14 ms·
I told the flight attendant "the WiFi isn't working"
- ano-ther 3y agoI love that “internet reset” button
- op00to 3y agoI don’t remember seeing a button on the internet when watching a documentary about an IT team that gave their manager the box that controls the internet. Only had a red led. This must be a new version of the internet.
- tym0 3y agoAfter it was dropped they had to do a v2
- Brajeshwar 3y agoI believe the “Button for the Internet” is the Browser - Internet Explorer.
- sammy2255 3y agoAre you sure you’re not thinking of The IT Crowd? https://youtu.be/iDbyYGrswtg https://youtu.be/iDbyYGrswtg
- laurencei 3y agoWe laugh as IT experts. But think about it from the end user perspective. Literally the most simple instruction; near fault proof. On an airplane that is thousands of feet from remote IT support (plus "costs"). The instruction to staff; problem with "the Internet"? - press the "Interest Reset" button. Far better than "router restart", "renew DHCP leases" or "reboot IT" Explicit, non ambiguous and without technobabble. Brilliant.
- laserbeam 3y agoHonestly, that should be the mindset of IT experts in general. Any reset/reset should fix everything and bring the system to a known functional state before doing any work. Obviously you don't want to have to restart to fix issues, but having that as a fallback (especially for issues you didn't predict during development) is great UX.
- fifteen1506 3y agoI refuse. I stand my ground on using quotes. "Reset" "Internet".
- macintux 3y agoHence Erlang. When in doubt, restart the part of your application with bad data.
- hnbear 3y agoIsn’t this the fundamental point of the push for impotency in configuration management tools? You just need the state set to “good”, regardless of which bits need to change and current state. Hit the button and it makes it “good”.
- chimeracoder 3y ago> Isn’t this the fundamental point of the push for impotency in configuration management tools? FYI, The word you're looking for is idempotence (EYE-dem-poh-tense).
- rasse 3y agoFrom an end user perspective the better label would be "Fix internet"
- poopsmithe 3y agoNo. That would mean the button needs to stay pressed indefinitely.
- op00to 3y agoTechnically the button breaks the internet then fixes it.
- mewpmewp2 3y agoMaybe it should be "press when in trouble".
- angrygoat 3y agoI'm a priest who was a software engineer for twenty years. This morning during the service in a small semi-rural church, the bluetooth speaker broke. I paused the service briefly, joked that I knew what to do, and turned it off and on. The IT Crowd got that part of the industry right!
- sunnybeetroot 3y agoWow why the career change?
- FunnyLookinHat 3y agoYes, don't leave us hanging (on Christmas, no less!).
- atonse 3y agoPaying penance for using Angular 2.0 (had to insert some random technology to make my silly joke work) Software engineer turned priest, perfect story for HN on Christmas Day, do tell!
- angrygoat 3y agoit's a complicated answer: faith is at the heart of it, of course. In Christianity there's the idea of vocation, which applies to all, not just the clergy. A simple way to think about it is to consider the things you're good at, the things you can do that will serve others, and what you enjoy: imagine that as a Venn diagram, and try to discern what lies in the middle for you. My software skills still play a part in what I do. But seven or eight years ago now I felt drawn to explore a vocation in ordained ministry – after study, a formation programme, completing a Masters degree in Divinity, and a lot of thought and prayer, here I am. It's the happiest I've ever been. Which isn't to say that it hasn't been difficult: being a cleric is not easy work. Intentional discernment about vocation really has made my life a lot happier, and it's something I talk about a little because it's of value to other people as well. (I'm in the Anglican [in the states, Episcopalian] tradition, but the process of ministerial formation is very broadly similar between the various mainline protestant denominations and Roman Catholicism.)
- linsomniac 3y agoShould be labeled "Turn Internet off and on again".
- fmajid 3y agohttps://www.southparkstudios.com/video-clips/hq0tek/south-park-internet-reset https://www.southparkstudios.com/video-clips/hq0tek/south-pa...
- jltsiren 3y agoThis must be something language/culture dependent. To a native Finnish speaker, labeling the button that resets the internet connection as "internet reset" makes perfect sense. Just like the power button only switches the power on/off for that particular device but not for the rest of the world.
- cassianoleal 3y agoThis is a very confusing message. The "internet reset" message makes sense in all languages that I know. Same with the power button. What do you think they mean in other languages?
- SkipperCat 3y agoThe entire commercial aviation industry operates using the english language. All pilots communicate with all airports via english. I'm sure FAs are most proficient in english too. Its the lingua franca of the biz.
