Travel Technology - Boeing to discontinue Connexion

I'm frankly shocked by this...

CHICAGO, Aug. 17, 2006 -- The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] today announced that a detailed business and market analysis of Connexion by Boeing is complete, and the company has decided to exit the high-speed broadband communications connectivity markets. Boeing will work with its customers to facilitate an orderly phase out of the Connexion by Boeing service.

http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2006/q3/060817a_nr.html

Two things:

I don't think Boeing ever had the critical mass with this that they expected (or probably need to make it work).

The infrastructure to do what they are doing is not cheap. As has been discussed and debated here in the past, Boeing would have been facing some nontrivial capital investments to roll this out to a wider customer base.

I think the critical mass issue was definitely a result of the lack of US carrier participation, which was more due to external events than anything else.

I'm not so sure re the infrastructure though -- airlines obviously had significant capital investments as well, which absolved Boeing of a lot of risk.

I'm still hoping LH and SQ will get together and find a way to make this work.. I think they both have a ton of $$$ involved here. This must really sting for carriers such as SK, which had to lease planes from other carriers to replace airframes that were out of service due to connexion installs.

I'm not so sure re the infrastructure though -- airlines obviously had significant capital investments as well, which absolved Boeing of a lot of risk.

I'm still hoping LH and SQ will get together and find a way to make this work.. I think they both have a ton of $$$ involved here. This must really sting for carriers such as SK, which had to lease planes from other carriers to replace airframes that were out of service due to connexion installs.

When I refer to "infrastructure," I'm discussing the ground stations and internet connectivity to make it work--above and beyond what goes on/in the airframe.

Plus, Boeing had a technical issue with the architecture for this that probably would've bitten them on a wider scale.

It's a crying shame. I am a regular user of this service and I fly a lot with LH due primarily to Connexion. I will likely move more flights to AF when the service ends.

I read that Boeing will have a $320 million charge during the second half of this year due to the shutdown. I wonder if they will have to pay significant contractural penalties to the airlines involved?

Well I thought the idea of email and IM while in the the air was a fantastic idea and I view this is as the biggest step backwards since the end of Concorde.

An article in the IHT speculates that someone will pick up the assets and continue the service.. i'm willing to bet a nickle this will happen. This business was clearly not designed to be run by Boeing.. perhaps someone else can make it work.

An article in the IHT speculates that someone will pick up the assets and continue the service.. i'm willing to bet a nickle this will happen. This business was clearly not designed to be run by Boeing.. perhaps someone else can make it work.

I'm hoping so but my expectations are not high today.

Connexion is one of the reasons why I've been flying Star Alliance carriers so much more than I otherwise would. If this goes, my travel patterns will change somewhat.

Discussed extensively in the LH forum (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=573149)

I'm hugely disappointed. While I never had the chance to try out Connexion (I rarely fly overseas), I was looking forward to the day that it ended up being deployed on domestic metal (yeah, I know...don't hold your breath). Anyway...I'd much rather see Internet access on planes rather than cell phones. I wonder how much the infrastructure investment is for making cell phones useable in flight vs. Internet.

Anyway...I'd much rather see Internet access on planes rather than cell phones.

Amounts to much the same thing since the advent of Skype et al...

It takes 5 seconds to put a rule in your firewall to block Skype.

NO!!!

NO NO NO NO NO!!!

NO!!!

(histerical cries of someone who uses the connextion service at least twice a week on transatlantic flights on EL AL and can not imagine flying mid-week wihtout it.)


NO!!!!

I was looking forward to the day that it ended up being deployed on domestic metal (yeah, I know...don't hold your breath).I think you will see that within the next few years. Did you ever see how big the hump on the top of Conexxion equipped aircraft is? Drag costs fuel which costs money. AircellSmaller (http://www.aircell.com/) is probably the company to watch in this arena. They've got small antennae and they recently won the FCC air-to-ground spectrum auction (http://www.ainonline.com/Issues/06_06/06_06_WiFi_8.htm).

It takes 5 seconds to put a rule in your firewall to block Skype....and maybe 30 seconds to set up a tunnel to route the traffic over ssh...

Well I thought the idea of email and IM while in the the air was a fantastic idea and I view this is as the biggest step backwards since the end of Concorde.

Email and IM have worked quite well since before Connexion; you do not need much bandwidth for those. Plenty of people have been using dialup in-air for years before Connexion, often priced much less than in-air voice services, and at a flat rate in some cases such as with Verizon JetConnect. There are other slowish email/IM services available or coming, such as Tenzing—which appears to be morphing into a higher speed service known as OnAir that will allow more services such as in-air cellphone usage (ew.)

