Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Inflight Wifi Works

thepointsguy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 129 posts

Re: How Inflight Wifi Works

#81

Post by toomuchtodo »

slapshot wrote: post #52
JoshGlazebrook wrote: post #3

Does anyone have details on the ground based cell networks used for some planes? Are they partnering with a provider like Verizon Wireless to use their existing service, which I don't believe is the case unless they are aiming their antennas into the air on certain towers for them. Or do they just lease space for their own antennas on towers and aim them upwards? and then pay for bandwidth, etc?

GoGo is the big ground-based provider. GoGo uses a network of cell towers that point up rather than down. An antenna under the plane connects to towers much like civilian cellphones. [1] By contrast, Row 44 (used by Southwest and some international carriers) is a satellite-based system. An antenna on top of the plane connects to a geostationary satellite. [2] Other services do one or both of the above. [3] [1] https:…

Last I heard, GoGo (previously Aircell) used an MPLS network to shuttle traffic between a few hundred AT&T cell sites they were using for their equipment, but that was years ago.

Re: How Inflight Wifi Works

#82

Post by idlewords »

Scottopherson wrote: post #34
beachstartup wrote: post #22

does anyone know a highly reliable mobile satellite internet solution? price is less-ish of an object but i've been looking for something to take with me on extended camping trips and remote locations to do work or for emergencies (also thinking of buying property somewhere without good wired internet). haven't found much so far except for extremely expensive (5-figure) expedition type rigs.

I'm interested in this too. I could take a lot more camping trips if I could video chat w/ coworkers from remote locations.

I'm kind of glad this is a limiting factor on techies in the wilderness.

Re: How Inflight Wifi Works

#83

Post by ffwang2 »

dheera wrote: post #57

"Prior to the integration of in-flight Wi-Fi, most airline passengers passed their time at 30,000 feet completely disconnected from the world below them — but these days, that’s a highly uncommon occurrence." Am I missing something here? 99% of the flights I take don't offer Wi-Fi, and in most cases not even power outlets. And those that do have Wi-Fi seem to be charging 30% of my monthly internet bill to provide it…

Many of the domestic flights have wifi, especially if you fly JetBlue or United.

Re: How Inflight Wifi Works

#84

Post by personjerry »

serf wrote: post #61
dheera wrote: post #57

"Prior to the integration of in-flight Wi-Fi, most airline passengers passed their time at 30,000 feet completely disconnected from the world below them — but these days, that’s a highly uncommon occurrence." Am I missing something here? 99% of the flights I take don't offer Wi-Fi, and in most cases not even power outlets. And those that do have Wi-Fi seem to be charging 30% of my monthly internet bill to provide it…

You're one of the lucky ones. Almost all my flights have power outlets, which means that some stranger is going to be rooting around my ankles trying to find the damn outlet for the first 20 minutes of the voyage.

In my experience the outlets are always on the back of the seat in front of mine, that floor socket seems like a bad design in a space-cramped setting.

Re: How Inflight Wifi Works

#85

Post by Redoubts »

kozukumi wrote: post #62
colmvp wrote: post #40

Of all the things I want on a plane, WiFi ranks a lot lower than having a consistent power outlet at my seat. There's nothing worse than having Wifi but a laptop that can only last a % of the flight.

Business idea - Free WiFi on all flights as part of your ticket price! Mains power supply provided for $30/hour ;) New TSA policy: Li-ion/Li-poly/etc batteries cannot be more than 20% charged for safety.

You joke, but sometimes I wonder if the low fluid ounce limit was a conspiracy by Big Shampoo and the Toothpaste Trust.

Re: How Inflight Wifi Works

#86

Post by PhantomGremlin »

thescriptkiddie wrote: post #55
rconti wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I typically find I can get ~6 hours on most modern laptops, which means far more hours than I have the patience to stare at a computer screen for.

Last time I flew internationally, I brought a 2015 macbook pro retina with a hard drive full of videos. I only ended up getting 4 of the advertised 9 hours run time running VLC with the brightness turned all the way down. Luckily, there were power outlets hidden under the seats. I don't understand why power outlets aren't the number 1 selling point for airlines that have them.

