29: The Alphabet Soup of Wi-Fi

Jim talks about his struggles to get decent Wi-Fi in all corners of his house. The big issue is all of the numbers and codes and things they use to describe the different Wi-Fi  technologies.

Hosts:
Jim McQuillan can be reached at jam@RuntimeArguments.fm
Wolf can be reached at wolf@RuntimeArguments.fm

Follow us on Mastodon: @RuntimeArguments@hachyderm.io

If you have feedback for us, please send it to feedback@RuntimeArguments.fm

Checkout our webpage at http://RuntimeArguments.fm

Theme music:
Dawn by nuer self, from the album Digital Sky

Transcript

Wolf: 0:00

Hey everybody! Uh, guess what? It's time for another episode of Runtime Arguments. I'm Wolf, and here is my best…

Jim McQuillan: 0:07

And I'm Jim.

Wolf: 0:09

My best friend, Jim, I was gonna say. Good to see you, Jim, even though I yelled at you this morning.

Jim McQuillan: 0:13

Uh, it's always. Always good to see you. We'll talk more about that in a minute.

Wolf: 0:19

Umm. So, uh, this is our 29th ep… well, that's not true. It's episode number 29, our 30th episode. I don't think I'm ever gonna get over that. Um, today we're going to talk about Wi-Fi. Jim has done research, um… we have both said to each other that it's going to be a short episode, so I assume what that means is you need to set aside 2 hours. Um… Anyway. We'll get to it at the end. I want to make sure you know there's a way you can send us feedback. There's a website, there's going to be transcripts, show notes, all of that stuff we'll talk about at the end. But let's start off with Jim. How was your week?

Jim McQuillan: 1:08

Um, my week's going really well, you know why?

Wolf: 1:11

Why?

Jim McQuillan: 1:12

Cause tomorrow I start vacation.

Wolf: 1:15

That is exciting.

Jim McQuillan: 1:15

By the time people are listening to this episode, I'll already be on vacation. But tomorrow, I start my vacation. I've been scrambling to get everything lined up so that it all goes right, get all my work done, make sure customers are happy, all that kind of stuff. And, uh, so I'm kind of excited. This is… this is kind of the last thing on my list to do before I can actually go on vacation. So here we are.

Wolf: 1:42

Nice.

Jim McQuillan: 1:44

How about you? You've been… well, I'm gonna say unusually busy, but really, the last 5 months or so, you've just been busy. So, how have you been?

Wolf: 1:54

I've been good, and I'm super excited, not because of vacation, but because I am about to release something. That is going to make the lives of people who. want to use their own editor. and they're, uh, a good debugger for whatever language it is, and some nice REPL. Maybe even multiple editors. Um, it's all built around the DAP protocol, Debug Adapter Protocol. Umm. and I'm gonna release it. I'm gonna release it to the world. And, uh, I… we're gonna actually do a mug, uh, uh, talk on it, uh, this coming… what day is it, do you know, Jim? It's the second Tuesday.

Jim McQuillan: 2:41

Yeah, it's a June… June, um… I've lost track. June 9th is the next MUG meeting, and you are the featured presenter for that meeting.

Wolf: 2:47

June 9th, and that… That is going to be live on YouTube, so you'll be able to actually see it run, but it's going to be publicly available code before that moment. You'll be able to get it, you'll be able to run it. It's going to be…

Jim McQuillan: 2:52

Um…

Wolf: 3:07

a tool anybody can use, because it's so… it's simple, but it does a thing that's good. And the thing that actually makes me happiest is… Um, well, okay, maybe this doesn't make me happiest. Maybe what makes me happiest is that it solves one of my own problems. But not second to that is there's a person that. both of us, both you and me, Jim, really admire. Um… Julia Evans, who does all the wizard zines.

Jim McQuillan: 3:39

Yeah, yeah.

Wolf: 3:41

The thing that I just wrote actually solves a problem for her. I haven't talked to her about this, but she's filed tickets about how annoying this problem is, and my little tool is gonna solve it instantly and completely for her. So that is exciting to me.

Jim McQuillan: 4:00

And what's it called?

Wolf: 4:03

Well, if I say the name, somebody else will write it before I publish it.

Jim McQuillan: 4:08

Okay.

Wolf: 4:08

Should I say the name? The name is… DAP-MUX. DAP-MUX. Okay. tiny tool. I've written it in Python, but I have evaluated whether Python was the right language, and I'm super excited to make this available to everyone.

Jim McQuillan: Yeah. And if, uh, uh, if you wanna watch it, uh, the, the MUG meeting, go to, uh, mug.org or www.mug.org. Uh, the information about the, the presentation is there with the, the 6: 4:26

30 PM on, uh, this Eastern daylight time.

Jim McQuillan: 4:42

On, uh, Tuesday, June 9th. Um, so that's… that's gonna be neat, because Wolf showed me, uh, he gave me a little private demonstration of it, and it's really, really cool. So I'm… I'm anxious for him to be able to talk about it in public and… and get it out there. So that's pretty neat. I know that's… that's been sucking up some of your time, and… and, of course, your normal work. Everything else going on.

Wolf: 5:05

Yeah. What about feedback? Have we had feedback?

Jim McQuillan: 5:05

So. So, yeah. Umm… We've had a few people suggesting things, and we're in the works trying to put some of those things together. But the one feedback I wanted to give… this is a follow-on to the feedback I gave last time. Um, you remember episode 27, we talked about SSH, and I had talked about a command called ssh import id-gh for pulling your SSH public keys off of GitHub. Uh, we got feedback saying they don't have that command, and they're… I think they're on a Fedora system, and they don't have that command. Last time, I mistakenly got, uh, SSH import ID and SSH copy ID mixed up. And I had said that SSH copy ID was written by Canonical, and, uh, it's a, it's a Python package, and you can install it on any, any system. Uh, the actual command is SSH dash import dash ID dash GH, uh, which will go. pull down your public keys off of your GitHub account and store them in your dot SSH slash authorized keys file. Now, if you don't want to install that package, you can always use curl. And it's really simple. You just do curl https colon slash slash github.com slash your name, whatever your GitHub account name is. dot keys, and that will fetch your public keys. It's kind of neat and kind of handy if you want to do that. The SSH copy ID that I had talked about last week, or two weeks ago, that's for pushing your keys from your current. your local system to a remote system. So, totally different things. Anyway, I wanted to clear that up because I realized my mistake, like, an hour after recording that episode last time.

Wolf: 6:59

Don't you hate that?

Jim McQuillan: 7:01

Oh, yeah, because what am I going to do? The best I can do is fix it now, right? So, anyway, that's that.

Wolf: 7:07

For me, my whole life, at least up until the time I got married, was… where it intersects this. Made a mistake, and then realized it just too late to fix, but not very long in time.

Jim McQuillan: 7:23

Yep.

Wolf: 7:25

is any conversation I would have with any woman, ever, anywhere. I would say something. And, uh, you know, an outside observer, someone who was watching the movie of me saying this, would be like, wow, that guy's an idiot, why would he ever say something stupid like that?

