
How Inflight Wifi Works - ffwang2
http://thepointsguy.com/2015/11/how-in-flight-wi-fi-works/
======
dheera
"Prior to the integration of in-flight Wi-Fi, most airline passengers passed
their time at 30,000 feet completely disconnected from the world below them —
but these days, that’s a highly uncommon occurrence."

Am I missing something here? 99% of the flights I take don't offer Wi-Fi, and
in most cases not even power outlets. And those that do have Wi-Fi seem to be
charging 30% of my monthly internet bill to provide it for a mere few hours.
Like, no thanks.

~~~
tbomb
While its been a long time since I've been on an airplane _without_ Wi-Fi, I
don't often see power outlets. And as you alluded to, most of the time its $10
for the duration of that flight, whether its 5 hours or 30 minutes.

~~~
Zarathustra30
What airline are YOU flying? I am usually on a 737 built before cell phones
were invented. I consider myself lucky if the SkyMall hasn't been stolen, let
alone in-flight Wi-Fi.

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degenerate
Jet Blue just rolled out free wifi to most of their US-based flights... and
while it was pretty slow, I could still RDP into my work computer to answer
emails and read HN. That was pretty sweet. You can pay $10 to get "gaming"
speeds but I didn't test it out. I'd imagine most pings being >200ms. Has
anyone tried it out?

~~~
wrenky
I work for ViaSat (the satellite provider for FlyFi)! You'll never have
latency fast enough for "gaming" speeds, as your signal has to travel halfway
to the moon and back meaning a physical limit of at least 500ms. Not good
enough for gaming, but streaming/torrents/large downloads work great.

~~~
rsync
"I work for ViaSat"

Well, well, well...

So, does viasat use different beams for the airplane links than the normal
ground based, satellite consumers ?

I assume yes, since most of the beams for ground users are _stupendously_
oversubscribed, such that you can't even open gmail or load your banks website
during a lot of the business day.

Our solution for rural Internet used to be a plain old T1 from AT&T @
$450/month, and we replaced it with 12mbps viasat at $149/mo ... and there
isn't a day that goes by that I don't wish we had that T1 back ...

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JoshGlazebrook
Does anyone have details on the ground based cell networks used for some
planes? Are they partnering with a provider like Verizon Wireless to use their
existing service, which I don't believe is the case unless they are aiming
their antennas into the air on certain towers for them. Or do they just lease
space for their own antennas on towers and aim them upwards? and then pay for
bandwidth, etc?

~~~
slapshot
GoGo is the big ground-based provider. GoGo uses a network of cell towers that
point up rather than down. An antenna under the plane connects to towers much
like civilian cellphones. [1]

By contrast, Row 44 (used by Southwest and some international carriers) is a
satellite-based system. An antenna on top of the plane connects to a
geostationary satellite. [2]

Other services do one or both of the above. [3]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gogo_Inflight_Internet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gogo_Inflight_Internet)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Row_44](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Row_44)
[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnAir_(telecommunications)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnAir_\(telecommunications\))

~~~
toomuchtodo
Last I heard, GoGo (previously Aircell) used an MPLS network to shuttle
traffic between a few hundred AT&T cell sites they were using for their
equipment, but that was years ago.

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colmvp
Of all the things I want on a plane, WiFi ranks a lot lower than having a
consistent power outlet at my seat. There's nothing worse than having Wifi but
a laptop that can only last a % of the flight.

~~~
untog
I'd love to see an airline get rid of seat back TVs entirely and just provide
power outlets instead. There are already systems that let you stream movies
for free over in-flight wi-fi - given that most of us have a smartphone (if
not a bigger screened device) the experience would probably be better.

Would suck for those without smartphones, though. Maybe they could lend out
crappy Android tablets to that minority of customers.

~~~
tbomb
I was recently on an Alaskan Air flight which did just that. It had no TV's on
the plane, but power outlets right on the back of the seat. For all of their
in flight entertainment, they directed you to their app or site once you
connected to the in flight Wi-Fi (for free). I ended up not using it and
reading instead (the free content wasn't great) but I really liked the idea
and it seemed to work great just poking around, as I did.

------
btrask
While on a flight recently, I realized... Why doesn't Google sponsor free in-
flight WiFi? It would be much easier than Google Fiber or Project Loon, and it
would let them deliver more ads to a fairly wealthy group of people.

~~~
bitwize
Because the (American) airlines will say no. Or, they will accept the offer
and then charge $12 per seat anyway. I think they get perverse joy out of
nickel and diming people to death. When not-uncomfortable seats are a premium
feature, there's nothing they won't charge for.

