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A story about bypassing air Canada's in-flight network restrictions

(ramsayleung.github.io)
137 points samray | 3 comments | 10 Oct 25 07:50 UTC | HN request time: 0.931s | source
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andy99 ◴[10 Oct 25 11:37 UTC] No.45537729[source]▶
> The only downside was that although we broke through the network restrictions and could access any website, the plane’s bandwidth was extremely limited, making web browsing quite painful.

Unfortunately this is also the downside of paying. Many times I have paid for internet, only to find it unusably bad. To be fair, I just flew a transcontinental flight on Air Canada the other day and the wifi was fine.

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1. CrossVR ◴[10 Oct 25 11:48 UTC] No.45537828[source]▶
This is likely another layer of security that they didn't break through:

To prevent chat apps from consuming lots of bandwidth typically your connection is severely bandwidth restricted until you pay. If they didn't then someone could simply stream movies from their chat apps.

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2. ms7m ◴[10 Oct 25 13:21 UTC] No.45538687[source]▶
I don't think so, compared to transcontinental, which lately (before Starlink) has been using the cell towers on the ground + satellite backhaul -- even paying would probably still result in a garbage experience.
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3. armada651 ◴[10 Oct 25 13:32 UTC] No.45538815[source]▶
The point is that if the connection does have more bandwidth available they wouldn't get that extra bandwidth without paying.