Road Tales From The Venice Project - "Dude, Where's My Router?"

Authored by Jay Baage on December 20, 2006 - 12:17pm.

CORRECTED & UPDATED
Fredrik de Wahl, CEO of the Venice Project, the much discussed internet TV project that was initiated by Kazaa and Skype co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, ran into some unexpected car trouble last night. Dirk-Willem van Gulik says on the company blog that in spite of the main router breaking in the process of setting up a new datacenter, the beta version of their Internet TV service "should be up and running just before Christmas."

The latest delays were, according to van Gulik, caused by a router that broke in transit. The enclosed photos are from The Venice Project's Leiden office before van Gulik and his co-workers unpacked, tested, and packed a van full of equipment and headed from their Netherlands-based office, to a new datacenter in Luxembourg. From there, the company will be setting up and using a datacenter as the effective 'headend' from where they will broadcast into peer to peer (P2P) networks.

van Gulik blogged:
"At 4am, a mere few hours before these pictures where taken, we found that a key piece of equipment was dead on arrival (yup, that was indeed the main router). Usually we can get those replaced in just a few hours - but unfortunately Luxembourg is too small a country to warrant its own depot - so we're now hoping that the replacement arrives tomorrow early. Which means that we should be up and running just before Christmas."

Now that's how real entrepreneurs live! If The Venice Project is a success, this should make a great opening to a Harvard Business School case.

UPDATE: van Gulik posted a status update stating that Cisco had come through and delivered a brand new router, which was waiting for the Venice Project team when they arrived at the new colo facility in Luxembourg.

Joakim Baage

To read more articles by Joakim click here.

Note: This post was corrected and updated on December 21, 2006 at 8:19AM local time.

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Comments

Its Dirk De Whal

Submitted by anonymous (not verified) on December 20, 2006 - 5:49pm.

Its Dirk De Whal (do a little research)

Accuracy

Submitted by anonymous (not verified) on December 20, 2006 - 7:55pm.

Is it too much to ask for some basic fact checking before posting? The blog you referred to was not written by de Wahl and, unless they moved the town together with the servers, Leiden is not in Luxembourg. It's in the Netherlands.

Dude, check your facts! The

Submitted by anonymous (not verified) on December 20, 2006 - 8:14pm.

Dude, check your facts! The post was from Dirk-Willem van Gulik, CTO of the company; and the move was *from* Leiden, Netherlands to Luxembourg, Luxembourg. And the best part is that I have no inside information, I can just read :-p Just kidding, don't take it to hard. Cheers, Paul

Thanks for the feedback!

Submitted by Robert Spears on December 21, 2006 - 5:26am.

We appreciate all of the feedback pointing out the discrepancies in the original post and apologize for not getting it right the first time. The story has been corrected and updated. (Yes, Cisco came through with the necessary router which was waiting for the Venice team when they arrived in Luxembourg - so they will have a new datacenter in time for Christmas!)

Sincerely,
Robert Spears