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I told the flight attendant "the WiFi isn't working"

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Re: I told the flight attendant "the WiFi isn't working"

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a priest who was a software engineer for twenty years. This morning during the service in a small semi-rural church, the bluetooth speaker broke. I paused the service briefly, joked that I knew what to do, and turned it off and on. The IT Crowd got that part of the industry right!

Wow why the career change?

it's a complicated answer: faith is at the heart of it, of course. In Christianity there's the idea of vocation, which applies to all, not just the clergy. A simple way to think about it is to consider the things you're good at, the things you can do that will serve others, and what you enjoy: imagine that as a Venn diagram, and try to discern what lies in the middle for you.

My software skills still play a part in what I do. But seven or eight years ago now I felt drawn to explore a vocation in ordained ministry – after study, a formation programme, completing a Masters degree in Divinity, and a lot of thought and prayer, here I am. It's the happiest I've ever been. Which isn't to say that it hasn't been difficult: being a cleric is not easy work.

Intentional discernment about vocation really has made my life a lot happier, and it's something I talk about a little because it's of value to other people as well.

(I'm in the Anglican [in the states, Episcopalian] tradition, but the process of ministerial formation is very broadly similar between the various mainline protestant denominations and Roman Catholicism.)

Re: I told the flight attendant "the WiFi isn't working"

#102
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why didn't she need to escalate it? I can imagine the hospitality industry would not want the WiFi sporadically going down for their guests; that's not a very hospitable experience.

She didn't need to escalate it because for her personally there was no downside to simply ignoring the matter.

And indeed, would have probably thought that people at a conference would be better being human beings and talking to each other, rather than staring into a laptop screen.

Re: I told the flight attendant "the WiFi isn't working"

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This must be something language/culture dependent. To a native Finnish speaker, labeling the button that resets the internet connection as "internet reset" makes perfect sense. Just like the power button only switches the power on/off for that particular device but not for the rest of the world.

The entire commercial aviation industry operates using the english language. All pilots communicate with all airports via english. I'm sure FAs are most proficient in english too. Its the lingua franca of the biz.

I think we’re ready for ‘Lingua Anglica’.

Re: I told the flight attendant "the WiFi isn't working"

#104
DHCP is broken all of the time in these inflight WiFi systems. After they reset, you need to wait forever for the portal to turn up after which point there's a storm of clients trying to create or re-establish an Internet session which usually saturates the super small link unless it's satellite-based (and sometimes even then)

Re: I told the flight attendant "the WiFi isn't working"

#105
post #29

Deep in the granite mountain where the internet Kill Switch is located, there is also the US national Internet Reset switch. What exactly, in this fictional universe, is the restoration flow if it is pressed?

[flagged]

I find it really tedious when people just post direct paragraphs written by ChatGPT. I mean, we could all just go and ask chatGPT to write that right? It doesn’t add anything to the conversation.

Sorry if that sounds harsh but I can’t think of a better way to post it and honesty felt like the best approach.

Re: I told the flight attendant "the WiFi isn't working"

#106

Hacking WiFi on a plane is a sure fire way to get yourself added to the no-fly list.

Note that what the author did could have been done in a purely passive way, just by capturing packages and seeing the DHCP responses others got. I don't think that qualifies as "hacking".

Tell that to the judge then.

Re: I told the flight attendant "the WiFi isn't working"

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I have to interact with a "captive portal", I'm annoyed at the hack implemented through DNS hijacking, rather than implementing and extending 802.1X and/or another layer-2 authentication scheme. The idea seems to have been tossed aside entirely. Instead, every device has to have a web browser. There's not even a way to do surrogate registration for devices that don't have browsers, with Apple TV and Ninten…

I have a work laptop (government) that hates captive portals. It has a security system that won't let it connect using the local DNS. So it doesn't get captured. Those of us with such laptops all have tricks for getting to a hotel's wifi login page using IP addresses. But we have to do it fast, before the security software fully wakes up and blocks the hack. We used to just login on our phones, then tether the work l…

This was the reason why I bought a travel router/wifi repeater. You connect your corp laptop to the travel router then use your phone to log into the hotspot. Hotels are now using Meraki Air Marshal to block them on 2.4Ghz networks though

Re: I told the flight attendant "the WiFi isn't working"

#108

This is adjacent to the classic free WiFi hack on airplanes, which is to boot another client off of their DHCP lease by spoofing their MAC. It’s unfortunate that, below HTTPS and a light smattering of WiFi encryption, there’s essentially no authenticity controls on LAN management protocols.

I work on SPR, http://github.com/spr-networks/super , we make it easy to use distinct WiFi 3/ WPA2 passwords to authenticate devices on the network for policy based access

>we make it easy to use distinct WiFi 3/ WPA2 passwords

If only we could get the industry to move to this model, we could dramatically reduce the amount of congestion due to APs broadcasting multiple SSIDs.

Re: I told the flight attendant "the WiFi isn't working"

#109
post #18

How does one learn about this stuff? I learned about basic networking in college (the TCP layers) etc but people doing such stuff sounds like Greek to me. If I want to learn more about what the author is doing, is there a resource like a udemy course or YouTube channel you guys can recommend?

I would take courses oriented towards getting your CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Administrator). It covers the basics while also teaching you a bit about navigating through a Cisco switch.

Re: I told the flight attendant "the WiFi isn't working"

#110
post #2

I love that “internet reset” button

We laugh as IT experts. But think about it from the end user perspective. Literally the most simple instruction; near fault proof. On an airplane that is thousands of feet from remote IT support (plus "costs"). The instruction to staff; problem with "the Internet"? - press the "Interest Reset" button. Far better than "router restart", "renew DHCP leases" or "reboot IT" Explicit, non ambiguous and without technobabble…

agreed. It’s a great solution for a flight crew that is most likely unable/unwilling to troubleshoot stale DHCP leases or bouncing ifaces. The only disadvantage is that if the Internet reset button doesn’t work for whatever reason, the FAs will mark the entire system INOP for your entire six hour cross country flight that you planned to work on...
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