Lufthansa Begins Trial of In-flight Wireless and Wired LAN Service

Lufthansa began a commercial test of Wi-Fi (802.11b) service throughout all the cabins of a 747-400 flight from Frankfurt, Germany to Washington, DC. In addition to Wi-Fi access, an Ethernet connector is available in the passenger seats. Connexion By Boeing, a mobile information services provider, is providing the infrastructure that allows two-way-live data between the plane and the ground, with speeds of 3 Mbps downstream and 128 Kbps upstream. Cisco Systems is providing the technology for the onboard network. Five Cisco Aironet 350 Series Access Points have been fitted throughout the plane, along with one Cisco 3640 Router and nine Cisco Catalyst 3548 XL Series Switches. Cisco said Lufthansa is also evaluating its recently launched Cisco 3200 Series Mobile Access Router, which provides seamless transitions between various wireless networks. Lufthansa plans to add the service to its entire long range fleet over the next year.
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