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Commuters on a train

Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2008 5:03 am
by greyhoundcode
Not too sure which part of the forum this belongs in, but anyway...

More and more trains provide WiFi broadband access to their passengers. Does anyone know if the web browsing passenger would (whether he is aware of it or not) switch from one IP address to another as he/she transits through the different regions, or would their IP address be static for the duration of their WiFi session?

Re: Commuters on a train

Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2008 9:57 pm
by jack_indigo
Don't know. Why don't you experiment with command line (either ipconfig on Windows or ifconfig on Mac or Linux) and find out? If it were me, I'd be putting a caching router for the entire train, and then have that router reach other routers as it moved along.

Re: Commuters on a train

Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2008 7:26 am
by greyhoundcode
That's an idea, but personally I don't often take the train over long distances; I was thinking more of my users and, indeed, abusers.

Re: Commuters on a train

Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 7:25 am
by SpiderMonkey
I thought this thread was going to be about the low budget sequel to Snakes on a Plane

Re: Commuters on a train

Posted: Mon Jun 30, 2008 11:23 am
by Kieran Huggins
I doubt it - I was talking with someone about implementing a system like this and each train would likely have it's own NAT gateway to a system-wide gateway.

That being said, connection handoffs don't exist in 802.x like they do in cell networks, so you'll likely have brief periods of connection timeout as the train moves from AP to AP. You would probably have trouble maintaining a socket connection (like skype) as the train moves, even though the IP remains constant.