
Internet in a Box - madaxe_again
https://www.revk.uk/2020/02/internet-in-box.html
======
ThinkingGuy
I thought this was going to be an article about the Internet-in-a-Box project
(which downloads resources such as OSM, wikis, media for free, private,
offline use)

[http://internet-in-a-box.org/](http://internet-in-a-box.org/)

Still a nice build, though.

~~~
emmelaich
The first image is of the "Internet in a Box" from the IT Crowd.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg)

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telesilla
A cell signal booster is also another useful travel companion. Further, if you
have the budget, consider a network bonding device such as
[https://teradek.com/collections/link-pro-
family](https://teradek.com/collections/link-pro-family). I use these at trade
shows (not this device but something similar) and it's really quite incredible
how good service you can get and not have to pay through the nose to the trade
show service provider for an ethernet connection.

~~~
rjvs
Any particular reason you linked to Teradek instead of the one that you use?
I'm very interested in something like this for trade shows and on-site demos.

~~~
telesilla
We made our own, it's not something we have public but it's similar in concept
to the Teradek or Viprinet.

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rcarmo
Cute. I’ve resorted to taking a tiny OpenWRT router with me on trips to do
pretty much the same (intend to switch to WireGuard on the next trip).

~~~
DividableMiddle
Can you provide more info about your setup?

~~~
close04
These travel routers [0] [1] support OpenWRT and/or Wireguard, as client and
server. They also support connectng to captive portal WiFi networks so they're
perfect for travel.

[0] [https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-ar750s/](https://www.gl-
inet.com/products/gl-ar750s/)

[https://openwrt.org/toh/gl.inet/gl-ar750](https://openwrt.org/toh/gl.inet/gl-
ar750)

[1] [https://www.gl-inet.com/products/gl-ar300m/](https://www.gl-
inet.com/products/gl-ar300m/)

[https://openwrt.org/toh/gl.inet/gl.inet_gl-
ar300m](https://openwrt.org/toh/gl.inet/gl.inet_gl-ar300m)

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mnemonicsloth
I write code on the internet every day, and I understood 0% of that article.
Abstraction is a powerful thing.

~~~
walrus01
One of the purposes appears to be to connect to the cruise ship's (expensive)
wifi as client, as a single fixed MAC address, and rebroadcast a local wifi
signal you control to more than 1 device. Because the cruise company wants you
to pay per device.

Also to have a small router you control to monitor the data usage per device,
and cumulative data usage on the wifi-WAN-uplink interface. And to establish a
whole-router VPN tunnel if you want.

~~~
close04
> mostly holiday, but also some work

> This is obviously somewhat overkill, so worth some explanation...

The author doesn't make it immediately obvious why they chose the particular
components and why the overkill, especially for something that is so rarely
used and is not aimed at enterprise scenarios. It comes at quite the cost. The
FireBrick alone is £500+VAT and as far as I can tell the 3 Aruba boxes
together easily cost even more. That's at least $1500 worth of equipment in
the Internet Box. Couldn't the same result (within reason) be achieved with
something substantially cheaper? Like a travel router, maybe combined with a
RPi if needed? Of course you wouldn't really get anything close to
"enterprise" but then again the occasional vacation cruise doesn't seem to beg
for such features.

~~~
rjsw
His company makes the FireBrick. Having one along on the cruise allows him to
develop for it as well.

~~~
close04
For him I understand, I read the comment above that made this clear. I was
wondering how much sense it makes for the rest of the readers. And it's not
just the FireBrick but the entire setup that is vastly overspecced for the
purpose, which would be "internet on vacation cruise" rather than "product
development".

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dorkwood
I'm finding it a little hard to discern to purpose of this. Is it to
circumvent wifi restrictions on a cruise ship?

~~~
dylz
Flight and plane wifi generally charge per device, block things like UDP and
ICMP that break the internet, filter and MITM websites, including MITMing
HTTPS, only allowing port 80/443, all sorts of horrendous malicious/hostile
things.

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kyuudou
Kept thinking about that old software bundle by Spry, "Internet in a Box"
([https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2014/10/openi...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2014/10/opening-an-internet-time-capsule-internet-in-a-box-for-
win95/))

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pupdogg
For those that don’t know, Royal Caribbean charges approx. $20/device/day for
their all-out streaming package. They claim it’s faster than normal land based
Ethernet but I’d say that’s a BIG LIE. It’s more like having an ISDN...aka 4x
faster than a standard dialup modem. Such a sham!

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zamadatix
The power injectors seem superfluous, the 330H and 501 both have standard AC
adapters available. Also the 303H isn't directional (page 7
[https://www.arubanetworks.com/assets/ds/DS_AP303H.pdf](https://www.arubanetworks.com/assets/ds/DS_AP303H.pdf))
so having one at each end of the case wouldn't be needed if you rearranged
things so both sides of the AP had a clear path.

Would be interesting to see the configuration of the FB2900, sounds like there
is a lot going on in there!

~~~
walrus01
Having PoE powered devices often lets you place things in more creative
locations, than the need to put things near an AC wall outlet. In certain
cruise ship cabins I imagine that optimal placement for wifi signal may not be
near where the wall outlets are located.

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kohtatsu
Off-topic, but I can't stand cookie banners that link to Google policy
documents.

Ironically it's the only way I end up leaking info to Google

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speedgoose
Can't you preload the content you want to watch on Netflix and similar?

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aSplash0fDerp
I agree that we are getting closer to archived data consumption (vs requiring
Internet access) and we'll pack a "data suitcase" prior to extended trips or
errands.

I guess it could be considered brown-bagging your Internet diet when you're on
the go.

