My apologies for the cheesy lead in. Just having some lighthearted fun, after my return from a seminar in the UK, and seeing all their news stands with all their sensational headlines.
A few years ago I got a call from an agency that maintained the Internet service for the National Train service of a European country. (Finland)
The scheme they used to provide internet access on their trains was to put a 4g wireless connection on every train, and then relay the data to a standard Wifi connection for customers on the train. The country has good 4g access throughout, hence this was the most practical way to get Internet to a moving vehicle.
Using this method they were able to pipe “mobile” wifi into the trains running around the country. When their trains got a bit crowded the service became useless during peak times. All the business travelers on the train were funneling through what was essentially a 3 or 4 megabit connection.
Fortunately, we were able to work with them to come up with a scheme to alleviate the congestion. The really cool part of the solution was that we were able to put a central Netequalizer at their main data center, and there was no need to put a device on each train. Many of the solutions to this type of problem, either developed internally by satellite providers or by airlines offering Wifi, require a local controller at the user end, thus the cost and the logistics of the solution are much higher than using the centralized NetEqualizer.
We have talked about the using a centralized NetEqualizer for MPLS networks, but sometimes it is hard to visualize using a central bandwidth controller for other hub and spoke type connections such as the train problem. If you would like more information on the details we would be more than happy to provide them.
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