Jim McQuillan: 7:42

Yes. Okay, you're…

Wolf: 7:45

Um, and then, like, one second later, I would know, and I'd be like, oh, oh, oh, no, no, no, that was wrong. Did I mention the bipolar spectrum disorder? Because it was a mistake!

Jim McQuillan: 7:56

Okay, now, you're talking about this like it's something that used to happen? Have you…

Wolf: 8:01

Oh. Well, it used to happen… it… it used to happen in this context that I just said. Uh, it is…

Jim McQuillan: 8:04

Have you fixed that so it no longer happens? Or do you just no longer talk to women?

Wolf: 8:13

it is still the case that my mouth moves before my brain. Um, so I often say things that, um, are not said with the appropriate. um, kindness, or force, or taking into account the knowledge of the party to whom I'm speaking, um.

Jim McQuillan: 8:31

Sure.

Wolf: 8:38

I am, verbally. clumsy. Um, and physically. I'm clumsy. I guess there's no dimension, really, that I could say I'm not clumsy in.

Jim McQuillan: 8:43

That's… That's fair.

Wolf: 8:49

Um… Now, I'm going to brag.

Jim McQuillan: 8:51

I don't know, you're not a clumsy coder, that's for sure.

Wolf: 8:54

Okay, that's true. I'm super careful. And why? Because I write the tests first. But I am going to say one thing about me saying things too early.

Jim McQuillan: 8:55

Oh.

Wolf: 9:06

Um, yes, it is true, they are inappropriate, and they are inconsiderate, and they are probably on topics. I shouldn't have discussed, like religion, or politics, or whether you should use spaces or tabs, but, um… The most important thing to me is, even though I said those things too early and probably to the wrong person. I was right. Okay, not really and not always, but it's funny to say.

Jim McQuillan: 9:44

Okay. Okay. All right, well, you and I had a conversation this morning that was kind of fun, and it got to the point where I was maybe pushing a little too hard. I've got a… I'm going to ask for feedback here.

Wolf: 9:50

Aye.

Jim McQuillan: 10:02

Because there's an opportunity to let us know what you think. I was doing something today, and I needed to clear out some log files, and I'm on a Mac system, and I grew up on Unix and Linux, and for the past 5 or 6 years, I've been using macOS. For my desktop. And I needed to clear out some log files, and I just… I typed the command that I always type to truncate a file, and that's a simple greater than file name. That's it. That's what I typed. Greater than file name. And on Mac, I did that, and it sat there, and I thought it was hung. I didn't know, you know, is it a slow system? What's going on? It just sat there. It didn't return back to the prompt when I did that. So I control-seed, and I look, and yeah, my file got truncated. So I tried it again and it just sits there like forever. So I, I, I asked Wolf, I said, am I having a brain fart? What's going on? Why is this happening? And he didn't, he did not understand why I was doing it the way I was doing it. So why don't you tell him the right way to do it, uh, according to Wolf.

Wolf: 11:08

According to Wolf, that is an important consideration. Um… So, uh, this is a thing between me and Jim. Jim is really good at remembering things, and if he learned it a specific way, that is how it is. That's the way the thing works, and he will continue to do it that way, because it works. because he gets the job done. Jim's brain is way bigger than my brain in this way.

Jim McQuillan: 11:33

Until today.

Wolf: 11:38

I have a different mechanism for how I manage these things. I don't remember the details of things instead. I reduce it down to the underlying why. How does this thing work?

Jim McQuillan: 11:54

The principles and that stuff, yeah.

Wolf: 11:55

Okay. Right. And so, uh, you know, for Jim, he's got tons of RAM, and for me. the thing I have in excess is CPU. Um, so, if I start with the seed number, I can get to the how-do-you-do-it. Um… But it might be that I have to deduce it. But I deduce it fast enough that it doesn't matter. You can't tell the difference when you look at me and Jim. Um, except that I wear glasses most of the time. Anyway, um… So, to me. There is a rule in Unix. And that is, uh, there are commands, and there is IO redirection. And IO redirection is things like send it to a file, append it to a file, take it from a file, send it into another process. And these are things that you add onto a command. Do this thing, but send it to this file. So… A command makes sense. It has implicit IO, I wouldn't call it redirection. The implicit is that the output goes to the console, to the TPY, but you can redirect it with IO redirection. So Jim was using IO redirection. greater than some file, says, hey command, send your output to this file, and by the way, replace anything that's there. If he wanted to append, he would have used two greater than's. But he didn't have a command. Um, he could have had a command. He could have put colon. Colon is the empty command, the don't do anything.

Jim McQuillan: 13:40

The no op. The no op command.

Wolf: 13:41

the NOAP. So he could have said colon greater than some file, and that would have done exactly the same thing. That would have. been a predictable answer for me. Now, I know Unix and Linux… Pretty well, I would say. And the fact that you would ever have said greater than some file? And gotten something out of it. was a surprise to me. It was a surprise to me because my rules didn't include that one special case. That saves you one character of typing in one instance.

Jim McQuillan: 14:23

It's a whole character.

Wolf: 14:27

Uh… Now, Jim does what he does. I'm not telling Jim not to do that. All I'm saying is. Somebody broke the rules. Somebody designed a system. with an inconsistency, on purpose, for the lowest possible payback. And it made the system have a surprise in it. It didn't follow the rules, and it meant that I didn't… guess what it was that Jim needed to know, because I deduced it all from scratch in my brain, exactly the way I solve all problems. So Jim and I had a disagreement. And of course, because I'm clumsy, at first, Jim thought I was telling him he was wrong, and he was doing the wrong thing. Uh, no. No, if somebody makes it possible for you to turn left from the shoulder and you do it, well, they designed it wrong. They let you turn left from the shoulder. If it was supposed to be not possible, make it not possible. Uh, follow the rules. Obey your own rules. That was our disagreement.

Jim McQuillan: 15:37

Yeah, and I'll admit that if you're on a Mac. The way I do it does not work. It's wrong. And I don't know, I don't know where the problem is. Maybe it's in the Z shell or something, but I SSH over to a Linux box and I typed the command, you know, greater than file name and it truncates the file if it already exists and it creates the file if it doesn't exist. And I learned that, like… like 45 years ago. And that's just the way I've always done it. So it was a surprise to me that it didn't work. And I really understand Wolf's reasoning here because, um, he's thinking about the, the process and the policies and, and, and all that kind of stuff. And, and, you know, he doesn't want to be surprised, he just, he knows if you type the no-op command. So, when you truncate a file, is that just what you type? Colon greater than file name? Or do you not find yourself truncating files very often?

Wolf: 16:35

I don't truncate files very often, um, and there's a zillion ways to do it. Instead of colon, um, which I never think about, you might say echo minus n, um.

Jim McQuillan: 16:47

That's a lot more letters.

Wolf: 16:47

Because… It is a lot more letters, but compared to the number of times I type it, which over the course of the last 8 years has been maybe once?

