How to get best results from Amtrak Wi-Fi

[John_Perkowski]

On 3/4, KC to/from Chicago, in coach, WHAT wi-fi?

That said, you’d not believe, or maybe you would, how sucky wi fi is in rural Missouri and Illinois.

[daybeers]

Wi-Fi would be a perfect topic for an Amtrak survey:
-what do you think of the service now?
-which trains do you ride most frequently? Maybe rate quality per route.
-do you have a data plan? Which carrier? Unlimited or limited?
-would you pay for better, faster Wi-Fi service on Amtrak?

I think the service is pretty terrible on both LD and the NEC. I have a (cheap) pre-paid 8GB AT&T plan. I am usually connected to Wi-Fi, so I rarely use that much per month, but it very conveniently includes a hotspot when I need to use my laptop and I don't have Wi-Fi, like when Amtrak's network doesn't want to connect to my laptop for the umpteenth time. Unless they were upgraded in the past few years, I'm skeptical at how good or even commercial-grade the network equipment in the cars is considering how incompetent the Amtrak IT department seems to be at most tasks. I also think they block VPNs, which is a big no-no IMO. Think of all the business travelers working remotely or with sensitive data. I suppose they might use a hotspot, but there are still those like me who will never use a public network without my VPN on.

I would imagine the new Siemens cars would be better at Wi-Fi connectivity than the current retrofit setup. I guess we'd have to turn to Brightline riders for that.

I'm not sure I would pay more for Wi-Fi on Amtrak when I can just use my data plan. It would depend on the price, how far I'm traveling, and if it would still rely on cellular networks. Based on reports above of bad cellular signal along the Crescent's route, I definitely wouldn't pay more if it wasn't getting me any more than what my cellular hotspot could if I'm already paying for it.

[STrRedWolf]

Equipment wise, it would cost less than $50 per car to equip it with strong WiFi relaying to the cafe/diner car to relay to cellular providers.

Coverage wise, it would take a ton to beef up each line with proper cellular service, using fiber communications along each rail line. Maybe even a few billion, and a lot of coordination between the line owners and the cell service provider(s). (I won't discount doing it like BART does and having a dedicated "rail line cellular" service)

[David Benton]

where do you get your $ 50 from . most of us have agreed it must have more than a home wifi setup . Then labor costs at say $ 150 per hour.
I would think lowball $5 k, high $ 50 k per car.

[Tadman]

I think this raises an important point about what it costs to get something done on the railroad. I work in the crane business, we have our own factories and also our cranes go to places like steel mills and railroad shops. What may seem like an inexpensive procedure at home or in the garage is not the same in an industrial environment.

Consider this scenario - a limit switch need adjusting, an encoder is not calibrated, or something like that. It's literally a turn of a screw away from working perfect. At home, perhaps on your garage door, one could get on a ladder and turn said screw. Ten minutes.

In an industrial environment, you have to park, sign in, watch the training safety video (or more), grab an escort employee, drag your tools across a building the size of the Superdome, find a forklift or scissor lift if necessary (and a driver if necessary) (this may be a 2 hour wait alone), wait for the work area you need to stop running production (waited days for this), get an electrician to shut down the area in question (again 2 hours +), then go up and turn the screw, assuming the control panel is not a rats nest or full of hornets. They do everything in reverse to finish up. Then do an hour of paperwork. Then drive home on the clock if you're working remotely.

When the project is planned by a good team as opposed to reactive maintenance, it can go a lot smoother, but a $50 problem is absolutely never a $50 problem. Keep in mind if a tradesman makes $30/hour, there's probably another $30+ overhead, insurance, pension per hour. If the tradesman is an outside contractor, they are being charged out at $80-150/hour straight time.

[STrRedWolf]

where do you get your $ 50 from . most of us have agreed it must have more than a home wifi setup . Then labor costs at say $ 150 per hour.
I would think lowball $5 k, high $ 50 k per car.

Just pure equipment cost is under $50 -- Vocore 2. As mentioned earlier, I got these. They're good little routers, using the open source OpenWRT project (security concerns? Here's the source code, audit it and compile your own image).

On configuration and labor, I think that'll be more under $1k/car (maybe not even $500) to print a case, configure a stock image, slap it on the Vocore 2, screw it into the cabin, connect power (5 Volts, 500ma max), and move on.

I think your estimates are based on Cisco or Juniper equipment.

[Tadman]

And this is another misconception. Where you or I would go out and find some open source good stuff off Newegg or Best Buy, the government works a bit differently. From my experience doing work with Amtrak, the DOE, or the Army Corps, this is how the procurement process works:

