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Thane_Bitter
Inquire within
Premium Member
join:2005-01-20

Thane_Bitter

Premium Member

But how good is it?

Sounds nice but does the service actually work? Case in point, VIA rail, (Canada's federally operated money loosing equivalent to Amtrak) also offers WiFi for free (it was intended to be a user pay system). However because of connection problems (translation: the system doesn't work while the train is in motion) they have been offering the service (lack of service) for no charge.

According to VIA's website it uses satellites and may experiences outages. Oddly enough there are no tunnels or many overhead obstructions that would otherwise hinder operation, but it doesn't work. The system does work at the stations along the Quebec Windsor corridor; however this is typical of the service:

Tracing route to dslreports.com [209.123.109.175]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 3 ms 2 ms 3 ms ontrain.viawifi.ca [192.168.134.1]
2 910 ms 1854 ms 1760 ms 10.0.17.1
3 894 ms 1146 ms 765 ms vlan706-gw.ripnet.com [66.78.97.65]
4 987 ms 923 ms 717 ms d221-78-17.commercial.cgocable.net [216.221.78.1
7]
5 493 ms 595 ms 699 ms gw-nac.torontointernetxchange.net [198.32.245.38
]
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 1220 ms 1669 ms 2276 ms 0.e1-1.tbr1.oct.nac.net [209.123.10.17]
9 518 ms 2432 ms 3491 ms vlan804.esd1.oct.nac.net [209.123.10.2]
10 835 ms 547 ms 910 ms www.dslreports.com [209.123.109.175]

Trace complete.


If Amtrak can provide a system that works reliability and provides a reasonable amount of bandwidth per user then they very well could offer the service for a fee.
soniko
join:2007-10-24
Hamilton, ON

soniko

Member

i am on via train right now..
i dont believe they use satellites...because the ping for me is quite low
or they switched to cell tower?

traceroute to www.dslreports.com (209.123.109.175), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1 ontrain.viawifi.ca (192.168.134.1) 2.439 ms 1.704 ms 5.320 ms
2 10.0.17.1 (10.0.17.1) 110.324 ms 151.221 ms 132.532 ms
3 vlan706-gw.ripnet.com (66.78.97.65) 175.718 ms 199.781 ms 171.022 ms
4 d221-78-17.commercial.cgocable.net (216.221.78.17) 169.068 ms 202.913 ms 182.415 ms
5 gw-nac.torontointernetxchange.net (198.32.245.38) 184.952 ms 119.678 ms 355.804 ms
6 * * *
7 * * *
8 0.e1-1.tbr1.oct.nac.net (209.123.10.17) 152.959 ms 182.158 ms 190.073 ms
9 vlan804.esd1.oct.nac.net (209.123.10.2) 199.240 ms 149.942 ms 190.739 ms
10 * * *
11 * *

and i can watch youtube video with the download speed of 200KB/s ..

Thane_Bitter
Inquire within
Premium Member
join:2005-01-20

Thane_Bitter

Premium Member

said by soniko:

i am on via train right now..
i dont believe they use satellites...because the ping for me is quite low
or they switched to cell tower?
Seems to use both, see:
»www.parsons.com/Media%20 ··· nada.pdf

How full is the train? On my trip is was sold out, (I know, I couldn't believe it either )) and I would guess that about 1/3 had some sort of laptop device. Might have overwhelmed the system.