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Wireless Networking Communications The Internet Hardware

Wi-Fi Warsailing In The Netherlands 111

Posted by timothy from the english-for-germans dept.
Roland writes "The first war-sailing event ever, AFAIK. A community based WiFi network in Leiden, the Netherlands, WirelessLeiden hold a warsailing event [Dutch links]. The war-sailing event was meant to show that WirelessLeiden is more than just a local city network. On this map you can see that 75% of the route was covered by WirelessLeiden. Vic Hayes, the Father of WiFi, was a keynote speaker during the war-sailing event. He gave a talk about how WiFi was developed. A couple of spin-offs gave presentations, namely AnyWi and KoGeRo. FYI: WirelessLeiden [English Link] has rolled out a free WiFi network covering almost the whole city of Leiden, 100.000 inhabitants, 49 nodes with 30 more to be build this year. This is the NodeMap of WirelessLeiden."
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Wi-Fi Warsailing In The Netherlands More

Wi-Fi Warsailing In The Netherlands

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  • How? (Score:5, Informative)

    by BlindSpy ( 772849 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @06:56PM (#9382958) Homepage Journal
    Thats awesome but: "The war-sailing event was meant to show that WirelessLeiden is more than just a local city network." how is it more than just a local city network?

    • Re:How? (Score:3, Funny)

      by ElForesto ( 763160 )
      Appearantly it's something speacial because the signals are picked up on the river. Imagine that, radio signals travelling well over an unobstructed area: who would have ever guessed? :/
    • It seems to be more than a city network because there seems to be possible access to this network from surrounding recreational and 'commercial' waters.
    • Because it extends beyond the city limits, obviously!
    • The area covered by the entirely wireless network goes far beyond the city limits: from the North Sea beach to approximately 20 miles inland. And including the lake district.
    • Well - As you can see on the map it covers not just the City of Leiden - but has also spawned copy cat initiatives which are building out in the adjacent villages - all the way till the sea. Dw.

  • Waterproof? (Score:5, Funny)

    by QuantumSpritz ( 703080 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @06:57PM (#9382964)
    Gonna need a waterproof laptop for that sort of thing...

  • Let me tell ya :) (Score:1, Interesting)

    by etcremote ( 776426 )
    I recently got back from the Netherlands, and let me be the first to say that they are the most security concious people WRT wireless I've ever been around. I've traveled in the US, Germany, Canada, the UK, and Italy extensively. Netherlands, hands down the best. Italy...let me put it this way: Italy go? Free surf all Day-go :)

  • 100 people! (Score:4, Funny)

    by seringen ( 670743 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @06:58PM (#9382970)
    100 People with an accuracy of three decimal points. Now that's news!

    • Re:100 people! (Score:1, Funny)

      by Mz6 ( 741941 ) *
      Haha.. Silly Americans and their fancy commas.

      • tsk tsk (Score:3, Informative)

        by Trepidity ( 597 )
        Silly continental Europeans who don't know about the outside world.

        It's true that in continental Europe, the period is used as a 10^3 separator, and the comma is used as a decimal separator, but this is hardly universal usage, and certainly the opposite is not a provincial Americanism. Using the comma fora 10^3 separator and the period for a decimal separator is in fact standard English usage, and is what is followed in the UK, Australia, Singapore, India, and South Africa, among other countries, in addi

  • Brings new meaning to (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @07:01PM (#9382984)
    Piracy on the open seas.

    • "Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)"
      Piracy Pi"ra*cy, n.; pl. Piracies. Cf. LL. piratia, Gr. ?.
      See Pirate.
      1. The act or crime of a pirate.

      2. (Common Law) Robbery on the high seas; the taking of property from others on the open sea by open violence; without lawful authority, and with intent to steal; -- a crime answering to robbery on land.

      Note: Robbery, in a strict sense, differs from theft, as it is effected by force or intimidation, whereas theft is committed by stealth, or privately.

      Pl

    • Piracy on the open seas.



      Actually, as The Netherlands' borders are 50% coastal borders, most of our major radio stations started out as pirate radio stations which operated from ships in the North Sea.

  • sailing? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by crazney ( 194622 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @07:03PM (#9382997) Homepage Journal
    Well I can't read whatever language the web page is in.. But from the one picture I saw, and the map, it aint sailing.
    Sailing is when you have a boat with a sail, and the boat move as the result of wind power.