Now broadband speeds in the air as Connexion has done, that's the fantastic idea. Sad to see it go. I'm glad I got to try it out on several KE flights recently before its demise which is likely to be before my next potentially-Connexion-enabled flight. :(

Email and IM have worked quite well since before Connexion; you do not need much bandwidth for those. Plenty of people have been using dialup in-air for years before Connexion, often priced much less than in-air voice services, and at a flat rate in some cases such as with Verizon JetConnect. There are other slowish email/IM services available or coming, such as Tenzing—which appears to be morphing into a higher speed service known as OnAir that will allow more services such as in-air cellphone usage (ew.)

Now broadband speeds in the air as Connexion has done, that's the fantastic idea. Sad to see it go. I'm glad I got to try it out on several KE flights recently before its demise which is likely to be before my next potentially-Connexion-enabled flight. :(

Any idea when will the service be shut off?

Xyzzy - i don't agree with the fuel penalty - i hear from 777 pilots on aircraft equipped with the service the entire infrastracture weighs about 500 pounds, and has a very slight effect on performance.

I really can not imagine how i will continue to fly the way i do w/out the service..

I hear from 777 pilots on aircraft equipped with the service the entire infrastracture weighs about 500 pounds, and has a very slight effect on performance.
The weight is irrelevant - the effect on the aerodynamics of the aircraft is much more important.

A ding the size of a quarter on the leading-edge of a modern wing can knock a couple of percentage points off fuel efficiency - admittedly the hump for the Connexion equipment is in a less critical position, but I doubt it's a negligible amount of drag.

i don't agree with the fuel penalty - i hear from 777 pilots on aircraft equipped with the service the entire infrastracture weighs about 500 pounds, and has a very slight effect on performance..I'd be curious what the actual statistics are. All I can find from Boeing (http://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/archive/2004/december/ts_sf11.html) is that, "...It produces some aerodynamic drag...". The article here (http://www.spacemart.com/reports/Shutdown_Of_Connexion_by_Boeing_Service_Predicted_ 999.html) says, "Airlines using the service already incur a substantial penalty in fuel costs for the weight and drag of the Connexion equipment and are unlikely to subsidize the service still further."

I'd be curious what the actual statistics are. All I can find from Boeing (http://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/archive/2004/december/ts_sf11.html) is that, "...It produces some aerodynamic drag...". The article here (http://www.spacemart.com/reports/Shutdown_Of_Connexion_by_Boeing_Service_Predicted_ 999.html) says, "Airlines using the service already incur a substantial penalty in fuel costs for the weight and drag of the Connexion equipment and are unlikely to subsidize the service still further."

I have asked in the past and received no answer --

Using the 'regular' Airinc / Satcom phones (not verizon) what is the best way to log in to download e-mails? (then respond, upload on a sep call) -

Apart from this being very expensive ($7 per minute) and assuming will require a dialup account with an ISP - - does anyone have any experience with this?

I wonder what this means for airlines that are currently rolling out the service. Are they stopping scheduled Connexion installations?

I wonder what this means for airlines that are currently rolling out the service. Are they stopping scheduled Connexion installations?

EL AL has stopped all installations for the past 6 months without giving a reason.

the last i heard was it was an 'equipment availability issue' on the boeing side..

this has never made much sense.. i guess they did not want to install on additional aircrafts if the system might shut down soon.

EL AL has stopped all installations for the past 6 months without giving a reason.

the last i heard was it was an 'equipment availability issue' on the boeing side..

this has never made much sense.. i guess they did not want to install on additional aircrafts if the system might shut down soon.I'd bet that Boeing didn't want to produce any more equipment since they lost money on every sale. They've been talking about selling the service for some time. Now I guess they're just going to close it down.

i don't agree with the fuel penalty - i hear from 777 pilots on aircraft equipped with the service the entire infrastracture weighs about 500 pounds, and has a very slight effect on performance.

I also wonder if any airlines have realized any cost savings from using the "free" 5mbps they get. (The 20mbps of Connexion downstream is segmented into 5mbps for end users, 5mbps for the lame streaming tv, 5mbps for the airline, and 5mbps reserved.) Theoretically, transmitting information like detailed mechanical logs and receiving information like detailed weather information that regular communications might not have the bandwidth for could perhaps save a few dollars. If every plane could transmit and receive real-time plane-observed information of wind/weather/turbulence/etc with every other plane, could that perhaps allow for some more efficient routing of flights and fuel savings?