Jim McQuillan: 16:55

Sure. Okay, all right, all right.

Wolf: 16:59

That's fine. I would rather have something I can remember than something where I save four characters or one character or whatever it is.

Jim McQuillan: 17:04

All right. Well, if you, if you Google how to truncate a file on a, on a Unix, Linux, Mac system, uh, the, the answer that comes up is the, the first answer is greater than file name. And then below that it says the portable way. Is colon greater than filename? So, uh, I learned something today, and it was kind of fun.

Wolf: 17:19

Ahhh. And I did, too. I will start using colon. Colon is one of those special commands like, uh, true.

Jim McQuillan: 17:30

Yes. The, the next time in eight years when you need to do it. Yeah.

Wolf: 17:37

Yeah, we'll see.

Jim McQuillan: 17:37

Yeah. All right. All right. So let's, uh, let, let's get on. Um, uh, so today we're talking about wifi and here's why I, I, I live in a house. It's not a huge house. It's, it's a nice sized house. We, we raised three kids here and it's, it's a good size for that. And I've got a problem. My office is in one corner of the house. And, uh, the upstairs bedrooms are in the other corner of the house, and the Wi-Fi. signal is awful there. And I know pretty much why, because where I've got my access point mounted, it just doesn't… work very well through the walls. It's got to go through a ceiling and a couple of walls, and so the signal is crappy. So, I decided I'm gonna fix that. And I started looking around, and I've got an access point that it's maybe 6 or 7 years old. It's certainly not the newest technology. Um, and when I started looking at new access points. The information you get is overwhelming and confusing.

Wolf: 18:40

Fire hose.

Jim McQuillan: 18:40

Umm. What's that?

Wolf: 18:43

Fire hose.

Jim McQuillan: 18:45

Yeah, it's just, it's, it's, it's terrible because there's all these different numbers and letters and things. Um. Uh, so… I thought, if this is confusing, I gotta do a little bit of research and try to understand it, so that when I do go to fix this problem, I fix it right. Or at least I fix it with some forethought. Um… So, everybody's heard of 802.11, right? I mean, that's… that's what wire… wireless networking is, Wi-Fi. Uh, so let's talk, uh, just a minute about that. Uh, what's magic about 802.11? Well, that's, uh, uh, it's from the IEEE. Uh, do you know, what does IEEE stand for? IN… I… I'm sorry.

Wolf: 19:30

It's got electrical engineering in it. I think it's the…

Jim McQuillan: 19:33

Yeah. International. I, I'm just gonna look it up really quick. I, I should have done this. Uh, I can't even spell it. I e e.

Wolf: 19:43

I should say, while you're looking it up, that my system is a mesh network.

Jim McQuillan: 19:43

That's I followed by three E's. Here.

Wolf: 19:50

Uh, comprising, um… two Eero 6 Pro base stations. Well, one's a base station, and one is… Oh, okay. I'll tell you when we get there.

Jim McQuillan: 19:56

Yeah, yeah, we're… Yeah, we'll… yeah, we'll get to that. We'll… we'll get to that, okay? Because… yeah. Uh, okay, IEEE stands for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, so, uh, leave it to them to come up with all these goofy numbers, right?

Wolf: 20:13

Uh-huh.

Jim McQuillan: 20:13

Uh, well, I… 802.11 is… is just one of the things of the 802, uh, uh, specification. 802 is… is the specification. for, uh, networking. It's the family of networking standards that dictate how devices communicate across networks. And I'm talking Ethernet, token ring, uh, Wi-Fi, um, um… all that stuff.

Wolf: 20:38

That's funny. I never see people talk about 802. Three being Ethernet, and I use Ethernet all the time.

Jim McQuillan: 20:46

Three. Yeah, right. Right, you just think Ethernet. But yeah, there's, there's, there's a, there, yeah, there's a number for that. network architecture, inter-networking, security protocols, that's all part of 802.1. Nobody talks about that, right? 802.3 is Ethernet, using copper or fiber optic. Now, I do have friends that deal with that kind of stuff, and I'm sure they know. Those, uh, those, those standards very, very well. Uh, I've… I just call it Ethernet. Uh, 802.5, remember token ring? That's the specification for token ring. Um, and of course, 802.11. Yeah, it's been gone for quite a while, and…

Wolf: 21:22

I'm super happy that's gone.

Jim McQuillan: 21:27

And I'm happy. 802.11 is, of course, Wi-Fi. We're going to talk more about that. 802.15.

Wolf: 8: 21:34

03.

Jim McQuillan: 21:34

Um, that's, uh, no, it's 802. I just typed it wrong in the outline.

Wolf: 21:39

Okay.

Jim McQuillan: 21:39

802.15 is a set of standards for… or specifications for wireless personal area networks. Um, that's optimized for short range. Um, things like, uh, Bluetooth, Zigbee. Um, and body area networks. This was an interesting one that I came across. Um, uh, and a body area network, that's for devices that can be worn or embedded in people. Uh, and we have a friend. Who has such a device embedded, what, in her forearm? You remember seeing that?

Wolf: 22:15

I think it's in the web of her thumb. We could say her name. She's a famous open source person working on beware stuff. Her name is Katni and she's done a lot of stuff. She did stuff for Adafruit.

Jim McQuillan: 22:19

Okay, yeah. Yeah.

Wolf: 22:30

and she is now doing stuff for Bea, and, um, she is a public speaker, and she ran PyOhio. Um, she's a fascinating and interesting person, and this, um, embedded body.

Jim McQuillan: 22:37

Yeah.

Wolf: 22:45

uh, radio stuff is, uh, I'm super glad someone else is doing it. I don't want it. I don't want that kind of thing in me, uh, but it, uh, man, it's really cool.

Jim McQuillan: 22:52

Yeah, not me, right. Yeah, you know, it's been a while since I talked to her about it. We should talk to her again sometime and see if she really gets any value out of it. It's kind of a neat experiment.

Wolf: 23:08

It might be nice to just to have her on the show and talk about.

Jim McQuillan: 23:12

We should do that sometime. That would be really good. Anyway, that's 802.15. There's a specification for that. But let's get into 802.11.

Wolf: 23:13

Like stuff.

Jim McQuillan: 23:25

Up. back in, I think it was 2001, uh, 802.11, uh, it's been around since, um, I think, like, 97 and 98. Uh, in 1999, 802.11b was released, and that was the. first real publicly available Wi-Fi. You could get cards for your computers, and you could have an access point, and all that kind of thing. Uh, in 2001, uh, my friend Ron and I, we went to the OSCON, that's the O'Reilly Open Source Conference. Uh, this one was in Monterey, California. And at this time, I was doing LTSP. I was really, really big into Linux Terminal Server Project. And we happened to stop by a place in, I don't know, Santa Clara, Palo Alto, somewhere in the Bay Area, to see somebody who was using LTSP, and they were showing me they had a wireless network card. And I said, well, we're going to the O'Reilly conference, and he said, oh, I heard they're going to have a Wi-Fi network there. And I said, well, I don't have a card. And he said, here, borrow mine. So he gave me… you remember back when laptops had. PCMCIA slots in them, but he gave me a network card to plug into my laptop, and I'd never done it before, I didn't even know how to get it going. Uh, so we showed up in Monterey at the conference center. Um, we're sitting there, I popped the card in, and a network came up. They're like, what?

