Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland • Hacker News Board

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#291

Post by ptspts » Thu, Oct 22, 2020, 8:53 AM UTC

ThePhysicist wrote: post #265

singhrac wrote: post #4

I would honestly pay significantly higher taxes if we could get Swiss-quality train service in parts of the US (and especially if they have good internet). When I traveled Boston to NY in the past, compare my flight experience vs Amtrak. Flight: - Take $25 Uber to airport and get there 1 hour early to go through security and wait. - Fly to JFK (1h 20m) - land, wait to get off, go through terminal again, then take $50…

It's hard to understand for me why there even isn't any high-speed train service between large metropolitan areas in the US. As an example, in 2016 I took the train from New York to Montreal. The distance is only about 600 km, but the train ride took almost 12 hours! Part of that was due to the border checks of course, but even during the part in the States the train tucked along really slowly and had to stop multipl…

In Switzerland a train transfer time of 3 minutes in the schedule is not unheard of. You can easily make it, the two trains involved stop on the opposite side of the same platform.

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#292

Post by thu2111 » Thu, Oct 22, 2020, 9:05 AM UTC

fergbrain wrote: post #288

mschuster91 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which have priority over passenger trains it seems Historical reason: the rails were built by freight companies and not by the government like in most of Europe. For them, passenger trains are, at best, an afterthought that doesn't matter.

Specifically the freight companies own the lines and prioritize their own freight trains above passenger service.

And even more specifically, this means the US moves a lot more stuff by rail freight than in Europe, where the rail freight industry is sickly and dying.

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#293

Post by yvan » Thu, Oct 22, 2020, 9:08 AM UTC

phab wrote: post #27

It's interesting that they state that the train was moving, but not how fast . My understanding was that one of the challenges with doing good mobile broadband on trains (esp. for VoIP applications) is how seamlessly you manage the handover between cells makes a big difference to real-world usability. If the train was going pretty slowly that would obviously make your time-per-cell a lot higher / % of time spent perf…

Well, it's a 4 km distance and according to the schedule of the train it takes 6 minutes between both stations, so it would be an average of 40 km/h (well, you will understand that it is relative as the train has to accelerate and decelerate). Also, some of the portion is in a tunnel, I don't know if this can affect in any way the network.

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#294

Post by thu2111 » Thu, Oct 22, 2020, 9:09 AM UTC

ggm wrote: post #114

wpdev_63 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem with the US interstate train system is that it's run on freight train lines. Amtrak and Acela do not actually own the railway they use and they can only go a certain speed due to the grade of the track. I don't think you would be willing to pay the amount of taxes you would need to, to completely redo the railways haha. Anyways Amtrak are barely turning a profit as it is and while it would be great t…

> I don't think you would be willing to pay the amount of taxes you would need to, to completely redo the railways haha. This premise feels wrong: The Swiss, German, Chinese, Spanish experience is that people pay to have high speed rail services, and the G20 economies in that list pay high marginal rates of taxes just fine, for this outcome. The "you" here is conditionally the "you" of current social mores America. I…

Switzerland doesn't have any high speed rail services, defined conventionally. All trains in Switzerland are pretty slow, but it's a small country so it rarely matters.

Also, Swiss trains are pretty expensive. You don't notice because wages are high, but really, everything in this country is very expensive compared to neighbouring countries. In most countries inter-city rail is used by commuters so governments impose price caps, if there is any political pressure to lower prices here I've never seen it.

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#295

Post by thu2111 » Thu, Oct 22, 2020, 9:13 AM UTC

foota wrote: post #137

tryptophan wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument goes that if nobody is willing to pay the price for something(passenger rail), and chooses another alternative(driving), then it means that the service is not worth having and subsiding it would just be a waste of taxpayer money. Of course its not that simple, because driving is subsidized(I would prefer every road to be a toll road and get rid of the general taxes that used to go to roads)...but you get…

I mean, the issue is I can't choose to pay for quality rail service because it doesn't exist here. I can't take HSR from e.g., Boston to NYC, SF to LA, or Seattle to Portland/Vancouver. These are all trips I would have gladly made at 100-400 dollar ticket prices in the last year.

Yes but you're exceptionally rare, and might discover you're wrong about your preferences if someone were to take the big gamble of building such a service. Also the whole era of passenger rail may have been killed off by lockdowns.

Train services are basically always hugely subsidised by governments. They could not survive against cars, buses and trucks if they weren't. The subsidies in Switzerland are eye-wateringly high for example. It's effectively a form of government planning designed to boost city/worker density as governments and others believe offices full of workers yields large benefits, and trains are the highest density/capacity form of passenger transport by far. So if you want ultra-dense urban cores you need a lot of trains.

But do we actually need those? Governments sure haven't acted like it this year. Now big corps are eyeing their expensive city centre HQs and wondering if the real estate is worth it, the workers are seeing how much they save when they aren't being forced to pay for the very expensive rail tickets, the managers are seeing that many (but not all) workers are happier without the time sucking, cattle-car commutes ... and governments are basically having to give up on the fiction that rail companies were private in order to keep them from going completely bust. But how long can that be sustained, if travel patterns have been permanently altered? No dense urban cores = few commuters paying business rates for rush hour travel = even worse economics for trains.