- jltsiren 3y agoI meant that I would label the button that resets the internet connection "internet reset", and there would be nothing weird or amusing about that. Because my native language is Finnish, English words often have subtly different meanings to me than to a native English speaker, even when we agree on the literal meaning of the word.
- apantel 3y agoI think we’re ready for ‘Lingua Anglica’.
- Ekaros 3y agoActually reset is kinda weird term. Internet is not working Solution: Set it again to working condition, thus reset Internet. Sometimes it is pointless to go to technical details. I was on flight with issues with infotainment systems, they fixed it by restarting them. Or reset.
- amelius 3y agoDon't press it too often, or you'll hear cursing from the cockpit.
- thyrox 3y agoHow does one learn about this stuff? I learned about basic networking in college (the TCP layers) etc but people doing such stuff sounds like Greek to me. If I want to learn more about what the author is doing, is there a resource like a udemy course or YouTube channel you guys can recommend?
- mingus88 3y agoThe vagueries of DHCP can be learned best with a home lab, IMO Back in the day, setting up random hardware or VMs on an isolated subnet taught you everything you needed to know about low level network protocols like DHCP, STP, BOOTP, ARP, RARP, and how to sniff it all with wire shark when you weren’t getting a lease Containers have largely hidden this plumbing from us at a test/dev layer
- bzzzt 3y agoDon't know about video courses, but Internet standards like DHCP are open and available on IETF.org. There are explanations on Wikipedia too. Also, if you're into Linux the HOWTO section on tldp.org can also be a big help for more practical stuff.
- jampekka 3y agoBack in the day you needed to know this stuff to get things working. It was not that uncommon for routers not to have DHCP so you had to input the IPs by hand. I think this may have been even the default and DHCP had to be explicitly enabled (e.g. in Linux installing and configuring dhclient). Also it wasn't that uncommon to expose a computer to internet through the router, so you had to make sure that computer didn't change its IP. I think having to set these up yourself is the best way of learning them.
- sunnybeetroot 3y agoI remember ye ol’ port forwarding to get Xbox live to work
- ytch 3y agoMost computer networks 101 class teach how their state machine is designed only. If you want to know "how to use them in real world", some universities has courses with "System Administration" would be more suitable. or learning the certificate program (CCNP, CCIE, JNCIP and others) materials with their lab.
- cheese_van 3y agoDeep in the granite mountain where the internet Kill Switch is located, there is also the US national Internet Reset switch. What exactly, in this fictional universe, is the restoration flow if it is pressed?
- raadore 3y ago[flagged]
- urbandw311er 3y agoI find it really tedious when people just post direct paragraphs written by ChatGPT. I mean, we could all just go and ask chatGPT to write that right? It doesn’t add anything to the conversation. Sorry if that sounds harsh but I can’t think of a better way to post it and honesty felt like the best approach.
- ThrowawayR2 3y agoI'll point out again that the moderators have said that posts with machine generated content are not welcome on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33950747 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33950747
- flutas 3y agoYou have to unplug the giant router and plug it back in like South Park did. https://giphy.com/gifs/southparkgifs-l0Hlwi7KzoajIJTI4 https://giphy.com/gifs/southparkgifs-l0Hlwi7KzoajIJTI4
- mynameisnoone 3y agoThe problem is it's incapable of running DD-WRT.
- ganzuul 3y agoInstructs Intel ME to boot into TempleOS with a Gopher client and IRC.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoThere's another one in the cockpit, marked "Avionics Reset".
- asystole 3y agoYou joke, but there absolutely are procedures in some airplane QRMs that involve cycling breakers.
- bilsbie 3y agoI upvoted this in the futile hope that the right person sees it.
- umvi 3y agoWould need to know which vendor. I used to work for a company that provided satellite Internet solutions for airplanes but might not be what OP used
- flutas 3y agoIn my mind, probably either Panasonic Avionics or Gogo. If this debugging is true... I'd guess Panasonic from experience working there. Things like an office scavenger hunt usually took priority over actual work.
- ratg13 3y agoThe problem is that the person reporting this needs to identity the provider or nothing will get done. The plane usually tells you if the WiFi is provided by viasat, anuvu, or any of the other big players. These companies program this stuff before it goes into the aircraft and the airline IT has no access to this stuff. Without the missing info, it’s almost impossible to trace this.
