What This Thing is For

We currently accept files in any of NetStumbler's exported file formats, DStumbler's text output, Kismet's CWGD, XML, CSV, or GPS formats, Pocket Warrior's text output, as well as via our online form.

To have your record removed from our database, or if you have any questions or suggestions, send an email to: WiGLE-admin[at]WiGLE.net or irc chat on #wigle at wigle.net:6667

Who are you people

• arkasha worked on the java client (JiGLE) and is writing the palm client (PRInGLE) and windows/linux native client
• bobzilla works on the web/db (WiGLE), map generation (RiGLE), and the java client (JiGLE)
• uhtu works on the java client (JiGLE)
• thuddwhir wrote the vector-based map generation (SquiGLE)
• wos wrote the Mac OSX native client (TinGLE)

How the triangulation works

The "triangulation" is actually just an average of the latitudes and longitudes gathered using the signal strength (squared) as a weight. This assumes that signal strength will change at the inverse square of the distance. This is reasonable as long is you don't get a one sided view of the network (IE only sample it on the west side) since it will be skewed in that direction. Perhaps a better way would be choosing a signal of 70 as being the ultimate, and every other point being a radius from 70 and trying to find where all the circles intersect, but we'll see. This should be good enough for the real world for now.

Getting Started

WiGLE.net is a submission-based catalog of wireless networks. Submissions are not paired with actual people; rather name/password identities which people use to associate their data. It's basically a "gee isn't this neat" engine for learning about the spread of wireless computer usage.

WiGLE concerns itself entirely with 802.11b networks right now, since it's REALLY hard to deal with cellular networks, 802.11a is so hard to catch, and everything else is so small-share. 802.11b appears to be experiencing an explosive growth, and it's neat to see it cover cities.

the first step in using WiGLE is to create a username for yourself. You don't have to submit anything other than a made-up name and password, validation is immediate, and we will not contact you (unless you wanna chat on our message boards). This will give you access to our query engine and software downloads.

once you've done this, you're free to send us wireless network traces (in any of our listed formats, usually pairings of wireless sample, names and network hardware addresses (for uniqueness), data/SNR triples and GPS coordinates) or enter networks manually. Note, your username gets "credit" for these, but of course some people don't want their networks listed (various reasons), so we delist these immediately upon request. If you're visiting us to ask for removal, just make an ID and ask about your network through the query page. Once you make a user id, you can look at the submissions statistics page to see how users stack up.

To view networks, you can 1.) ask the website, 2.) download one of our clients. The clients are particularly fun to look at, but require either a java-1.3-and-up machine (windows, sunOS, MacOS-X, linux, mostly) or a windows box, for the new windows-native prototype. This will superimpose "points" from a live query onto a map of an area. Maps can be downloaded in "packs" from our mapping engine and are installed simply by unzipping them into your client installation directory. Mappacks are created and served by-state-by-county, or in the case of large cities, by-state-by-city. If we haven't generated a map for your area of interest yet, ask for it, and come back after the rendering engine's had a minute or 5 to think about it.

Overall, WiGLE aims to show people about wireless in a more-technical capacity then your average static map or newspaper article.

If your network is in WiGLE and you don't like it, we'll take it out immediately, but you should look into making your network harder to detect AND more secure; remember that you're the one bombarding passers-by with your signal. We aren't affiliated directly with any particular community or interest (other than our own), but we applaud the efforts of the people who wrote the stumbling software that feeds our project, the people looking to use wireless in innovative ways, and especially the community of people who just dig wireless network access and dig sharing it. (freenets)

Licensing

The official legal End User License Agreement. We basically just offer no warranties on our software, and don't want our software to be used for unlicensed commercial gain.

Commercial Use

To help fund WiGLE operations, we offer licenses to a subset of the data derived from postings that our users have permited us to use for commercial purposes. As a matter of policy, we will not comment on future, past, or hypothetical customers.

We additionally refuse to claim or disclaim any involvement with the alleged moon landings, area 51 and 'bigfoot'.