Boeing Drops Wireless System For 787

K7DAN writes "It appears that state-of-the-art connectivity in Boeing's newest aircraft means a wired, not a wireless network. The Seattle Times reports that Boeing has abandoned plans to bring entertainment and information to passengers through a wireless system in its 787 Dreamliner due to possible production delays and potential conflicts with other radio services around the world. A side benefit is an actual reduction in weight using the wired system. Amazingly, the LAN cables needed to connect every seat in the aircraft weigh 150 lbs less than all the wireless antennae, access points, and thickened ceiling panels required to accommodate a wireless network (the design called for an access point above each row)." The article concludes: "The net impact, [a Boeing spokesman] said, is less technical risk, some weight saved, the system's flexibility and quality preserved plus 'a bit of schedule relief.'"

No surprise

[BadERA]

Considering every commercial airline's effort to offer WiFi to date has been scrapped either before takeoff (pun intended), or not long after launch. The costs are simply not supported by the revenue, simple as that. Other considerations like weight and maintenance complexity are secondary.

Not surprising.

[adamstew]

They would need to have cables running throughout the plane anyway to all the wireless antenna. Just put a hub in place of an antenna and run a few more cables to the seats. With all the shielding and such that a plane has, you'd probably need a boatload of antennas...Then you have to worry about extra shielding for all the onboard components, etc.

Besides, all this means is that the business traveler will have to carry around a 2 ft CAT 5 cable...big deal. I bet some creative laptop maker comes up with one of those airline power adapters that also integrates a CAT 5 cable in to it. Just plug the one end in to the back of your laptop, and plug in the power and network cables in to the appropriate ports on the other end.

It all goes to show...

[ockegheim]

...if you're not moving around much, use a light little ethernet cable and save yourself all the hassle of wireless. It trumps wireless in speed, reliability and cost.

I can see...

[otacon]

how this makes sense for laptops as it shouldn't matter laptops generally have both, and there is no need to be mobile on a plane, but what about WiFi PDA's and the upcoming cell phones with wifi capabilities, both of those could be pretty important to an exec who needs to remain connected.

Waaaait-a-minit...

[Sunrun]

"Amazingly, the LAN cables needed to connect every seat in the aircraft weigh 150 lbs less than all the wireless antennae, access points, and thickened ceiling panels required to accommodate a wireless network (the design called for an access point above each row)."

So, obviously, they didn't spec this out with commodity hardware -- I'm guessing that and the extra shielding were to mitigate any radio interference that might mess with the avionics. But come on.. there has to be a wireless solution that uses less physical hardware than this.

- 'Drew

Re:Weight saved?

[Dunbal]

How important is saving 150 pounds on a plane that weighs between 360k and 540k pounds on takeoff?

      It may seem small in comparison, but it's 150lbs less you have to pay fuel for, for the entire service life of the plane. While this probably wouldn't be a huge chunk of profits gone, why waste money? After a while the fuel needed to ship that extra 150lbs certainly adds up. I wouldn't want to pay for it!

Now all they need to do..

[zyl0x]

..is allow you to take your laptop on the flight.

Re:access point above every row?

[Tristandh]

Quick, call Boeing! They probably didn't even consider that! They'll love to hear the your expert opinion! Or: Ask yourself who'll know best. You or them.

Common Sense...

[AVonGauss]

An access point above every row? Maybe there is a technical reason that someone can point out, but that sounds just whacked to me... So now there are going to be jacks at every seat, people will need to carry a LAN cable and since we're crunching all the seats together to maximize profit thats one more coffee spilling device to invade the small world of the plane traveler's seat... Sigh...

Re:1 AP per row?!

[SnowZero]

I would guess it was so they could use low-power APs. Probably easier to get FAA approval for something running in the bluetooth power range rather than a typical AP.

What about the connectors?

[Nkwe]

The challenge I see with wired Ethernet is the connectors. Is a standard cat 5 jack designed for multiple plug insertions and removals every day? How often would the jacks need to be replaced and can this be done easily?

Power?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget that your typical household WAP (let alone a commercial version) has enough transmitting power to register a good signal at least 10m away. I'm guessing, based on the paranoia about RFI in planes, that nothing CLOSE to that high powered would be considered acceptable.

It's quite probable that, for safety reasons, they were looking at a solution with a large number of very low power WAP's, which makes sense--you will have a lot less stray energy.

I don't think that the primary design concern is how to cover as much of the plane as possible with little equipment.

Re:access point above every row?

