Mobile Pinging and Posting from Puyallup
Seattlest rode the southbound Sounder last week. We broke out the sexy laptop to work on a lame, new post that we had rolling around in our heads and that just wouldn't go away (lucky you!). Naturally, the promiscuous little minx that is our sleek MacBook asked if we wanted to join some wireless network; its name was “Sounder_302”. We evaluated the name and, figuring that it wasn't one of the millions of mysterious, unsecured “linksys” networks out there, thought, “why the hell not!” Have we as a networked society sunk so low that merely renaming a router/SSID is cause for rejoicing and conferring authority?
We were aware of homebrew wireless aboard the Sounder. Additionally, we dug into the dim recesses of our memories and thought that we remembered hearing of pilot projects to test wi-fi on some Sound Transit routes. All things considered, however, this was a complete and pleasant surprise.
So we opened a browser window and proceeded surfing at nostalgic speeds that reminded us of the grand old days of dial-up. We were taken back to the heady days of running a network in our group rental house at a little Big Ten university, a network connected to the pre-WWW, outside world via this awesome technology called SLIP. If you knew what you were doing, it allowed multiple computers in a house to be on the net at the same time! Holy crap!
Please do not read the above paragraph as a snarky critique of our wi-fi experience. Instead, please focus on the unbridled awesomeness of it all. (Aside: we understand that the word awesome has been banned this year; however, in this context, we are using it in its pure, true sense.) We don't care how slow the connection was. What is important here is that we were on a fucking commuter train, barreling down the right-of-way at over 40 miles per hour, and posting to our lame-ass LiveJournal!
Without a doubt, wireless fidelity is utterly cool. Running on battery power, one can connect to the world without the pesky nuisance of wires. Tesla's dream is one step closer! But mobile wi-fi trumps that business hands down. Just as SLIP had us creaming our geek jeans over a decade ago, mobile wi-fi from a moving fucking train had that same less-than-perfect, completely experimental, nerdy avant-garde feel. We swoon.
Even more fun was monitoring the SSIDs during the ride. Leaving King Street Station, we saw networks in lawyer's offices, for example. It was like we were on-line Peeping Toms, virtual voyeurs, It was exciting. We admit it. You figured us out, dear reader: our dad got us hooked on amateur radio when we were younger so stuff like pulling in far-away contacts excites us. At one point in one of the stations, our list swelled to over 20 access points. And as we pulled into Tacoma, we got a blip from SSID flyingj, the Flying J truck stop travel center which had to have been around a quarter of a mile from our position. This reminds us we need to get a Mac OS X stumbler-like app to gauge signal strength. (Suggestions?)
Anyway, in the interest of gratuitous quantitative data and to give you some idea of connection speed, we provide the following snip of ping response times that we took from the train just after we left Puyallup station. These were pretty representative of the entire ride, although further out in the hinterlands, our times were just a bit slower. Also, we were pretty far back toward the rear of the train, so perhaps that had something to do with it. All in all, not the best for heavy graphics, of course, but perfectly fine for when you just have to check your e-mail and/or if you are super cool and read your mail via a text terminal interface.
[Tom-Dobrowolskys-Computer] (agent) ~#ping www.google.com
PING www.l.google.com (72.14.205.99): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 72.14.205.99: icmp_seq=0 ttl=239 time=509.277 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.205.99: icmp_seq=3 ttl=239 time=1633.173 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.205.99: icmp_seq=5 ttl=239 time=435.280 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.205.99: icmp_seq=6 ttl=239 time=398.381 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.205.99: icmp_seq=7 ttl=239 time=493.402 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.205.99: icmp_seq=9 ttl=239 time=488.752 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.205.99: icmp_seq=10 ttl=239 time=391.433 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.205.99: icmp_seq=11 ttl=239 time=575.521 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.205.99: icmp_seq=13 ttl=239 time=3893.122 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.205.99: icmp_seq=14 ttl=239 time=2903.458 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.205.99: icmp_seq=15 ttl=239 time=1906.544 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.205.99: icmp_seq=16 ttl=239 time=1364.261 ms
64 bytes from 72.14.205.99: icmp_seq=18 ttl=239 time=698.482 ms
^C
--- www.l.google.com ping statistics ---
20 packets transmitted, 13 packets received, 35% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 391.433/1207.007/3893.122/1069.607 ms
