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The State of In-Flight Wi-Fi
CowboyRobot writes "Byte magazine gives a run-down of the current state of Internet access on airplanes. 'All of the services function in basically the same way. They provide connectivity to the public Internet via a Wi-Fi hotspot accessible from the cabin of the aircraft. This in-cabin network may also be used to provide in-flight entertainment services ranging from television network feeds to movies and canned TV shows available from an on-board media server connected to the network. In the U.S., the Internet connectivity is available when the aircraft is above 10,000 feet and is turned off during take-offs and landings. Gogo, the current market leader, provides connectivity to aircraft via a network of 250 dedicated cell towers that it has built nationwide. Fundamentally, it offers the same type of connectivity you would expect to see on a standard 3G-capable phone. The connection is limited in speed to just over 3 Mbps — and all users on the plane share this one connection.'"
That the news for me...
?its hard to tell
The connection is limited in speed to just over 3 Mbps — and all users on the plane share this one connection
Yikes.
GoGo is in the process of upgrading their networks. They are also working on switching from air-to-ground networks to satellite which will allow them to provide coverage over oceans. Newer planes are being built with WiFi in mind. Things are looking up.
Dear person who insists on trying to run Netflix watch instantly from inflight wifi,
STOPIT!
Sincerely,
Every other passenger
I wonder if some of the connection bandwidth could be used to also transmit the flight recorder's data.
Not sure, however, if it would be a good idea...
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Just auction the bandwidth on the plane
As long as the rate per minute per kbps you bid is > the available bandwidth, you get it. If somoene bids for $500/minute/1kbps and asks for all 3mbps, let them take it all!
That would be a horrendous speed - 3G speeds divided between 100-300 people in the flight will make it slow to a crawl. Gogo's solution that is. Security would be bad as well, since everybody would be on a LAN in the flight.
I am curious about one thing. Previously, cellphones and other wireless devices were required to be turned off, and the only harmless electronic devices during take-off or landing were the ones that had no connectivity. So what happened that made them allow this today?
When you have emulators?
Any kind of cross-country (or rather anywhere) flight and I break out my cheap ass laptop and open up ZSNES.
I highly doubt that any of these planes utilize QoS properly anyway. So the second anyone uploads a file or attempts to sync their e-mail, the entire connection comes to a screeching halt.
Sometimes people should just take the x hour ride as a chance to relax and catch up on your sleep/reading/video game time. Lord knows that the workaholic middle class could use it.
I fly all the time and have used the in flight wifi, its ok I suppose. But the cost is just too high. This is exactly what happened to the older in flight phone service, which never took off because who really wants to pay that much for a phone call.
The in Flight WiFi is price higher than high priced HSIA at a hotel. Who really needs to pay that much for a 2 to 4 hours of internet access that is barely able to do email or web browse. The airline that just contracts this service and offers it for free to passengers might do ok. Most people who walk into airports, starbucks or anywhere else expect a basic level of internet access for free. So the airline adds a dollar to the price of every ticket and then gives away the internet, that would make it work.
The setup of these systems is actually rather interesting from a FOSS perspective. They appear to run a redhat derivative and squid and use some interesting tricks to control access to the network. I figure the squid is probably caching locally on the plane to lower the bandwidth consumption, but haven't really invetigated too far. The network routing is more interesting: If you hard code the DNS they will tamper with the route and either null route you or redirect to their sign-up page. But there are some exceptions, such as google for example: if you force https you can access google and related results just fine, but attempting to access gmail (even via mail.google.com) will result in a timeout even over https. You can also access a few sites for free such as amazon. Since you can hard-code the related IP addresses for google or amazon, it has been theorized that you could setup a proxy via google's servers or amazon's servers and get out that way by directing all lookups to that IP address from your hosts file or equivalent. When authenticating directly they appear to use ARP records to determine who is restricted and who isn't, so arp or mac spoofing would probably allow a non-paying customer to use a paying customer's credentials (albeit at the expense of probably making both connections pretty intolerable). The routing is most likely handled within the plane after a global sign-in is performed, but I haven't confirmed this.
Get a web developer
"My access to global information networks from a pocket-sized computer while flying miles above the earth is so slow that I can only watch pornography in standard definition!"
My phone and tablet (Android) were able to get gmail and Google Maps data for free on my last round of flights a month ago. I was able to "chat by email" with my wife.
you can perhaps view one tweet per flight. sounds like the peanuts, pillow, blankets, and complimentary baggage services.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I went ahead & tried GoGo on a flight recently (about a month ago). It worked surprisingly well until I tried to use SKYPE and/or Google Hangout (videoconferencing) ... those ports are apparently blocked. No huge deal, I just wanted to be able to say that I'd done a videoconference while in flight.
All I can say is that Internet access on a plane (even with limited speed) is awesome!!!! It completely changes how I view air travel as I can still get work done.
"a network of 250 dedicated cell towers that it has built nationwide"
I worked on this project for a time, and this might be a minor point, but they do not have dedicated cell towers. Most of their antennas are on towers that are owned by third parties. It's much easier to lease space on someone else's tower than to have to deal with the politics and cost of erecting your own.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Any kind of encryption? Or would running wireshark for the flight give lots of interesting info?
Perhaps "BUSINESS people" could (do note the capital letters!):
1.) lighten up
2.) use the gift of offline time to reflect on something other than the incessant persuit of the Almighty Buck.
3.) Accept that the problems and opportunities that existed when they left the ground will still be there when they land.
4.) Review the sibling post that references Time Management issues.
"Business" certainly has significance ( I enjoy comfortable amounts of gelt as well as the next guy!) but they are not All Important!
Flame On!
The article goes into this some. It's not GoGo who's switching to direct satellite operation, but ViaSat which (as far as we know) will only be on JetBlue, some time in 2013. Ironically, what got us doing this article was when one of us was flying on Virgin and the charge was $24.95 instead of the advertised $14.95. It turned out that this was one of the planes with the upgraded GoGo hardware and Virgin was charging more for Wi-Fi on those flights. This led to an internal "WTF is going on here?" memo and this story, which we hope to keep updated.
I recently flew cross country on a business trip. I flew American Airlines and had two flights out and two flights back. I purchased the daily pass on the first flight out and it worked fine for e-mail, vpn, remote desktop, etc. Unfortunately, even though all of the flights said they were wifi enabled (and the crew mentioned the wifi availability on all four flights), the first flight was the only one during which I could see the GoGo SSID. So, I feel kind of ripped off because I purchased the daily pass assuming I could use it on both flights that day but only got to use it on the first flight. Apparently there are some service issues which mean that even though the flight says it has wifi available, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's working.