How is Location of a Flight or Aircraft Tracked- (ADS-B Technology)

ADS-B  (Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast) system is widely used globally for real-time tracking of flights. Currently around 60% of passenger aircrafts are equipped with ADS-B transponder. When in flight the aircraft gets its GPS location from the satellite in space. Then ADS-B transponder in the aircraft now transmits the GPS location details (and other information including speed, vertical speed, Skuawk signal etc.) to nearby aircrafts and receivers on land. ADS-B signal is received by the receiver and information is analyzed and sent to base stations (including live tracking systems, ATC).  

Further resources:

http://www.flightradar24.com/how-it-works

Live Flight Airoplane Tracking Website

Amidst the current controversy of disappearance of Malaysian Airline flight MH370 I was researching on how to track live stat for flights and I found two very useful resources. These websites are quite useful if you want to track the live position of someone’s flight you are waiting for. They also tell about some very useful and technical information about flight such as speed and altitude. Try these website yourself and be amazed.

•     http://planefinder.net/ 

Once you search for a flight with its Flight No. Planefinder tells you flight’s Registration no., Altitude, Speed, Route, Course, Squawk etc. It lays out the flights location on Google  map and shows nearby flights as well.

To search a plane on planefinder you need to know the flight no. Simply click on Map Option on top right of page and enter flight no.

• http://www.flightradar24.com 

Flightradar24. When you search Altitude, Vertical speed, Speed, Track, Latitude, Longitude, Radar, Squawk information is displayed along with flights’s real time map on Google map.

Great Firewall of China: How to Check if a Website is Censored in China

As most of you know internet in China is censored. The program also called as Great Firewall of China. 

How does this censorship actually implemented in such a volatile and free environment of cyber world. Interestingly this is a very organized effort involving mass scale operation, cyber infrastructure and a daunting number of human resource. (read - http://www.ww24.org/2013/10/internet-censorship-in-china.html ) Censorship is a joint effort between public and private enterprise. 

Social media platform like facebook, twitter are blocked to be accessed from Chinese mainland territory. You may wonder what else is blocked. This can be simply checked from the Great Firewall of China website.

http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org
Updated link (5-May-2018): https://www.comparitech.com/privacy-security-tools/blockedinchina/  

 

You can enter the website which you want to see if is blocked in China and the query server tries to access it from 5 locations in mainland China including Beijing, Shenzen, Inner Mangolia, Heilongjiang Province & Yunnan Province and shows the result. Surprisingly many Google services are also blocked in China.