25 November 2008

Ten Things You Need To Know About In Flight Wi-Fi

I'm live from Virgin America's Beta run of their Wi-Fi service, over San Francisco, and there are a few things you should know about how its going to work when most airlines go live in 2009.

And yes, I am posting this live from 15,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean.

1. Your last bastion of Internet Free peace is gone. Forever. You'll be forced to work on flights instead of valium napping or reading comic books, and your boss will expect you to be checking email. Time to plan a camping trip.ââ¬~¨

2. Total bandwidth is not as fast as Cable Modem, but it seems faster than slow DSL. (We were sharing 3.6Mbps down and 1.8Mbps up, which isn't bad at all, on this Virgin America test flight, and it felt this fast when benching.)

ââ¬~¨3. But bandwidth is shared between customers. Aircell's GoGo a 3GHz EVDO-Rev A related tech modded for ground to air, started crawling as soon as other passengers signed on.

4. You have to pay. Virgin America charges, for example $9.95 for flights under 3 hours, and $12.95 on flights over 3 hours.ââ¬~¨

5. You will still need to close your laptops and shut off your devices until you reach cruising altitude.ââ¬~¨

6. Most airlines, even those that are not blocking ports, are blocking known VOIP ports. For our sanity. Although I WAS able to initiate a really solid iChat video session, but they may filter this on real flights.

7. Although plenty of airlines will have Wi-Fi by the end of next year, I prefer Virgin America because they've got 110v AC power plugs in coach.

ââ¬~¨8. WiFi porn won't be blocked by Virgin America (or American Airlines according to a test we performed earlier this week). But blocking porn is silly ââ¬' people can easily play porn on DVDs or pre-downloaded files, but people generally have refrained so there's no reason to think they'll do otherwise now.

ââ¬~¨9. Flights using Go Go service will be able to connect to a VPN.ââ¬~¨

10. You can file share with other computers on the 802.11 a/b/g Wi-Fi network. That's good for gaming, but also, make sure your firewall is up.

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• Cathay has power in economy
  
  

  My favourite S.E. Asia airline, Cathay, now has multi-voltage outlets on most every econo seat in their newer aircraft. VPN is obviously the technology to use to bypass restrictions carriers might impose on usage. Free VPN software is now available (see < http://openvpn.net/>)

  By Jon Hewson, Tuesday, December 9, 2008