Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Wi-Fi Warsailing In The Netherlands

Posted by timothy on 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."

13 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. How? by BlindSpy · · Score: 5, Informative

    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?

    --
    Whoever dies with the most toys wins.
  2. Waterproof? by QuantumSpritz · · Score: 5, Funny

    Gonna need a waterproof laptop for that sort of thing...

  3. Re:Stupid Question by BlindSpy · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm guessing its wardriving but on boats ;-P Wardriving is driving around and looking for hotspots (places you can connect WiFi).

    --
    Whoever dies with the most toys wins.
  4. 100 people! by seringen · · Score: 4, Funny

    100 People with an accuracy of three decimal points. Now that's news!

  5. Brings new meaning to by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Piracy on the open seas.

  6. sailing? by crazney · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    stuff
    1. Re:sailing? by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    2. Re:sailing? by kavachameleon · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

  7. Total coverage by Tranzig · · Score: 5, Funny

    I hope the remaining 25% are covered by Linksys routers.

  8. There's a big difference by chaffed · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    What could possibly go wrong?
    1. Re:There's a big difference by mabinogi · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      Advanced users are users too!
  9. Warsailing, Arrr! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Ahoy Matey! Welcome aboard the Black Perl. We be the Software Pirates of the Caribbean, hoist the wi-fi and start the mp3 piratin'!

  10. This is pretty cool by periol · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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!