On 10.07.2014, at 07:06 , Chris Peterson <[email protected]> wrote: > To quickly scale our database of Wi-Fi access points, we could add Wi-Fi > stumbling code to the Firefox desktop browser like that used in Fennec.
I like that idea, but I’m not sure how practical it is. > The problem is that desktop-stumbled APs would have no position because > desktop machines don't have GPS hardware and we don't want to GLS positioning > (because we do not want to inadvertently import GLS data into MLS). Instead > we could build a giant connected graph of neighboring APs based on which APs > are reported together in each geolocate server request. We have some public telemetry data about "geolocation accuracy” for our nightly users. That tells us that more than 80% of those users get a GeoIP based result today, with the accuracy being well over 20km. Nightly users with activated telemetry are a very small percentage of all users, but I think for this purpose the number should be a good overall indicator. I think that most desktop users still have stationary devices, and their home or office WiFi networks aren’t in any database. If we added them to our database, I fear we’d just end up with many unconnected islands of networks, but nothing to connect those. We’d need someone with a GPS capable device to capture at least one of the networks, to anchor it with a good position. But if we have someone stumbling in the neighborhood, than that person will also likely pick up most of the networks our desktop users have seen. That’s not to say there isn’t a value in this, but I think it’s not as big as you might imagine. Hanno _______________________________________________ dev-geolocation mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-geolocation
