a little unclear here - are AA/Aircell and QF/Panasonic using the same ground-2-air wifi technology?
No - they are very different. What AA and VX offer via
Aircell's Gogo service is aircraft direct to ground base stations (ie. Aircraft <--> Ground base station <--> Internet), so it will only work over the USA (but not over Canada where come flights temporarily leave US airspace). What QF is offering through OnAir is a Satellite based connection - (ie Aircraft <--> Satellite <--> Ground base station <--> Internet).
tscharke said:
AA is not filtering
QF is filtering!
Because of the Satellite dependency and the costs of Satellite comms (in both dollars and latency):
- I would not expect the same bandwidth as Aircell are able to offer
- QF will filter the traffic enabled via that link to stop Bittorrent, VoIP and other high bandwidth or bandwidth hog protocols (like download tools that open multiple FTP connections).
tscharke said:
Are they both routing the bandwidth to the passengers? and just that AA have chosen not to filter?
or
Is Aircell offering public access and QF using some private frequency which is then routed to passengers?
either way QF is screwed -as speed would then be severely limited on a flight full of happy lappy owners wanting a piece of silicon pie!
if that is the case then, I wonder why the satellite method wasnt considered by QF as I think(?) it offers higher speeds?
QF's OnAir system is via Inmarsat's Satellites
tscharke said:
in the end tho one thing is certain - it would only take a couple of drop outs or to experience a dial-up like speed to put me off for good!
Thus blocking VoIP connections...
According to
OnAir's web site the bandwidth that will be available to the plane (to be shared among the pax)
is a maximum of 864 kbps (ref http://www.onair.aero/index.php?pid=219), I still think it would make for a reasonable browsing experience. Remember that most people will not have their laptops out at any one point in time, and of those that do, because of the nature of web browsing (people take time to read pages before going to the next page). I know of plenty of offices (where all users have a PC in front of them all day long) with 300 people and a 1Mbps connection, and they do just fine - not stellar, but certainly faster than dial-up speeds.
edit:: actually it doesn't make sense that Aircell are offering public access as it would then be available on all carriers!!!!! any techies out there in the know? Mal?
In order to use Aircell, you must have the Aircell transceiver installed on the aircraft, and presumably have some account with Aircell(GoGo). Then to share that connection among the pax, you would also need a WiFi access point and router mounted in the aircraft. So - it is not available to all and sundry unless they have all the appropriate hardware and accounts set up.
NM said:
Its a pretty simple exercise to filter and cache the content inside the aircraft. This has the advantage of limiting the actual data transfer volume (for which Qantas will be required to pay). So rather than trying to block inappropriate content, it sounds like they plan to only permit access to a set of known suitable sites. Obviously Qantas' own site would be one that is permitted. But they have not indicated what else would be permitted.
My reading of the article in the OP is that for now, there will not be ANY direct access to the Internet, and that some Internet pages will be cashed on the aircraft to be served directly. Any links that go to content that is not cashed will fail. A real connection to the Internet will be deployed in 2009 some time once they are over their technical and regulatory issues.