. if he hits a pr0n site and get's excited we'd all be screwed!
Looks like the New York Times thinks Amazon.com should set up shop on aerial servers.. Seriously, who edits these articles?
www.lonseidman.com
"Boeing and Lufthansa have not worked out how they will charge customers. Communications experts say they could charge by the minute or the bit."
Well let's see - voice grade phone calls are $5.00/minute. I wonder what it would cost to download that Powerpoint attachment in my email? A hundred bucks? Yeah that's what I'm thinking.
Ouch, that would hurt. However I am offering 37 celsius to all comers.
Does anyone really care? Yay, now I can get crappy internet connection if I EVER fly.
Sooo, when ppl start sharing music and movies on board, what laws apply 40k ft above the atlantic/pacific? Or would it just be illegal when they enter national airspace?
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
In March, I was flying from Denver to San Diego in an American Airlines DC80. They had those AT&T phones in them, one per row attached to the back of the center seat headrest. They all had a sticker on them that stated they would be out of service at the end of the month.
I can believe this. How much utility is there in using a phone on an air plane? Almost none. Who wants to talk on a phone when the plane is crowded? How much do you want to pay to use the thing? Nobody that I see ever uses them. It must have cost a lot of money to install those phones, one in every seat. I bet that AT&T lost a lot of money on that one.
Flying on an airplane is sitting back and relaxing for a few hours. If you are on an international flight, then you are going to drug yourself before hand too, else the monotony of sitting there doing nothing for hours.
It would be cool to be able to plug in my laptop on an air plane, if I could get power and data. But how much of the populous will also want to do that? I doubt enough to make it worth the costs.
In business planes, this might be okay. So, who here is going to be flying in a business plane?
This technology application matters not.
In a side note...
AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! ! Giant Jon Katz banners! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Now we don't have to hijack the plane physically anymore since the plane has an Internet connection.
:))
Just fire up Microsoft Flight Sim on your home computer and then connect to the plane.
(Remember Turbulence III?
so does that actually mean that if your going 50% the speed of light towards the broadcast satellite, you'll lose a certain percentage of bandwidth due to packets making it to the satellite almost instantaneously and not being retransmitted due to the satellite being COMPLETELY DISMEMBERED by the craft flying 50% the speed of light from the surface of the earth to the orbiting object only miles above the surface?
At that rate, we could make a flight from NY to LA in a little over a hundredth of a second.
Note: subtle humer, and trying to bring things into relativity. Any craft travelling 334.8 Million MPH (approximately half the speed of light? 3.348e+08) towards an object only 20 or so miles above the surface would reach it in a little over 1 millionth of a second. (is that right? 0.000108 seconds? rounded of course.)
Of course, we're talking about Microwave frequencies, so it's not exactly light speed. Last I checked, that was one of the downfalls of satellite internet. (high MTU to make up for the highly latent transmit)
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Dumbass, he's marrying a woman.
I wonder though, with all the advents that have occured lately, (9/11, security tightening, civil right violations that are state sanctioned) how will the gov't get there hands into this? I know it sounds slightly stupid to think, but the cautious side of me *knows* beyond a shadow of a doubt there will be some kind of sniffer running. Hell, since you can't bring nail files onto the plane, whats to stop people from just turning off their freakin' laptop and cracking peoples skulls with it? (users of Dell Latitudes know what I'm talking about.. the thing almost looks designed for that)
:)
But seriously... caution by the consumer cattle needs to be taken. I've wondered about the airplane phones for years, but at the price of those I seriously doubt anyone but a PHB or a PHB lacky would use one of those... or someone with a corporate card and no reason to hold back
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
....we slashdot a Learjet?
Imagine a beo.... oh wait, that doesn't fit, does it....
Wolfenstien 3D runs sweet on my 486 laptop no matter where I am!
Are these business people's lives so busy and complex that they can't be without the net for 3 frigging hours? How sad is that.
An airplane traveling at 50% of the speed of light leaves Kennedy Airport in New York City at 10:16 AM EST, and is scheduled to land 4 hours 23 minutes later at Los Angelos International airport. At what Pacific Daylight Savings time will the 40-year-old pervert sitting in Seat 37C finish downloading his first 10MB S&M video clip from www.spankme.com, assuming he is able to utilize 80% of the available 64kbps bandwidth and with the satellite directly in front of him?
With the satellite directly behind him?
With the satellite in geosynchronous, low-earth orbit where it should be instead of directly in front of a jet flying at 40,000 feet?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Tenzing laid off 85 of 125 employees before their product even had billing capabilities and Boeing is betting that the airlines are willing to pay 500K per plane just for the antanae. Not likely. Plus with sat time at $7.00 a minute, lousy investment market, the losses that have happened with Sky Phones and the reality that airplanes that make 4hr or less flights not likely to be equiped, I'd day that we have along time until we get meaningful IP in the sky.
The rates for phone service are so low on planes, that high bandwidth shouldn't be much more!
Regular business flight people will need to logon to check emails etc etc etc, it will save the need to catchup on those 3 hours when you get home. Maybe economy class shouldn't have it, but business etc, yup. Even if economy did, it's all for the luxury of flying huh, something extra to kill some time of the flight, i recon it's a great idea.
wow.... if I run my own web server on my laptop during my flight, and something interesting happens on my site, and thi fact is reported to /.
... this could be the first /.ed plane!
fun, cool!
667 The Neighbour of the Beast
I can hear shemos now...
"You think I know fuck nothing!!!??? Well, let me tell YOU!!!! I know FUCK ALL!!!"
Uhhm, I travel quite a bit and it's usually the 1 hour drive to the airport, 2 1/2 hours of checking in and boarding. Another 1/2 before the pane actually takes off. A nice, tiring 12 hour flight from Johannesburg to Heathrow. Another 1 1/2 of running around frantically to make the connecting flight to some other European country. Another 3 1/2 hours to destination counrty (Sweden, Ireland or whatever).Then it's waiting for baggage / getting forex and taxi and about 1 1/2 hour before you get to the hotel with jetlag and in a state of serious sleep depravation. That's 22 1/2 hours later! Then you fall down and sleep and the next day your mailbox is flooded with urgent messages from the previous day.The trip back is the same siHt! I for one would like e-mail access on the plane. I just think that it's a Major security risk!
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
An airplane traveling at 50% of the speed of light would not give the average suit enough time to boot his Windows to even start downloading or whatever before it reaches its destination.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
as you can't a laptop onto a plane anymore.
I hate this fucking login crap. I won't register... anyone got an account?
Depends on what you're into...
Does anybody else think it would be a good idea for Slashdot to have a New York Times section? These articles straight from the Circuits section seem to come out weekly...
We have an early prototype Boeing Connexion system on a 757 (I work for NASA) and we measure ping times just over 500 ms. We get 2 megabits ground to air, and 250 kilobits air to ground. That 20 gig from the NYTimes article is obviously a typo, but based on our prototype system, I wouldn't be surprised at 20 megabits ground to air. And, yes, you will share the bandwidth with the kid on Gnutella.
Check here: http://www.boeing.com/connexion/sitemap.html
In other news, the Veep (Cheney) is getting the Boeing system on his Air Force Two. Maybe he's a Gnutella user!
Exactly. Light is not just another classical wave.