Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 21st April 2009
7 COMMENTS 
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Heat Map of Wi-Fi strength
People expect a wireless network and connectivity at a web conference. And they expect it to work too. unfortunately it usually doesn’t. Every edition of The Next Web Conference suffered from some problems. This year, it was almost perfect.
It was so perfect that I publicly offered to make the Wi-Fi work at leWeb in paris next year. It famously didn’t work last year even though Loïc reportedly spent over 100.000 Euros on it. We spent a little more than 5.000 so I offered to provide working Wi-Fi for 50.000 in Paris.
This is what the setup looked like last week:
- We provided almost 50 workplaces with fixed ethernet and power connections. We also provided ethernet cables for everyone to use. This means that the heaviest users switched to cable.
- Average number of simultaneous WiFi users was an average 130 (all day) with peaks of more than 150 users.
- WiFi limits were set at 10Mbps down and 5Mbps up – no limits on fixed ethernet
- Around 50GB of data was transferred over wireless in the main hall
- Wireless was provided with a managed WiFi setup (Ruckus) and 8 APs in the main hall
- Wireless in the nearby rooms was provided with 3 extra APs
- Average signal strength per client was 75%
- Bandwidth usage peaks were at 80Mbps
- There were about 20-30 rogue WiFi devices visible at any given other than our managed WiFi setup (other APs, phones, ad-hoc networks etcetera)
Early in the morning on Thursday the technicians (@eventengineers and @mdbraber!) found a small error in the DHCP settings which they were eager to fix. As they rebooted the system the company handling the Fibre optic cables decided to unplug a bunch of cables to clean things up. It took a while to find out that the DHCP settings were fine and to persuade the Internet provider to reconnect the cables. Fortunately the downtime was short and easily fixed. (more…)
Written on 20th July 2008
3 COMMENTS
Joop Dorresteijn, East Asia correspondent
Do you have an event that you want to cover live, but you lack the budget to cover bandwidth costs? Researchers from 21 different European countries have developed software that can stream video over a peer-to-peer bittorrent network, an open source initiative that might change the way we stream video on the Internet.
Broadcasters have little bandwidth costs
With the BitTorrent zero server approach, receipients supply pieces of the data to newer recipients. It allows everyone to broadcast a live stream to thousands of people with just little personal broadband usage. Broadcasters can save millions by using the technology, although someone has to pay for the bandwidth on the end, if the broadcaster sends their data out by torrent the ISP is covering the costs.
Improving the BitTorrent protocol
Dr. Ir. Johan Pouwelse, researcher on Peer-to-Peer technology at Delft University of Technology said to torrentfreak: “To be relevant we remain BitTorrent compatible… However, traditional BitTorrent is not compatible with streaming. We solved this problem by dropping the tit-for-tat protocol and making something which is more generic, which we call Give-to-Get.” The Give-to-get protocol streams the video to users that also give broadband, rewarding “nice users”.
Try it for yourself
The live streaming technology is still work in progress. For now, the project has received a €19 million ($30 million) grant from the EU this year, and the BBC is currently testing the new BitTorrent streaming format, and you can try is out for yourself as well. Download the SwarmPlayer (Windows, Linux) and click on this Live Bittorrent Webcam Feed to tune the SwarmPlayer into Amsterdam.
Written on 4th July 2008
0 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Every year, the European Commission carries out a study on the digital lives of the citizens in its 27 member countries: the E-Communications Household Survey. The research mainly concerns telecommunications – we’re giving up on landlines -, but also contains some interesting facts about the use of computers and Internet.
The survey of 27,000 households was carried out between November 9 and December 14, 2007. You can either download the report (2.8 MB) – which you don’t have the time for – or glance at this short fact sheet to see what your target group is up to.
- A majority of the European households – 53 percent – have access to a computer.
- Half of the European houses have access to the Internet. Although this is an increase of seven percent compared to last year, 51 percent still can’t check their email at home.
- Half of the people who don’t have Internet access just don’t really care about the web.
- Access via broadband has once again become more widespread, it increased with eight percent over the last year to 36 percent.
- 22 percent of the European households have a wireless Internet connection. An increase of eight percent.
- another 22 percent figure: this is the percentage of people who make VoIP calls. This is an increase of five percent and similar to the trend in the U.S.
We can be really satisfied with these numbers. Especially as a recent study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows that of the fifteen countries with the highest number of broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, twelve are European. Like I stated before, Europe is broadband paradise.
Written on 22nd May 2008
5 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
As an European entrepreneur you might be delighted to find that you’re actually living on a continent with a rather impressive broadband penetration. A study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows that of the fifteen countries with the highest number of broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, twelve are European.
Denmark is the leading country with 35.1 subscriptions, the Netherlands come in second with 34.8 and Iceland is third with 32.2. Remarkable but true, the United States is only number fifteen of the list with 23.3 subscriptions. The number of broadband connections has been growing 187 percent since 2004 in OECD countries to an average of 20 subscriptions. You can look up all the results in this spreadsheet.
Nate Anderson from Ars Technica draws an interesting conclusion from OECD’s broadband data. He’s clearly worried about the lack of a broadband plan in the U.S.. He then identifies that “Canada, Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Iceland all have lower population densities and yet are managing to beat us in broadband penetration. Come to think of it, all five of them are also quite cold and dark for long periods of time.” So a good way to improve the broadband density in the U.S., says Anderson, “maybe is as simple as cooling the country and blotting out the sun.”
So while they’re thinking of drastic measures in the U.S., we can rely on the thought that most of our internet users have a fast connection. Always a good thing to know when building a web-based start-up.
Written on 19th May 2008
6 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
According to research firm Parks Associates roughly one-fifth of all U.S. households are disconnected from the Internet and have never used e-mail. Apparently they called 20 million households and asked them if they had Internet Access. (Had they gone door to door that number would have been way higher as I can imagine that a high percentage of people that don’t have a phone in their houses also don’t have Internet.)
John Barrett, director of research at Parks Associates is quoted:
“Nearly one out of three household heads has never used a computer to create a document. These data underscore the significant digital divide between the connected majority and the homes in the unconnected minority that rarely, if ever, use a computer. Many people just don’t see a reason to use computers and do not associate technology with the needs and demands of their daily lives”
There is hope though as 7 percent of the 20 million disconnected homes plan to get connected within the next 12 months.
Werner Vogels at The Next Web Conference 2008
Last Friday we had dinner with Werner Vogels, CTO Amazon, who told us how dangerous it is to ignore users who still use 800×600. One guest said “It is just too much work to design your website in such a way that it works on all resolutions. You should just ignore the older browsers and systems and make sure everything works for 98% of your users”.
Vogels replied that Amazon currently has over 80 million members, that lots of those come to the service because of its low pricing. Many Amazon customers are very price aware and that Amazon is also attractive for customers with lower incomes. If he would ignore even a few percent of his customers that would come down to millions of disappointed users.
When you are surrounded by geeks and early adopters it is easy to forget that not everybody own the latest MacBook Pro, a speedy broadband connection and a 23 inch monitor. We are very focused on what the Next Web will look like and are always looking ahead. Just remember that sometimes it pays to look back a bit too…
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
