Fly OVER Ireland for better connectivity...

dahamsta

Ok, you breakout via satellite, but still...

January 15, 2003
Lufthansa and Cisco Put Wi-Fi in the Plane
By Eric Griffith

At last, the days of your laptop being nothing more than a method of playing Minesweeper on airline flights may be coming to an end.

Deutsche Lufthansa AG is currently doing passenger trials of in-flight Wi-Fi- and Ethernet-based access to the Internet. Partnered with Boeing Company (Quote, Chart) and Cisco Systems (Quote, Chart), the Lufthansa flight -- part of a project called FlyNet -- will travel from Frankfurt, Germany to Washington D.C and back for the next three months.

The plane in use is a Boeing 747-400 equipped with Connexion By Boeing, a system for providing high-speed, real-time data services via satellite. The network from Cisco includes five Cisco Aironet 350 Access Points, a Cisco 3640 Router, and nine digital switches for the hardwired Ethernet connections found in some seats in First Class and Business Class. The wireless, obviously, reaches everyone on the plane. The data throughput for users on the plan is about 3 Megabits per second (Mbps) downstream and 128Kbps for uploads.

The service is initially free to any one on the Germany to US flights; Jonathan Hindle, strategic technology manager for the World Wide Mobile Team at Cisco, says that this trial is, in part, about finding out what people will pay for the service.

While anyone who has traveled on a flight in the last few years knows that laptops and cell phones must be turned off during take off and landing -- and that won't change just because of this trial -- the 802.11b network Cisco has installed in the plane causes no apparent problems. In fact, what Cisco had to do to get the WLAN equipment to meet airline regulations had little to do with technology.

"The thing we had to change was the housing on some of the boxes -- we had too much paint on them. They were a fire risk," says Hindle. The Cisco equipment also needed new power supplies to work with the voltage found in the Boeing craft.

The fixed Ethernet installed in some seats still turned out to be a massive undertaking. According to Hindle it required over 550 kilograms (1474 pounds) worth of additional wiring -- that's a lot of displaced passengers or luggage. Wireless solutions would shave that weight. Lufthansa expects to put broadband in its entire intercontinental fleet over the next two years.

SkepticOne

I don't think this is of much interest to Irish internet users.

Urban Weigl

Not unless Aerlingus offer a service like that on their Dublin/Shannon -> US service.

d-j-k

Airbus are rolling out an even more advanced technology that also allows you to use your GSM mobile phone safely on board their aircraft. You'll be roaming on the airline's network though using an on-board pico cell that allows the phone to communicate using very low power signals (as the base station is only meters away from you)

The system also includes WiFi access similar to Boeing's Connexion system.

Since Aer Lingus exclusively uses Airbus aircraft on long haul and uses smaller Airbus aircraft for the Dublin - London Heathrow and Cork-London Heahtrom services, it's quite likely that this will be the first on-board wifi technology we see.

The Airbus system's called "OnAir"

dahamsta

SkepticOne wrote:

I don't think this is of much interest to Irish internet users.

Simply making a point Mike. Did you miss it?

SkepticOne

dahamsta wrote:

Simply making a point Mike. Did you miss it?

I suppose there was a weak point in there somewhere along the lines of "Uh look what the Germans are doing in planes flying over Ireland and yet in Ireland no one can get broadband". Was that it? Otherwise not much of interest to people trying to get broadband here.

damien

Just got an email from Yoda as he was passing over the boards.ie server on the way to the states:

Lufthansa uses a satellite connection for onboard internet access.
Costs $30 for the flight from Frankfurt to Newark.

http://www.flynet.lufthansa.com/en/

I get the following pings from this service:

PING www.jolt.co.uk (82.133.85.65): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 82.133.85.65: icmp_seq=0 ttl=42 time=763.958 ms
64 bytes from 82.133.85.65: icmp_seq=1 ttl=42 time=762.367 ms
64 bytes from 82.133.85.65: icmp_seq=2 ttl=42 time=807.672 ms
64 bytes from 82.133.85.65: icmp_seq=3 ttl=42 time=757.025 ms
64 bytes from 82.133.85.65: icmp_seq=4 ttl=42 time=755.904 ms
64 bytes from 82.133.85.65: icmp_seq=5 ttl=42 time=878.304 ms
64 bytes from 82.133.85.65: icmp_seq=6 ttl=42 time=752.872 ms
64 bytes from 82.133.85.65: icmp_seq=7 ttl=42 time=751.466 ms
64 bytes from 82.133.85.65: icmp_seq=8 ttl=42 time=750.603 ms
64 bytes from 82.133.85.65: icmp_seq=9 ttl=42 time=835.559 ms

--- www.jolt.co.uk ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 750.603/781.573/878.304/41.932 ms

jesus_thats_gre

Quite a few airlines are offering this service already or definetly trialling it anyway.

Also, I would imagine that techniques used to offer internet access while in the air wouldnt need to be changed too much in order to offer mobile phone services..

dahamsta

Heh, nice pings. When did he send the email, last week?