On Virgin America's inaugural GoGo WiFi flight: this post published from 35,000 feet
By Ryan Block 
posted Nov 22nd 2008 7:25PM
posted Nov 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.
RYAN! You've returned to Engadget!
Technically I never left! Since I went to start gdgt with Peter, I've stayed on at Engadget as editor-at-large. Basically, that means I'll occasionally write bits for the site (like this) and serve in a broader advisory capacity. Stay tuned for gdgt, though!
how come I never got any of your stuff
Thank goodness Ryan hasn't left. Seriously.
Tell us how the speed varies (whether it starts feeling really slow as the flight goes on). EvDo is nice, but depending on your route, it isn't going to be perfect everywhere. Just keep us posted.
"Virgin America isn't filtering content, so feel free to cast a glance over your shoulder and engage your browser's private mode." = xDD GOLD
Ryan, very subtle.
He's like Bill Gates. He throws a going away party but never leaves!
How is it that Ryan gets to shamelessly promote his new site here whenever he wants?
awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Welcome back Ryan! I imagine you were doing something like this:
http://www.stane-island.net/dump/postingtoengadget.jpg
:)
how many of the planes/flights will be equipped with this?
doesnt matter as long as your on the right one... ;)
GO RYAN GO RYAN!
read the article all of them.
@ one90ohustla:
Several to start with. Unfortunately, we have only a limited amount of time to be able to equip each and every flight. This includes Virgin or any of our other partners' aircraft.
Why do I hate that face?
Well considering that you are in the sky, thats pretty good as far as speed go, some people dont even get that on the ground.
P0rn On A Plane!
On another note this is a lot cheaper than what they charge in some internet cafes in new york!
$1 for 10 minutes.
Off-topic, but cell phone usage? How is accessing the Wi-Fi on your cell phone?
that i want to know, UMA ftw
@ ace587
As I'm sure you are aware, every access point handles VoIP calls differently. We've done our best to optimize our access points for UMA traffic.
Hey, Ryan's back!
quality photo
"Shared 3.6Mbps downstream (to the ground), and 1.8Mbps upstream (to the plane -- i.e. everyone on the plane is sharing 3.6Mbps of bandwidth for loading pages, downloading files, etc.)."
Am I the only one that is confused by this? "Downstream" usually means TO YOU (so, in this case, the plane), and "upstream" usually means FROM YOU (in this case, the 'ground'). Seriously, Engadget...WTF are you talking about?
No Stupid, downstream to your PC, upstream to your ISP
@ redcard: Yes, I know that. Read my post (if you can, that is; I got low-ranked because Engadget edited the stupid out of the article, despite the fact that I quoted the original text). That's exactly what I said, and isn't what Engadget said...hence my post. Thanks for calling me stupid and then agreeing with what I said, moron.
Ryan's post was perfectly clear.
You're the one who's confusing.
Ryan's post IS perfectly clear...following the edit. It was not prior to the edit. If it was, then why edit it at all?
I'm sorry my post was confusing to you. Good luck with your ESL courses.
of course it is confusing. you end up downloading files from a server below you, and uploading down to the earth.
its like the xkcd post about "the west" and "the east" :)
I guess that explains why I got low-ranked. So much for this being a techie site. Guess it's just a bunch of techie posers =)
This is an Apple blog.
If you're looking for general tech news, TUAW may be a better choice.
Do you get WiFI reception in the toilet? On a long haul flight, a laptop, internet. Hmmm.
Yeah, considering the air-bumps and all... Hmm.... ;)
you know, you can type "bare stewardessess" only using your left hand on a qwerty keyboard? (recent news at /.)
might be useful if you have wifi in the toilet.
Atanas, technically youcan write anything with just your left hand on a QWERTY keyboard, assuming the operator has one at least.
Dude, you can type "Stewardess ass sex" with only your left hand.
Slightly more interesting, no?
Chicken or fish?
Ahh yes, i remember. I had Lasagna
Coffee or tea?
5 dollar bottle of water? wait...this isn't US Airways.
Even so, domestic coach shouldn't expect real food regardless of airline
US Airways is fucking evil.
Whats the name of this fish again? Gefilte fish?
Here are the few things I'd like to know:
1. Could you try to use Skype Video and tell us how good the video/audio quality is?
2. What kind of WiFi networks are they using? 802.11a, b, or g?
3. Do they allow VPN connections?
He said it uses 802.11 a/b/g (yeah all of 'em)
And he mentioned the latency and bandwidth, which should give you the idea of how the Skype video will look like up there.
Now the only question you're left with is VPN, which I couldn't infer from the post. Maybe someone else can.
So how much does this cost normally? like a 10000000$ a MB?
Yeah, I'd like to know too, will be free or cost per megabyte or what?
According to Gizmodo it's $9.95 for flights under 3 hours, and $12.95 for flights over 3 hours.
Woops, then you'll have unlimited data.. It's not $9.95/$12.95 per MB, lol.
Never try using iVirgin iMericas inflight internet. They decided to use EDGE because EV-DO is a bag of hurt!
It was a joke, I'm not a fanboy or a troll, I own apple products and I like them!
Rofl.