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Wireless Internet Launched on Lufthansa FRA - IAD
JpMaxMan writes "On flight LH 418 from Frankfurt, Germany, to Washington, DC, Lufthansa AG began on Wednesday a three-month trial for a new
onboard wireless broadband service
that allows travelers to connect to the Internet some 10,000 meters in the sky."
Is that they go through all this trouble to prevent bombs getting on board, yet they act like the plane will crash if I have my CD player on during take-off. Heck, if it could, and I wanted to crash the plane, I'd just turn it on and leave it out of sight!
I wonder how much this costs, and I'm assumming its satalite so does that affect pings for online gaming? Fragging from 10,000feet..........
does this mean i can finally join the solo mile high club?
I always enjoy surfing the net while high.
Stanley Feinbaum, professional journalist and master debater! God bless the USA!
It will be interesting to see how different countried react to this availability onboard - many countried are VERY paranoid about RF gear operating on an airliner due to fear of interferance with the onboard systems...
Personally I'm quite suprised that this is a wireless solution, and not wired onboard, as that would seem a much more 'acceptable' solution worldwide, and quite probably more secure for individuals.
I wonder how well seperated the network streams are between users? network sniffing count suddenly before very interesting
if it goes 10k meters into the sky how far does it span on a horizontal plane?
In Andrew Tanenbaum's Computer Networking, he outlined the idea of a "flying LAN" as early as 1996. It's a much better approach to the problem than those godawful "airphones". (Thank God those are going away).
Liberate your mind in two clicks or less.
How Warchalking Died . . .
http://webword.com/moving/warchalking.html
Ttalks about WiFi stuff and WiFi zones. Wonder what'll happen with WiFi this year, and what with warchlking?
While it's better than my DSL connection, is it really enough to support up to 50 people? 3000/50 = 60, which is acceptable, comparable to dial-up. But 128/50 = 2.56! Ouch! If you've ever maxed out your upload while downloading, you'll know how it causes downloading to come to a crawl. I really think they'll need to seriously considering upping the upload speed.
Eventually the Internet will become an essential service in any business that's open to the public: malls, airports, schools, bus stops... just like drinking fountains, walkways, and bathrooms.
For the near future though, everyone is going to be trying to figure out how they can charge a few bucks a minute to let people with important business acces their $50/mo DSL line. I hope people just decide not to pay for these services. There's no reason why an airport/airplane/whatever can't afford to give access to a wireless AP just as a courtesy.I would definitely enjoy flying a lot more, and they'd get way more business from me by throwing stuff like this in for free.
Well it's nice to see the bait and switch methds being used :) Realy this would be a boon to my travaling at least. Funny I wonder what the latency will be like and why they need such a big router to do the job. A 265x can run things wire speed to 100bt easly unless they have all sorts of things going on. Now I winder will they be handing out public IP space and what the SWIP will look like for that one :)
No sir I dont like it.
You sir, are an idiot.
The RIAA and MPAA, building upon their already close relationship with law enforcement agencies, are lobbying to give armed air marshalls the power to shoot on sight anyone caught engaging in "terrorist activities" such as file sharing and unauthorised humming.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
They are talking about a 3Mb down, and 128Kb uplink.
I guess this is a shared connection for all users? This will become a large bottleneck when you get a couple of users.
How is this a more effective way for terrorists to coordinate themselves than the airphone that's been around for years. They can just use codewords not to tip anyone off like "nice weather" = "we're in position".
Commence the in-flight porn jokes...
Ticket: $200
Cab to the airport: $12
Drinks at then lounge: $30
Watching porn @ 600mph feet all wasted: $PRICELESS
http://www.DaveNet.biz/
In soviet russia, first post comes last!
little late there bud.
from 10, KM high in the sky (in no man's territory), and be never convicted for it..... Next time i am travling on lufthansa, i am taking my 1 million email address CD with me.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
Now we will see bums in their lear jets
warflying in close formation to the airliners
just to get the free internet access.
Akmad469GoodTime: R U RDY 4 KILLING????
:(
SexyGirl17Muslim: no meal service yet
Akmad469GoodTime: I H8 NUTS!!!
SexyGirl17Muslim: u r nuts!!! LOL!
Akmad469GoodTime: ROFLOLOFLOLFO!!!!!!
As a pilot, and an American, I just have to ask one question:
What the hell is a meter?