    What they seem to be doing is 'warboating'.

    As far as I can tell from the map there is no way a sail boat could get around that route.

    • Re:sailing? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Marxist Hacker 42 ( 638312 ) <seebert42@gmail.com> on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @07:09PM (#9383035) Homepage Journal
      Sailboats can move by river current also. In fact, on rivers, the main way that a sailboat gets power is like a kite- the tension between the wind on the sail and the current on the dropboard. This, given proper angles between the two, can even be used to sail a sailboat UPSTREAM, though you've got to do a lot of tacking to do so.
      • Actually nearly every Tuesday night I sail for one and a half miles up a river. No tacking, just a nearly straight shot.

        It all depends on the angle of the wind to the angle of the boat, and river.

        Of course in early spring with tons of rain, We can sail up river at seven knots, while only traveling at 1 knot as per the shore. Damn current.
    • A sail boat can go in pretty much any direction it pleases, into the wind, with the wind, or parallel to it. You can't just look at a route and say that a sailboat couldn't do it (although it may be slow!).

      • Re:sailing? (Score:5, Informative)

        by kavachameleon ( 637997 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @09:26PM (#9383663)
        A sailboat (barring a motor) can't go straight upwind. A modern racing rig can get within a point or two, but most can't even get near that. Figure on 45 degrees off of the wind as maximum upwind performance. But anything else and she's good. Although it's interesting to notice that a straight downwind is not a sailboat's fastest point of sail.

      • Re:sailing? (Score:3, Informative)

        by crazney ( 194622 )
        I'm a sailer, I know about such things.. But you have to tack to get upwind, which is very hard to do in a river (since they are generally too narrow)
        • I just thought it looked wide enough on the map. I mean sure you'd be tacking a lot, but you'd get there in the end.
          • :). It is wide enough for a small boat. And yes, it's tacking (laveren I think is the dutch translation) every 30 meter or so, but if you're sailing in the rivers or channels that connect the lakes in the netherlands there's usually tacking involved.

            Anyway, looking at the page, I don't think they used a sailboat, just a boat. Shame :)

            http://wleiden.webweaving.org:8080/svn/node-con f ig /fotos/events/wifi_te_water/tn/koningin_juliana002 3.jpg

            That's the boat they used. Severely lacking sails :)
    • I was born there :P. Somewhat surprised to find a map showing my sleepy homevillage. Anyway, with small boats (16^2 meter sails) you can perfectly well sail there. Larger boats will have to wait for the bridges to open up, so that'd be somewhat awkward sailing, except on the upper bit of the map (called Kaag), which is wide open, and a popular sailing place.

      Enjoy.
    • I live in Leiden and have spend quite some time sailing that stretch of water. As long as you don't mind sailing in circles along the 10 mile stretch of lakelets leftover after the we drained most of the real lake in the 18 and 19 hundreds you'll be fine.

      If you want to actually sail a boat anywhere beyond the lakelets you'll spend most of your time waiting on bridges.

      In good weather all waterways in and around Leiden are extremely crowded, so I shudder at the thought of somebody messing with their laptop
    • In English, sailing is travelling by ship.
      But of course you are free to make up your own version of the language as you go.

      You cannot read maps either, you mean?

    • Well I can't read whatever language the web page is in.

      Clearly it's in Hollish [penny-arcade.com].
    • Yesm, you're right. It is warboating, and it is not a first [panbo.com].
    • And it is not the first ever warboating event. Last year a group of about 20 nerds did a warfloating event in the canals of Amsterdam, and as far as i know the first ever warfloating was done in 2001 by the artist Franz Feigl: http://www.free2air.org/story/2001/9/15/115017/225

  • Total coverage (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tranzig ( 786710 ) <voidstar@freemail.hu> on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @07:04PM (#9383011)
    I hope the remaining 25% are covered by Linksys [slashdot.org] routers.

  • Arrr... (Score:2, Funny)

    by N4DMX ( 614024 )
    I wonder if this is related to this [jinx.com] T-Shirt?