Wolf: 24:52

Wow.

Jim McQuillan: 24:55

How did that happen? I don't remember how we actually joined the network. Of course, you have to select the ESSID and all that kind of stuff. But there I was, in 2001, I was on a wireless network. I just thought it was the neatest thing. And, you know, it seems so silly now, because everything is Wi-Fi. You know, I don't know how many devices I have right here within 5 feet of me that support Wi-Fi. Um…

Wolf: 25:19

I can't tell if the fact that it's been 25 years, or whatever.

Jim McQuillan: 25:25

Yeah, yeah.

Wolf: 25:26

Whether that's a gigantic amount of progress, or an incredibly small amount of progress.

Jim McQuillan: 25:34

Well, it's gotten easier and gotten better. So let's just say it's progress.

Wolf: 25:41

Okay.

Jim McQuillan: 25:42

Right. Yeah, that's what it is. But it was so exciting to be on the network. That was like the biggest thing I got out of OSCON that time. So I was pretty happy. So of course, you know, when we were done at the conference, I dropped the card off at my friend's place. And when I got home, I bought a wireless card and an access point, and then I had Wi-Fi in my house. And I thought that was pretty neat. And, you know, in the early days, there was all kinds of compatibility issues. You gotta get the right card, you gotta get the right access point, talk the right protocol, and all that kind of stuff. Um, but that was 802.11b. Uh, on the 2.4 gigahertz, uh, frequency, uh, it had a, it had a rate of, uh, between 1 and 11, uh, megabits per second. Which, you know, at the time, any connectivity, you know, at the time we were all getting on the internet with 56K modems. So one to 11 megabits of internet was pretty good. And I don't know if you could actually get 11, but you know, it was in that range. And, you know, people were happy. So that was kind of neat. Um… Let's see. what's confusing for me, and where I… where I didn't really know what to buy when I want to fix my problem here at home is, uh, you start looking at… at… access points, you know, you go to Amazon, or wherever you buy your stuff, and you look at them, and they've, you know, they support 802.11g, and n, and 802.11ac, and 802.11ax, and what are all these things? So a while ago in 2018, the Wi-Fi Alliance attempted to simplify the naming purely for marketing purposes. But that's when they came up with Wi-Fi followed by a number. And that's… I started seeing that, and I didn't really know what that meant. Uh, uh, so I… I dug in, and I… I, um… I kind of figured things out. Uh, Wi-Fi 1 is the old 802.11b from 1999. Uh, Wi-Fi 2 was 802.11a. Um… which you'd think would have come out before B, but it came out just after B, and it's, uh, it's in the 5GHz range, uh, supporting between 6 and 54 megabits per second. Uh, and then there's Wi-Fi 3, and 4, and… things really start getting interesting when we get into, like, the sixes. Now, my home network here, turns out, uh, my access point is Wi-Fi 5. Wi-Fi 5 corresponds to 802.11ac, came out in 2013, and that's between 6.5 and 6,933 megabits per second, so pretty close to 7 gigabits. per second of wireless frequency, or wireless, uh, throughput. Um, and that's Wi-Fi 5. Um, they added things, uh, with that, um, something called beam forming, which somehow the, the access point is able to direct the beam right at your device. I have no idea how that works. Uh, but beam forming.

Wolf: 28:52

Right, the important… the interesting thing is, how does it even find your other… like, I understand knowing that you have one, but how does it geographically figure out, point the beam here.

Jim McQuillan: 29:07

Ah, I am, I should have started out with this. I am not an electrical engineer. I… I'm a consumer. I'd like to think I'm a smart consumer, but you'll be the judge of that. Somehow, it just magically works, and it does this beam-forming thing, so that it's not wasting all its energy sending signals all over the house, it sends it just where I need it. Now I imagine the device you have your laptop or iPhone or whatever you have, it's going to send out, let's call it a wireless ping to try to find something and the access point is going to respond and then they link up. And that's how they talk. I'm making this up, but that's how I, in my head, that's how it works. So, yeah, my house is Wi-Fi 5. If you have an iPhone X or X… what is it, Wolf? X or X?

Wolf: 30:06

It's 10.

Jim McQuillan: 30:06

The Wi-Fi… the iPhone 10, or an Intel-based MacBook Air, MacBook Pro… I'm sorry, I don't have any non-Apple things to talk about, but those all have Wi-Fi 5. So that's pretty good, you know, you can get up to almost 7 gigabits per second of. of throughput. It runs at the 5 GHz range, um, uh, or frequency. Um, Wi-Fi 6, uh, gets a little nicer. That's 802.11ax. Uh, that came out in 2021 and that's between. 4 megabits per second and 9.6 gigabits per second. So, you know, we're getting close to 10 gigabits per second on Wi-Fi, and that uses both the 2.4 and the 5 gigahertz frequency. It offered reduced latency. Um, I do happen to have a access point in my basement that I remodeled, uh, last year, and that's, that's a, uh, Wi-Fi 6. So if I'm in my basement, I get a nice Wi-Fi 6 signal. It's just not gonna make, uh, the signal doesn't make it all the way up into the bedrooms very well.

Wolf: 31:02

I won't blow.

Jim McQuillan: 31:10

Um, and then Wi-Fi 6E, if you run across that, it's like, what's the difference between 6 and 6E? Well, they added the 6 gigahertz, uh, frequency to that. So, uh, a Wi-Fi 6E thing, uh, device will talk 2.4, 5, or 6, which is… Pretty good, right? Uh, I've…

Wolf: 31:27

Yeah, that's… that's my phone. My phone does that.

Jim McQuillan: 31:30

iPhone 15, um, the Pro and the Max. Uh, the, the non-Pro, um, is not, uh, 6E, it's just 6. Um, MacBook Pro M4, which… that's what you have, right? You've got an M4 MacBook Pro… yeah, I've got it. I've got the old M1.

Wolf: 31:45

I do.

Jim McQuillan: 31:49

So that's back on, on, uh, just six, not 60. Um, so yeah, the big thing there is the 6GHz thing. Now, Wi-Fi 7, that's where things get much better. Uh, 802.11be. Now, I don't know how many… how anybody ever remembers these AX and BE and all that kind of stuff, so yeah, the… The number after the Wi-Fi is a nicer way to do it. Uh, that goes from .4 to 23 gigabits per second. Um, and… It's nice to have that kind of speed, but who's got that in their house, right?

Wolf: 32:24

Right, how does it get into the into the building?

Jim McQuillan: 32:28

Right, right. Well, if you've got fiber, what was that, like, 1 gigabit up and down, or 2 gigabits up and down, something like that?

Wolf: 32:37

I do have fiber, and I believe it is symmetric 1 gigabit.

