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Explain to me why airplane wifi is slower despite being closer to the cloud

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You are traveling at high speed. For the outside observer (cloud) your time slows down, so everything inside your bubble is slower for you. Basic relativity!

Simeon.__proto__@dotproto.com

Did you know that airplanes are actually TOO close to the cloud to get good WiFi? Its true! We all know the internet is bits of data. But where do the bits come from? Turns out The Cloud spontaneously emits quantum wave packets that coalesce into WiFi radio waves after traveling at least 93 meters!

If you're close to the sun, your WiFi runs through Sun infrastructure, which all uses Java. That's why it's slow.

The plane’s being a massive faraday cage, clearly weakening the signal. Massive design mistake, they should make planes out of carbon fibre going forward. What do you mean lighting and pressure is an issue up there…

If you point out the other window, then you've looked at clouds from both sides now. I'm too late with this one, right?

The wifi *on the plane* is actually faster but the CAT-6 cable back to the airport is the real bottleneck. And then they have to switch the cable over to the arriving airport at the halfway point, it's a whole thing.

Network packets have been designed around land-based travel since the 70's. With the invention of airplane Wi-Fi, there's a need to design a newer packet format which is more aerodynamic to factor in the higher speed of travel as well as air drag.

Because you are constantly flying away from the cloud. But if you were to sit in a hot air balloon and just ride in the clouds you would have the fastest internet in the universe. I mean.. surf in the cloud while in the cloud..

First you have to know how WiFi actually works. And that's it! That's exactly how it works! Some things defy science.