Boeing Drops Wireless System For 787

K7DAN writes "It appears that state-of-the-art connectivity in Boeing's newest aircraft means a wired, not a wireless network. The Seattle Times reports that Boeing has abandoned plans to bring entertainment and information to passengers through a wireless system in its 787 Dreamliner due to possible production delays and potential conflicts with other radio services around the world. A side benefit is an actual reduction in weight using the wired system. Amazingly, the LAN cables needed to connect every seat in the aircraft weigh 150 lbs less than all the wireless antennae, access points, and thickened ceiling panels required to accommodate a wireless network (the design called for an access point above each row)." The article concludes: "The net impact, [a Boeing spokesman] said, is less technical risk, some weight saved, the system's flexibility and quality preserved plus 'a bit of schedule relief.'"

Comments

No surprise

[BadERA]

Considering every commercial airline's effort to offer WiFi to date has been scrapped either before takeoff (pun intended), or not long after launch. The costs are simply not supported by the revenue, simple as that. Other considerations like weight and maintenance complexity are secondary.

Not surprising.

[adamstew]

They would need to have cables running throughout the plane anyway to all the wireless antenna. Just put a hub in place of an antenna and run a few more cables to the seats. With all the shielding and such that a plane has, you'd probably need a boatload of antennas...Then you have to worry about extra shielding for all the onboard components, etc.

Besides, all this means is that the business traveler will have to carry around a 2 ft CAT 5 cable...big deal. I bet some creative laptop maker comes up with one of those airline power adapters that also integrates a CAT 5 cable in to it. Just plug the one end in to the back of your laptop, and plug in the power and network cables in to the appropriate ports on the other end.

I can see...

[otacon]

how this makes sense for laptops as it shouldn't matter laptops generally have both, and there is no need to be mobile on a plane, but what about WiFi PDA's and the upcoming cell phones with wifi capabilities, both of those could be pretty important to an exec who needs to remain connected.

Re:Weight saved?

[Dunbal]

How important is saving 150 pounds on a plane that weighs between 360k and 540k pounds on takeoff?

      It may seem small in comparison, but it's 150lbs less you have to pay fuel for, for the entire service life of the plane. While this probably wouldn't be a huge chunk of profits gone, why waste money? After a while the fuel needed to ship that extra 150lbs certainly adds up. I wouldn't want to pay for it!

Re:access point above every row?

[Tristandh]

Quick, call Boeing! They probably didn't even consider that! They'll love to hear the your expert opinion! Or: Ask yourself who'll know best. You or them.

What about the connectors?

[Nkwe]

The challenge I see with wired Ethernet is the connectors. Is a standard cat 5 jack designed for multiple plug insertions and removals every day? How often would the jacks need to be replaced and can this be done easily?

Re:access point above every row?

[MaestroRC]

Obviously you don't know much about how wireless works. See, while 3 AP's may provide the proper *coverage* (ie: you can get a signal anywhere in the plane), it can't provide the *bandwidth*. Assuming they're using this for more than just some person's want to get online from the air, such as for in-flight entertainment (think screens at each seat) and possibly a VoIP phone-type setup to consolidate cabling (no seperate phone/video cables for each seat), it likely will use quite a bit of bandwidth. If each row has some 7-8+ seats (twin aisle configuration, likely it's 2/3/2 or 3/3/3), and designing for peak capacity (i'm sorry you can't watch your in-flight movie because your rowmates are all watching it already and those guys are online and that guy is on the phone), it's going to take a lot of bandwidth. Even at 802.11g/a speeds, you're talking at most 108Mbps (twin radio configuration) split across 7-8 people. Figure watching a movie uses 3-10Mbps, that's at nearly peak capacity right there, best case scenario.

Satalite has massive bandwidth.

[raehl]

But also has massive latency.

Worst case, you can easily throttle bandwidth to a particular row or seat to keep one user from sucking up too much.

What will be interesting is if first class passengers get more bandwidth than cattle class.

Re:Satalite has massive bandwidth.

[drinkypoo]

All you have to do is use traffic shaping and specify that each person gets, minimum, their share of the connection. When they aren't, the traffic will be available to others. When they are, their traffic will be sent. All you need do is put the traffic in a separate bucket for each host, and then service each bucket with a packet in it once per sweep. Sounds like it should be a pretty simple connection to me. You could then put the first class passengers into a bucket and everyone else into another, and service the first class bucket twice as often, and implement the concept in your last sentence.