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Wi-Fi by Rail, Bus or Boat
securitas writes "The New York Times' Glenn Fleishman writes about the growth of 802.11x WiFi wireless Internet access on commuter rail, bus and ferry boat now that it's commonly available in restaurants and coffee shops. The article also has an illustration by Al Granberg of some of the techniques used to achieve ubiquitous WiFi in motion."
It's only a natural extension of the hotspots popping up everywhere. Just a matter of time until anywhere with cell phone service will have net service... with the right provider.
I'll never make my computer vulnerable for attacks by anyone who just happens to drive by with a laptop and a wireless.
I'm much more interested in 10Gbit ethernet over copper.
The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
And posting as AC just for the anti-whores:
Destination Wi-Fi, by Rail, Bus or Boat
By GLENN FLEISHMAN
Published: July 8, 2004
BOARD THE KLICKITAT,
on the Admiralty Inlet, Wash.
THE Klickitat, a 1927 steel ferry boat plying waters between a 19th-century port and an island harbor, may seem a quaint way to travel - and an unlikely place to get work done. But it may be headed for a new frontier in Internet access for commuters.
The ship is the test bed for a plan to offer high-speed wireless Internet access on most Washington State ferry runs, serving tens of thousands of regular commuters.
Through a federal grant, the ferry system will roll out an expanded test of the Internet service this summer and fall on seven ships serving the three busiest runs, covering 50 percent of the system's ridership, or about 12 million passenger trips a year. When the first of those routes joins the trial, the effort will become the largest commuter Internet experiment ever.
As such experiments gather momentum, ready access to e-mail and the Web may become increasingly common on the way to and from the office.
In the United States, nearly six million people commute daily by public transportation, according to the Department of Transportation. Few operators offer wireless Internet access in their stations and terminals - much less on board - even though it is now routinely found in many airports, hotels and coffee shops. But trials and planning are under way in several countries to determine the technical feasibility of offering mobile Internet access, and whether commuters will ultimately pay for the privilege.
Providing Internet access on vessels and vehicles is not as simple as adding it to a fixed venue, like a restaurant or even a convention center. Boats, buses and trains have metal skins or hulls that block wireless signals. They move, often at average speeds of 20 to 100 miles per hour, requiring a system that can rapidly and seamlessly hand off a signal. And they could have large numbers of simultaneous users, many of whom are already working on laptops during the voyage.
Jim Long, director of information technology for the Washington State ferry system, said that boats on the Bainbridge Island-to-Seattle run carry 2,600 passengers during each rush-hour trip. Based on his observation of commuter work habits, he said, "you could have upwards of 300 to 400 at any one time trying to access the Internet - those are concurrent users."
Airlines, too, are looking at making Wi-Fi connections available to passengers, and face some of the same challenges. Two competing services, Connexion by Boeing and Tenzing, provide Internet access (at $10 to $30 per flight) by connecting to satellites relaying service from the ground. But the commuter projects offer the potential to become part of a daily routine, and perhaps an incentive for some people to abandon commuting by car.
The companies working on commuter service have taken various approaches: relying on a combination of cellular towers and satellite data links, erecting dedicated antennas in a line of sight or at points along the route, or limiting service just to terminals or stations on either end of a run.
The Washington State ferry test is one of several in the United States and abroad. Internet access on rail was inaugurated early last year on a route between Sweden and Denmark, and regular service is beginning on certain train lines in Britain, including the Great North Eastern Railway linking London with much of England and Scotland (free for first-class passengers, about $9 an hour for others). There are also plans to test an Internet service for municipal bus riders in Paris.
A Canadian company, PointShot Wireless, is providing Internet service for trials on two rail lines in Northern California and another in Canada. So far, the PointShot tests, like the Washington State ferry project, are free - beyond the user's investment of $50 or so to equip a laptop with a W
I wonder what the social implications of the growth of WIFI are. Coffee shops and cafes and trains used to be a place where people would sometimes sit alone, be bored, and sometimes start talking and meeting people. Now with WIFI, you'll be able to work whereever you go, could this have any sociological effect?
Isn't this the very same article The Register viciously assaults for being biased? Intriguing...
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!
Hopefully widespread adoption of WiFi services fuels the market for wireless network security. I know somebody who can't use his WAP because his neighbors keep hacking his encryption.
newb question: is wifi good enough to play games on? With the new generation of high power laptops, pretty soon we could be having lan parties anywhere we go.
