Gotta love technology

Ghery

Ghery

Touchdown! Greaser!
Joined
Feb 25, 2005
Messages
10,903
Location
Olympia, Washington
Display Name
Display name:
Ghery Pettit
Here I am at 11,000 meters (sorry, Singapore Airlines doesn't give the information in English units) about 3 hours out of Hong Kong, using my laptop to post on Pilots of America. Is technology neat, or what? Thanks, Boeing!
 
Ghery said:
Here I am at 11,000 meters (sorry, Singapore Airlines doesn't give the information in English units) about 3 hours out of Hong Kong, using my laptop to post on Pilots of America. Is technology neat, or what? Thanks, Boeing!
Click to expand...

How many $$$/bit???


And [expletive deleted] Now I can't use the excuse I was on the plane and could not read email for 14 hours. :vomit:
 
Ghery said:
Here I am at 11,000 meters (sorry, Singapore Airlines doesn't give the information in English units) about 3 hours out of Hong Kong, using my laptop to post on Pilots of America. Is technology neat, or what? Thanks, Boeing!
Click to expand...

Well that is great, we know right where you are but not where your baggage is!
 
Ghery said:
Connexion by Boeing. $9.95/hour.
Click to expand...
Not too bad at all. What is the link? 802.11 in the plane and then something up and out?

Can't be iRidium as that had a 9600bps limit unless they are flying new satellites.

Here is their web page http://www.connexionbyboeing.com, does not say what sats they are using and what the physical layer spec is.
 
Last edited:
I'm on Luftunsa outbound from BLR to BOS; they have the new inflight wireless (FlyNet IIRC), I can't wait to see what it is like. However, my ability to "catch up" on the plane is rapidly dwindling...

Cheers,

-Andrew
 
How can an multiple-thousand mile wireless connection from an airliner at 39000ft, moving mach .85 over the north pacific, to millions of outposts on the internet be $9.95 per hour..... when I make one breathless three (3) minute collect call 150 miles to ONE person at $10.35?!
 
Ghery said:
Here I am at 11,000 meters (sorry, Singapore Airlines doesn't give the information in English units) about 3 hours out of Hong Kong, using my laptop to post on Pilots of America. Is technology neat, or what? Thanks, Boeing!
Click to expand...
That is pretty darn cool! Now that ZMA has fully implemented (so I'm told) CPDLC (Controller-Pilot Datalink Communication) and Gander (oceanic) is using it in North Atlantic flights, data and ATC transmissions may soon be in textual format for most oceanic clearances/requests. Amazing technology these days.

Jason
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
How can an multiple-thousand mile wireless connection from an airliner at 39000ft, moving mach .85 over the north pacific, to millions of outposts on the internet be $9.95 per hour..... when I make one breathless three (3) minute collect call 150 miles to ONE person at $10.35?!
Click to expand...
It only takes one connection to hook everyone on the airplane to the entire internet.

It takes 1 connection to make 1 phone call.

Oh, that and they're really good at ripping you off...
 
Greebo said:
It only takes one connection to hook everyone on the airplane to the entire internet.

It takes 1 connection to make 1 phone call.

Oh, that and they're really good at ripping you off...
Click to expand...

I suspect the biggest difference is most folks aren't going to be doing continuous downloads and instead will likely have significant dead times in their email/surfing in the sky. That makes it easier to share bandwidth. And when congestion occurs, things simply slow down. With a telephone connection you need the full BW for the whole call duration even if you are silent.

And that brings up an interesting issue. Do you suppose the internet bandwidth is sufficient to support VOIP? I'll bet that even if it does the airlines will have a prohibition on that kind of use although I believe it would be near impossible to enforce.
 
I don't know for sure about VOIP on an airplane but I highly doubt it. The high level of latency that I'd expect in that kind of a connection would make for a really bad environment for any kind of streaming. I'd expect them to also clamp down on everything but ports 80 and maybe email - what is that 23?
 
Greebo said:
I don't know for sure about VOIP on an airplane but I highly doubt it. The high level of latency that I'd expect in that kind of a connection would make for a really bad environment for any kind of streaming. I'd expect them to also clamp down on everything but ports 80 and maybe email - what is that 23?
Click to expand...
As Ed already noted:

25 = SMTP
110 = POP3
80 = HTTP
443 = HTTPS

If it was my connection, I'd throttle 25/110 to a lower priority. Too much e-mail has attachments on it nowadays. Send a photo and we're talking 1Mb+ in some cases (those that don't know better).
 
Yeah I wasn't so sure about email m'self for that very reason.
 
Greebo said:
I don't know for sure about VOIP on an airplane but I highly doubt it. The high level of latency that I'd expect in that kind of a connection would make for a really bad environment for any kind of streaming. I'd expect them to also clamp down on everything but ports 80 and maybe email - what is that 23?
Click to expand...

The sat link would only ad perhaps a second of latency to VoIP connection. That can surely be over come and is no worse than what we used to have for the overseas calls. It is, I agree, not like tlaking ont he phone now, but even with the cellular PTT services you can get a .5 to 1 sec delay latency.
 
smigaldi said:
The sat link would only ad perhaps a second of latency to VoIP connection. That can surely be over come and is no worse than what we used to have for the overseas calls. It is, I agree, not like tlaking ont he phone now, but even with the cellular PTT services you can get a .5 to 1 sec delay latency.
Click to expand...

When I was involved in telco, the rule was no more than one satellite hop per connection. Round trip latency is something like 250-200 ms per hop.
 
lancefisher said:
When I was involved in telco, the rule was no more than one satellite hop per connection. Round trip latency is something like 250-200 ms per hop.
Click to expand...

Depends on the satellite. LEOs are much lower latency than geostationary. I don't recall what the Boeing system is using.
 
Not to mention compression techniques that can be used in VoIP to keep the data rate down. Instead of the 64kbps open link that you have when you pick up and dial on a land line, you can use two VoIP links on that same line at 30kbps. And as someone else mentioned, if you're not talking, you're not spending the bandwidth. Really fun stuff :)
 
Well, I'm on the ground and hardwired into the company system in Penang. Dropped out on the flight as I had only purchased 1 hour and it ran out during breakfast before getting into Hong Kong.

That $9.95 figure is for a single hour. If you wanted 2 hours it was something like $14.95. $29.95 would get you 24 hours, including connecting flights (assuming they had the service, my connecting flight was on Cathy Pacific and they didn't offer it).

One other problem with doing this in coach - no power outlets, so when your laptop battery is depleted, you're finished.

The connection wasn't the fastest I've experienced, but it worked fairly well. Solid signal. 802.11b from the laptop to the network in the plane. Who knows what to a satellite.
 
wsuffa said:
Depends on the satellite. LEOs are much lower latency than geostationary. I don't recall what the Boeing system is using.
Click to expand...

Yes, I was referring to geosynchronous SVs which is what I expect Boeing is using, but I'm not sure as their early descriptions (circa 1997) specified LEO. One thing for sure is that it's not ground based as the service is also offered for maritime use.

WRT use restrictions, they claim to allow VPN and AFaIK once you tunnel to your own server you could use any service available there, including VOIP.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top