Alex speaking from Flight LH 432

[Alexander Turcic]

Now let me post some of the more technical findings using Connexion's broadband with my notebook (Thinkpad R50):

- e-mail access (secure POP3, IMAP, SMTP) worked fine.
- browsing the Web was smooth, albeit sometimes loading images seemed to lag for half a second or so.
- downloading of a larger file (80MB) file from Mobileread resulted in a data throughput of around 180-220Kb/s.
- VPN access to my home PC immediately worked.
- no ports seemed to be blocked (including P2P).

[TadW]

Originally Posted by Alexander

...
- downloading of a larger file (80MB) file from Mobileread resulted in a data
...
- no ports seemed to be blocked (including P2P).

But what if every laptop user on board was downloading large files at the same time, or what if some geek was implementing a P2P node? Can Boeing promise me a certain bandwidth? I would be rather annoyed if I didn't receive the promised broadband after paying $29.95!

[hacker]

Originally Posted by TadW

But what if every laptop user on board was downloading large files at the same time, or what if some geek was implementing a P2P node? Can Boeing promise me a certain bandwidth? I would be rather annoyed if I didn't receive the promised broadband after paying $29.95!

A small handful of people streaming some 128k streams to their laptop/headphones/pda would certainly saturate that connection fast. You could figure out who they were pretty easily though and just knock them offline if you wanted, but the Average Joe wouldn't know how to do this.

Its new, give them time to lock it down and throttle each connecting MAC to 64k or whatever... it'll happen, in time, and as people begin to abuse the system.

[Alexander Turcic]

Originally Posted by TadW

But what if every laptop user on board was downloading large files at the same time, or what if some geek was implementing a P2P node? Can Boeing promise me a certain bandwidth? I would be rather annoyed if I didn't receive the promised broadband after paying $29.95!

Good question. This is what Boeing officially says:

How many people can Connexion by Boeing serve simultaneously?
Depending on airline preference, Connexion by Boeing is capable of providing service to every passenger simultaneously through either a stand ethernet Connexion or wireless connectivity.

Well, that doesn't really answer your question. After digging some more, I found this interesting answer on Lufthansa's homepage:

How fast is the data transfer?

Each aircraft boasts a transfer rate of 5 Mbps in the airplane and approximately 1 Mbps outside of the airplane. This bandwidth is shared among the users on board and, as with any other Internet Hotspot on the ground, the bandwidth per user depends on the number of users sharing and the applications used. Tests carried out last year showed that during average Internet usage, passengers should experience close to DSL speed.

In other words, next time I should book a flight outside of the airplane to receive my dedicated 1 Mbps Ok ok,they probably mean upstream bandwidth is limited to 1 Mbps, while downstream bandwidth is 5 Mbps. This is not all the bandwidth Connexion could offer though. Transmission speeds can be as fast as 20 Mbps; however, currently only one-quarter of the bandwidth is given over to passenger data needs, with another quarter devoted to carriage of television broadcasts (yet to come), a quarter for airline use and the final quarter as a buffer to provide extra bandwidth to the other applications when needed.

So to answer your question, I think there could be a problem if too many passengers are using the service at once, or if there is some bandwidth hog who cannot live without P2P even just for a couple of hours.

[sUnShInE]

Originally Posted by Alexander

Lynn, I was actually booking United myself, but they are code sharing flights with Lufthansa ("Star Alliance") and I ended up on this Lufthansa flight. There was a big annoucement on board before they enabled the service, and I was like, geez, this is my lucky day!

I couldn't get so lucky even if I tried. I've flown UAL to London before. Unless you go directly to Frankfurt from DC, you're on UAL. Even the movies suck. But, since I'm still paying student rate airfares, I should keep my yap shut.

Gizmodo did have a good point though: it would be interesting to actually benchmark the transfer rates. I am really shocked that they're not blocking P2P. I would guess that they'll start blocking ports pretty darn soon. Especially once they figure out that their first-adopters are 20-30 sumptins who are trying to "test" the system to its fullest.

I'll say one thing though: Lufthansa owes you a free flight for all the free advertising you're giving them. Screenshot of your bill? LOL

Yeah I've got a flight London -> Singapore next month and was thinking of coughing up for the deal, although with only 2hrs on my battery it would be a waste.... now we've got the nerd onboard, how abouts some power points?

[Alexander Turcic]

Originally Posted by sUnShInE

Gizmodo did have a good point though: it would be interesting to actually benchmark the transfer rates. I am really shocked that they're not blocking P2P. I would guess that they'll start blocking ports pretty darn soon. Especially once they figure out that their first-adopters are 20-30 sumptins who are trying to "test" the system to its fullest.

I didn't scientifically benchmark the rates (using some software like Sandra), but I came up with download rates between 180 and 220Kb/s. As I said in my previous post above, if you have some more people like myself on board, and perhaps the one or other doing P2P, the system would come to a halt pretty fast - unless they start blocking ports or limiting bandwidth rates.

I'll say one thing though: Lufthansa owes you a free flight for all the free advertising you're giving them. Screenshot of your bill? LOL

Heh, I didn't mention the following part of my flight story yet: An hour after take-off, the person sitting next to me crashed with his seat on the person's lap behind him. Flight assistant came and judged that the seat could not be repaired and that it was against regulations to sit on a broken seat. Alas the plane was completely full, and the guy couldn't be separated from his wife who was sitting to his left (we shared a row of 3 seats), because she was suffering from flight phobia. I offered my seat to him given that the flight assistant could find me an alternative isle seat... of which there wasn't any available. End of story was that I got upgraded and transferred to the first row in Business class for the remainder of the flight. Guess you could really call this my lucky flight !!

[sUnShInE]

I love when that happens.

As for Skype on Flynet: Since the uplink is much slower than the downlink, when I tried it, people could not really understand me speaking - very garbled and frequently interrupted. I could hear them just fine, though.

Tom

Oh, one more thing: LH has standard 110-volt-outlets in each seat in business and first class. That's really what you want for surfing during a whole flight.

[Colin Dunstan]

Alex, this is soooo cool! I must admit that I am a little jealous of your unique experience. I'll make sure to check Lufthansa flights the next time I have a long-haul trip.