1. Hire a consultant to write a spec.
2. Consultant, who may or may not be an expert in that field (I've seen really good and really bad cases) writes a spec'
3. Spec really isn't based on a business case so much as "we want to do this and it must last 30 years" mindset, so everything in nickel plated.
4. Spec often calls for good ideas that may not work so well together or be commercially available. For example, US Navy requires Allen Bradley contactors on most equipment. That makes a $3000 tool $21,000 in some cases. Why not just buy 3 of the tool?
5. An RFI goes out asking for experience in this field.
6. Anybody who wants to bid makes up some bs and gets included.
7. An RFQ goes out and the bids are wildly different. You can usually drive a bus through the gray areas of the spec.
8. The process is rebid 4 times
9. We are now 2+ years down the road and technology has changed.
10. Money is put on hold for a year and technology has REALLY changed.
11. The low bidder that meets specs gets the PO for something that is likely custom and long lead time
12. Another year passes and delivery happens but technology has gone from iphone 1 to Iphone 5; they have to deliver by end of year or the money is taken back so they really hustle on the last few units and quality control craters.
13. For ten years they run trains with wifi system that is four years out of date in beginning to 14 years out of date at the end

This is why I keep advocating for a third party vendor like GOGO. I've had my frustrations with them but they're far better than Amtrak wifi. Now it can be a performance contract that says "we want X bandwidth Y% of time", and "you have 10 square feet to do this on a railcar at 72 degrees with certain vibration and shock tolerances". As time goes along, they upgrade the equipment including reflashing firmware from remote locations. If the vendor can't make it, you tell them to pack their stuff up and open a bid again.

Amtrak has no business being in the wifi business when there are so many good providers out there.

[Red Wing]

Amtrak should expand the wifi to include entertainment. The airlines and Greyhound offer movies and the like for free. The closest I think Amtrak got to this was free Washington Post online in Business Class.

I understand paying for wifi on a plane when you are required to turn off cellular data. Greyhound has free wifi. On a train I would concede having a two tiered wifi system. Slower free wifi with no streaming and a faster paid option with the option for streaming and guaranteed connection wherever you are (well maybe not in canyons and tunnels).

-edited for spelling mistakes.

[STrRedWolf]

Amtrak should expand the wifi to include entertainment. The airlines and Greyhound offer movies and the like for free. The closest I think Amtrak got to this was free Washington Post online in Business Class.

I understand paying for wifi on a plane when you are required to turn off cellular data. Greyhound has free wifi. On a train I would concede having a two tear wifi system. Slower free wifi with no streaming and a faster paid option with the option for streaming and guaranteed connection wherever you are (well maybe not in canyons and tunnels).

Might as well partner with Gogo then. It'll be less hassle in the long run.

[Greg Moore]

Equipment wise, it would cost less than $50 per car to equip it with strong WiFi relaying to the cafe/diner car to relay to cellular providers.

Coverage wise, it would take a ton to beef up each line with proper cellular service, using fiber communications along each rail line. Maybe even a few billion, and a lot of coordination between the line owners and the cell service provider(s). (I won't discount doing it like BART does and having a dedicated "rail line cellular" service)

You realize every car already is equipped with a repeater. And to server as many as 160 or so devices (imagine worst case scenario, every passenger on their laptop AND their cell phone connects automatically) typical $50 repeaters won't cut it.

I'm looking at quality ones for my home and they're up in the several hundred dollar range. I suspect that's similar to what Amtrak uses.

[STrRedWolf]

You realize every car already is equipped with a repeater. And to server as many as 160 or so devices (imagine worst case scenario, every passenger on their laptop AND their cell phone connects automatically) typical $50 repeaters won't cut it.

I'm looking at quality ones for my home and they're up in the several hundred dollar range. I suspect that's similar to what Amtrak uses.

Not all of them. The wifi signal was barely there when I did my Pittsburgh trip last year. I ended up tying to my phone 99% of the time.

I also really doubt these are just off-the-shelf consumer-grade repeaters. They're probably Cisco or Juniper repeaters, bought at bulk with a purchase order and *maybe* a contract for support.

That said, lets assume worst case: Every passenger has a laptop, a tablet, and a smart phone, and they all are streaming video. Most likely they're pulling from a major provider (Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Youtube, etc) that auto-drops the quality down to 480p (aka DVD quality). Going through some of the movies I have in my Plex library (Godzilla 2014, Serenity, Ghost in the Shell, Guardians of the Galaxy, Ghostbusters, etc) finds a good average bitrate of 1500 kilobits/second. The California Zephyr on average has a maximum capacity of 300 passengers. So 300*3*1500 = 1350000 kilobits per second, or 1.35 gigabits/second.

802.11n (Wifi 4) is 0.054 to 0.6 gigabits per second. 802.11ac (Wifi 5) is 1 gigabit/second. 802.11ax (Wifi 6) is slated to get 1.37 gigabit/second nominal (even though it's been hyped at 4 to 11 gigabit/second). That assumes everyone's device has that level of Wifi! Worst case is someone has a 802.11g device (Wifi 3), the backhaul network is the same as what's being used for passengers, and now the entire freakin' network is maxing out at 0.054 gigabits/second (because of how the standard is set).

You're right, the 802.11n bearing Vocore 2 won't cut it. But then I doubt anything will given how Wifi is spec'ed out.

Not that it matters much because you can't get gigabit speed cellular currently on a good day and out in the boonies, what service? It's basically recreating a Boeing 777-8 on the track.

Thus my shift in stance. Might as well have Gogo do it for Amtrak. Technically, even I can recreate such a portal with cheap equipment, but I definitely will need to impose the no-streaming limit and offer in-cabin movies for cheap. You might as well go with a provider that already deals with that headache.