- linsomniac 3y agoThis reminds me of a conference, attendees were having sporadic problems with accessing the Internet and eventually I was able to capture a trace of the problem: when the main lease network filled up, it started allocating IPs from another block, but with the same gateway. I got a lease for something like 10.1.1.69/24 with a gateway address of 192.168.1.1. I went to the support person and she offered to reset the WiFi, but I explained that she needed to escalate it because it was a configuration problem, resetting it was only a temporary solution. (edit: PyCon 2006 IIRC, DFW)
- jdthedisciple 3y agoAnd? Did she escalate it and was it solved? Don't keep us hanging!
- midasuni 3y agoAlmost certainly no. Unlike the assertion made, she didn’t need to escalate it.
- nulbyte 3y agoWhy didn't she need to escalate it? I can imagine the hospitality industry would not want the WiFi sporadically going down for their guests; that's not a very hospitable experience.
- lupusreal 3y agoShe didn't need to escalate it because for her personally there was no downside to simply ignoring the matter.
- okeuro49 3y agoAnd indeed, would have probably thought that people at a conference would be better being human beings and talking to each other, rather than staring into a laptop screen.
- linusg789 3y agohttps://nitter.net/erratarob/status/1739132876732674539?s=46&t=FFxXRm_qmWG4nJwsccRUbA https://nitter.net/erratarob/status/1739132876732674539?s=46...
- woodruffw 3y agoThis is adjacent to the classic free WiFi hack on airplanes, which is to boot another client off of their DHCP lease by spoofing their MAC. It’s unfortunate that, below HTTPS and a light smattering of WiFi encryption, there’s essentially no authenticity controls on LAN management protocols.
- placatedmayhem 3y agoEvery time I have to interact with a "captive portal", I'm annoyed at the hack implemented through DNS hijacking, rather than implementing and extending 802.1X and/or another layer-2 authentication scheme. The idea seems to have been tossed aside entirely. Instead, every device has to have a web browser. There's not even a way to do surrogate registration for devices that don't have browsers, with Apple TV and Nintendo Switch at launch (added later) being prime examples. IoT and headless gear is also a pain. On trips, I end up bringing my own travel router and using my laptop to auth it by proxy, but it's another thing to remember to bring.
- chimeracoder 3y ago> Nintendo Switch at launch (added later) The Nintendo Switch actually had a browser either at launch or close to it, then removed it in an update, and didn't add it back until about 3 years later. It's really hilarious that a device that touted its portability from the beginning was literally incompatible with most public Wi-Fi for years.
- sandworm101 3y agoI have a work laptop (government) that hates captive portals. It has a security system that won't let it connect using the local DNS. So it doesn't get captured. Those of us with such laptops all have tricks for getting to a hotel's wifi login page using IP addresses. But we have to do it fast, before the security software fully wakes up and blocks the hack. We used to just login on our phones, then tether the work laptop to the phone over USB. The security people caught up to that a couple years ago and disabled USB tethering. So now I alter my laptop's MAC to be the same as that from the work laptop. That tricks about 90% of hotel wifi into allowing the work laptop to connect without need of a splash page. But for the other 10%... (Not a joke, I do this) I sometimes login to the hotel wifi on my personal phone, tether that phone to my personal laptop, then setup that laptop as a router. The work computer can then connect to the wifi from the personal laptop, which tethers into the phone, which is on the hotel wifi. All of this just avoid another ridiculous wifi login page.
- ape4 3y agoWhy don't laptops randomize their MACs?
- zamadatix 3y agoDevices tend to support randomization by default these days but it comes in multiple types: scanning, persistent, per ssid, or full random. Full random is not typically used, particularly if a captive portal is detected, because it breaks connectivity.
- ruune 3y agoProbably because no desktop OS I know of randomizes MAC addresses by default. How many people are gonna enable that manually? At least android (and I think iOS) default to random addresses
- woodruffw 3y agoI believe recent versions of macOS also perform MAC randomization by default.
