When we talk about Wi-Fi on board, we always think of a single purpose: to provide an internet connection only to passengers, but we really forget that there are many on-board devices that require an internet connection and this almost always goes unnoticed.
If we look at the devices on board a bus, many of them have data cards inside and require connectivity to be able to connect with external applications such as location, ticketing, multimedia systems, security camera DVRs, etc... Doing a quick count on many of the buses we find 3, 4 and even 5 SIM cards in the same vehicle to provide connectivity: Why not use our WiFi system as a common internet connectivity element on the bus?
It is true that the vast majority of WiFi systems are not designed to allow this type of use, but there are some advanced solutions that do allow it and also with guarantees of success and information security.
When using the WiFi system router as the bus's central communications node, we encounter 2 obstacles:
– The first of these is that some of the manufacturers of equipment on board buses only allow access to the Internet through their internal modem, using a SIM for private purposes. If we have any equipment with these characteristics, we will not be able to provide connectivity through our router, it will have to continue working through its dedicated SIM. Luckily, there are many other devices that do have Ethernet network interfaces to be able to give them connectivity through a conventional network hose and therefore that we can integrate into our WiFi router.
– The second obstacle is the impossibility of many routers on the market to be able to effectively separate the network traffic so that the traffic generated by the passengers in the WiFi network and the traffic generated by the on-board equipment are not mixed, putting at high risk the information transmitted and the integrity of the systems. Luckily today there are professional routers with the capacity to separate both logically and physically the generated networks, being able to isolate the data traffic coming from one machine, another or a set of them, ensuring the information.
Another utility that is gaining strength in the sector, mainly due to on-board multimedia systems, is the possibility of linking the bus with certain Wi-Fi networks in order to be able to carry out massive uploads/downloads of data. Generally, for this type of requirement, the operators have to add a new piece of equipment on the bus that is in charge of connecting via WiFi with the configured wireless networks, for example in garages, stations or any other point. Once the connection to the Wi-Fi network is established, the on-board system is accessible to the application that requires the upload/download of data. There are currently specific WiFi solutions for the sector, which in addition to providing WiFi to passengers and providing connectivity to on-board equipment, as we have previously mentioned, are capable of connecting externally with configured WiFi networks in order to be able to use said connection for the required tasks. This is another example of how, with a single piece of equipment on board the bus, we are able to obtain benefits that go beyond the WiFi service itself for passengers.
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