Internet Access 10 Kilometers High Up In The Air

Marton writes "Lufthansa started rolling out their Flynet service in 2004. It is now available on several long-haul flights such as 411D - the one I'm sitting on right now. It is not cheap ($30 for the duration of a flight) nor is it very fast (satellite-based technology can't deliver the snappy response you are used to on the ground) but it is really, really nice. It's great to be able to check my email, catch up with some work, or just surf the web - airplane time used to be about napping, paperbacks or crappy movies. Now if only they'd let me have a cigarette I could actually be productive too. " Marton also gave us a traceroute which is attached... I'm going to Tokyo in May and crying that Northwest won't have this.

Here's a traceroute from my laptop which is currently on an A-340 10,000 meters up in the air, doing about 800 kilometers per hour, somewhere over the Atlantic bound for Munich.

C:\Documents and Settings\Marton>tracert www.slashdot.org

Tracing route to www.slashdot.org [66.35.250.151]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms 3 ms 2 ms 172.16.64.1
2 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms cbb-cds-psn.by.boeing [172.16.0.18]
3 3 ms 4 ms 2 ms sbs.by.boeing [172.31.0.1]
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 568 ms 626 ms 576 ms 10.8.20.38
6 703 ms 567 ms 583 ms ltn02r03-vlan25.connexionbyboeing.net [10.8.20.2]
7 580 ms 705 ms 582 ms ltn02r21-fa2-9.connexionbyboeing.net [10.8.16.25]
8 627 ms 582 ms 632 ms 10.8.16.33
9 579 ms 581 ms 581 ms ltn02r01-fa3-3.connexionbyboeing.net [10.8.16.130]
10 619 ms 582 ms 582 ms ltn02r02-fa3-3.connexionbyboeing.net [10.8.16.131]
11 581 ms 582 ms 665 ms 12.125.155.5
12 655 ms 912 ms 1072 ms gbr1-a31s1.dvmco.ip.att.net [12.127.4.134]
13 1144 ms 1612 ms 1939 ms gbr1-p60.la2ca.ip.att.net [12.122.1.29]
14 1500 ms 712 ms 580 ms tbr2-p013301.sffca.ip.att.net [12.122.12.133]
15 613 ms 579 ms 582 ms 12.122.80.57
16 589 ms 608 ms 790 ms dcr1-so-3-0-0.sanfranciscosfo.savvis.net [192.205.32.110]
17 588 ms 605 ms 582 ms dcr2-loopback.SanFranciscosfo.savvis.net [206.24.210.100]
18 609 ms 1774 ms 1079 ms bhr1-pos-0-0.SantaClarasc8.savvis.net [208.172.156.198]
19 610 ms 968 ms 1108 ms csr1-ve243.SantaClarasc8.savvis.net [66.35.194.50]
20 1109 ms 886 ms 998 ms 66.35.212.174
21 630 ms 860 ms 994 ms star.slashdot.org [66.35.250.151]

Trace complete.

tcptraceroute

[Barbarian]

Remember that some providers give UDP packets low priority. I'd be more impressed if he'd run tcptraceroute.

Re:NICE!!

[magarity]

if they made it a bit cheaper it would be better though?

They have to make a trade off between making it so more people can afford it versus the relatively slow connection. If you're going to pay any noticable amount for such a small time frame as a single flight then you want to get your money's worth. If too many people use it then it slows to a crawl. Then everyone complains. Keeping the price high is a way of ensuring there is a reasonable amount of bandwidth to the few who do pay.

Not being on Lufthansa is nothing to cry about

[raju1kabir]

Lufthansa is one of the most wretched airlines in the sky (unless you're in the front of the plane), so don't cry too much. Basically Lufthansa is a European-style low-cost carrier (zero service, zero amenities, treat the customers like something that got stuck on their shoes on the way into work) with high-cost carrier fares (and a slightly lucrative business and first-class trade that has nothing to do with their horrid economy class offering).

Addicted to net access though I am, I'd take Northwest with a good book over Lufthansa with wifi any day of the week. At least I'll have someplace to put my legs, will be served something approximating edible food, and I won't be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from being yelled at by the flight attendants for 12 hours.

