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.

Boeing technology

[thammoud]

A link to the real provider to this technology.
http://www.connexionbyboeing.com/ [connexionbyboeing.com]

Is $30 really that bad?

[Demonspawn]

I havn't flown in a LONG time, so I don't know what the price would be for a long flight like the ones that have this service. I realize compared to the prices of ground service it's horably expensive (vs. a month long contract), but thinking of it as an 'add on' to the ticket, what percentage of the ticket cost is it? If you are dealing with a $300 ticket, then it's only a 10% rider.

Of course, if you are taking one of those $59 flights I see advertised, you'd be thinking the cost is insane.

Back in September...

[beebware]

When I went to Tokyo from Heathrow, London, UK via Munich, Germany - the Munich to Tokyo flight (all the route was by Luthansa German Airlines), they had wireless internet access by Boeing Connexions. If you look out at airport (Munich had them in September when I flew), you may be able to get a $10 free internet access voucher. Just a quick note: The internet access is WiFi, so you will need an appropriate Wifi card - I took plenty of network cables, but my Wifi card for my laptop was "faulty" so I didn't have any internet access :( . It's worth also pointing out that at least in "cattle class" (I can't say for Business or First class), there are NO charging points, so make sure you have plenty of battery power.

sharing?

[cbc1920]

What's to stop someone from purchasing the access and then sharing it with everyone on the plane through an ad-hoc wireless bridge? (except for those pesky regulations)

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

[EpsCylonB]

A small fire would be very easy to put out anyway, im sure the trolly dollies are trained to use a fire extinguisher. how many times (when smoking used to be allowed on planes) did people used to set fire to things with cigarettes?

I don't know about planes but cigarettes that aren't extinguished properly is one of the biggest causes of house fires.

Re:If you need slashdot on a plane...

[Anonymous Coward]

And while we are at it, LEARN TO LINE WRAP. Trust the browser to do it for you, man. The worst thing about the internet today is reading horribly formatted text when your stoned/wasted/bored.

Re:Not being on Lufthansa is nothing to cry about

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, I heard different stories about the comfort on Lufthansa planes, and I found for example this [airfraid.com].

Source: Aviation Health Institute, December 2001 AVERAGE LEG ROOM IN ECONOMY CLASS* Figures in inches -
Monarch Airlines 28
JMC 28
Gulf Air 28
Flying Colours 28
Britannia 28
Airtours 28
Air 2000 28
Ryanair 29
Go 29
Easy Jet 29
Virgin Atlantic 30
Qantas 30
Delta 30
Caledonian 30
United Airlines 31
KLM 31
Iceland Air 31
British Airways 31
Singapore Airlines 32
Lauda Air 32
Emirates 32
Cathay Pacific 32
British Midland 32
Austrian Airlines 32
Aer Lingus 32
Alitalia 33
Thai Airways 34
Malaysian 34
Lufthansa 34
Japan Airlines 34
American Airlines 34
Air New Zealand 34
Air France 34
Air China 34
Air Canada 34

Seems to me, that at least 4 years ago Lufthansa was rather at the top in terms of leg room...

Anyway, good airlines, like Singapore Air also offer Conexion

Yes, but you have two inches less leg room... :)

traceroute is a measure of latency

[rminsk]

Traceroute is a measure of latency and not a measure of bandwidth. Traceroute just sends one packet at a time with an ever increasing hop count. It would be nice to see some bandwidth tests.

Re:VoIP

[melonman]

There are also a cluster of problems connected with how satellite connections handle character data. The satellite hop is converted from IP packets to something streaming, and then the packets are rebuilt at the other end. That process (the details of which I don't pretend to understand) works very well for streaming data, and very badly for a couple of typed characters a second. The worst case I have come across is ssh, which can lag by 5 seconds on occasions, which I think is either because some of the handshaking takes several exchanges of packets or because the Earth station waits in the hope that a few more packets will come along to fill its "bucket". FTPing a load of small files is pretty bad too, because the handshaking for each file takes several seconds.

Re:NICE!!

[KanSer]

30$ is not bad for a trans-atlantic hop. I've done San fran to Frankfurt on Lufthansa many many times, and while the service is impeccable, those 10 hours sure would go easier with a net connection.

For any of Lufthansa's long haul flights 30$ is very reasonable. The next logical step would be to wire up every seat with an ethernet port (which I imagine this service provides) and set up a LAN. Think about the new A380s, formerly the A3XX or the 400-800 seat true double decker planes.

800 people, lets say San Fran to Frankfurt or Munich, what do you think the odds are that at least 20 people have a laptop with some games. Hello, wouldn't fragging at 35,000 feet be awesome? Even better if the plane hosted old-school games (doom 2, quake 1) so people wouldn't need to all have it installed.

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

[domc]

Most of the dangers of smoking come from smoking low-quality, chemical-laden cigatettes (like Marlboro, Camel, etc). The chemical process used to make light cigs are the origin of the huge lists of chemicals contained in cigarettes.

Also, smoking too much (more than a pack a day) is bad for you. I believe that over-smoking is directly related to 'light' cigarettes. You'll find that most two-pack-a-day smokers are smoking lights. Constant nicotine craving because the dose is too low.

I only smoke high-quality tobacco, with no gunpowder in the papers, with no filters (what do they have to put in cotton to make it not burn?), and I roll my own. I believe that this practice is much safer than smoking mass-produced cigarettes. In fact, if I have to smoke commercial cigs, I find that I begin to feel ill after about two packs (4 days).

I always tell other smokers to take some tobacco out of their cigarette, and eat it. They are usually disgusted by the nasty chemical taste. Then, I give them some of my tobacco to eat, and they always respond with something like "This tastes good enough to put on top of a salad". Then I tell them that this good-enough-to-eat tobacco costs an order of magnitude less than what they are paying for their nasty cigs.

So, in my belief, it is not the act of smoking that is dangerous, it is the act of smoking low-quality, chemical-laden cigarettes. Kind of like eating McDonalds vs. a nice buffalo burger. It always pays to go with the highest quality option. And, in this case, the highest quality option is also the cheapest (much like Open Source).

My motto is: If you wouldn't want to eat it, why would you want to smoke it!

Dom

maybe it's just me...

[argStyopa]

But is it so wrong that there is a place where you CAN'T get email, CAN'T be contacted, CAN'T be responsible to work?

As someone who flew to 5 countries in the last 4 weeks, and has spent about 50% of his time traveling since 12/26/04, the only thing that stops it from totally sucking is the fact that I can "power down" while flying and have some quiet time.

My boss hears it's only $30 more for me to be 'connected' all this time, and guess who's going to be held responsible to make sure those 'urgent' emails get a response next time I'm between Iceland and Minneapolis?

I don't see this as such a wonderful thing. :(