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
al i have to say is......simply stunning..
i am the mighty xao
xao gypsie
xao
http://TheHillforum.hopto.org
Eventually someone will take their webserver along on the plane and then posts a Slashdot article about it. What happens when we slashdot an airplane?
Jason
ProfQuotes
Researchers have already bombarded commercial jets with all types of RF of many frequencies and varying power and found no flight threatening effects. This is due to heavely sheilded cables. The electronic device usage fear stems from cellular phone companies advising airlines not to use the phones in flight as they would have difficulting tracking the signal and the signal would reach many towers simultaneously. For the most part, RF is a non-issue. But still comply to keep the paranoid at bay.
Private aircraft on the other hand is more effected by RF than their commercial counter parts. Cell phones and ham radios have been known to crash private aircraft.
A recent story. A local car stereo business installed a TV and sound system in a private aircraft. The FAA was on that like stink on a hog. The equipment was not certified and threw out quite a mess of RF. Not to mention non of the cables were sheilded. Both the pilot and the company who installed the equipment were fined.
I recently received the device that creates the high voltage needed to strobe the lights on an aircraft along with its timer circuit. The device oscilated 24v at high frequency through a transformer and was rectified into two capacitors at 600v. this was creating noise in the radio and the part was promptly removed.
My father is a mechanic and supervisor for a private aircraft repair business. Thats how I get my info on the personal airecraft. I saw the commercial aircraft RF bombardement on Disconvery i beleive.
-Foxxz
HAHAHAHAHHAHA thats hilarious.
1) soviet russia uber-jokes
2) ??
3) profit!!
I wish I'd thought of that :)
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Then again, downloads to earth should zip pretty fast.
He was posting from the plane. The lag is still a bit much.
more like:
1)Soviet russia jokes
2)??
3)bad mod, cause that joke is old
i am the mighty xao
xao gypsie
xao
http://TheHillforum.hopto.org
You cant even talk about Bombs in an airport, now we're gonna have dorks on planes yelling about their FPS game, "Score, i just got the rocket launcher!!". As if the skymarshals dont have their work cut out for them, now they have to sperate gamers from terrorists.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
If FAA is relaxing rules to allow passengers to use 802.11b transmitter while flying, there are some possibilities to get cellphones approved for flights as well. I hate when flight attendants ask you to shut down your cellphone upon departure...
they'll get lots and lots of shooting practice :)
This finally proves the assertion that the reason for the ban on in-flight electronics was to protect Airfone and in-flight movies from competition and had nothing to do with RF interference. Now that the airlines found a way to extract revenue from this, suddenly spread-spectrum RF signals are perfectly safe.
Turn off your cellphone please. And put away that gameboy.
It's hard to feel sorry for the struggling airlines when lie as much as they do.
yeah but that isnt funnie
The rules on cellphones have nothing to do with potential RF interference with the instrumentation. Imagine, if you will, thousands of cell phones, thirty thousand feet up, each connecting to dozens of cells. The reason they ban cell phones on airplanes is because it just wreaks havoc on the cellular network (which in many places is overburdened as it is).
Why-do-I-care panders: The other day, Some Guy took his radical casemod out for a bit of 802.11 action at 36,000 feet. That's amazing, beats the onboard movie.
Let's see some power outlets...I hate how my laptop runs at 1/4 speed off the battery. Then there's long flights to Japan, and the fact that my particular wireless NIC drains my battery way quicker than I care to admit...
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
This is amazing. Think about how far technology has come, that allows you broadband internet access on an airplane 35,000 ft high, travelling between two continents over nothing but water.
:)
Holy crap.
I know the very first thing I would do, without a doubt, is fire up XMMS and listen to Digitally Imported Radio, and smile
You need wireless power.
They give you great meals (especially for airplane food), free wine with your dinner, and movies playing all the time. And that wasn't even in first class. It's so cushy, no wonder they're the first to implement that wireless internet on a passenger plane.
Repeal the DMCA!
"Tickle your ass with a feather?"
"Excuse me?"
"PARTICULARLY NASTY WEATHER! haha Akmed, I am just fucking you."
"You are not fucking me Mohammad. Damn you"
"I mean Akmed I fucking WITH you. You know. You know what I mean."
"What you mean? You fucking me now? Who fucking who? Pay your own attention."
The wireless is the satellite to the plane...inside there is one wired ethernet connection for every 1st class seat, and one for every two business/coach.
802.11g? maybe later....