  • There's a big difference (Score:4, Interesting)

    by chaffed ( 672859 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @07:08PM (#9383026) Homepage
    There's a big difference between picking up a wifi network and acutally maintaining a usable link. IMHO a lot of this "Warflying" and "Warsailing" crap serves no real purpose. In a way the less sensitive your antenna is the more acurate the location of a network is mapped. In way I am playing devils advocate and in another it is my opinion.

    • Re:There's a big difference (Score:5, Informative)

      by mabinogi ( 74033 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @07:23PM (#9383104) Homepage
      I was always under the impression that war*ing was not about maintaining a link, but about locating hotspots.

      Didn't it start with "warchalking" where somone would put a chalk mark on a wall or footpath or something indicating that you could get wireless access from there?

      From what I understand, these war driving / flying / sailing events are about producing a map that someone can use later to find the locations.

      • I think his point is that with big antennas like many war*ers use, you might be able to hear the bssid packets coming out of the hotspot, but unless the person following the map has the same tooled up rig ( and the average laptop wifi user doesn't use much in the way of antennas ), it's going to look like dead air, or at best a horribly unstable link, to them.

        This is common sense, again - when you're testing something, test the actual real-world version, not some turbo boosted research version that nobody

      • Didn't it start with "warchalking" where somone would put a chalk mark on a wall or footpath or something indicating that you could get wireless access from there?
        And don't forget war-dialling, the granddaddy of them all. Acoustic couplers at the ready, gentlemen...
    • There's a big difference between picking up a wifi network and acutally maintaining a usable link. IMHO a lot of this "Warflying" and "Warsailing" crap serves no real purpose.

      Sure it does. It provides an excuse to board a watercraft, drink your ass off, and look at bikinis.

      Kind of like fishing, actually.

  • Warsailing, Arrr! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @07:09PM (#9383034)
    Ahoy Matey! Welcome aboard the Black Perl. We be the Software Pirates of the Caribbean, hoist the wi-fi and start the mp3 piratin'!

  • ISP=town (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This concern anyone else?

  • What happens (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Marxist Hacker 42 ( 638312 )
    When the inevitable gust of wind capsizes the sailboat (happend to me so often when I was learning to sail that I started leaving my wallet onshore)? Does a laptop, when it gets wet and shorts out, start working again when it dries out like a cell phone?

  • This is pretty cool (Score:4, Interesting)

    by periol ( 767926 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @07:17PM (#9383079) Homepage
    There has been way too much emphasis on wireless "security" lately, and almost none on the subversive possibilities of wireless networking. Every time I see a city is putting up a wireless network, I get excited. More and more of the commercial wireless companies are starting to give up on their business models, because giving out wireless bandwidth is cheap and easy.

    Seriously, the advent of free wireless, whether municipal or "lilypad", means that the internet is becoming a technology with increasingly low entrance requirements. Find an old laptop, run Linux, and start a blog.

    If you're going to worry about security, do it on the machines. Leave the network infrastructure alone. Rawk!
    • If you're going to worry about security, do it on the machines. Leave the network infrastructure alone. Rawk!

      Right on. I'd put securing wireless in about the same category as securing streets and sidewalks. Now imagine downtown with toll sidewalks. Society has always had ways to deal with disrupters of the peace. Internet shouldn't be any different.
    • That's how big companies (like mine) are applying wireless today. You build a WiFi network, leave it 100% open, but don't connect it to the LAN/Intranet. In our office we just got a separate DSL line for the WiFi network. When people in the office want to use WiFi, they just VPN from the public Internet into the corporate network. No WEP, no nothing, just relying on VPN. Just the same as when I connect to the office from home or from a hotel.

      So all those journalists that go wardriving and then have a big a

  • "The first war-sailing event ever, AFAIK." (Score:4, Funny)

    by Niten ( 201835 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @07:25PM (#9383118)
    The first war-sailing event ever, AFAIK. [...]

    Prior art? [ancestry.com]

  • if its free who pays for the bandwidth ? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    i mean 100,000 people all on [insert p2p of choice] will use huge amounts of bandwidth, who pays for this if its free ?

    • uh, no they won't. they'll simply use all the available bandwidth, or at least all the bandwidth allocated to them.

      the bandwidth will cost exactly the same amount whether or not it is used. it's not like the city is using cable or something.

