amtrak connect wifi

So I knew that the wifi on the acela blocked certain websites because they took up too much bandwidth, for example, one can't stream movies and it wouldn't let me play any zynga games. Check out Paul Krugman's blog post today at the NYTimes:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/04/amtrak-protecting-us-from-progressive-economists/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto

Apparently it wouldn't let him view a blog of a fellow economist because it was categorized as "spam." I wonder who makes those decisions or if there are certain things that prompt it?

Amtrak does say they will unblock incorrectly classified content if you contact them:

http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer/AM_Content_C/1246044325520/1237405732514

With a broad based filtering system, every so often mistakes happen. It's inevitable.

I'll be the first to defend Amtrak for blocking videos and high bandwidth content, though. Cellular bandwidth is limited and expensive and allowing high bandwidth uses slows the connection for everyone else. Cellular technology is just not at the point (except perhaps in areas with LTE, but even then it's questionable) where a few connections can support a number of people streaming video on the train.

I set up a WiFi system on the commuter buses for the agency I work at and we don't filter the connections. All the time I see people streaming audio or video and slowing the connection to a crawl for everyone else on the bus. Granted, we only employ a single cellular modem whereas Amtrak uses several from a variety of carriers (as well as wayside technology in stations and the NYP tunnels) but you're also supplying internet to an entire train vs a single bus.

I believe it's possible to throttle individual connections to a given speed in both directions (depending on what soft/hardware they're using). Then sites which "hog bandwidth" could still come in, just be ridiculously slow but without clogging up the bandwidth for other users.

I agree that streaming movies is not OK and have no problems with amtrak blocking it

Every filtering system, almost no matter the criteria, is going to have misfires. I seem to recall my high school having to fight with it to allow connecting to CNN at one point (though in retrospect, I think they were getting cut off because at one time they were not exactly filtering their ads too well). It's not really Amtrak's fault...but I'll agree that it does get annoying. Still, it beats the random problems I've run into with some hotel chains (where at least one game I play suddenly ran into a mysterious "unrecognized language" error...even though when I threw it through anonymouse, it ran just fine...>_<).

MattW said:

I believe it's possible to throttle individual connections to a given speed in both directions (depending on what soft/hardware they're using). Then sites which "hog bandwidth" could still come in, just be ridiculously slow but without clogging up the bandwidth for other users.

Click to expand...

It should be possible if the cellular modem is connected to a wireless router. They could set each connection up to only be allowed a pre-defined amount of bandwidth, and then someone can stream their movie...it'll just take forever, but it wouldn't clog the system for everyone else.