Obviously, I think most of us with a reasonable schooling in software would agree that applications written in C++ are the biggest security threat for PCs today. This is why you've been seeing more and more Java based applications on the PC lately. Most of the C++ vulnerability comes from a single, well known, and often exploited bug in the Windows C++ virtual machine. This bug allows C++ programmers to access protected and private data that is SUPPOSED to be secured by the C++ virtual machine. Here's a simple example of a crack that would allow a C++ programmer to access improperly secured data:
// Forge a pointer to peek inside the class
.Net framework as a new standard and make big cash off of its widespread adoption. Another way that MS will profit from this security hole is by pushing their dreaded Palladium scheme on us. Palladium, put simply, is just a hardware solution for this exact sort of security issue. Meanwhile, we consumers sacrifice our privacy through insecure software so Microsoft, Intel, and AMD can reap big profits sometime in the future.
Let's say we have this class called PersonalFinances:
Class PersonalFinances
{
private:
char creditCardNumber[16];
};
To bypass the Windows C++ security manager, all we need to do is write some code like this:
Main( )
{
Finances finances;
char *cardno = (char*)
printf("Stolen credit card number = %s\n", cardno);
}
Simple as that... we have stolen "secure" data. Curiously enough, this code sample came from O'Reilly's "Learning Java" book. This book was first printed in 2000, which means that this critical security bug has been known for over 3 years! I find it quite unbelievable that this lack of response (from Microsoft) is tolerated in the software community. Why haven't they responded? Simple... MONEY. Rather than maintain old code, Microsoft would rather push their new
If you are fed up with these monopolistic profit schemes, this is what you do. Start or support an open source Windows C++ virtual machine project. A port from the Linux VM should be possible.
A second parallel approach should be to put political pressure on Microsoft to fix this issue. I've started this petition to get things started. Please sign and forward the link to everyone!
We DEMAND better protection of our privacy!!!
color flashing, thunder crashing, dynamite machines.
Great... I wonder if I can use Voice over IP! Seems like the connection is fast enough on the download side at least.. Although I would hate to see 60 people trying to make a phone call on that 128K uplink.
This can't be the same Lufthansa I flew from Paris to Frankfurt, and then Frankfurt to Atlanta! Those planes throughly SUCKED! They didn't have TV or in flight movies of any kind. Only 1 sky phone per row. I was spoiled on British Airways to London (Video screen in every head rest, phone/remote in every arm rest, & free unlimited snacks). I can't beleive that Lufthansa, one of the crappiest airlines i've ever flown on, is going to be one of the first to offer wireless internet in flight. It just Boggles my mind.
BTW, I flew these flights in April of 1999 for reference.
To see who can get the first /. post at 10,000 feet. Although I'm sure it would be modded down to -1 troll and have a bunch of goatse links as a response.
Check out my life
That is correct! Jamie has stated that he has a way to stop crapflooding, but the hidden agenda at hand here is that he will surpress the freedoms of us trolls to post what we want here.
It doesn't matter what the content is, stopping people from posting what they want goes against freedom of speech and that is the hypocracy of Slashdot.
I encourage all of you to troll to your hearts content, as the freedoms Slashdot "bitches" about frequently are being oppressed.
I can't beleive that Lufthansa, one of the crappiest airlines i've ever flown on...
All airlines have shitty airplanes. They put the really nices ones on the high-profit routes. I've flown on Lufthansa, KLM, United Airlines, Delta, Southwest, and some others that don't come to mind immediately. They all have stellar planes like the one you flew on British Airways. Also, they all have crappier, older planes. You just got unlucky on your Lufthansa flight(s).
It seems that you don't fly much...
neurostarJoking aside, this is a good start. My question: Can the aircraft so equipped serve as relays?
Best news: "Connexion by Boeing faces competition from other companies, including Tenzing Communications Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc., which are pushing their own narrowband onboard systems. Competition sure is sweet.
Man Gets 70mpg in Homemade Car-Made from a Mainframe Computer
...Jackass to hook up to the internet on MS Flight Simulator and pretend he's flying the plane he's on...
I think this is interesting though... a weird little community in the sky... IM'ing buddies throughout the 13 hour flight... Checking current news or seeing what's going on in town... Or god forbid maybe get some work done... I also think the price is right too. What does everyone else think about $32 for a transatlantic flight? Would that make a cross country flight $15 maybe for cross country sound reasonable?
flynet by Lufthansa
According to Lufthansa, the system will be installed on all 80 intercontinental aircrafts if the test is successfull. So use it !