- meinheld111 3y agoCaptive portals
- m3047 3y agoBecause they're connected to the network. Seriously. It's like "why do recursing DNS servers spam queries if they don't get an answer within 10 milliseconds?" To give you an idea how shortsighted this is, a production grade DNS server doing this also supports response rate limiting (warfighting capability which treats the spamming as spam), and the recursing DNS server is supposed to be caching and should be trying to optimize "whole of page" to achieve so-called "happy eyeballs". To give you a somewhat more technical explanation, a MAC address can be permanently tethered to an IP address (so that each time it connects it always gets that address on that particular network). When that is not done (when there is no association for a particular MAC), an address is assigned from a (finite) pool. In some deployments the finitude of the pool provides a "fusible link" for defense in depth against some forms of resource exhaustion. The MAC address is visible regardless of whether or not a device is connected to a network: it is an address (it has broadcast and multicast too). When devices are not connected to a network and want to go around mumbling "notary sojack" (with a major 0) to every man + dog + keyhole to see who/what responds there's no downside for them doing it; at least, I haven't seen any hostapd option for running a tarpit like we do for some level 3/4 services (the first attempt is rejected; sometimes the entire TCP handshake is completed and at the app level the server says "not now, try later"). Once they're connected to a network there's a network stack with DHCP, ARP and server state. The set of MAC addresses is orders of magnitude larger than the set of IP addresses in a DHCP pool. It doesn't "hand out an address" as the first order of business; it records your MAC address and gives you an address from the pool. Addresses return to the pool when the lease expires or when they're observed not to be in use. (There is a DHCPRELEASE op but crappy software so defense in depth doesn't rely on clients cleaning up after themselves.) Once you've got an IP address associated with a MAC address associated with your network interface it looks like a LAN segment on the internet. If somebody on the segment wants to send a packet to that IP address they use ARP to ask what hardware machine code (MAC) do I address a packet to this IP address to? (IP addresses are a layer of indirection) Beyond that the LAN segment is connected to other segments with a router. The router knows things about topology that you're not supposed to know, and more importantly that random peers elsewhere on the internet aren't supposed to know. If you were on a LAN segment connected with a hub, you'd have some idea what other internet addresses were active on that segment. You can make an educated guess about what addresses are allowed (by the router) on that segment based on the broadcast mask; you could perhaps ping addresses within the broadcast range to see which ones are / aren't in use and hijack one of them. What happens to packets which are part of a session which are in-flight when an IP address changes? Quite frankly, many applications very wrongly presume that an address (or DNS name, but that's out of scope) is some form of identity. TCP has no way to change one of the addresses mid-session. So you're not going to be changing the IP address with garden variety cloud services. Now we've got the problem defined: what happens if the MAC address associated with an address changes? First off, packets coming from the router destined for the old MAC address based on the cached IP -> MAC association are going to start dropping. Or be intercepted: what's to stop some joker from grabbing such an address and claiming the "legitimate" holder is the impostor? (I wouldn't be so sure that you can't see wifi traffic which isn't addressed to your MAC if you've successfully authenticated to a wifi network. It's more like a hub, at least if you're connected to the same AP.)
- mnutt 3y agoBack when my company was a tiny startup the old nyc building door had an intercom buzzer and physical keys. To make it easier to get in I wired a raspberry pi w/relay into the intercom and built a web UI. The pi setup wasn’t solidly reliable for weeks at a time, but fortunately it was plugged into an outlet with a light switch so everyone knew to turn it off and back on again. But since it was by the door, no matter the labeling from time to time we’d come in to find it turned permanently off.
- duxup 3y agoIt’s fun how a sorta absurd term like “reset the internet” now has an obvious meaning, usually resetting whatever access point type device is nearest the person resetting it.
- sys_64738 3y agoHacking WiFi on a plane is a sure fire way to get yourself added to the no-fly list.
- perlgeek 3y agoNote that what the author did could have been done in a purely passive way, just by capturing packages and seeing the DHCP responses others got. I don't think that qualifies as "hacking".
- sys_64738 3y agoTell that to the judge then.
- mynameisnoone 3y agoThe ignorant masses demonize what they don't understand. If you don't appreciate the subtleties of passive investigation vs. offensive intrusion, then why are you even here?
- sys_64738 3y agoA layman only sees a terrorist hacker interfering with the operation of an airplane. The no-fly list at best or Gitmo at worst.
- UrineSqueegee 3y agogood thing he didn't do any then lol
- bdavbdav 3y agoWhat was hacked?
- sys_64738 3y agoRunning hacker tools against aircraft operations will get you easily indicted. This can be seen as probing an aircraft defenses for weaknesses.
- tyingq 3y agoInteresting. The "minimum F/A's required: 5" sticker suggests it's a pretty big plane that holds around 250 passengers. So it probably happens less often on smaller planes.
- mynameisnoone 3y agoProbably a narrowbody though. I've been on overseas flights on widebodies where there were ~20 F/A's.
- gugagore 3y agoI had a Internet connectivity problem on a JetBlue flight recently that I couldn't figure out. I could see the captive portal, with a URL like "planSelectionPage". I would check the agreement and hit "Let's go", and some JavaScript would trigger and look like a new page was loading, but would just stay on the same page. It happened on both Firefox and Chrome. My phone connected without a problem. I wasn't sure how to debug it.
