WiGLE.net

1. Is there a way to find the actual population of detected spots per country, I couldnt find 'that in your stats section.

2. related question , is there a way to derive the total population of WiFi spots from the number observed? do you have any expert view? 5.7 million is huge but forecast suggest that by now there must be 4 million in the USA alone, and possibly 5 times as many world wide. Do you have any reference to suggest?

I discovered this site while researching an estimate of the population of private wifi networks. Fantastic site , congratulations. The maps are very useful.

1st: I'm not speaking for wigle, they can do that themselves.

1. Is there a way to find the actual population of detected spots per country, I couldnt find 'that in your stats section.

It's quite some calculating to derive the country from the coordinates. You need the coastline database to find where each country ends.

2. related question , is there a way to derive the total population of WiFi spots from the number observed? do you have any expert view? 5.7 million is huge but forecast suggest that by now there must be 4 million in the USA alone, and possibly 5 times as many world wide.

Wireless networks showing up on wigle is very highly dependant on an area being covered by an active wardriver. If you look for example at my country (the Netherlands) you will see high densities of wireless networks in cities like Amsterdam and Utrecht, but other big cities seem to have a lot less networks. I think the numbers are quite comparable in those cities, it's just that no wardriver has been there and uploaded the results. So, I think that derivation is very difficult.

i wouldn't rely on wigle for anything other than the occasional wisecrack remark (which is exactly what i rely on it for :-)

the dataset is inherently flawed for estimation as it is non-random and self-selected sample.
what it is good for is skeptical evaluation of observed points (some number of people allegedly saw a network with these characteristics around here),
and my favorite application: putting little dots on maps.

. . . and my favorite application: putting little dots on maps.

And they're even in color too!

our earliest experiments of saving bandwidth by drawing the background, map detail, and observed points all in one solid shade of black turned out to be a failure...


color was a huge advancement!

our earliest experiments of saving bandwidth by drawing the background, map detail, and observed points all in one solid shade of black turned out to be a failure...

color was a huge advancement!

Two words -- alpha channel

Hide all the useful data in the alpha channel, and suddenly those shades of black take on MUCH deeper meaning...

our earliest experiments of saving bandwidth by drawing the background, map detail, and observed points all in one solid shade of black turned out to be a failure...


color was a huge advancement!

I actually have a screendump from that first attempt.
I think I'll ebay it, and donate the proceeds to the Wigle API Development fund. That should get things going on that front PDQ...

/ducks and runs for cover...

Dutch

At the same time as black-on-black ultra-efficient maps, we anticipated very little bandwidth usage because of our innovative compressed world map.
By rendering all of the world detail into a single pixel square, we were able to host the whole mapping system off of a dialup connection! Below, you'll find a never-before-seen example of our unreleased "high res" (2x2) alpha web maps.

--->

. . . . Below, you'll find a never-before-seen example of our unreleased "high res" (2x2) alpha web maps.

--->

Cool, but it's out of date. When are you going to update it? Huh?

/ducks and runs.

By rendering all of the world detail into a single pixel square, we were able to host the whole mapping system off of a dialup connection! Below, you'll find a never-before-seen example of our unreleased "high res" (2x2) alpha web maps.

--->

That would render even faster if you properly closed the HTML comment

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