Does that imply they'll actually have a place for me to plugin my laptop??? With these fast processors, batteries only last a little over an hour (if even that), and on a long 6-9 hour flight, well, you get the idea...
AND, unless you're first class, there is no way they'll let you plug it in anywhere; unless you go to the rest-room and sit there for an hour to charge the damn battery.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
HEHEHE ... talk about a fast system.
Just imagine the possiblities for all the apple users.. load up ichat and look for Rendezvous contacts on the same flight! Maybe you could hook up with a female type you never would have talked to before.
magnanomous.
georgewbushisabafoon.com
(For all you German challenged people out there, it reads: 'New device found. Device: Airbus A310. Start automatic configuration?')
b.
--
"Just believe everything I tell you, and it will all be very, very simple."
... we'll get "flying warchalkers" :)
n-e
Now there will be no place where I can hide and tell my boss: "Sorry, I could not read my emails, I was on a flight".
without a 'chute. Makes me wonder just what, ummmmm, "terminal" velocity is though.
Sorry.
KFG
No no no, YOU read the article:
Cisco Systems Inc. is providing technology for the onboard 802.11b based network, which offers wireless connectivity throughout all cabins, in addition to wireline connectivity via an Ethernet connector in the passenger seats, according to a company statement.
Why not fork?
So, who is going to organize the worlds first flying WLAN party from Munich to New York and back?
Kristian
One persons pays and setups a NAT for the remainder of the plane, would that work ?
If you don't pay, can you still use the wlan to play some quake with other passengers ?
Jan
Popup ads aimed at airborne websurfers:
<flashing> Your aircraft may not be optimized!!!!
[ OK ]
Seduce flight attendants FAST!!
[ OK ]
Your might be in danger from TERRORISTS! Find out who is on your plane.
<link>Consumer/Credit reports
Given phone calls on planes are horrendously expensive (I think it was $US1 - $US2/minute last I checked), and the prices for this are (as another poster quoted) approx. $US35/flight, seems like a good use of VOIP: make a phone call from your PC.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
A user of the service on the flight was posting to the Professional Pilot Rumour Network PPRUNE www.pprune.com , the thread is here.
Noone else has seemed to say this yet, and you all knew it was coming
First war dialing
then war driving
now war flying!
I think wired would be more practical, but wireless does have it's advantages, I just hate the damned dongles (drools @ powerbook). How do they control who can use it? Do they give out a different WEP key or whatever?
Since they have been releasing all this hype about how wireless is a security threat as a terrorist tool, now they are putting it on aircraft. Well,if they are using wireless to hide their identity, at least we have the subjects narrowed down to being on a particular aircraft. They'll only have to weed through a couple hundred passangers to find the culprets.
Mine means my own, but how can this be if I owe for it?
Here's the text from the Boeing news release:
No one got beat up more often than the mimes of the old west!
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
802.11g? maybe later....
Of course, had you read the entire article, you would have noticed this:
It's not 802.11g, but it's still a WLAN.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
if I don't have one of those proprietary power cables adapter thingies!
All your base are belong to us!
This Lufthansa flight and the British Airways one that starts between JFK and LHR on Saturday use the Boeing. This technology is very different than the one being touted by Airbus. For one, the Connextion is up and running.
Airbus tapped Tenzing of Seattle to create a system which periodically connects to the net to upload/download email update a few webpages stored on a server aboard the aircraft. That's right, it's not live access to the net. Connection speeds for the Tenzing solution are slower than most dialup connections.
So whats the difference? I'm guessing Tenzing is using the same technology as airphones, while Boeing is probably using a newer satellite technology (they have a satellite division)
Seems like what people will use the system for would be partially influenced by how the various providers (assuming this catches on with other airlines) bill the access... whether it's a lump sum charge per flight for unlimited access or they follow the GPRS model of charging $x.xx per MB.
Ok
How long before someone brings a laptop loaded with an IRC server on it? After all they say that they are using 802.11b technology to provide the service in the cabin. Now what's from people with those cards not just firing them up in 'ad-hoc' mode and running a private network with IRC or UT2003 server? That could make a plane ride really interesting.. you can talk about who's sitting next to you (and how bad they smell) or about that cute girl that's 5 rows up. Planes are so anti social, this could make a trip interesting.
Then again someone with some talent could then either spoof or steal service. Who's to going to charge you with anything, it's out of all gov't juristictions as someone claimed (akin to international waters). Then again, someone with two wireless devices can collect $10 from a few people then proxy the service out of the one laptop.. ahhh.. bandwidth sharing..
just thoughs.
the service will cost between 30 (US$32) and 35 per flight
So how do I get on the network without paying?