I also wonder if any airlines have realized any cost savings from using the "free" 5mbps they get. (The 20mbps of Connexion downstream is segmented into 5mbps for end users, 5mbps for the lame streaming tv, 5mbps for the airline, and 5mbps reserved.) Theoretically, transmitting information like detailed mechanical logs and receiving information like detailed weather information that regular communications might not have the bandwidth for could perhaps save a few dollars. If every plane could transmit and receive real-time plane-observed information of wind/weather/turbulence/etc with every other plane, could that perhaps allow for some more efficient routing of flights and fuel savings?

I think that the additional information transmitted over the connexion netowrk is not a big change over the regular satcom data communications widely availble today (777, some 744's, 764 and other aircraft with installation)

Weather data (metar's, taf, etc) route data and auto-acars with detailed text messaging is availble for a long while and built in into the 777 fd

I'd bet that Boeing didn't want to produce any more equipment since they lost money on every sale. They've been talking about selling the service for some time. Now I guess they're just going to close it down.

The equipment was not manufactured by Boeing. Another company had an exclusive contract to sell the equipment to Boeing's customers, iirc.

AircellSmaller (http://www.aircell.com/) is probably the company to watch in this arena. They've got small antennae and they recently won the FCC air-to-ground spectrum auction (http://www.ainonline.com/Issues/06_06/06_06_WiFi_8.htm).

I'm not sure how AirCell helps on a 16 hour flight to HKG though :(

...and maybe 30 seconds to set up a tunnel to route the traffic over ssh...

Assuming you allow ssh. Sure, a very technically savvy user could always find ways around whatever you disallow at the router/firewall. But enough roadblocks can be thrown up easily to prevent anyone but that very savvy user from getting anything other than web, email and perhaps VPN.

Trying to picture your typical business traveler setting up tunnels over ssh, tunneling web requests over DNS, etc. is laughable.

I'm not sure how AirCell helps on a 16 hour flight to HKG though :(They claim to be using the Iridium network right now. I presume some amount of data can be transmitted over that.

They claim to be using the Iridium network right now. I presume some amount of data can be transmitted over that.

I saw that after I posted... However, Iridium's bandwidth is nowhere near enough to allow 40 people to browse the web.

I still don't think Boeing is looking forward enough. The 'net is already as essential to any business as anything. It will only become more essential going forward.

I still don't think Boeing is looking forward enough. The 'net is already as essential to any business as anything. It will only become more essential going forward.Sure -- the only problem is getting people to pay for it. It's just like Iridium, once the buildout costs were wiped out via bankruptcy the economics made sense.

Sure -- the only problem is getting people to pay for it. It's just like Iridium, once the buildout costs were wiped out via bankruptcy the economics made sense.

That kind of route won't work for Boeing unfortunately. And Connexion doesn't have the equivalent of Iridium's DoD client basis.

I was just about to post some info about economics, ala irridium, but xyyz beat me to it.

I have the feeling, that boeing could inded push this concern even further out, and write off a large chunk of the investment costs. At the current moment, and historically I have had no idea how they were going to pay for it over time. There are just not that many flights and users who would pay. They MIGHT generate maybe 1000-3000$ a flight on international flights, getting a BUNCH of users to try it, but there are not that many int'l flights daily, and I don't think the domestic model would provide too much.

With probably 200mm in investment, or MORE having the debt relief of a write off would allow a future operator to make a viable go of it.

Assuming you allow ssh. Sure, a very technically savvy user could always find ways around whatever you disallow at the router/firewall. But enough roadblocks can be thrown up easily to prevent anyone but that very savvy user from getting anything other than web, email and perhaps VPN.

Trying to picture your typical business traveler setting up tunnels over ssh, tunneling web requests over DNS, etc. is laughable.

Huh? You don't have to know how to spell SSH or tunnel or anything. You just turn on your corporate VPN and poof, bye-bye firewall rules. Most Connexion users are corporate users and run a PPTP or IPsec tunnel back to corporate HQ for their email, etc. So Skype runs right through that tunnel .

Huh? You don't have to know how to spell SSH or tunnel or anything. You just turn on your corporate VPN and poof, bye-bye firewall rules. Most Connexion users are corporate users and run a PPTP or IPsec tunnel back to corporate HQ for their email, etc. So Skype runs right through that tunnel .

How many corporate firewalls do you suppose do nothing to keep skype from getting in or out?

