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Muy Very Interesting

Tracking your flight by watching routers chat Complete with a very good explanation of network routing. Basically, he was able to track his flight by watching the BGP updates. A bit wasteful (each aircraft has a C-Block (CIDR /24), which it announces via good old-fashioned BGP), but definitely better than a centralized access exchange and a bunch of traffic being shipped there (cranking the latency up as you get further from the company's exchange). I'm not crazy about the fact that each aircraft is NAT'd (each one is a flying C-Block, why not give everyone a public address for the flight? (YES I *KNOW* there are good reasons not to, so STFU. I'm just bitter because I'd like a routable address!) Go read it, check out below for more of my thoughts.
So, what do I think? I think it's cool... I also thing they can do better. 1sec connection setups? I can live with that. My connection dropping off in the middle of my flight while the aircraft starts doing massive BGP advertisements? Nuh-Uh! Every major ISP in the world has AT LEAST 2 routes. One is cheap, one is expensive (traffic weights). Both routes are advertised whenever they are available. One can predict when one will be in or out of view of a given satellite; so why not advertise on BOTH satellites while the coverage overlaps? Continue advertising on the Euro-Satellite with a low weight, & the US with a high weight; Then as you cross the midpoint, switch, and as you approach the edge of coverage from the Euro-Satellite, withdraw your routes. More complex, yes. More robust, probably. Just my $4.50 (aint inflation a BITCH?)

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