Jim McQuillan: 32:37

I don't remember. It's in that range. Yeah, yeah. So, if you have a device with Wi-Fi 7, you're gonna… you're not gonna get, uh, 20… 23 gigabits of throughput on your device, because the bottleneck there is just gonna be your cable connection.

Wolf: 32:55

Right, the reason to have Wi-Fi 7 is if your Plex movie server is in the basement, and you're gonna play uncompressed movies upstairs.

Jim McQuillan: 33:06

Yeah.

Wolf: 33:06

So, it doesn't matter, the data's already in the building.

Jim McQuillan: 33:09

Yeah, so iPhone 16 and up, the MacBook Pro M5, the new MacBook Nano all has Wi-Fi 7. They added something called Multi-Link Operation, that's MLO. That'll operate on multiple bands at the same time. Now, this supports. 2.4, 5, and 6 GHz, it'll use all of those. And if it has any problem with interference or something, it'll just do the right thing. It's not like you have to change your device. Yeah, supposedly.

Wolf: 33:38

Supposedly.

Jim McQuillan: 33:42

I don't have one, so I don't know. My iPhone supports Wi-Fi 7, I just don't have an access point yet that will support that. So that's probably where I'm headed. I'm probably gonna go with a Wi-Fi 7. What I probably should do is go more like a mesh, or hardwire, or another access point upstairs. The problem is, the way my house is set up…

Wolf: 33:55

But… I definitely agree with Mesh. I think it's important to say here that that was a lot of different numbers and speeds, but the truth is.

Jim McQuillan: 34:03

Yeah. Yes.

Wolf: 34:12

for almost everybody. It doesn't matter. Whatever you get, no matter how many different things, they're all going to work together. Now, if you care, if you actually have to have some specific speed or better, yeah, you can, you know, min-max it, you can play with whatever you get and do the right thing. But this is a situation where you can operate without fear. If you get stuff because you just need one thing to talk to another, it's gonna be okay. Uh, and number two is…

Jim McQuillan: 34:44

Yeah.

Wolf: 34:46

It is not just the numbers that tell you what you want your access point to be. Um, for a long, long time, uh, and maybe even still, uh, a lot of people would specifically get a family of wireless, uh, access points, um. that were made by Netgear, Net… uh, something, but they all started with WG something or other, and the reason they got these is because you could run the right.

Jim McQuillan: 35:14

Oh, yeah.

Wolf: 35:21

Um… OS and firewall on them.

Jim McQuillan: 35:26

Yeah, yeah, those were… those weren't just access points, those were firewall… yeah, those were router access points. Yeah, Netgear, Linksys, um, TP-Link, they all had those, and you could flash them with, like, what was it, WRT…

Wolf: 35:30

Netgear. Smooth Wall was one.

Jim McQuillan: 35:42

Yeah, well, smooth wall is the firewall part of it, but the… it was, like, WRT54G or something, maybe that was the model of the Linksys, but there… there's a couple of different. software distributions you can load on those things. Those aren't just access points, though, those are router access points, uh, integrated. Um… And we'll talk about that in just a minute. Anyway, my problem certainly isn't throughput. I don't need 23 gigabits of throughput anywhere in my house, because my… I've got, like, 1.2 gigabit download. Uh, through my, uh, Xfinity connection. So, I don't need 23 gigabits of throughput. My problem is getting the signal throughout the house. And I think this Wi-Fi 7, uh, the fact that it uses this multi-link operation and that can run 2, 4, 5, and 6 GHz, I think that might be the thing that works. If… so I'm probably gonna go that way. I'll probably get a Wi-Fi 7 access point. My phone will talk to it, my laptop… well, my laptop is, like, Wi-Fi 5, but it'll still talk to it just fine. Um, but I'm gonna see if that solves my interference issue, or my poor signal issue upstairs. Um, if it doesn't. then the next step is, I'm probably gonna run a wire up there, and mount an access point, uh, up there.

Wolf: 37:10

See, my feeling is, um, because I've heard discussions of this. that lots of people support MLO, but don't leverage it. They don't actually transmit on all the… they don't do the frequency hopping, or sharing, or the stuff it's supposed to do. They have the…

Jim McQuillan: 37:26

Yeah.

Wolf: 37:31

hardware to make this stuff work. They can put the label on the box that says, yeah, we are blah blah blah.

Jim McQuillan: 37:36

Yeah, they pass certification, but whether they actually do it.

Wolf: 37:40

But they won't. Right, they won't solve your problem. Now, I have heard there is one, I just can't remember what it is. Uh, to me, when you say your problem, the first thing that pops into my mind is MASH.

Jim McQuillan: 37:44

Right. Okay, all right, all right. Yeah, but even if I go mesh, um, you know, where are my nodes? Certainly, the main node would be here in my office, but where would the other node be? In the bedroom? It's gonna have a problem communicating. Like, I'd have to put another one in between somewhere. And, you know, maybe that's the answer. I don't know. But… Uh, when you say some companies' devices may not support it, are you thinking that, like, the phones and the laptops, or are you thinking the access points? May not support it fully. Or both.

Wolf: 38:21

Um, for… So, there's receiving, and there's transmitting. And my understanding is that until recently, when one person came out with it, nobody.

Jim McQuillan: 38:28

Well, both sides are doing both.

Wolf: 38:38

Leveraged that capability for transmitting.

Jim McQuillan: 38:41

Okay.

Wolf: 38:41

Um, so I believe that if your phone does the right thing…

Jim McQuillan: 38:43

So… If nobody's transmitting, what's the point, right?

Wolf: 38:47

Right. Um, so you need to find the right manufacturer to get this. I'll bet we're gonna get some feedback, and also there's, you know, Google.

Jim McQuillan: 38:48

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I hope so. I hope so. And Wolf, you mentioned you're using Eero. That's E-E-R-O?

Wolf: 39:03

That, that's right, so there's, there's a couple really well-known brands of mesh stuff. There's Eero and Ubiquiti, or maybe it's Ubiquiti. I think you use Ubiquiti, um…

Jim McQuillan: 39:03

Uh, it's a… Yeah, ubiquity. I do.

Wolf: 39:17

a podcaster that I highly respect, um, which is Marco Armas. He's one of the trio of people in the Accidental Tech podcast. The other two being, um… Uh, Casey Liss and, um, John, uh. You know, I'm almost afraid to say his last name, because they say his last name multiple different ways, and I can't tell the difference. So, if I say it, I'm almost certainly going to say it.

Jim McQuillan: 39:49

Just say it.

Wolf: 39:52

No. Okay, um…

Jim McQuillan: 39:53

Okay. All right.

Wolf: 39:55

So…

Jim McQuillan: 39:56

Look up the ATP Accidental Tech Podcast if you want to see who he's talking about.

Wolf: 40:03

Yeah, but the point is, uh, that Marco Arnment, who, you know, researches the crap out of everything.

Jim McQuillan: 40:08

Yeah.

Wolf: 40:12

Um, this is what he uses in his home, and in all of his homes, and in his restaurant. He's the guy who wrote Overcast, by the way. Um, so he's technically competent.

