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Virgin American In-Flight Internet Review, From In-Flight
wintersynth writes "I've posted a review of Virgin America's in-flight internet provided by Gogo. Here's the scoop: Avg. .90 megabits/sec DL, .283 megabits/sec UL, ping: 130.6 msecs, $12.95 for the duration of the flight. Verdict: AWESOME. In fact, I'm posting this from 36,000 feet right now. Skype did not work for voice, even though I'm pretty sure those stats are over the minimums. Any ideas from the slashdotters on what might be going on?"
You could be experiencing a difference of bandwidth versus latency. Although the two are related, you could be suffering high latency with Skype's servers. You might try pinging those servers compared to pinging www.google.com. If you are experiencing high latency, Skype uses UDP rather than TCP (like normal web traffic). If I remember correctly, UDP packets are many small packets which may perform badly over connections of very high latency. Your bandwidth readings on a TCP sight might look just large enough to use Skype but since it's a UDP service it could be unusable.
Another possibility is that Gogo is demoting UDP traffic in some sort of QoS scheme to ensure that things like e-mail and regular HTTP traffic aren't slow or interrupted because 4 people are using Skype.
My work here is dung.
Probably blocked everything VoIP related to force airphones on you.
I tried dialing the Skype test call, but I only caught every other word. So much for my dreams of in-flight video conferencing while yelling over the din of jet engines.
Oh god, I hope you, nor anyone else, ever gets this to work.
Yes,
You need to watch this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jETv3NURwLc
They might have a way to block Skype, or it could just be a large amount of jitter from you to the Skype gateway you were trying to reach.
Everything is awesome and no one is happy!
---don't make me break out my red pen.
We don't want to hear you talking on the phone while flying, and neither does Virgin.
Logically, they likely blocked it in order to preserve the sanity of other passengers.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
Maybe I'm just insufficiently wealthy, or insufficiently internet addicted; but is 13 dollars for what is essentially five hours of DSL actually exciting?
A traceroute to (anything) would have been very interesting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jETv3NURwLc
---don't make me break out my red pen.
Probably blocked everything VoIP related to force airphones on you.
From the article:
I'm trying to get some critical production tasks done, and the rep I work with emailed me to call her. Thinking I was so tricky and cool, I fired up Skype and dialed out. Massive failure. For some reason the sound is horrendously choppy and thin sounding. It was completely unusable. I didn't get a chance to speak and see how I sounded on the other end. I tried dialing the Skype test call, but I only caught every other word.
Sounds like he could connect, it was just choppy.
My work here is dung.
Joining American Airlines, Virgin America has demoed its in-flight Gogo broadband service. Official policy for Virgin Airlines is to block VoIP parts, but, rather than just let sleeping dogs lie, it seems to be a rite of passage for tech media wonks to demo work-around as they write about their experiences. From: http://www.fiercevoip.com/story/no-voip-blocking-virgin-america-beta-voip-holes-aa/2008-11-23
Let me be the first to welcome you to the Mile High Virgin Club.
Ezekiel 23:20
Any ideas from the slashdotters on what might be going on?
No. Is there anything else I can help you with?
Edith Keeler Must Die
Any ideas from the slashdotters on what might be going on?
It's the "block the VOIP" feature which tested much more positively than "kill the annoying guy on the phone" with focus groups.
. . . you at least get something for the extra money.
As opposed to those other airline surcharges, like: extra baggage charge, security charge, too little baggage charge, late charge, early charge, right on time charge, homeland security charge, screaming kid charge, lack of screaming kid charge . . .
"Hello, and welcome to our flight. In order to ensure Homeland Security, alcoholic beverages will now cost $20 each. And non-alcoholic beverages will not be served."
"Our toilets are fitted with lapping sensors, so don't even dream of doing the family dog thing."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
seriously, no WoW raid, no TF2 performance stats?
I tried this service several weeks ago between LA and NYC. While I didn't try Skype, I did RDP back to my computer back at my office through a VPN. Surprisingly, it worked quite well. There was also a novel trill in people asking where you were, and giving them a location 30,000 ft above some midwest state. Having outlets underneath the seat was nice too. Those perks alone are *almost* enough for me to dump JetBlue as my priamry airline of choice and fly Virgin America. But sadly, their routes and time schedules aren't quite there for me yet. Maybe someday soon...
