In-Flight Wifi - VPN Issue

[wlittler]

Hello All! 

I sit here in April 2019 on a flight from San Diego to Austin, and found my way to this thread as I also cannot establish a connection through my corporate VPN! We use Pulse Secure. I can connect to WiFi and browse openly, but cannot do the work I bought the $8 WiFi for, as I need to connect to my corp VPN... I will be requesting a refund, hopefully they accomodate... but Southwest, please fix this! It's the only reason some people buy the WiFi, and it works on other airlines.

Thanks!

[williambascus]

Just wanted to chime in that I've been on two Southwest flights in the past two weeks, and access to our corporate VPN has been a no-go each time.     This is actually something that I'm going to raise up our chain, as Southwest is one of our recommended choices when booking travel.  I'm kind of wondering if perhaps noone else at the company is actually working on a flight 

My IP understanding is not super great, but it doesn't logical that all corporate VPNs would require the same port access, but I will admit, I'm not a loyal flyer to any one company, and haven't had any issues on Alaska or United.    

I can understand that Southwest might want to restrict Virtual Machine access, but it's odd that VPN is such a no-go.   

[SWDigits]

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@williambascus wrote:

Just wanted to chime in that I've been on two Southwest flights in the past two weeks, and access to our corporate VPN has been a no-go each time.     This is actually something that I'm going to raise up our chain, as Southwest is one of our recommended choices when booking travel.

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This is a really good point, I'm surprised there are not more comments along these lines.

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@williambascus wrote:

I'm kind of wondering if perhaps noone else at the company is actually working on a flight 

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Thank you for a good laugh!!!

[ridgeway]

I guess this thread puts the nail in the coffin on this issue. Officially not supported. What a shame

VPN? (southwest.com)

[ridgeway]

Quick little revival, conclusion and final hail mary of a proposal

First - last flight I was on with SWA I was able to get certain wireguard-based connections to work- BARELY, just unusable unless the flight is empty. IPTV boggs down the GEO-SAT based internet SWA switched to slowly around 2016.

Given how much BETTER other airlines wifi is (i.e. using ground station 5G based comms instead of GEO (I believe SWA is now all GEO-based comms specifically provided by Viasat).

Before all this mess started happening, SWA was using a similar system that providers like American Airlines uses (4/5G direct to ground receivers eliminating the huge GEO (geostationary earth orbit satellite) latency. Before SWA offered free TV, speeds were great (given the era and the medium), it would die over bodies of water and as much direct testing I could and experienced when SWA started flying to Puerto Vallarta - a route taken by AA usually only, I was able to compare and contrast for a while, AA would cut out just as SWA would as we got into Mexico from DFW if AA and sadly only via connecting flight if SWA (boy I would love if LUV got an international terminal, I will do everything in my power to avoid layovers, which is why I say limited testing). 

Then, SWA switch from Business to ‘free TV’ which is when this all started happening. Basically, I figure what happened is ViaSAT sold SWA on a contract of some sort and it wrecked business users so they could advertise free live junk TV without needing DISH.  

1. SWA started having connectivity over Mexico but still very poor
2. AA still doesn’t, but it’s gotten a lot better as 4/5G get’s deployed in Mexico (heck, I get 5G in Puerto vallarta with speeds around 200Mbps / 10Mbps up which is huge compared to just 4 years ago - note ON LAND via mobile not via the airplane’s wifi).
3. To this day I will happily pay AA wifi because I can actually use VPN with RDP reliably. As long as we’re flying over land in the US. Mexico has gotten better so much so that I will buy it now when going down to PVR. (I still hate DFW though, not as bad as connecting in Houston, though).  
4. AA doesn’t have free TV (from what I can recall). I may be mistaken, I think I recall seeing Dish being a provider for a bit. Separate systems. 
5. So SWA being the cost-cutters they are, were likely sold a great deal with ViaCrap who I assume basically told SWA they could provide both wifi and ‘dish-style’ TV without the extra cost and hardware/maintenance of managing 2 systems.
6. What they DIDN’T say was that it would completely bog down the bandwidth because IPTV isn’t the same thing as Dish. SWA may or may not have known the ramifications of this ‘cost saving’ measure, I will assume someone knew but they thought who cares about wifi when you have MOVIES AND TV FOR FREE (marketing department). 
7. I hope ViaCrap contract ends with SWA soon, I’ve honestly been travelling less on SWA just because they used to be tech-focused (was one of the first airlines to provide decent wifi from what I recall as most orginally started with SAT and very expensive at that. But internet connectivity on a 2-5 hour flight is critical. If I want to watch a movie, I will preload it from Plex. 
8. People are going to get sick of the 7 channels on SWA and the sub-dial-up speeds. And as a manner to ‘keep kids quiet’, In my opinion, I think kids these days would prefer the internet over archaic-style cable tv. 

Which brings me to my final proposal:

SWA, you would change the game for business, wait, everyone, flying SWA if you signed on with Starlink. My team has been installing Starlink for multi-home/business backhauls in very rural areas in Texas in which they previously paid $300+ a month for ViaCrap at each location - now through some nifty WISP-ing 1 business class dish backhaul supplies 10x the speeds, 1/20th the latency and shared saving thousands of dollars. Results were far far far better service from the prior mix of ViaSat and HughesNet. StarLink is a game-changer and I believe the airlines that sign on first will benefit best. I dare you, SWA - DO IT! 

https://www.starlink.com/business/aviation