Jim McQuillan: 40:21

Okay, and what is it used?

Wolf: 40:24

Uh, and he uses Ubiquiti. He says that's the thing. And I've heard, I don't know if this is my imagination or not, but in the same way that Toyota is the normal brand, but Lexus is, like, the special version of Toyota, that they're related.

Jim McQuillan: 40:26

Okay, good. Right, right, the luxury version.

Wolf: 40:43

I had heard or maybe made up in my mind that. Eero is the normal brand and Ubiquiti is, like, the same. They're related, but Ubiquiti is really, really the high-end. I don't know. Maybe I'm totally wrong about that.

Jim McQuillan: 40:57

Well, I don't think they're not the same company. Eero is Amazon. Arrow is owned by Amazon. Yeah.

Wolf: 41:03

Oh, that's right, they did get bought. I forgot because that's kind of screwed me.

Jim McQuillan: 41:08

Yeah, but Ubiquiti, I love them. Their devices are fantastic. I've got a couple of switches and a couple of access points.

Wolf: 41:15

That's what everybody says. Everybody says Ubiquiti stuff is the best you can get.

Jim McQuillan: 41:18

And they work, yeah, they work really, really well. So I'm likely going to go with an Ubiquiti Wi-Fi 7 access point. Uh, and like I said, if that doesn't solve my problem, then I'm gonna run a wire up there, and have another access point up there. Uh, roaming is no problem. You set them all up with the same, same, uh, ESSID. In fact, with Ubiquiti, the management software, it's really simple to deploy. So this is not a commercial for Eero or Ubiquiti. Um, but, uh, I, I like what I have and I think you like what you have. Right? It's working well for you.

Wolf: 41:53

Uh, except for one little hiccup, um, in recent memory. Uh, I have been using my Eero for a long, long time, uh, at least five years, and it is rock solid and 100% does the job.

Jim McQuillan: 41:57

Yep. Yeah, and another one of our friends, Ron, he's got Eero. And and it's working for him. So, I don't know of anybody else personally that's using it, I'm sure there are people out there using it, but I think it's pretty simple to set up. Um, probably simpler than Ubiquiti. With Ubiquiti, you have to have this thing called a cloud key device, um, to do the management. In fact, I think you can set it up without that, but if you want to manage your network, uh, and provision all your devices and stuff, it's…

Wolf: 42:43

Normal people should have eras.

Jim McQuillan: 42:44

It's really a nice way to go. Yeah, probably. If you're a bit technical and you don't mind getting into the networking part of it, Ubiquiti is just fantastic. Anyway, we're going to try that. Maybe, like I said, I'm going on vacation starting tomorrow, so it's not going to be in the next couple of weeks, but maybe sometime in the next month or two months, I'll be able to report my success and let you know how that. how that works. So, uh, let's talk about one other thing. Uh, your Eros, uh, you've got, like, a… Is there something special about one of them, or do you have, like, three that are all the same, and you just happen to use one of them as your base station, or main node?

Wolf: 43:29

Um… So, my network grew. Um, when I first got my Eros, I got a… I think I got a pack. That was one pro to use as the gateway, and then, uh, two…

Jim McQuillan: 43:42

Okay.

Wolf: 43:46

regular ones, non-pros, that are much smaller. Um, and that gateway was where the cable came in, and so we had the cable box. That was in the living room.

Jim McQuillan: 43:48

Okay. Okay.

Wolf: 43:56

So the one in the living room was the gateway.

Jim McQuillan: 43:59

Huh-huh.

Wolf: 43:59

Um, and then I decided I wanted one that was fast, um, in… My office at my desk. So, radio from the living room to my office. but then Ethernet from that device, which was on my desk, to my computer, which was on my desk. So, you know, a 3-foot Ethernet cable.

Jim McQuillan: 44:18

Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Wolf: 44:22

But then, I got… uh, fiber into the house, and I moved the Pro on my desk. over to the window, where we, uh, we didn't bring it in through the window, but right by there, the wall. Um, and so now, the fiber goes into the whatever they call that thing, is it the OTP? The NTP? I never get that right.

Jim McQuillan: 44:42

I don't know.

Wolf: 44:43

And then Ethernet comes out of that.

Jim McQuillan: 44:44

It's like a cable modem, but for fiber.

Wolf: 44:46

Right. Goes into the Eero Pro 6 or 6 Pro, whatever it's called. So that's the gateway and the living room. We didn't move anything else. So my total network is two 6 Pro's and three 6 Pro's.

Jim McQuillan: 44:52

Umm.

Wolf: 45:01

regular sixes. And the two gamers in the household, um, two of my four sons, they each have regular Eros on their desks. They get their signal from the other EROs by radio, but they have an Ethernet cable that goes from that ERO into whatever their device is. I don't know if that's better or worse, but that's what they have, and it works.

Jim McQuillan: 45:26

That's what you did, and it's working. And it's working. So, mesh is really kind of neat because, um, uh, with, with Wi-Fi, you have channels. Not, not only do you have, uh, frequencies and bands, you know, like the 2.4 GHz band and the 5 GHz band, but you have channels among those frequencies.

Wolf: 45:29

Yep.

Jim McQuillan: 45:45

And, uh, these mesh networks, the Eero, uh, will, uh, reserve one of those channels for what they call the backhaul, and that's the channel that all the Eros talk to each other on. And then other channels are used for your, uh, your device, your laptop, your… your, uh, cell phone or whatever. Um, so that… supposedly, the, the, uh, your phone talking to the Eero doesn't interfere with the Eero talking to the other Eero. You know, so there's not this contention between them. So that's kind of neat. with a mesh, your devices roam around the house with no problem at all. It'll just… it'll just keep track of the most powerful signal and automatically switch to it. You don't even know it. Um, and you've got the Pro 6, you said, and that's… that's Wi-Fi 6, so, uh… it's pretty good, right? Uh, they do have a Pro 7 now, which, of course, is Wi-Fi 7.

Wolf: 46:43

Yep.

Jim McQuillan: 46:48

But your devices don't do it. And you're, you know.

Wolf: 46:52

I don't saturate the… the…

Jim McQuillan: 46:54

Right, right, right. Uh, so that's not a problem. And like I said, I'm just looking for a clearer signal, um, and maybe that'll work.

Wolf: 47:01

And that's essentially why I did it, because my wife using the iPad in the bedroom.

Jim McQuillan: 47:05

Yeah. Yep.

Wolf: 47:10

And, uh, you know, you and I talk about the Wi-Fi signal strength and stuff. There's a whole different way to measure this. There's, is she mad at me, or is she not mad at me?

Jim McQuillan: 47:22

Right, right.

Wolf: 47:22

If I put an access point in there, she's not mad at me.