Anyway, good airlines, like Singapore Air [singaporeair.com] also offer Conexion and fly from the US to Japan (e.g., SQ11, LAX-NRT), so you can have it both ways.

-raju1kabir, 50000 miles in 2005 and counting

Re:Boeing technology

[MathFox]

If you've read the connexionbyboeing website a bit better: The plane has an 1 Mbit connection (or better). Unfortunately the data is routed via a satellite, so the link has pretty high latency.

One of my friends has downloaded a Knoppix CD on one of his transatlantic flights.

Re:Mwuhahahahha

[drdink]

Please stop propagating the myth of classful routing. 172.16.0.0 is neither class B, class C, or any other class. It is 172.16.0.0/12. This is CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing). Please see RFC 1519 [faqs.org] about CIDR and RFC 3330 [faqs.org] about 172.16.0.0/12 and other special use IP addresss.

Re:The new Boeing/Airbus consortium

[Tx]

It's not just for Boeing aircraft. From the connexion web site:

Installation
The system can be installed on any aircraft with a seating capacity of 100 or more during a scheduled maintenance interval. Connexion by Boeing is currently working with aircraft manufacturers to develop the capability for in-line production installations.

planes did in fact crash...

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

There have been many fires in aeroplanes due to smoking. I believe a Boeing 707 even crash landed near Orly (Paris) in the 70s because of that. The pilots were the only ones that didn't asphyxiate.

Re:Will $30 more also get you smoking rights?

[wasted]

...I don't think there are any cases of planes crashing or otherwise coming to harm because of cigarettes.

I think (not totally sure) that the cause of the lavatory fire in Air Canada 797 [pilotfriend.com] on June 2, 1983, could have been a cigarette. [erau.edu]

I couldn't find a good linkable reference, but I think the 25 fatalities on an Ilyushin 18B at Guangzhou-Baiyun airport in 1982 was also caused by a fire started by a cigarette.

Another example (July 11th, 1973) can be found here [airborne.org].

northwest

[cyberwave]

Northwest is the worst way to fly to Japan. Japan Airlines is the ONLY way to go. Trust me on this--I've tried both extensively myself, and consumer reports shows that northwest is one of the worst airlines, experience wise, though they migh have good prices.

Re:coverage

[Marton]

You should try to get a refund for your $30 then. :)

For what it's worth, they were *supposed* to have Internet flying in to New York from Frankfurt as well. WiFi worked, and I got the pages served from the onboard portal, but clicking the purchase link (that takes you to a server on the ground) resulted in "Page cannot be displayed" errors. Or "The operation timed out" errors in Firefox. Of course, the stewardess could not really help me. I told her that even though their onboard WiFi is up, the satellite link seems to be down. She said they'd be showing a movie very soon on how to use the Internet.

So yes, the technology is there, and sometimes it works. And when it does, it's great. When it doesn't - well, they'd better have an onboard network admin as well.

Re:As the Photon Flies

[Marton]

The technology is satellite based. If they're using geostationary satellites (and I don't see why they wouldn't) then you have to deal with a fair bit of latency. Your ping goes to the satellite, then to the ground, then to the satellite, then to the plane. This is 4x an Earth-satellite distance, and geostationary satellites are on an orbit about 35,000 kilometers high.

35,000 x 4 = 140,000 kilometers. Even the light can only cover 299700 kilometers per second - there you have your .5 second delay.

Re:Back in September...

[Marton]

They (Lufthansa) have AC outlets in business class (and of course in first), it accepts a European or a non-grounded US plug. They even have USB outlets for charging a PDA...

They also have a CAT-5 connector right next to the USB port. It does not seem to be hooked up to anything meaningful though.

Re:As the Photon Flies

[Marton]

Well, ping and tracert measure round-trip time. So it is plane->satellite->ground->satellite->plane.

Ummm

[Danathar]

Think about it...

Fire....pressurized cabin....no place to run (20,000 feet up).

Do you need a smoke THAT bad