How many corporate firewalls do you suppose do nothing to keep skype from getting in or out?

Most corporate firewalls do not keep Skype out.

Most corporate firewalls do not keep Skype out.

I beg to differ.

OK, since I do not have knowledge of every corporate firewall in the world, I will simply say that every corporation I do business with does not block Skype. I haven't found one yet that did. I'm sure that some do, but clearly not all.

Most corporate firewalls do not keep Skype out.

Those that don't block Skype entirely are likely to block Skype from using UDP. When you're already dealing with extremely high latency and adding even more onto that with the VPN in the way, a TCP-only conversation via Skype is likely to be unusable. I've found TCP-only Skype unusable even with fairly low latency at times (all it takes is just a bit of packet loss to make VOIP over TCP basically useless unless you have very, very low latency to the VOIP server.)

Those that don't block Skype entirely are likely to block Skype from using UDP. When you're already dealing with extremely high latency and adding even more onto that with the VPN in the way, a TCP-only conversation via Skype is likely to be unusable. I've found TCP-only Skype unusable even with fairly low latency at times (all it takes is just a bit of packet loss to make VOIP over TCP basically useless unless you have very, very low latency to the VOIP server.)

What you are saying makes sense on paper, but as a heavy Skype user I can tell you that in my experience it works well even when using TCP. I rarely have low-latency connections to their servers, but if it is a clear Skype to Skype call you aren't talking to a server. Maybe their TCP retransmits are tuned better than most apps?

The thing with Skype and firewalls is, Skype will try a lot of different ways to 'get out'..

Usually, if you have a 'non restricted Web Proxy' outbound, Skype will use that.


Unless the corporation is specifically blocking their (Skype's) IP or hostname, it will probably work.

Our firewalls block all traffic to the Internet, other than Web (and yes, we limit some sites, but not Skype) , and yeah, it works through that.

OK, since I do not have knowledge of every corporate firewall in the world, I will simply say that every corporation I do business with does not block Skype. I haven't found one yet that did. I'm sure that some do, but clearly not all.

Every one that I do business with goes thru great lengths to block Skype. Several Fortune 250s and a whole slew of suppliers.

With that said, many (I won't go so far as to say most) corporations can provide an IP softphone to their users. I've done this via Connexion, although it's really, really latent (and sounds as such).

What you are saying makes sense on paper, but as a heavy Skype user I can tell you that in my experience it works well even when using TCP. I rarely have low-latency connections to their servers, but if it is a clear Skype to Skype call you aren't talking to a server. Maybe their TCP retransmits are tuned better than most apps?

TCP retransmissions are controlled by the OS; if you're going through a Skype server for a call to an external number, they could have modified their TCP/IP stack to perhaps retransmit in a non-standard fashion, but I doubt that. Anyways, in the case of Skype-to-Skype without the server involved that's irrelevant anyways.

Are you sure you've been using TCP and not UDP on these occasions? I've had the Skype statistics window lie to me about the transport (using the Mac 1.5 beta at the moment, so maybe you're getting different data.) Tcpdump tells me the truth, though.

Even with high latency, if there is virtually zero packet loss then you should be okay... so maybe you've been lucky there as well. But I could see something on the order of even 0.2% - 0.3% loss causing serious problems, especially at higher latencies, and these are losses that are low enough to be ignored in regular circumstances. But of course when you do get that occasional dropped packet you'll have a few seconds of freezing on your real-time app. I suppose with just moderate latency (e.g. 100 - 200ms) a bit higher could be tolerated, perhaps even more so if the loss is more clustered than randomly spread, but I was thinking along the lines of Connexion latency+VPN latency+latency to Skype server.

Another factor when using VOIP over a VPN: you may only establish a TCP VPN connection, so even if your VOIP application is using UDP it's TCP-encapsulated and thus suffering the same fate when you lose a packet.

TCP retransmissions are controlled by the OS; if you're going through a Skype server for a call to an external number, they could have modified their TCP/IP stack to perhaps retransmit in a non-standard fashion, but I doubt that. Anyways, in the case of Skype-to-Skype without the server involved that's irrelevant anyways.

Are you sure you've been using TCP and not UDP on these occasions? I've had the Skype statistics window lie to me about the transport (using the Mac 1.5 beta at the moment, so maybe you're getting different data.) Tcpdump tells me the truth, though.

Skype does a lot of crazy things so I wouldn't be surprised if they reached down to the TCP layer. I noticed through netstat that Skype sometimes use TCP. I haven't sat down with a packet analyzer though.

