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

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

#91

Post by Nextgrid »

BuildTheRobots wrote: post #65
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…

Handover is a massive non-trivial problem - I'm amazed you're the only one commenting on it. GSM-R was modification to the 2G mobile phone specification specifically to help with high speed handover, but being 2G it gives pretty awful data speeds (1mbit max iirc). If you google for LTE-R it seems there's special provisions to bring that fast handover ability to 4G & 5G networks. As well as the actual radio layer, you…

> 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).

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

#92

Post by Nextgrid »

laurencerowe wrote: post #77
orf wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once got a text message welcoming me to Switzerland from a commercial flight from Rome to London. The data rates my provider gave me in the message where ridiculous (10+ GBP per mb), but it's impressive I got it while on an airplane.

From a plane you're usually in direct line of sight to many, many mobile network towers at once. Mobile phone use is banned on planes because of the interference this could cause with ground based networks.

This is not entirely correct. The majority of mobile antennas are directional and are optimised to cover a ground area and not waste transmit power broadcasting into the air.

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

#93

Post by Dylan16807 »

likpok wrote: post #79
pansinghkoder wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share some article to back up your facts? All I could find here is, american freight trains are longer and run over a longer distance. : https://www.freightwaves.com/news/railroad/us-and-european-f... . After living next to train tracks in SF (for 7 yrs) and in PDX for (over 2 yrs) I can tell you that train tracks traffic is not even 10% of Euro cities like Stuttgart, Rotterdam let alone Berlin or Paris. If t…

Here's something written for non-industry people: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2010/07/22/high-speed-rai... Your article notes that rail freight costs are much lower in the US (for shippers), while profitability is high. That suggests that the US rail network is... good for freight? I don't know about Portland, but SF has almost no freight traffic. The caltrain tracks don't go anywhere (what are you going to do…

> Their owners worry that the plans will demand expensive train-control technology that freight traffic could do without.

Oh no, a control system to install on a locomotives and tracks that already costs millions of dollars, how could they afford that?

> Most of all they fret that the spending of federal money on upgrading their tracks will lead the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), the industry watchdog, to impose tough conditions on them

Are you kidding me?

These excuses are pathetic.

> Add the fact that freight trains do not stick to a regular timetable, but run variable services at short notice to meet demand, and the scope for congestion grows.

You were just bragging about having 2.5x the productivity, I would happily trade competent consumer rail for you "only" having 2x productivity.

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

#94

Post by jeffbee »

PTOB wrote: post #90
jdminhbg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American train system is also drastically more expensive than the Swiss train system.

This is true. The USA has over 10x the population and 238x the land area. A national train system = dollar amounts that the human mind can't really grasp.

That is not the reason because if it were, there would be Switzerland-sized bits of the US with Swiss-esque rail service, and there are not. For example, LA County is more populous and five times as dense as Switzerland, but has essentially no rail service of which to boast. It's just a land use choice we are making: we can either have compact urban forms easily served by rail, or distributed forms that are impossible to serve.

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

#95

Post by cmdshiftf4 »

jagger27 wrote: post #18
maccard wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Edinburgh and have travelled to London fairly frequently. It's a £30 uber to the airport, arrive 2 hours early, £20 for a flight, and £25 for the Heathrow express. The other option is the train, it's 4.5 hours, comfortable, but costs £250. It's a much nicer journey, but regularly much more expensive.

£20 for a flight is so, so foreign as a Canadian. Domestic flights here are easily 10x that on a good day. In the before times, it was pretty much the same price to get a last minute VIA train ticket or a Porter flight between Ottawa and Toronto. If you’re lucky, early, or a student, you can get a train ticket quite a bit cheaper.

>so, so foreign as a Canadian

Canada, as a whole, is an absolute rip-off. There is virtually nothing you can point to in the country and remark that it's a good deal when compared to the prices offered in America or most areas of Europe.

High food costs, high booze costs, high communications costs, high transport costs, high taxes etc., combined with low salaries, is incredibly bleak.

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

#96

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

macspoofing wrote: post #43
jsu32 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love trains and I'm a EU-born US resident, so I get it. It's a density problem though. US is super sparsely populated. Outside of the northeast corridor (DC NYC Boston) the rest is too spread out with few exceptions to support train service. The US highway system is like spaghetti for good reason.

>It's a density problem though. If you want to take a train to Idaho from Boston, sure, but nobody would do that. And for NY->Boston, it's plenty dense. Freight traffic is miles ahead in American than in Europe, and is always prioritized over passenger trains - that's the reason.

The NY - Boston corridor is denser than most of Western Europe.

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

#97

Post by cmdshiftf4 »

ubanholzer wrote: post #22
maccard wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Edinburgh and have travelled to London fairly frequently. It's a £30 uber to the airport, arrive 2 hours early, £20 for a flight, and £25 for the Heathrow express. The other option is the train, it's 4.5 hours, comfortable, but costs £250. It's a much nicer journey, but regularly much more expensive.

Flying is just too cheap for the environment. 1 EUR per km for car/plain and 0.4-0.5 by train should be the minimum.

Only the rich should be allowed leave their home town!

Back to work, peasants!

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

#98

Post by tvb12 »

wpdev_63 wrote: post #53
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…

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'll probably always take the train into Boston. Even though it's a little more expensive than taking a greyhound or driving (if I can find parking), I don't like to drive in Boston. However, if I needed to go much further I'd be in a bind. The website is really difficult to use at times. I was trying to get to Maryland(?) at one point to buy a used car, but I couldn't find a page that would show me stations near where I needed to go. I ended up finding one nearby using Google, and though the Amtrak website allowed it as a destination, it seemed there were never trains headed there. After 15 minutes of confusion, I checked wikipedia and it turned out the station had been closed to trains for years and only operated as a museum.

So even if they redid the rails, they might have to redo the website as well.

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

#99

Post by joejohnson »

macspoofing wrote: post #38
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…

>People tell me the reasons that everything is more expensive than in Switzerland US is cheaper than Switzerland for pretty much any product. If you are talking about train service, then the reason for that is because US (and Canada) prioritize freight traffic. Freight traffic is much more efficient in North America than in Europe [1] and unfortunately (or fortunately) is prioritized over passenger traffic. Honestly,…

The US is certainly not cheaper for two products that everyone has to buy: healthcare and housing. Switzerland is significantly more affordable than the US because the price of these two goods (which are human rights) are regulated.

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

#100

Post by [deleted] »

mattkrause wrote: post #64
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…

That's true if you consider all of Amtrak. The Northeast Corridor, which the GP is talking about, is a bit of a special case. Amtrak owns the tracks from NY to DC (states own the CT/MA part) and they're good enough to go a bit faster than the otherwise-usual 79 mph speed limit. This part of Amtrak is, IIRC, fairly profitable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Corridor In the rest of the country, Amtrak is indee…

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