- nunez 3y agoDHCP is broken all of the time in these inflight WiFi systems. After they reset, you need to wait forever for the portal to turn up after which point there's a storm of clients trying to create or re-establish an Internet session which usually saturates the super small link unless it's satellite-based (and sometimes even then)
- workfromspace 3y ago15+ years ago, I had the same problem at a Starbucks. I asked the cashiers to reboot the modem, but they didn't understand why. Then I showed my new Microsoft certification card which has MCSE and few others and told them that "trust me, I know what I'm doing". They called their manager, who was also suprised but decided to go along with it and restarted the modem, solving the problem. I remember all the employees were looking at me for the rest of my visit (which was few hours because at that time I was working from Starbucks). Glad I wasn't the only one :)
- mewpmewp2 3y agoI would like a "Blessed by the Elders of the Internet" certificate for such occasions.
- belter 3y agoThat happened to me also. The manager told me all employees had a MCSE and CCIE and they were not currently hiring, thank you...
- mynameisnoone 3y agoThat's adjacent to "Do you know who I am?" The problem with certifications are that they aren't a very good signal of quality employees because A+ and MCSx were on every resume along with SQL and Java. The best technical people I've know/n have few to no certifications to please HR, but maybe a Master's or PhD in CS or CCIE. Mostly, certifications have fallen by the wayside since 2008 apart from low-productivity businesses that aren't technology-focused.
- workfromspace 3y agoI agree with this. Likewise, I unfortunately witnessed some colleagues who got certified through test leaks, and they sucked at their job. Btw back then, Microsoft was suggesting to get the certifications after few years in the industry. I received most certifications because my employers required them for some projects or customers. The last (MS) certification I got was around 2009, and I didn't need any of those during my developer years.
- belter 3y agoSounds appropriate... - https://youtu.be/kBLkX2VaQs4?t=92 https://youtu.be/kBLkX2VaQs4?t=92
- hrunt 3y ago> Obviously, one solution to the problem is that DHCP leases on planes should be drastically shorter, like at 1 hour intervals. Secondly, the number of leases should be drastically increased. Why isn't the solution as simple as, "Reset the Internet at every flight turnover"? Once the plane lands and (almost) everyone deplanes, hit the button as another step in crew handover.
- D13Fd 3y agoBetween “crew has to remember to hit the button” and “everything just works,” I have a strong preference for the second one.
- gpjt 3y agoThat would help, but I can imagine that on larger planes, especially if people connect their phone, then later their laptop, and so on, you could hit the limit of a 192.168.x subnet even during a flight.
- calamari4065 3y agoReminds me of when our router failed at work. Every machine got booted off the network, except mine. Digging in, my machine somehow got assigned an IP that looked like our public facing IP, not a local address. We replaced the router, but the problem turned out to actually be that a construction worker had accidentally cut our fiber line. Absolutely no clue how my laptop got to the internet. It must have failed over to some other WiFi network or something
- mynameisnoone 3y agoAll the WiFi vendor had to do was use a properly-sized subnet like 10.N.0.0/16, but no, they couldn't provide something better than a shitty retail home router with an aviation-grade reset button panacea.
- Comfy-Tinwork 3y agoAlways good to see something from Rob. Question would be how high in the management chain did that have to go before a "internet reset" button was added to a plane.
- Tijdreiziger 3y agoThe author has more courage than me, opening “hacking tools” (Wireguard and Terminal) on an airplane. (Yes, I know they’re not actually hacking tools, but try explaining that to a random flight attendant.)
- lionkor 3y ago"These are not hacking tools, I work in IT and these are harmless diagnostics for my laptop" seems pretty simple
- jancsika 3y ago> Apparently in the front near the entrance/exit, there's a button simply labeled "INTERNET RESET" that she presses whenever a customer complains. I worry that this is actually part of a RESTful interface. In that case it probably garbage collected erratarob et al, replacing them with a fresh version of our universe's page that had working internet for that plane. Until someone proves me wrong we probably shouldn't press that button again...
- baldgeek 3y agoI used to work at one of the larger IFE providers and we always being asked to make the system as dumb as possible because flight crews hating supporting them. Not surprising to see this exists.
- bshacklett 3y agoFor what it’s worth, dual stack with IPv6 + DNS64/NAT64 would be a great solution here, as well. SLAAC and a /64 would make it pretty unlikely for this kind of failure mode to occur.
- NikkiA 3y ago> Obviously, one solution to the problem is that DHCP leases on planes should be drastically shorter, like at 1 hour intervals. Secondly, the number of leases should be drastically increased. Or just hit the 'internet reset' before each boarding, why are they over complicating this?