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

WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

jamesbvaughan.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

641–650 of 675 posts

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#641

Post by pmarreck »

renewiltord wrote: post #462
pmarreck wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably the least-intelligent comment on this entire page. I would literally buy downvotes to bury this obnoxious stupidity into oblivion. There's a significant contextual, moral and ethical difference between "exploring a lock" and "opening it and stealing whatever it's holding from you". Also, you're another one who apparently needs to read the domain name of this site aloud to yourself again.

> I would literally buy downvotes to bury this obnoxious stupidity into oblivion. How much will you pay me to delete it? I can send you an Ethereum address.

/eye roll emoji

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#642

Post by ComputerGuru »

foxhill wrote: post #636
ComputerGuru wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you can take risks like that, but I certainly can’t. I don’t think anyone with my name or skin color would be given the benefit of the doubt for even a moment.

let me guess, you experience “random selection” events more than the expected amount? apologies for joking. it must suck.

Oh yes. Reminds me of the XKCD rand() comic!

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#643

Post by xcrunner529 »

nerdbert wrote: post #620
chankstein38 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this same reason you used to be able to send messages via platforms like whatsapp without internet as well! I don't remember the airline I just remember I hadn't paid for internet but I could message and do a few other things but I couldn't browse the internet.

KLM and United for sure have free in-flight messaging (at least as of a few days ago, the last time I used them). It's interesting what does and doesn't go through. e.g. Facebook notifications update, but not the content. I guess that's because they use the same channel as FB Messenger.

At least for iOS iMessage uses the same push notification endpoint so really you get iMessage plus any push notifications.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#645

Post by V99 »

lom wrote: post #515
pklausler wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stupid question: how do civilian GPS units know that they're above 60,000' or faster than 1000 knots without, um, working?

I’ve managed to get a GPS lock while flying, it just takes a few minutes to find one. Was it misreporting my position? because it usually matched up with what I saw outside of the window

Civilian planes do not go 1000kts or up to 60,000'. Your phone GPS works fine in a plane as long as it can see enough satellites (pick a window seat).

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#646

Post by willhackett »

I remember doing something similar on a flight until a flight attendant, very confused, asked me how I had all of the graphs from the flight deck on my laptop.

Was a funny conversation, especially giving Panasonic (who made the inflight flight tracker) exposes way more data on their API than I could get in the airline’s provided view.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#647

Post by 867-5309 »

Fatnino wrote: post #588
withinboredom wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its wifi. You both just pick up the same frame when it is broadcast, then it sees two stations (a level below IP) with the same MAC. Most routers just don't care about that. (it's technically a valid edge case that two stations have the same mac address. It should be vanishingly rare in the wild ... but this is a practical example of why it isn't).

"vanishingly rare" I once bought a cheap Bluetooth dongle from China. Its MAC address was 11:11:11:11:11:11 Obviously there are now a lot of bluetooth dongles in the wild with the same MAC address.

I still see a lot of "(to be filled by OEM)" on computer parts

at least they bothered to type something!

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#648

Post by cromka »

nerdbert wrote: post #621
cromka wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a way to workaround virtually any kind of gated Internet access: DNS tunneling ( https://github.com/yarrick/iodine ) It’s slow, but it works and is a handy “last resort” tool.

Painfully slow. I would not call it usable for any modern workflow.

Which is why it is a last resort tool, e.g. if you need to access your remote server

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#649

Post by cromka »

josh_carterPDX wrote: post #611
cromka wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not an app, per se, but a concept of setting your WiFi card into monitor mode and listening to the radio traffic. Kismet is one of the suites that does that.

True. I just can't recall the name of the platform I used, but it was something similar to an ip address scanner which gave me a list of all devices already connected to the network along with their mac addresses.

If not Kismet then maybe airmon-ng from aircrack-ng suite

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#650

Post by midasuni »

jrockway wrote: post #617
extraduder_ire wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoever set that up probably wanted it for their own use, both for easily managing the system when they need to work on it, and for themselves when they're travelling anywhere. If I'm ever in charge of rigging up a captive portal system like this, I'm certainly going to do something similar if I can get away with it. Maybe even put a hint on how to bypass in the portal's page source. "ssh works on port 46969, don't t…

Honestly, I think captive portals are probably on the way out, given how good 4G/5G is these days. I am not sure what business traveler wants 10kbps hotel wifi for $30/day when their phone gets 600Mbps down and 30Mbps up.

Most hotel wifi I’ve seen is free now. It’s still a captive portal for some reason - sometimes room/name but often just “click to accept”
Post reply on HN