Virgin American In-Flight Internet Review, From In-Flight

wintersynth writes "I've posted a review of Virgin America's in-flight internet provided by Gogo. Here's the scoop: Avg. .90 megabits/sec DL, .283 megabits/sec UL, ping: 130.6 msecs, $12.95 for the duration of the flight. Verdict: AWESOME. In fact, I'm posting this from 36,000 feet right now. Skype did not work for voice, even though I'm pretty sure those stats are over the minimums. Any ideas from the slashdotters on what might be going on?"

Srsly?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Maybe I'm just insufficiently wealthy, or insufficiently internet addicted; but is 13 dollars for what is essentially five hours of DSL actually exciting?

Traceroute?

[maxrate]

A traceroute to (anything) would have been very interesting.

Latency would be *bad*

[w0mprat]

I was an early adopter of WAN wireless internet in my area. While reasonable download speeds *could* be achieved on average the latency was terrible. Essentially the latency of data traversing the cellphone networks with some proprietary transmission protocol was unavoidable, since these networks were never designed for Teh Internets. Indeed you don't really notice 200-300ms of unstable latency when you're on a mobile call, but you do when your trying to shunt data over it the same network. All up, I had a 5mbps connection where a minimum latency floor of 300-350ms to local servers was the norm. These days with new GPRS through to HSDPA or whatever, things are a bit better.

The same with something in flight internet.

I would have been more interested in your pings to Google.com I bet they would have been rubbish.

Re:Skype and latency

[BraksDad]

Skype worked for me over hughesnet from the middle of missouri. That network has serious latency issues.

Re:Skype is Not Blocked

[silent_artichoke]

Exactly, nobody wants to hear some asshole yammering into his laptop for a 4 hour flight. "WHAT?!? YES!!! I'M FLYING...FLYING. I SAID I'M FLYING!!!" Shut the fuck up already! Send a text message or something. Those people do NOT need to hear from you because (wait for it) YOU ARE FLYING, ASSHOLE! Shakrai, this wasn't aimed at you in particular. It's just that you are the first one to bring this up so far.