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WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

jamesbvaughan.com

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Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#421

Post by ceejayoz »

sokoloff wrote: post #388
ceejayoz wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's missing the point. If a human can manage to keep it within 100 feet of a desired altitude, an autopilot most certainly can; it didn't require new technology in the 2000s. Autopilots in the 1960s/1970s weren't seesawing all over the skies.

RVSM is overwhelmingly about instrumentation accuracy and precision, not pilot capability. [0] The pressure difference between 5K MSL and 10K MSL at standard conditions is 14.6 kPa. The pressure difference between 30K MSL and 35K MSL at ISA is 6.3 kPa. For a given amount of aircraft-to-aircraft variability in their precision altitude sensing equipment, the resulting difference in actual altitude is more than double i…

Still missing the point.

You’re talking about getting different aircraft to agree between each other.

The post upthread expressed surprise at an aircraft maintaining a steady altitude to within tens of feet. That’s been a thing for many decades.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#422

Post by alwayslikethis »

thedanbob wrote: post #317
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.

That was probably deliberate. I flew United recently and they advertised free wifi for certain messaging apps, or you could pay to access more apps or the general internet.

I flew United recently, and I was able to use the free messaging service for basically everything without any intervention from my part. It's just a tad slow. Not sure if it was intended or not.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#423

Post by AdamJacobMuller »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #372
AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it depends, nothing good" Network devices forward (switch, more technically) packets to and end device based on an internal MAC table (send packets for DE:AD:BE:EF to interface ge-0/0/0.0) and most devices populate their MAC table simply by looking at input packets and sending the "next" packet for that MAC address out the "last" received interface. If two devices in a network have the same MAC address, they will ef…

> "it depends, nothing good" Fun anecdote from the early 2000's re: duplicate MACs: Embedded IP time clock kept intermittently barfing out frames with the source MAC addresses of other devices on the network. The switch would update its MAC table and direct packets to this device. The Customer's AS/400 would kill all remote terminal sessions when the clock ended up w/ the AS/400's MAC. (They were doing a layer 2-base…

> it was temperamental and didn't like any layer 2 "hiccups"

The clock was probably doing the "correct" thing when it got a TCP packet for a connection which it didn't recognize and sent back an RST, which caused the client to abort.

> kind of problems that teaches you to question your assumptions

Yep. I learned a lot from dealing with large layer-2 networks (commonly running on hardware not suited for the task). Mostly I learned to never run large L2 networks.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#424

Post by cragfar »

dramm wrote: post #136

“According to this data, the plane’s altitude was only fluctuating by about 20-30 feet. This is more stable than I expected!” Autopilots are very good and they are servoing to the pressure altitude. Many pressure altitude encoders used in modern aircraft (for example to drive altitudes that transponders report to SSR radar or via ADS-B) have 25 ft encoding resolution. That 25ft resolution is likely what is being seen…

No idea how true it is, but I overheard someone on a flight say that whenever you feel a real sudden jolt on a plan it's really only moving like 2-3ft.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#426

Post by rootbear »

Spooky23 wrote: post #294
pantalaimon wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never been at a hotel that charged for WiFi - is that a US thing?

Conference hotels often soak the companies with booths for internet access. One place I did for my company demanded $1500 for 3 days of internet access for up to 5 devices. In-room, you get free internet access, but in the windowless ballroom with spotty cell-service, there's nothing available for free.

I’ve also seen the opposite, where in-room Wi-Fi was charged, but in the hotel’s function spaces, it was free. The economics of this are confusing, at best. I have also had the situation where the in-room wi-fi was so slow that using my phone as a hot spot was faster!

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#427

Post by babypuncher »

commandlinefan wrote: post #205

When my son was younger - maybe 9 or 10 or so, we were on a plane and he was using his phone and I looked over his shoulder and realized he was on the internet... but I hadn't paid for an internet plan. I said, "son, how are you using the internet?" He said, "oh, a kid at school showed me - if you go here" (he opened up the wifi settings where the DHCP assigned IP address is) "and start changing the numbers, eventual…

A slightly more ethical solution, for those wondering, is SSH tunneling. A lot of gated wifi networks allow SSH traffic through without payment.

I used to spend a lot of time at JFK back when they still charged for WiFi. I watched a lot of Netflix for free by just logging into my router and opening a tunnel to my VPN server.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#428

Post by pmarreck »

ardit33 wrote: post #80

It is just 8 bucks for the full service... just buy the internet bro. It is actually pretty good.

If you really think the folks here do this to save a few bucks, you both 1) don't realize what the average pay of people here is, and 2) are completely tone- and context-deaf.

Look at the domain name of the site you're posting on and read it out loud. FFS dude. LOL

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#429

Post by groby_b »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #417
commandlinefan wrote: post #205

When my son was younger - maybe 9 or 10 or so, we were on a plane and he was using his phone and I looked over his shoulder and realized he was on the internet... but I hadn't paid for an internet plan. I said, "son, how are you using the internet?" He said, "oh, a kid at school showed me - if you go here" (he opened up the wifi settings where the DHCP assigned IP address is) "and start changing the numbers, eventual…

The LAN here seems relatively small and fixed, i.e., the number of passengers on a flight is known and does not change during flight. The airline could easily assign a unique IP address to each seat (ticket) without using DHCP. This is generally in contrast to other instances of public Wifi.

Good luck finding out which seat that wireless connection is coming from, though :)

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#430

Post by pmarreck »

renewiltord wrote: post #104
el_benhameen wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But you’re on a site called “Hacker News”. I’m not sure that there’s a more perfect topic of discussion for a site with that name.

[flagged]

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.

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