Shameless plug for my photos on Flickr
You might want to try to vpn into work or home, then try to use Skype. Chances are they filtering what ports are allowed, so going through a crypto tunnel will remove this ability.
When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail
Any of you fellow nerds will make your laptop adhoc/an access point to share the connection if you end up buying service.
:D
Or, better yet, offer a discounted rate for the above and make some or more of your money back
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
you couldn't use skype because the connection was likely via satellite and that usually means you get to download really big packets really fast, but a lot of small packets could be highly inefficient I THINK
Skype did not work for voice, even though I'm pretty sure those stats are over the minimums.
...you can send wave file samples and receive them as "packets" using the record button. Start with this 2 way radio approach to talking and see where you can go from there.
If there is a god in the sky, voip will stay blocked.
I can't imagine sitting around someone who is talking incessantly on a phone on an airplane.
I don't care to listen to my own family members talk on a telephone for any length of time.
Normally I ascribe all life to intelligent design, but in your case I'll make an exception.
Depends on the reason you're flying.
Business travel is sometimes "fire fighting". There is a big problem, so the company flies in an expert to fix it (or at least diagnose and convince the customer a fix is forthcoming).
In this situation, being able to work on the problem remotely while in the air is a good thing.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
Virgin American In-Flight Internet Review, From In-Flight
Which would be far better if the blog in which this was written was called "In-Flight". And if this person was on the run from the law. Then we'd have "Virgin American In-Flight Internet Review, From In-Flight, On In-Flight, In-Flight".
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
Not to be an asshole, but why has the above been modded "informative"?
All voice traffic is UDP. TCP wouldn't make any sense for streaming. Skype uses separate flows for chat, voice, and control. UDP is perfect for connections with very high latency because it can fill the pipe. Try using a straight TCP flow on a 2Mbps satellite connection. Good luck if you can use more than 800Kbps. ACKs will kill you.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
It's the "block the VOIP" feature which tested much more positively than "kill the annoying guy on the phone" with focus groups.
Odd, I would have expected the latter to be much more entertaining. Certainly more so than the movie.
I was an early adopter of WAN wireless internet in my area. While reasonable download speeds *could* be achieved on average the latency was terrible. Essentially the latency of data traversing the cellphone networks with some proprietary transmission protocol was unavoidable, since these networks were never designed for Teh Internets. Indeed you don't really notice 200-300ms of unstable latency when you're on a mobile call, but you do when your trying to shunt data over it the same network. All up, I had a 5mbps connection where a minimum latency floor of 300-350ms to local servers was the norm. These days with new GPRS through to HSDPA or whatever, things are a bit better.
The same with something in flight internet.
I would have been more interested in your pings to Google.com I bet they would have been rubbish.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Southwest is testing Wi-Fi on four of its planes now. I was on one on a flight from Las Vegas to Baltimore. They sent me an email the day before telling me that the plane would have wi-fi and that it would be free during this test period.
The speed was fantastic, but I didn't benchmark it. However, I was able to do a video iChat with my wife at home. Didn't try to do any audio, just video.
The big drawback about Southwest is that their planes have no power outlets. Not sure if they're going to add them. But they're aware of the issue.
Skype and video games will probably never work because of the huge latency of satellite communications. Pretty much anything that is real time is going to be tough over a consumer grade satellite connection. I mean I play video games over the internet with my tethered cellphone and that is pushing it and the latency of cellular connections is lower by orders of magnitude then satellite connections.
But having any internet connection, especially one with decent bandwidth, is a god send to any buisness traveler or slashdot reader =].
Besides I will start taking trains if they allow skype on the plane. I mean how long before you have 50 people talking while your trying to sleep.
I used Connexion by Boeing over the Atlantic on SAS about 5 years ago or so. The speeds were good considering I was 36,000 feet above the water somewhere between Iceland and Greenland. The prices were similar then, I think. I used it for a few hours just browsing and chatting and didn't run into any problems. I would pay for it again, but only on long haul flights.
Connexion shut down due to financial feasibilty, is this the same satellite network but with new owners?
"Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherfscking skypes on this motherfscking plane!"
but seriously: I've done some pretty serious coding and work with VoIP using several codecs and most are very bad at dealing with high latency connections -- variable latency is even worse. This has been pointed out several times in here already.
The pipe is big enough, but it's too long. {Insert your own joke here}
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
i hope they put a "no laptop" sign on the lavatory doors or at least add a section in the safety video before take off about eyes falling out or hair growing on your hands
Skype worked for me over hughesnet from the middle of missouri. That network has serious latency issues.
Slowly waving my hand - "This is not the sig you are looking for."
obviously no phones allowed during flights.
duh.
Asterisk 1.4+ has a jitter buffer for at least IAX and SIP which helps to work around jitter in most cases. Given that they know what they're doing, I assume Skype does too.
Jitter is (relatively) okay, it's packet loss that VoIP is particularly sensitive to. Packet loss at levels that will only mildly inconvenience most other traffic will screw up VoIP quite badly... there's no mention of packet loss in the article that I see, but I suspect that's what's causing the poor quality.
I recently had the chance to use wireless on a delta flight, and it was $9.99 for the duration of the flight. I didn't use it because the flight was just one hour, but on my connecting flight to France there was no internet. I could have used it on that flight as it took almost 11 hours.
Having internet access might be a great way to increase security aboard a plane.
"Avg. .90 megabits/sec DL, .283 megabits/sec UL"
You mean 0.9 mbps DL, and 0.283 mbps UL ?
Is it standard practice in English to drop the leading zero ? or is this a marketing trick to mislead readers ?
Why electronics are banned on planes:
Unlike the conspiracy theory that "they want you to pay for Airphone services", electronics are banned for two reasons:
(1) For cell phones, a cell phone in a plane is "seen" by far too many cells and generally confuses the cell network. This is the same reason that they were relatively useless for locating the missing hikers, in recent history, on Mount Hood, which has the same altitude-based issue.
(2) For all electronics, the (now very old, but not yet replaced in all US airports/aircraft) ILS/LOC systems are oversensitive to electronic interference, which is why you are required to shut portable electronics off on takeoff and landing, when an emergency might require their use(*).
[*] ILS/LOC was supposed to be replaced by MLS, but with the advent of GPS and the hopes that it could be used instead, few MLS systems were deployed in the US, and most that were have been shut down. Instead, the GPS-based WAAS is being deployed instead, which broadcasts differential corrections for the intentional GPS "wobble" that was intended to prevent GPS being used by an adversary for targeting purposes (meaning it's still usable for that, if you include WAAS). Fears about the ability of the US to "turn off" GPS signals on a theatre-basis have led to continued deployment of MLS in Europe.
See also:
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/cellonplanes.html
http://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsId=6275
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_Landing_System
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Area_Augmentation_System
-- Terry
I'm not sure why you didn't get Skype working, Skype's a little temperamental at times I guess. I had a full video link for almost an hour while flying over the Rockies, amusingly of the 8 people in first class 7 of them had Macs and we were all surfing the web at 39,000 feet. The connection was pretty much perfect, I got similar speeds too, there appeared to be no restrictions on ports so I was able to run a VPN and SSH, I could even watch BBC iPlayer films via VPN to the UK. I did try to log a few devices in at the same time and it was interesting to see that you could log in a second device with the same password but it instantly disabled the previous device. This means that you can't use your iPhone (for example) at the same time as your laptop, log back in though and it works fine. A small price to pay. I'm hooked, I'm a geek yes but this is technology, why has it taken so long to provide something so simple? Thank you Virgin. -John-
Can I get you to stop reclining into my knees?
Im 6'4, my body frame will be large no matter how skinny I am, and yes I can wear a seatbelt without an extension.
Do you think I can shrink by not eating?
I don't know if it's standard, but it's pretty common. I don't know about marketing trick. Usually context is enough to figure it out.
I mean, the difference between 0.283 and 283 is significant to make someone double take, and find that leading decimal point, I'd think.
[[Citation needed]]
In fact, the original post and the referenced article is very similar to a comment I made two months ago regarding American Airlines offering wifi. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1182095&cid=27401567
--Sam