Jim McQuillan: 47:27

Yeah, and I might just have to do that, because I know when I'm, like… you know, in the morning after I get up and I do the shower and all that kind of stuff, then I've got a chair that I just like to sit for 45 minutes and just sort of… start my day, and I'll be, you know, checking email and all that kind of stuff, and the signal is so bad that I have to wait for the email to come up, and then if there's any attachments or images or anything, it just sits there, and it's annoying, so I want to fix this problem. So… so that's… that's kind of, uh, where I started with this. Now, we really ought to talk about security for a couple of minutes, right? Um, uh, you remember when we first started doing, uh, Wi-Fi, like I did back in 2001? WEP, the Wired Equivalency… the Wired Equivalent Privacy. Um… was the thing. And it turns out it's got significant vulnerabilities.

Wolf: 48:19

Umm. Before I actually let you go through all of them, let me just give people something to keep in their mind while you say all of them.

Jim McQuillan: 48:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes.

Wolf: 48:33

Yes, this hardware has some features labeled security. Sometimes they'll put the quotes around security, like it deserves. And sometimes they don't. Is the security your Wi-Fi device gives you. Enough. There's a simple answer to that question. That answer is no. Um, Jim and I have talked about other things. We've talked about SSH, we've talked about WireGuard, we've talked about Tailscale, we've talked about a ton of different things. minimal is that your Wi-Fi has these things, in the same way that it's minimal you are connecting to an HTTPS. server connection. But, is that enough? No. That's step one. Okay, Jim, tell us the rest of step one.

Jim McQuillan: 49:32

Yeah, so, like Wilf says, nobody is running Telnet across these things anymore, right? They may claim that they're secure, but we don't use Telnet because it's just not secure, because anybody that taps into your network. uh, can see the packets and see what you're doing. We don't run FTP across these things, uh, or even across our, our physical networks because of that, because it's just not secure. We use SSH and SCP and SFTP and, and of course HTTPS for, for web browsing, so that if somebody did hack into our network. They're still not going to understand what they're seeing. It's just all encrypted. Um, but it's still, it's nice to keep other people off your network. Right? The best you can. The thing about Wi-Fi, somebody could sit out in front of your house and get on your network if you're not careful, so lock it down. Uh, sure, there was WEP, uh, that turned out to have problems. Then WPA. came along, and it was better. Then WPA2, which probably everybody is using these days. Now there's WPA3, you really should be using that. And then the thing that always confused me until recently was, what's this WPA Personal versus WPA Enterprise? Well, WPA Personal is where you put in a password when you connect up to the network, and your device is probably going to save that password for you, so you don't have to put it in every time you connect, but the first time you connect, you have to put it in. Well, the Enterprise, that adds, uh, uh, a server, an 802.1X authentication server, uh, to the mix. So, that's like… you know, the word enterprise means something here. That's, like, for a corporation that has a large number of devices, and they want to secure it with auditing and all that kind of a thing. So they would go for an authentication server, they'd use WPA Enterprise. Um, okay. it uses… remember RADIUS? Anybody using a RADIUS server out there? It uses that to, uh… to hand out the authentication tokens and all that kind of stuff. So that's the enterprise stuff. Uh, but… I was starting to talk earlier, Wolf, you've got the Eero, it's got the integrated router. and firewall and access point in the main one. Um, and then that's what connects to your… thing that connects to fiber. Uh, in my case, that's what would connect to the cable modem. Right? For a long time now, I've always liked a separation of the router firewall from the access point.

Wolf: 52:05

Yes.

Jim McQuillan: 52:14

Um, because I think that the people that do good Wi-Fi may not be the people that do good firewalls. Uh, so I've kind of opted for this…

Wolf: 52:21

Same with car companies and software.

Jim McQuillan: 52:26

Yeah. Yeah. So I prefer a separation there. So I've got my firewall is a net gate. I forget the model right now, but it's like the low end net gate, but it runs PF sense. And of course. You know, Marlon, our genius friend from Meta, that's what he recommended. And if he recommends something, that's what you want to do. So I'm using the Netgate router and it works really, really well. So now I can swap out my access points anytime I want without disrupting my firewall. and my, uh, you know, of course the firewall's got DHCP on it, I don't have to disrupt that or anything. I can just swap out the access point, get a different signal, and move on. So that's kind of what I prefer to do. I think, Wolf, you're a little more set it and forget it kind of guy. Right? You sort of set it up and just don't worry about it.

Wolf: 53:18

Well, I'm a I'm a horrible combination. I'm that thing. The one who. thinks they're low maintenance, but is actually high maintenance?

Jim McQuillan: 53:33

Ah, you're the Meg Ryan of the group.

Wolf: 53:33

That thing? I am! So, first of all, I love my fiber provider, but my fiber provider has a problem which we discussed when we talked about IPv6. Which is that I have a, and you remember the exact name for this, but the kind of…

Jim McQuillan: 53:57

Oh.

Wolf: 53:58

A connection I have.

Jim McQuillan: 53:59

You've got CG NAT, carrier grade NAT, so you can't do IPv6.

Wolf: 54:05

That that is exact.

Jim McQuillan: 54:05

No, there's actually two separate things there. It's two separate things. You have CGNAT, and they don't provide IPv6.

Wolf: 54:13

Right. Um, and that means, uh, like, I don't get to, uh, you know, do port forwarding or stuff like that out of my…

Jim McQuillan: 54:21

Yeah, you can't host things out of your house.

Wolf: 54:24

And so that influences just how many things I can do separately from that device. Like, does it matter if I run a super smart router and firewall as a separate device in the house?

Jim McQuillan: 54:24

Um…

Wolf: 54:39

Um, so, it turns out that the, uh, Eero firewall is acceptable. Uh, port forwarding doesn't matter. If I need anything that I would have gotten from port forwarding, I just use tail scale instead. Uh, and yet, every single, uh… OS, every single machine inside my house that is capable and under my control. Runs its own firewall. in both directions. I care what is allowed to come in, and I notice when stuff tries to get out.

Jim McQuillan: 55:17

So, yeah. Sure, sure. Okay. I tend to not worry as much about the individual devices, but I've got a really good, strong firewall. And the reason I like that device, like I mentioned, Marlon explained it to me. I started playing with IPv6. We did an episode a long time ago on that, and I had this rude awakening that IPv6 doesn't use NAT, and I always thought, well, NAT's good enough for a firewall, right? Uh, I don't have any, I don't have any open ports. So, so, uh, uh, you know, everything going out is going to have the IP address of the, of the, of the gateway. Uh, and I don't have to worry about it. But then Marlin explained to me that yeah, IPv6 doesn't work that way. All these devices on your network have their own public IP address, and it goes through the router, and they're publicly addressable on the internet. So, if I talk to something.

Wolf: 56:19

So to to make it. To make it short for people listening.

Jim McQuillan: 56:22

Yep.

Wolf: 56:25

Regular NAT for IPv4. is as powerful and protective as ROT13.

Jim McQuillan: 56:33

Yes.

Wolf: 56:33

And IPv6 is, like, exactly the same thing, except without the Route 13.