~~~
greggyb
American travelers tend to purchase tickets based solely on price. If your
consumers are very price conscious, you move as much as you can out of the
base price.

Don't blame airlines in the US, blame airline customers.

Personally, I like the nickel-and-dime scheme, as you call it. I rarely take
cross country flights. My typical travel is 3-4 hours of flying at the most. I
absolutely prefer a cheaper base ticket price, because I don't care if they
give me crappy food for "free" in that time frame. At 6'2", I fit comfortably
even in Spirit's closely-spaced seating. I travel very light and typically
have a single bag.

For me, a lower base fare with extra charges for the rest is something I
prefer. I am very happy that the US air-traveling market agrees with me and
has pushed the industry in this direction.

~~~
rconti
They haven't even bothered to try. 3" more legroom for $40? No. Human-sized
seat? I'd pay double the price. But I'm not going to pay 5x as much.

~~~
ubernostrum
_They haven 't even bothered to try._

Sure they have. All three of the big legacy US airlines have some form of
extra-legroom economy: American has Main Cabin Extra, Delta has Comfort+ and
United has Economy Plus.

The problem is those seats cost more, and people shop for airfares based
solely on the price they see in a search engine.

Airlines have tried all sorts of tricks to get people to buy the nicer seat.
They've tried showing it to you as an option at booking. They've tried
offering it as an upsell afterward. They've tried offering it during check-in.
They've tried branding it as a separate fare class labeled "premium" but still
a reasonable-looking price.

It's entirely due to passenger behavior at this point: people will grumble and
complain and whine about the legroom and the lack of power and the extra fees
for everything, but the next time they book a ticket they'll still just sort
by lowest fare and pick that.

~~~
rconti
I specifically mentioned that I was looking for a human-sized seat, not more
legroom. I'm not unusually tall, I'm an average-sized male adult, and I'd like
to have somewhere to put my arm. I don't really enjoy having my elbows pinned
to my sides for 4 or 6 or 14 hours.

~~~
ubernostrum
Wider seats take up more space, which means fewer seats which means less
revenue. And there's no way they'll give that up; they're facing competition
both domestically and internationally now from sardine-can aircraft layouts on
low-cost carriers.

So these days, US-based airlines have standardized on a width of 17-18 inches
in economy class. Used to be long-haul international flights would have
slightly wider seats, but now they're aiming to get 10-across seating in
economy and you can't do that with 18-inch-wide seats.

If you want a wider seat, your options are to pay for first class or (if
traveling internationally) pay for premium economy on a foreign carrier.

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devy
This paragraph is absurd. Not sure if the author was excessively exaggerating
or this is true. Can someone who's a domain expert or is familiar with the
device to clarify why in-flight WAPs are 10x more expensive but 10x more
fragile? Cosmic rays?

    
    
    		Called Wireless Access Points (or WAPs), these black boxes
    	function similarly to Wi-Fi routers that would be found in a
    	home, but because they’re on an airplane, they cost 10 times more
    	and break 10 times more easily. Each WAP is connected by a
    	QuadRax cable, which is essentially formed of wires within wires
    	within wires.

~~~
vacri
Can't speak to the fragility, but when a home WAP typically only costs $50, a
10x increase in cost for an aerospace item is trivial.

~~~
MBCook
The fragility bit doesn't seem too unreasonable. Being encased in the hull of
a plain means drastic temperature variations, air pressure variations and TONS
of vibration.

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nfriedly
Funny story: some in-flight WiFi services give you a different price based on
your user-agent (high for phones, higher for tablets, highest for desktop
browers). Fortunately no one can change that...

~~~
ubernostrum
If you fly a lot and are consistent in your choice of airline, typically you
can buy an unlimited-use pass that renews monthly for a flat fee.

If you don't fly often, I know you can prepay for a pass for your flight
before leaving home on most services. Though for my use case (flying
75,000-85,000 miles/year on average) the monthly pass is absolutely cheaper.

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mindslight
What's with the insistence on demand for streaming music or video on a plane?
Do these people also forgo packing a suitcase and just rebuy everything as
needed?

~~~
pavel_lishin
Are you saying that they should pre-download movies and music to listen to on
the plane?