Skype does a lot of crazy things so I wouldn't be surprised if they reached down to the TCP layer. I noticed through netstat that Skype sometimes use TCP. I haven't sat down with a packet analyzer though.

Skype will always use TCP for the login session to their servers. Could be what you've been seeing...

To screw with local retransmissions, Skype would have to use raw sockets and have its own full TCP implementation (or severely muck about with your kernel's IP stack, but that's infeasible and would be utterly stupid.) Either way, it'd have to run with root/Administrator privileges for the above. Since it runs as an unprivileged user there's no way it's doing any such thing.

What would be a lot simpler, actually, would be using multiple parallel TCP sessions for voice if packet loss is high (assuming random loss and not time-synchronized loss that'd affect all sessions at once.) But they don't do this either per my experience watching tcpdump while Skyping—at least not with the Mac version of the application, and I'd be very surprised if it was any different under other OSes. Or sessions to multiple servers if the loss profiles are different. And you can add in more fun stuff like distributed checksumming (think RAID 5) to cut down on the excess bandwidth overhead by requiring fewer sessions for the same amount of redundancy.

To screw with local retransmissions, Skype would have to use raw sockets and have its own full TCP implementation (or severely muck about with your kernel's IP stack, but that's infeasible and would be utterly stupid.) Either way, it'd have to run with root/Administrator privileges for the above. Since it runs as an unprivileged user there's no way it's doing any such thing.

It's been many years since I've done such things, but isn't there a Windows API for manipulating the stack? Ditto for Mac's?

It's been many years since I've done such things, but isn't there a Windows API for manipulating the stack? Ditto for Mac's?

Yeah, various platforms have various APIs for configuring low-level TCP/IP stuff. However, I'm not aware of any platform where you can configure such things as dubious timing of retransmissions. There are often various things you can configure that do violate RFCs; if you 'man tcp' on a recentish Linux system you'll notice that various items note that they do violate the RFCs. I believe Linux is the most liberal in this case as well; take a look in /proc/sys/net/ipv4 for a bunch of stuff that can be manually configured system-wide. On OS X, 'sysctl -a net.inet.tcp' will spew out a bunch of stuff you can configure there. Deviating from TCP specs as far as retransmission timing goes is really pushing it compared to some of the more minor violations that various TCP/IP stacks let you get away with. Dunno what Windows can do exactly but I'm guessing it's less than Linux or OS X/BSD.

Skype doesn't give a you-know-what about RFC's, standard codecs or any standard internet practice. The designers decided to make the best working voice platform they could and screw everything else.

Anyhow, I don't know how we could possibly get more off-topic. ;)

Skype doesn't give a you-know-what about RFC's, standard codecs or any standard internet practice. The designers decided to make the best working voice platform they could and screw everything else.

Anyhow, I don't know how we could possibly get more off-topic. ;)

Yeah, I'd agree they could care less about RFCs. :) But until I see them doing crazy stuff like blasting parallel TCP sessions or using raw sockets I'm inclined to believe that they're sticking by the rules of the OS. But anyways, I'd say we should just agree to disagree here since neither of us knows what they're really doing. :)

I will say that it is NOT the best voice platform if it falls back to TCP. As I've mentioned, there are many things they could do (at the expense of some bandwidth) to potentially seriously increase TCP-only performance.

Oh, was this a Boeing discontinuing Connexion thread? Oops. :p

Always glad to have a nice technical conversation with someone clueful about network engineering innards though. :)

I got this email from Ipass...

Boeing recently provided formal notification to iPass of their decision to discontinue the Connexion by Boeing in-flight high-speed wireless service.

Boeing has advised the end of service date is targeted for October 31, 2006 but may extend as late as December 31, 2006 depending on the outcome of various events and negotiations.

Prior to the end of service date, passengers traveling on in-flight Internet-equipped flights in the near term may continue to use Connexion by Boeing normally at current pricing levels.

iPass users engaging in air travel remain able to enjoy Wi-Fi access at over 341 airport locations worldwide, allowing ample opportunity for convenient high-speed access at departure and destination venues.

http://networks.silicon.com/mobile/0,39024665,39163203,00.htm

Connexion FREE till the end of the year (aka "the end").

Connexion sent emails to a lot of its customers about this. From that and the former orange popsicle flyers, I took that it's free until whichever of the following comes first: the year end; or whenever the airline's part of the system fails; or whever the airline decides to turn it off/get rid of it.