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#296

Post by Symbiote » Thu, Oct 22, 2020, 9:17 AM UTC

martinald wrote: post #284

maccard wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The figures can be skewed both ways in fairness. I had a look for travelling for the weekend of Nov 20th (it's a month from this weekend) on Friday and back Monday, leaving after 8:30am both days. Trainline is quoting me £190 return. Easyjet is £60. As an aside, the train schedule and prices seem substantially cheaper than this time last year. I don't ever recall there being availability on the super off peak trains…

A super off peak single is £78 each way on Edinburgh-London, Anytime £166. This puts a cap on the cost which air travel doesn't have. Often will be significantly cheaper if you There's no such thing as 'availability' on trains, you can buy a ticket from the ticket machine without booking in advance. You may not get a seat for the whole journey, but it's better IMO than not being able to board at all (like when flight…

In some countries, high speed trains don't allow standing passengers.

I was caught out with this when I visited Toledo from Madrid. I bought a ticket for the next train to Toledo from a machine, which was fine. When I tried to return, there were no available tickets for several hours. I took a bus instead.

A seat reservation is also compulsory on the TGV in France, but not the ICE in Germany.

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#297

Post by martinald » Thu, Oct 22, 2020, 9:19 AM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #177

singhrac wrote: post #4

I would honestly pay significantly higher taxes if we could get Swiss-quality train service in parts of the US (and especially if they have good internet). When I traveled Boston to NY in the past, compare my flight experience vs Amtrak. Flight: - Take $25 Uber to airport and get there 1 hour early to go through security and wait. - Fly to JFK (1h 20m) - land, wait to get off, go through terminal again, then take $50…

This is why I'm against increasing taxes in the USA. Europeans get more per tax dollar than we do. In the USA, we just waste the money. Europeans pay a bit more than we do, but they get a lot more back in terms of transit, health care, social safety net, etc. If our government can't use the money more efficiently, it shouldn't get even more. Last time I rode on Amtrak it was absolutely depressing. Same with Caltrain…

This isn't as true as you think it is.

Social security is often a lot, lot better in the US than Europe. Take the UK:

UK unemployment 'benefits' are around $100/week regardless of previous salary (so low compared to housing costs in many areas that it is almost pointless). US state unemployment benefits tend to be a lot higher than that.

UK pensions are low - around $10,000/yr, again regardless of salary. US Social Security pensions are vastly higher.

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#298

Post by ulfw » Thu, Oct 22, 2020, 9:20 AM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #182

ethbr0 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. Here's the Amtrak network: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/Am... Here's the US freight rail network: https://i.imgur.com/4TYsU_d.webp?maxwidth=1024&fidelity=medi... You can't tell me we can't do better.

We could definitely have a beautiful, big, fast train network. But most people still wouldn't use it.

Why not?

There's tons of routes in the US that could make sense if there wasn't so much NIMBYism, corruption and the oil and auto lobby, let's be honest.

SF-Sacramento, SF-LA, LA-San Diego, LA-Vegas, Seattle-Portland, the whole Northeast Corridor (a better truly high speed Acela), Houston-Dallas, Orlando-Miami, Pittsburg-DC and and and. There's lots of large cities in the US in the high speed rail sweetspot of 400-800 miles (2-4h travel time) apart

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#299

Post by 4ggr0 » Thu, Oct 22, 2020, 9:26 AM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #280

Retric wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US population density is hardly the issue for two reasons, first nobody wants high speed rail in Alaska. But secondly high speed rail is between cities not every little podunk town. Linking Richmond, DC, Baltimore, NYC, Boston is a single 550 mile high speed rail line, which connects over 10% of the entire Americana population.

Sounds good. Don’t make us over in California pay for it though.

Why not?

Re: Stable 1.2 Gigabit/s Internet achieved in moving train in Switzerland

#300

Post by yaantc » Thu, Oct 22, 2020, 9:31 AM UTC

BuildTheRobots wrote: post #256

Nextgrid wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your IP address has to move across That’s handled at a higher level though. If you manage to get the lower level handover running fast enough, the IP side of things shouldn’t be a problem (as all the traffic goes to the GGSN or whatever LTE’s equivalent of that is).

> the IP side of things shouldn’t be a problem (as all the traffic goes to the GGSN or whatever LTE’s equivalent of that is). I'm not sure it's quite that simple. One of the things LTE started (and 5G continues) is to push more and more of this to the edge of the network. Traffic from the UE does get tunnelled through the Serving Gateway (S-GW), but there can be multiple SGW's on a network. Mobility management is als…

The mobile (UE) IP anchor is not the S-GW but the P-GW in the core network. For an established PDU session the IP address is fixed, and does not change during a handover.

For information MIP is used between S-GW and P-GW (PMIP IIRC), so there can be IP addresses changes when the HO is such that the S-GW changes. Still, this is transparent to the UE: it's a change at the tunnel level, and the UE traffic flowing inside this tunnel is not affected.

BTW what "anchor" means here is that the IP address the UE gets is routed to the P-GW. From then on the traffic is tunneled to the UE across the cellular network core and radio access networks, but all this is transparent for the end device. There's a first leg from P-GW to S-GW, then from S-GW to the eNB (the base station), then the over-the-air and last leg to the mobile device. That's 3 tunnels joined together to transport data seamlessly from P-GW to UE. During a HO the radio one always changes, the S-GW to P-GW rarely changes. And the P-GW is fixed to provide IP session continuity.