I use Google Play for music because it's pretty okay at letting me cache local
music on my phone, but I have no idea how well Rdio, Spotify, or Pandora do
that. I don't think there's a way to do it on your computer at all, so if you
only have a work phone that you don't keep music on, streaming music might be
your only option if you don't want to listen to one of the 13 channels
provided via the crappy in-seat audio jack.

~~~
ghaff
>Are you saying that they should pre-download movies and music to listen to on
the plane?

Um, yes? It doesn't really seem like a huge deal. On the other hand, I have a
fairly large music library on my phone and carry a tablet for movies and other
things.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Netflix and Hulu don't support offline caching as far as I'm aware. And I
can't run cat5 from my house to a flight. And buying a season of something to
download from, e.g., Amazon seems silly when Netflix and Hulu offer it as part
of their regular service - now _that 's_ like forgoing to pack a suitcase and
just buying things on the go again.

~~~
ghaff
Amazon does support offline caching--at least on their own tablets. And
there's almost always a season of something I want to watch that isn't
available streaming. I've also been known to rip DVDs and import them. The
bottom line is that I can find plenty of things to watch that don't require
double-buying.

------
beachstartup
does anyone know a highly reliable mobile satellite internet solution? price
is less-ish of an object but i've been looking for something to take with me
on extended camping trips and remote locations to do work or for emergencies
(also thinking of buying property somewhere without good wired internet).

haven't found much so far except for extremely expensive (5-figure) expedition
type rigs.

~~~
Scottopherson
I'm interested in this too. I could take a lot more camping trips if I could
video chat w/ coworkers from remote locations.

~~~
idlewords
I'm kind of glad this is a limiting factor on techies in the wilderness.

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guelo
It used to feel like a sanctuary going on a plane and being forced offline, no
social media, no emails, no ads, no constant poking of my dopamine receptors.
One of the last refuges.

~~~
Altaer
I thoroughly enjoy driving due to the fact that I know I can't do anything
productive on my phone or computer. It's one of the few times I can relax
myself and enjoy the experience...something that is dwindling on airplanes as
the WIFI technology gets better and better.

------
ikeboy
_Formally used for military communications_

Probably should be formerly.

------
ekimekim
I mainly do trans-pacific flights. In such long (>12h) flights I can't use
wifi even if its on offer, as it chews through precious battery time too fast.
I would kill for plane seats with power plugs, or even just USB power.

~~~
rconti
I typically find I can get ~6 hours on most modern laptops, which means far
more hours than I have the patience to stare at a computer screen for.

~~~
thescriptkiddie
Last time I flew internationally, I brought a 2015 macbook pro retina with a
hard drive full of videos. I only ended up getting 4 of the advertised 9 hours
run time running VLC with the brightness turned all the way down. Luckily,
there were power outlets hidden under the seats. I don't understand why power
outlets aren't the number 1 selling point for airlines that have them.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
_I brought a 2015 macbook pro retina with a hard drive full of videos_

Not clear which exact model you have. Some have a discrete AMD GPU which would
take more power.

Also it's not clear what format your videos were in. If it's something like
DVD rips, then it could have been MPEG-2. I don't think Intel GPUs have any
hardware support for playing that back. Also VLC probably doesn't take
advantage of any CPU support for playing back video.

You should do a little more research. Your reported performance seems
disappointing. You should be able to do much better. For example the current
model 13" claims:

    
    
       Up to 12 hours iTunes movie playback
    

Notice they don't mention VLC there. :) So you might have to transcode your
video into a format that iTunes supports.

~~~
thescriptkiddie
It's the low-end 15" model with Intel Iris 6100 integrated graphics, and the
files were mostly H.264. I suppose I could have played them in iTunes, but I
made a conscious decision to never run it.

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calebm
If they don't offer free wifi, just use DNS tunneling ;)

~~~
finnn
I got 10-15 _second_ round trip time to the ground using DNS tunneling on
Southwest's inflight WiFi

~~~
0xdragon
Anyone tried ICMP tunnelling? :)

~~~
calebm
They were blocking ICMP on United last time I checked (4 days ago). If I
pinged a website, the ip would come back, but the pings would timeout.

~~~
0xdragon
Ah, that's a pity. I might try it when I fly next. Wish there was a website
that displayed the airline along with which different tunnelling methods
worked. I'd pay for that :)

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copperx
> initial page elements will take up to a second to appear.

This happens to me too on my home 50Mbps connection.