  • The realities of WIFI (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @07:27PM (#9383137) Journal
    Wifi is easy to set up. ($50 at the local electronics mega-mart gives you a decent AP)

    The big problem isn't the "wifi" part - it's the other half - the "Intarweb" half. See, the real expense is the Internet connection.

    If I share my ADSL 1.5/384 connection with my neighbors, I'm violating terms of service, and could lose my (very important to me) Internet connection.

    T1 or T3 lines, which wouldn't have the above contract restrictions, cost at least $750/month around here.

    So, who provides the bandwidth? Also, assume that somebody uses YOUR wifi AP to email bomb threats to King George, WITH YOUR RETURN ADDRESS.

    Now, who's in HOT WATER?

    I personally think that sooner, rather than later, Internet Access will be more of a public service, provided by your Municipality. In many areas, this already happens.
    • If I share my ADSL 1.5/384 connection with my neighbors, I'm violating terms of service, and could lose my (very important to me) Internet connection.

      Your ADSL provider sucks. My provider not only allows WiFi sharing, but even encourages it [speakeasy.net].

      That is not to say I actually do share my 1.5/384 ADSL connection, but I could if I wanted to. Moreover, speakeasy's ADSL prices are way below T1/T3 (although still above el-cheapo baby bell DSL prices).

      • Your ADSL provider sucks. My provider not only allows WiFi sharing, but even encourages it.

        OK - let's assume that your ISP is "cool" and doesn't "suck".

        Take your 1.5/384 connection, and use some point-to-point microwave links and numerous wireless APs so that you provide free service to a few hundred free "community" users.

        In case you hadn't read the PDF on the page you linked to, your "cool" ISP wants cash from your neighbors when you share your connection!

        You get to share your Internet connection wit
        • your "cool" ISP wants cash from your neighbors when you share your connection!

          False, although you do have to read deeper than the front page to obtain the true terms and conditions under which sharing is allowed.

          The Terms of Service [speakeasy.net] say (and I quote):

          Speakeasy allows residential customers to share their broadband connection through a home network that utilizes technology such as Wi-Fi. However,

          if a Speakeasy member is collecting access fees from any individual accessing their Wi-Fi network, the memb

      • anyone that uses Speakeasy know if they offer extra IP's for connection sharing?
    • I personally think that sooner, rather than later, Internet Access will be more of a public service, provided by your Municipality.

      If this happens, the temptation to filter or otherwise control use of access falls directly to political authorities. File this one under bad idea.

    • The Wireless Leiden network is different from most community networks. It is NOT a collection of hotspots that each have their own Internet connection, but an entirely wireless network that only has three high-speed (8 Mbps) Internet gateways, providing adsl-type bandwith to thousands of people. This is what makes the difference.

  • Submerge (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Who's going to be first to go warsubmarining?
  • there is a spam-bomb onboard, and if the boat goes slower than 10 knots an hour, it will explode!!

  • War- (Score:3, Funny)

    by Nick Driver ( 238034 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @08:35PM (#9383414)
    Well, we have wardriving and warflying..., and now warsailing. What's next? Warspelunking in hell?

  • Well at least... (Score:4, Funny)

    by dj245 ( 732906 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @09:11PM (#9383598)
    If the owner of the house feels the need to come beat you up with a baseball bat for screwing with his network, he must first:

    1. Locate a boat.
    2. Release the docklines.
    3. Start the motor and or raise sails.
    4. Catch up.
    5. Maneuver to within boarding distance.
    6. Sucessfully board without falling in the water, or being repelled.
    7. Commence with the beatdown on a rolling, pitching, heeled deck.

    Oh yeah,
    8. Profit!.

  • I've warsailed in the hudson river a few months ago.

    While taking a ferry from NJ to Wall St, I ran macstumbler on my powerbook.
    Voila! There's about two accesspoints smack dab in the middle of the river.
    The number increases as it reaches the docks..
    • And I war-sailed The Broadwater and Nerang River at the Gold Coast, Australia in November 2002.

      And I'm sure I wasn't the first to come up with the idea either.

  • Check out wardriving maps of the US at location based wifi headquarters [wifimaps.com]. Upload your findings, and see data from other wardrivers. Of course it's a shameless plug, but at least it's on topic!