I brought a 2015 macbook pro retina with a hard drive full of videos

Not clear which exact model you have. Some have a discrete AMD GPU which would take more power.

Also it's not clear what format your videos were in. If it's something like DVD rips, then it could have been MPEG-2. I don't think Intel GPUs have any hardware support for playing that back. Also VLC probably doesn't take advantage of any CPU support for playing back video.

You should do a little more research. Your reported performance seems disappointing. You should be able to do much better. For example the current model 13" claims:

   Up to 12 hours iTunes movie playback
Notice they don't mention VLC there. :) So you might have to transcode your video into a format that iTunes supports.

Re: How Inflight Wifi Works

#87

Post by guiambros »

rco8786 wrote: post #77
serf wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're one of the lucky ones. Almost all my flights have power outlets, which means that some stranger is going to be rooting around my ankles trying to find the damn outlet for the first 20 minutes of the voyage.

Dang, for every new convenience technology affords us there's someone to complain about it.

Indeed. It remembers me of Louis CK - everything's amazing and nobody's happy [1]

[1] https://youtu.be/uEY58fiSK8E?t=143

Re: How Inflight Wifi Works

#88

Post by rsync »

wrenky wrote: post #25
degenerate wrote: post #6

Jet Blue just rolled out free wifi to most of their US-based flights... and while it was pretty slow, I could still RDP into my work computer to answer emails and read HN. That was pretty sweet. You can pay $10 to get "gaming" speeds but I didn't test it out. I'd imagine most pings being >200ms. Has anyone tried it out?

I work for ViaSat (the satellite provider for FlyFi)! You'll never have latency fast enough for "gaming" speeds, as your signal has to travel halfway to the moon and back meaning a physical limit of at least 500ms. Not good enough for gaming, but streaming/torrents/large downloads work great.

"I work for ViaSat"

Well, well, well...

So, does viasat use different beams for the airplane links than the normal ground based, satellite consumers ?

I assume yes, since most of the beams for ground users are stupendously oversubscribed, such that you can't even open gmail or load your banks website during a lot of the business day.

Our solution for rural Internet used to be a plain old T1 from AT&T @ $450/month, and we replaced it with 12mbps viasat at $149/mo ... and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't wish we had that T1 back ...

Re: How Inflight Wifi Works

#89

Post by guiambros »

untog wrote: post #44
colmvp wrote: post #40

Of all the things I want on a plane, WiFi ranks a lot lower than having a consistent power outlet at my seat. There's nothing worse than having Wifi but a laptop that can only last a % of the flight.

I'd love to see an airline get rid of seat back TVs entirely and just provide power outlets instead. There are already systems that let you stream movies for free over in-flight wi-fi - given that most of us have a smartphone (if not a bigger screened device) the experience would probably be better. Would suck for those without smartphones, though. Maybe they could lend out crappy Android tablets to that minority of…

Some airlines call it "PDE" - Personal Device Entertainment [1]. You connect to internal wifi and can stream all the catalog of movies available aboard. I think it's a lot more convenient than those old (and usually malfunctioning) lcd screens. Even better when there's a USB port right there, so you can charge your phone while you watch it.

[1] https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/travel/inflight/ent...

Re: How Inflight Wifi Works

#90

Post by farva »

beachstartup wrote: post #22

does anyone know a highly reliable mobile satellite internet solution? price is less-ish of an object but i've been looking for something to take with me on extended camping trips and remote locations to do work or for emergencies (also thinking of buying property somewhere without good wired internet). haven't found much so far except for extremely expensive (5-figure) expedition type rigs.

It's possible (at least with the HN7000 ku-band system) to put a Hughesnet dish on a tripod and point it yourself (with the proper tools and knowledge). You'd need to get it from a dealer that allows self-installs (Hughesnet won't sell you equipment without a professional installation), such as Montana Satellite.
Post reply on HN