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Dude Tracks His Transatlantic Flight By Watching Internet Routing

FRIDAY APRIL 28 2006 11:34 AM

Submitted by WilWheaton. Edited By WilWheaton.

We have a new candidate for geek of the year: Todd Underwood who tracked his Lufthansa flight across the Atlantic ocean, using Internet routing as his guide.

I just saw my plane cross the mid-Atlantic, not by looking out the window, but by watching routing updates cascade across the Internet. I'm writing from a Lufthansa jet right now, traveling from Munich to Boston. This plane offers the (relatively) new Connexion by Boeing wifi + satellite Internet service. It's seriously cool stuff - high latency, but absolutely functional.

Todd is the Chief Operations and Security Officer for Renesys Systems, so just writing about his plane's location isn't enough; he explains in great detail how he knew where he was, and why the technology is so cool.

I was able to see the mid-Atlantic shift because the plane I'm on withdrew its routes from the European communications satellites and re-announced them in North America. The Boeing engineers faced some interesting challenges in designing this system. They wanted a wifi-delivered platform that was easy to use. They also wanted fully-functional connectivity. They were targeting business customers so simple web connectivity was not enough: customers would want VPNs, ssh and all manner of connections to corporate applications. And finally, if this service was going to work properly, it would have to be as low-latency as possible, not just high bandwidth.

The best part of Todd's blog post is his explanation of routing protocols and how the engineers at Boeing overcame what could have been service-crippling problems, including all sorts of really cool and useful graphics that even a level 010 geek can easily understand. In fact, if you grok and get excited by his story, you're probably on your way to being a level 1010 geek. If you understand what I'm talking about and are giggling right now, you're a level 101010 geek, and we're looking forward to seeing you at the meeting tonight. Excelsior!

(via reddit)

12 Comments

rdpixie

United Kingdom

January 2006

APR 28, 2006 12:18 PM

Oh dear....

Mark_plus_Beer

United Kingdom

August 2005

APR 28, 2006 12:19 PM

oh dear

bronte

San Francisco, CA

August 2005

APR 28, 2006 12:25 PM

I'm not grokking anything here! I really can't criticize the guy, because I know how this happens to someone. I mean flying overseas turns into the game of finding new an inventive ways to waste time after you realize there's at MOST one movie that you actually want to watch.

You try you hardest to avoid the game...you read the Skymall catalog, you briefly consider buying something you don't need from the Duty Free catalog just becauee you'd save some money, you re-acquaint yourself with "water landing" procedures, hell, you may even read the barf bag.

After that, you get up...stretch...use the restroom...maybe look for the hot girl you saw get on the plane hours ago -- awwww..she's with her dad! Then it happens, you start tracking internet routing. See ya at the meeting...

dicey

United Kingdom

February 2005

APR 28, 2006 12:46 PM

"You got the wrong guy, I'm the dude"

Domo_Kun

Rockford, IL

March 2005

APR 28, 2006 12:50 PM

Heh...

What is six times nine?

That story was fuckng awesome!

FrankMask

Saint Paul, MN

June 2003

APR 28, 2006 03:28 PM

I'm just geek enough to understand why this would be interesting and exciting to professional geeks.

xrinti

Madison, WI

April 2006

APR 28, 2006 06:17 PM

Apparently I'm far more of a geek than I thought. I got the joke, but I was far more interested in how you solve the latency issues with the satellite uplink. Are they running all of the outgoing stuff the entire distance from geosynch or is it piggybacked on the nav signals? If it's off the nav signals, what kind of broadcast are they using from the middle of the ocean? If it's going geosynch, they're talking about a half second to a second of lag for *every* up/down transaction.

[slaps self on forehead and screams LOSER!] OK, I'm feeling better now.

lostboy

Carlisle, PA

November 2002

APR 28, 2006 07:00 PM

I understood it fairly easy, I wouldn't call him a geek though, its fairly related to his field of work and he made mention of the presentation of the technology by boeing which he may have seen or a friend may have seen and explained. Thats like me being a geek or maybe a lama for someone explaining a principle of Bhuddism in life and then me seeing and understanding it for the first time as it takes action in real time and getting excited. I don't know doesn't seem all that geeky to me but most of the 30 some members in the last generation of my mothers family work in the computer field some even for R&D.

Just because I don't understand a play in football doesn't mean my buddy who does is a pro footballer no?

Just my two shiny copper bits..