On Virgin America's inaugural GoGo WiFi flight: this post published from 35,000 feet
By Ryan Block 
posted November 22nd 2008 7:25PM
posted November 22nd 2008 7:25PM
Quick facts:
- The service is a shared high-power EV-DO Rev. A connection, at 3.6Mbps downstream and 1.8Mbps upstream.
- By April, 100% of Virgin America's flights will have GoGo service. Dayumn! All GoGo service is $10 for short flights (under 3 hours) and $13 for longer flights (over 3 hours).
- So far I've been getting about 1Mbps down, and 200Kbps up -- pretty good considering that this is about as pinned as the system is going to get. There are only about 150 people on it right now, you know?
- Latency is between 200-500ms, sometimes higher. Reasonable latency, though.
- The system uses 802.11a/b/g, although it's an open AP (i.e. no encryption).
- Speaking of which, GoGo claims they'll support VPN, so expect that to work. SSH is iffy though -- it worked for us, but they don't really want people SSH tunneling (especially to do stuff like VoIP).
- Aircell intends to block voice and video chat to keep things less obnoxious for travelers. It's working in flight though -- people are doing iChat sessions. But part of this inaugural flight will have live YouTube streaming, so one should expect to have this cut off later.
- BitTorrent works! It's not crazy fast, but I'm peering with about 8 nodes. I wouldn't expect this to work when the service launches.
- GoGo has a built-in traffic shaper that keeps an eye out for those using more traffic than others. If you're consuming too much, it'll scale you back (although no one has a hard cap). If you're the only one on GoGo (say, on a red-eye at 4am) then you can go crazy, you won't be scaled back. Still, I'm sitting next to my old pal Brian Lam from Giz, and I'd wager the two of us are somehow taking up about 80% of the plane's bandwidth.
- Virgin America isn't filtering content, so feel free to cast a glance over your shoulder and engage your browser's private mode.
http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/4216138/
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-mon-virgin-oharenov17,0,918931.story
I beg to differ
That is indeed a more recent article :)
And that Tribune article mentions how people can transfer to Virgin Atlantic flights... which explains ORD
How much is it?
Sod the internet whats the food like? ;-)
Does the pilot have internet access? You should run up to the cockpit and bang on the door to find out.
finally! something to use the 7+ hours of battery with my eee!
...they need power outlets.
@ethana2:
Every seat in First Class and Coach has a start 110v AC outlet.
sweet. ill surf Rotten.com when snacks are being passed out ;)
Ryan, what's with the tiny mohawk?
I think it's a combover!
how much does it cost?
Wow, didn't know Moby was the editor for Engadget.
who cares. i h8 flying. i would never take a flight unless i necessarily have to. even then i could care less if it has internet or not. now, hard liquor, is a must.
Was this included in the price of the flight or does this cost extra? I planned on flying Virgin soon anyway so this could be cool.
Damn, your a sexy geek...
Yeah, Ryan that's a great idea! Let's all watch pron on the airplane. Wouldn't that be awkward!
That's really cool. I hope all planes in the world are built with WiFi soon.l
What do boobies look like at 20,000 feet?
Torrents work? Woohoo, sky piracy!
Ahh, sky pirates, like that Disney cartoon back in the 80s, with Baloo the Bear.
That show was awesome.
I'll download it on BT now...
Can't wait to watch the guy next to me play WoW for 4 hours next time I fly across the country.
Branson is just testing GoGo for upcoming space travel flights.Then you'll be able to contact the aliens for free.
Trolls love delicious, nutritious spam: pixelmonk@aol.com
I thought Wifi on the plane would be the coolest thing ever (OMG hours of uninterrupted facebook and engadget reading!!!!!)
... and then I got a blackberry (for work) which made me realize that I can only reasonably be at peace in the sky.... no more :(
Wow dude, that is pretty righteous! This is something that is LONG overdue!
http://www.privacy.de.tc
It looks like he's sitting next to Brian Lam of Gizmodo!
QUICK, somebody give a shit.
we need that on the cities too.
come on. we've got the technology... so why dont we make it all easier?
hmm i guess... there's the money in between haha.
Did the plane make funny noise when you turn on the wifi?
what about the ping?
any good for online gaming :) ?
Ryan,
Can you plug your laptop's power adapter?
Are you karl pilkington? You have a head like a F&@king Orange. :)
Welcome back Ryan, props for the on-flight post.
If you access web sites that determine your geographic location from your IP address (Google, BBC, iTunes Store etc.), do they always consider you to be in the US? Will this be the case for all flights, even if international?
can i play wifi games with psp and nintendo ds