(Yeah, I know immoral, possibly illegal, but a cool project...)
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
So they're using geostationary satellites - which means that minimum latency will be at least (2*36000 km) / 3000000 km/s = 240 ms plus whatever amount of the latency caused by the actual internet service provider.
I'd guess that you'd be lucky to see overall latency below 500 ms - and that with a high packet loss. Sure, it's probably ok if you're just browsing web-pages or sending huge chunks of spam, but good luck trying to use anything requiring a more quicker response time (like online gaming - Citrix just might work for all of you type A's).
I have to say that sounds a bit high. I'd be delighted to pay $10, willing to pay $20, but $30 seems like it's overreaching just a tad - especially if I don't have a direct flight and would have to pay $30/leg! Yikes!
D
Anytime you have a bunch people pluggin in ethernet your going to have some user issues. Does this mean that airline attendents will be cross trained in IT support?
But who's Luca Scheuring? (See "Luca scheuring airlines" on the window shade).
D
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
Marketplace had a cool report on this yesterday afternoon that the reporter recorded as an MP3 file from the flight.
In the report he indicated that on first try his laptop didn't connect, but that Lufthansa had three connection specialists on the plane and were able to get him running within 5 minutes. Apparently the plane was full on reporters and other testing it out, so the connection was a little slower than is usually expected.
The thing that hit me was that they would charge up to $30 extra to use this feature. That might not be a big deal to business passengers, but I'm not sure the average person will appreciate that extra fee on their ticket.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
I used to think the same as the original poster - that RF was a non issue, and simply allowed the aircarriers to charge more for services such as airFone etc...
Now that I've spent the time and energy getting my private pilot certificate PP-ASEL (FAA standard etc...) I can tell you that the reason for not allowing 'personal electronics' on commercial aircraft during takeoff and landing is a very sound one.
Commercial flights are always on IFR flight plans. This means Instrument Flight Rules. Thie does Not mean that the flight is being conducted in clouds or other IMC, but that the controllers can expect the flight to behave according to IFR rules.
Now - IFR rules are there for a reason. One - primary navigation - if you have a plane going at any altitude above 18k feet, it has to be on an IFR flight plan, and be positively controlled (Read vectored/guided) by flight control. However, the pilots are still required at all times to avoid things like: Mountains. Many Many crashes, both commercial and private, are due to CFT - Controlled Flight into Terrain. This is when a pilot for reasons of pilot-error, or instrument error, flies a perfectly good airplane and passengers into a mountain or obstruction.
Many airports in the US have large obstructions and mountains in the vicinity of their respective airports. Compasses - while very useful as a cross check, or for VFR day flying, have significant errors accross the US (many places as high as 15 degrees - such as the SF Bay area) - and hence are not always the primary tool - particularly when they show the aircraft heading and not course (with a crosswind, the aircraft is headed somewhat sideways with respect to it's ground course). They use the radio nav aids such as VORs, NDBs, VORTACs, etc...
. There are also 'hidden' hazards such as military training routes that cover much of Northern California and Nevada - where if you veer off course by even a few miles, you could be subject to military intercept procedures, or worse: a midair with a heavy and well-build military aircraft (which often slice thru civilian aircraft). To Sum Up: Unless you want your commercial flight to end up in a mountain, I suggest people don't play with this or treat it litely.
Interference with radio navigation signals is soo easy, that in a recent safety seminar held in Oakland - a flyer was presented that emphasized IFR hold zones - zones simply to keep waiting aircraft an additional distance from the runway and landing guidance ILS/other radio services.
I just flew London to Chicago and back for a two week holiday - they have those airphones on the 767. The in flight magazine quoted the rate as $10/min.
The word "downloading" takes on a whole different meaning when you're 6 miles up in the air...
> > Other than the fact Linux has a cool name, could someone explain why I
> > should use Linux over BSD?
>
> No. That's it. The cool name, that is. We worked very hard on
> creating a name that would appeal to the majority of people, and it
> certainly paid off: thousands of people are using linux just to be able
> to say "OS/2? Hah. I've got Linux. What a cool name". 386BSD made the
> mistake of putting a lot of numbers and weird abbreviations into the
> name, and is scaring away a lot of people just because it sounds too
> technical.
-- Linus Torvalds' follow-up to a question about Linux
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