I know that the Japanese national railroad was working with Cisco to do WiFi a couple years ago. It was a real engineering challenge because the access points had to do handoff and authentication quickly enough to keep the trains computers on the network (this was initially for secure communications with computer systems on the train, commuter access was to come later). When your cells are only a couple hundred meters across and the train is moving at 300+ kmph.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I'm not a networking expert either, but to the best of my knowledge this is usually done with IP tunnelling. You don't have to have any coordination between AP's - each of them can have its own subnet or something. To connect, you log in and set up a tunnel to the gateway, which gives you another IP address with Internet access. When you switch cells, your actual wireless interface gets a new IP address, your tunnel re-authenticates and you're back online with maybe a few dropped packets, but no interrupted connections.
Karma: Segmentation fault (tried to dereference a null post)
I work for a relatively small public transit company in So Cal. All of our busses are already 802.11b enabled. As soon as they pull into the yard, they connect to an FTP server, and send reports containing the fare information, passenger data, and other things. It also updates the automated stop announcements, and anything else that we need to update.
As of now, the 802.11b isn't accessible to the public, but we're looking into making it available.
Like I wouldn't just read slashdot during my whole commute anyway, who am I kidding?
While I think Wi-Fi is really exciting - I just got an iBook with an airport extreme card - this is getting to be a bit much. People who carry laptops with them to/from work while commuting are probably at work on the computer all day. Now they're going to travel and use the internet? And then get home to their broadband connection and check their email?
Internet connectivity blanketed everywhere would be amazing. The convenience is great, but we need downtime and to interact with other people. If you're looking to occupy yourself on the train say hi to the person next to you. A person is an incredible thing - they probably have all sorts of stories that you can hear from no one else.
Maybe no one cares about that. But there are so many other issues. Imagine the security problems that come out of this. And what kind of costs is going to incur on the user? Advertising? By the minute? And trouble from illegal activity happening through these AP? It'd be great if it works out, but I think this is some time away.
-- Why keep us waiting? We are not made of time.
The UK has numerous train-borne WiFi servuices, which work through a combination of satellite uplink and GPRS connections through tunnels.
The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
Here in the UK we have Wi-Fi deployment now operating on the East Coast rail line. Rather than caching data in tunnels, the train switches to GPRS and is supposed to maintain its connection to the net using the mobile phone networks which have had the foresight to start providing coverage through tunnels on main railway lines.
People who say things like that baffle me. It's like the people who won't carry a cell phone because they don't want to be bothered-- while simultaneously failing to realize that you aren't compelled to answer it, or even to have it turned on.
WiFi everywhere is handy. But just because I can get signal everywhere doesn't mean I'm somehow compelled to work. Hell, you don't even have to be working when you USE the WiFi. I prefer to waste a bunch of time on slashdot.
I thought cell phones are banned on flights fearing they might intervene with the flight-to-groundstation signalling
Wouldn't such problems exist with wifi?
No, you see all of that money being siphoned out of the traveler's pocket forms a magic faraday cage so that their paid-for radio waves don't cause interference.
Them that pays, gets.
I heard (from a pilot, but it was 1995 when he told me this) that you can't use cell phones because you would be in range of a number of cell towers at the same time, which would mess up either your cell phone or the towers. My guess is that problem has been solved by now.
I also remember at the time having a cell phone sitting next to a pair of powered speakers. A 1/2 second before the phone would ring, the speakers would shut off. I'm not sure what kind of EM emission would cause it, but I don't think I'd want that happening in a plane. Again, I think newer cell phones aren't quite as bad, but Mythbusters did have an episode where they measured the EM of a cell phone before/during a call and it was higher just before the phone rang.
My favorite part of the article:
In the United States, nearly six million people commute daily by public transportation, according to the Department of Transportation.
With an estimated population of 293,027,571 in July 2004 (from the cia world factbook)that means around 98% of the united states doesn't use public transportation.
Anyone else have an estimate for some place in Europe? Denmark maybe?
From the diagram, it would seem the commuter train has in-car WiFi repeaters connected to a larger network wirelessly, which breaks in tunnels. The train is always in contact with a pair of "wires" - i.e. the rails - which on many train systems already carry data (that is, information for in-cab signaling systms). Is there a technical limitation which keeps the rails from being a suitable medium for high-speed data access suitable to feed to the in-car access point? Tunnels wouldn't interrupt the service.