[MaestroRC]

Obviously you don't know much about how wireless works. See, while 3 AP's may provide the proper *coverage* (ie: you can get a signal anywhere in the plane), it can't provide the *bandwidth*. Assuming they're using this for more than just some person's want to get online from the air, such as for in-flight entertainment (think screens at each seat) and possibly a VoIP phone-type setup to consolidate cabling (no seperate phone/video cables for each seat), it likely will use quite a bit of bandwidth. If each row has some 7-8+ seats (twin aisle configuration, likely it's 2/3/2 or 3/3/3), and designing for peak capacity (i'm sorry you can't watch your in-flight movie because your rowmates are all watching it already and those guys are online and that guy is on the phone), it's going to take a lot of bandwidth. Even at 802.11g/a speeds, you're talking at most 108Mbps (twin radio configuration) split across 7-8 people. Figure watching a movie uses 3-10Mbps, that's at nearly peak capacity right there, best case scenario.

Re:plane-LAN to WAN?

[markov_chain]

Access point in each row, with 8 people per AP doing streaming video? That's nuts! I bet they couldn't make it work and wouldn't admit it.

Re:plane-LAN to WAN?

[Planetes]

This was essentially the point of Boeing's Connexion service but since Boeing canned Connexion it's essentially a non-issue. Connexion was the in-flight internet among other things. Whether or not an equivalent comes around in the future is completely up to the company and it's definitely not a priority among the 787 people in BCA.

Re:plane-LAN to WAN?

[mike260]

Agree.

Plus, I was under the impression that although 802.11 b/g has 11-13 'channels' there's only really 3 non-overlapping frequency-ranges. So each frequency would be fought over by 10+ APs, all stuffed inside a giant pringles-tube, all trying to shout each other down.

Satalite has massive bandwidth.

[raehl]

But also has massive latency.

Worst case, you can easily throttle bandwidth to a particular row or seat to keep one user from sucking up too much.

What will be interesting is if first class passengers get more bandwidth than cattle class.

Re:Satalite has massive bandwidth.

[drinkypoo]

All you have to do is use traffic shaping and specify that each person gets, minimum, their share of the connection. When they aren't, the traffic will be available to others. When they are, their traffic will be sent. All you need do is put the traffic in a separate bucket for each host, and then service each bucket with a packet in it once per sweep. Sounds like it should be a pretty simple connection to me. You could then put the first class passengers into a bucket and everyone else into another, and service the first class bucket twice as often, and implement the concept in your last sentence.

Re:plane-LAN to WAN?

[mike260]

They'd still have to rewire seats for power if they moved them about, so surely doing network cabling at the same time would be no great hardship. They'd only need to scatter a few switches around the plane with enough ports and capacity for the densest possible seat config.

Wifi seems like a really complicated way to move bits the few feet between the floor and the seatback.

Re:Not surprising.

[Deadstick]

More to the point, why install wireless to save wiring the seats when you have to wire the seats for laptop power anyway?

rj

Not the same thing.

[raehl]

Considering every commercial airline's effort to offer WiFi to date has been scrapped either before takeoff (pun intended), or not long after launch. The costs are simply not supported by the revenue, simple as that. Other considerations like weight and maintenance complexity are secondary.

The costs for an ADD-ON system are not supported by the revenue. Putting a wireless system on an EXISTING plane means you have to:

- Take the plane out of service
- Partially disassemble the plane
- Run supplemental wiring
- Install new access points and new compartments to hold them
- Bolt-on trasmit/receive device
- Reassemble plane

The costs of a system BUILT INTO the plane when it is FIRST CONSTRUCTED would be MUCH, MUCH lower. You just run your network wires at the same time you run all the other wiring for the plane. And you don't have to REPLACE receptacles etc with new ones, you just install the ones with ethernet jacks to begin with.

And, in this case, they're installing a wired network, not a wireless one. So even cheaper still.

Re:Not surprising.

[AeroIllini]

I don't think they would require you to bring a cable with you, since it's probably only a matter of time before they ban all cables of any kind from airplanes because they could be used to make bombs or something.

Or I could use a CAT5 cable to strangle the TSA representative who is telling me that my 4 oz bottle of hair gel is a danger to the plane and its passengers.

power over ethernet?

[speculatrix]

there are pros and cons of offering cables vs wireless. wireless would be fine for a bit of email and web-browsing especially if traffic shaping were used. cabling allows isolation of each switch port (and firewall off passengers from each other), and control of bandwidth would be relatively easy compared to wireless.

if they use power over ethernet then they can make the in-seat entertainment system a thin client and use at least *some* off-the-shelf hardware (remember that aircraft electronics, even in entertainment, have to withstands many years of use, far longer than any consumer electronics have to).

it also means they could use SIP phones for providing in-flight telephony and put them on their own vlans, likewise have vlans for security cameras and remote controlled devices.