A Survey on Methods for Broadband Internet Access on Trains

The authors present a survey of approaches for providing broadband Internet access to trains. They examine some of the barriers that hinder the use of broadband Internet on trains and then discuss some of the opportunities for broadband deployment to trains. This survey considers some of the basic concepts for providing broadband Internet access and then reviews associated network architectures. The review of network architectures shows that they can subdivide networks for providing broadband Internet access to trains into the train-based network, the access network - for connecting the train to the service provider(s) - and the aggregation network - for collecting user packets generated in the access network for transmission to the Internet.