Put a Nokia TDMA phone on your CRT monitor and call the number. You'll see the screen vibrate and distort just before it starts to ring. There's definitely some interference there.
sulli
RTFJ.
Lufthansa also offers wireless access on some of their flights. I flew from Munich to Los Angeles two weeks ago and used it. They have a free portal you can use or complete Internet access for $30 (which was too much for me to pay).
Honk if you're horny.
who takes the train any more, it would be great for subways, but it probably will not work under ground.
Yeah, but it you tried it on the NY subway you would probably get mugged and your laptop stolen.
Airports, alot of them are now providing net access in the terminal, notable ones I can think of off hand:
- Pierre Elliot Trudeau (formally Dorval) in Montreal
- Dulles in Washington DC (mind you it seems to be iffy in parts of the airport)
Problem though I have found with alot of these connections is that many seem to be very picky about the cards you use to connect up to them. While at home I can easily run a Dlink Card and Linksys Router; but I have found that at the airports my connection drops alot more it might be the the odd router's they (might be) using...
As for other connection points I havn't had as much troubles myself but then again I could just be lucky.
When I'm not working, I spend a lot of time on the internet, playing. Yes, believe it or not, the internet can be used for entertainment purposes. Some may even call slashdot entertaining.
I think of wifi+laptop in a cafe (or similar location) as a variation of sitting there with a book. Sometimes, you want to get out of the house, sip/munch on something, and amuse yourself. Books do this well, as can laptops.
"Righteous speed demon and trust fund party darling of justice"
Yay! Maybe these telecommunications/rail synergies will spur a resurgence of rail transport in the US. As measered in tons per mile per dollar, rail travel is by far the most efficient form of transport. Of course, there are other perfectly legitimate concerns such as connectivity (trains don't go everywhere that cars do), convenience (you have to synchronize your schedule to the train), and speed (jet planes are faster) which have made rail travel a modern loser in the United States. Well those things, and also brutal treatment by government.
But I am wondering if telecommunications can help to mitigate some of the more significant shortcommings of rail. For one thing, if you can make productive use of your time on the train, by telecommuting while you are commuting, that should make a big difference in deciding whether to drive or train. Secondly, back in the old days, if you did not live in a city, then your fancy store bought goods were purchased mail-order from the Sears catalog and shipped to you rail freight. People prefer to see goods for themselves, which might be why shopping malls and Wal-Marts litter the countryside now. However, the trend seems to be moving back to remote purchasing because you can now see the goods over the web. So does this mean that we can move back rail freight also, at least for shipment between regional hubs, if not door-to-door?
Another thing is, with automated inventory, it should be possible to track rail packages in transit to within a few meters. So no "it's on a train somewhere" answers when you ask about your package. If the packaging contains RFID tags, and the train has internet access and GPS, then it should be a matter of software to glue that all together and give me live reports over the web of where my package is. Its true that this is not the same thing as speedy transport, but it is predicatability. Speed and predictability both help solve the same problem, which is planning. You can achieve just-in-time delivery by fast transport, but in some cases you could use slower transport and earlier ordering if you also have predictable delivery.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
DailyWireless reviews the technology of WiFi Trains:
The small Possio AB, a Linux-based access point, can provide local WiFi and connect to the backbone using 3G (EV-DO) mobile backbones for a couple hundred dollars.
Perhaps a load-balancing router would help. The Xincom - XC-DPG402 ($150) a 4-Port 10/100Mbps Twin WAN Router can combine two different backbones into one. P
Bob Cringeley uses the Xincom box. It works with his Vonage (VoIP) adapters, too. That's how WiFi on Trains provide constant connectivity.
How about "unwiring" your transit agency.
Additional DailyWireless.org articles include and WiFi on Mass Transit as well as stories on Wireless Ferries, Wi-Fi Ferry Testing, WiFi on Canadian Trains, Limousine Wi-Fi, Highspeed Mobile Roaming, Internet Rickshaw and Mobile Access Points.
I ran kismet on a recent train journey and spotted the obvious Ap's called "train" on channels 1 and 6. A few passengers had left their centrino's on adhoc mode and I also picked up quite a few AP's as the train slowed for stations.
The interesting reason for this post is that they have handheld machines with WiFi to sell tickets and to take payment the till at the bar... for credit card authorisation.... arg.
I travel regularly on the train and the internet access doesn't always work. The train staff don't have a clue about the technology or how to make it work. The Ap's are poorly configured and I guess are hard to manage because they are always on the move!
rd