  • In-water hotspots... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cybervarun ( 774601 ) on Wednesday June 09, 2004 @10:41PM (#9384003) Homepage
    These results are quite interesting. That's an awful lot of wireless coverage for any body of water, including the lakes on the map.

    I could definitely see something like this cropping up in the Long Island Sound and becoming quite popular with Long Island boaters who want a relaxing day on the water. I know someone was looking at hotspots in the water around NYC, and I'm sure there are already plenty of those :D

    But...knowing entrepreneurship in the United States, I simply can't envision a free Wi-Fi network with range good enough to cover a body of water. In general, it seems like phenomena like this one in the Netherlands are seen more often in Europe, so where does it leave us unpriveliged Americans?

  • Gives new meaning to pirating internet

  • I've been doing this for two years now (Score:4, Interesting)

    by aquarian ( 134728 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @12:25AM (#9384391)
    I spend my summers boating in the Pacific Northwest. I've been "warsailing" for two years now. Whenever I settle down in a new marina for the night, or even a cove with houses around it, I boot up and see what king of internet access I can get. More often than not, I'm able to hop on someone's network -- usually a Linksys router at the default settings. Sometimes it may be from a liveaboard boat w/ cable access (yes, they have that now in marinas), but most of the time it's from a nearby house. The signals seem to travel really well across water -- hundreds of yards.

    Most better marinas have paid WiFi now. Others have somewhere you can jack in your laptop. Still others have internet cafes nearby, which capitalize on the large boater market -- everyone relies on email these days. Small marinas are starting to offer free WiFi. Internet access has become an important feature for attracting business. And there's nothng better than surfing the net from your own boat.

    One beautiful evening last summer, I was sitting on the foredeck of my boat, with my laptop and a glass of red wine, reading my email while enjoying the fabulous view of the BC coastal range. It was a surreal, TV-commercial moment -- priceless! Yes, this is for real. We really can live like this these days.
  • War-driving, war-flying, war-sailing... when was the last time you heard someone trying to get a cellphone signal refer to is as cell-driving, etc?

    Just because you've changed the vehicle doesn't mean you've changed the technical achievements.

  • Living in Leiden (Score:4, Informative)

    by johannesg ( 664142 ) on Thursday June 10, 2004 @02:22AM (#9384816)
    Since I live and work there, I suppose I could add a few things...

    Leiden is a small (110,000 inhabitants) city in the west of the Netherlands. Its main claim to fame is its university (430 years old now and going strong). We get a lot of american tourists since Leiden was the location where the pilgrim fathers lived before taking ship to what would one day be the USA. Every year I get to disappoint a couple of americans coming over for a visit: only a few remnants of walls remain of that church (and for some reason they are always asking _me_ where it is!?). But do keep coming - there is lots of other stuff to see ;-)

    The area to the north of Leiden has a lot of open water (small connected lakes), and makes for excellent sailing. Around the lakes is where we grow all those flower bulbs. For a rural area it has one of the highest population densities in the world, which helps explain the proliferation of wireless access spots I guess.

    The office where I work is just about on top of one of the access points: "Rabo" is about 20m away from where I sit. When we tried last year we couldn't pick up any signals, but I'll try again today, see if it actually works now.

    • Just to point out that they were English initially,

      The Pilgrims were English Separatists who founded (1620) Plymouth Colony in New England. In the first years of the 17th century, small numbers of English Puritans broke away from the Church of England because they felt that it had not completed the work of the Reformation. They committed themselves to a life based on the Bible. Most of these Separatists were farmers, poorly educated and without social or political standing. One of the Separatist congregat
  • Wireless technology uses capacitors, the modern descendants of the device known as a Leiden jar [kenyon.edu], invented two and a half centuries ago.
  • All of you other fakes who claim to be digital pirates have NOTHING on these guys. I'm sure they could fill their sails with the full force of irony produced by infringing copyrights on the open seas.

  • So, we have had war-driving, war-flying and now war-sailing. Not much left to do. How about some war-fucking? Have as many one night stands as you like, take your Wi-Fi equipment with you and dive into it:


    # pump -i dck01

    The girls will really like it, when you start to discuss their signal-to-noise-ratio after you're done. And don't forget to publicly announce each open access point you've found :o)

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