Jim McQuillan: 56:39

Yes. Right. So, uh, uh, you talk to something out on the internet with IPv6, and they have your address, and they can talk back to you. And if you don't have a firewall in there, uh, you better get a firewall, because they can, they can talk back to you, and that's not good. Then you should be running a firewall on your, on your individual devices. Um, uh, anyway, I prefer the separation, uh, the, the router firewall, uh, from the access points and the physical network in my house. Uh, so that works out pretty well for me. And I, and, uh, so yeah, so now I can change my access point without disrupting. anything else. I'll provision it with the same ESSID that my old access point has, and everybody will be happy. Up. So if we're talking about wireless networking, let's talk just very briefly about Bluetooth. Um, it's out there. It's, uh, it's one of those 802. What did I say that was? It falls under 802.15. Um… You know, I can't talk a whole lot about it. It uses a band frequency between 2.402 GHz to 2.48 GHz. One of the problems with that 2.4 GHz band is lots of things use that band. Like, your microwave oven will cause interference. Cordless phones in your house will cause interference. Some garage door openers can cause interference. So, that's why we're more… we're happier with 5GHz and 6GHz. But Bluetooth is using that same thing. Bluetooth is really only good for, like, 10 meters, so 33 feet. Yeah, you can go farther. Like, I've been able to walk out to the mailbox and still stay connected, but the signal gets really, really bad.

Wolf: 58:27

The interesting thing about Bluetooth, to me…

Jim McQuillan: 58:30

Yeah, yeah.

Wolf: 58:31

is, um… Just how. uh… wonderful it is for us, in combination with the fact that it's really, really crappy. Um…

Jim McQuillan: 58:44

Yeah, it's really crappy, but…

Wolf: 58:45

Bluetooth, if you think you're an audiophile, but you're listening with Bluetooth.

Jim McQuillan: 58:49

Yah.

Wolf: 58:51

You have just told me two completely opposite things.

Jim McQuillan: 58:56

Yeah, right. You might spend a ton.

Wolf: 58:56

Umm. Because if you're using Bluetooth, you're not listening to the music.

Jim McQuillan: 59:02

You might spend a ton on hardware that can play vinyl records, because it just has that warmth, and then you run it over Bluetooth, and you lose it all. Anyway, the interesting thing I found out about Bluetooth was where the name came from. Uh, uh, it, it was, uh, well. you know, I did read exactly where it came from, but for a long time, it was the internal code name used while they were developing it. The official name was going to be PAN, for Private Area Network. Uh, but they did an exhaustive search and discovered that there were already tens of thousands of hits on the internet, uh, out there, um, for things that were using that. So they backed away. They were gonna call it Radio Wire, but they ran out of time. They couldn't do the full trademark search. So, Bluetooth stuck. So, fine. It's Bluetooth, right? Um, another thing is near-field communications. That's, like, what your phone uses when you tap to pay. Um, it's NFC. Um, I, I don't know much about that, but I, I know it's, it's something separate from wifi. Uh, and then. we'll talk briefly about cellular, uh, you know, uh, we all were using 2G, these are, uh, well, digital actually came along, I think, around, uh, 3G, but, um, you know, there was GS…

Wolf: 1:00:23

Oh, don't go through all these abbreviations. They don't mean anything to anyone.

Jim McQuillan: 1:00:26

nah, the GSM, uh, you remember CDMA? That was the, the, the thing we used to use with, uh, Verizon, uh, but everybody moved up from that. And now we're at 5G, and… What always confused me was. okay, there's 5G, and then in Wi-Fi, you got 5GHz, I just thought they were all kind of the same thing. And no! 5G, that's 5th generation. 4G was fourth generation. There's LTE and all kinds of things. I'm not going to get into it. Maybe sometime, if people are interested, we can talk more, but like I said, I'm not an electrical engineer. I probably shouldn't be talking about that at all. Uh, anyway, um. So yeah, this was going to be a really short episode. And here we are.

Wolf: 1:01:12

Nope. Yep. Absolutely not a short episode.

Jim McQuillan: 1:01:16

You know, when we, when we started this, this podcast, we, before we recorded the first episode, we sort of. wrote down some ideas, what we were gonna talk about, and then we said, well, how long should it be? And I think we said, uh, you know, I think we both sort of arrived at this, you know, 50 minutes would be pretty good. And I think we've only had one episode that was less than 50. Okay. I said, I think you agreed. We've only had one episode that was less than 50 minutes. Now we get to like, uh, uh, an hour and 15 minutes. It's like, well, okay.

Wolf: 1:01:35

No, YOU said that!

Jim McQuillan: 1:01:50

Anyway, um.

Wolf: 1:01:51

I will tell you what the problem is. There are two problems. One is, I talk too much and I know it.

Jim McQuillan: 1:01:53

What's the problem? Yep.

Wolf: 1:01:58

And the other problem is, uh, you talk too much, and you don't know it.

Jim McQuillan: 1:02:06

Well, I do now! And that's fine. Well, we're having fun. Nobody's complained about our episodes being too long, so… so I think we're doing alright.

Wolf: 1:02:17

I think we are.

Jim McQuillan: 1:02:17

Anyway, so that's sort of our, our, our Wi-Fi, uh, uh, thing. Uh, I'll report back in the next month or two about, uh, if I solved my problem or not. Um, but…

Wolf: 1:02:27

There weren't a bunch of takeaways in this one. It was more, uh, just sort of a picture of the landscape.

Jim McQuillan: 1:02:35

Yeah, yeah, sort of.

Wolf: 1:02:35

And.

Jim McQuillan: 1:02:38

Uh, I don't know, what's the takeaway? Uh, make sure you're using protection, kids. Uh…

Wolf: 1:02:43

Yeah, so I think one of the main things is it's probably just going to work.

Jim McQuillan: 1:02:44

It's important. Yes.

Wolf: 1:02:49

Um, there's easy answers and hard answers, and you likely don't need the hard answer. Um, you could, but you likely don't. Uh, and as always, uh, be cautious. Use, use good security. Do, do the things you need to do. I think, I think those are the things, uh, worth remembering out of this. Certainly, I'm not going to remember any of those numbers. All I'm going to remember is, oh, here's the thing I need to ask Jim.

Jim McQuillan: 1:03:20

Yeah, but now I'm thinking, okay, Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 7, I have an understanding of what those numbers mean now.

Wolf: 1:03:26

Those are easier to remember, yes.

Jim McQuillan: 1:03:26

And I can… I can ignore all that other stuff. I don't care about 802.11ax, or N, or anything. If it… if the device says Wi-Fi 7, and my access point says Wi-Fi 7, okay, fine. It works. So yeah, there is some, there is some value to the Wi-Fi Alliance assigning those numbers and ignore all the other numbers.

Wolf: 1:03:49

Should I wrap it up?

Jim McQuillan: 1:03:50

Right. Yeah, let's wrap it up.

Wolf: 1:03:52

Okay, first of all, if you made it all the way to the end, even if you didn't make it all the way to the end, but you won't actually hear me say this, thanks for listening. This is really all about you guys. We both love… uh, learning stuff and sharing it, and, um, we're, we're trying to make the world, uh, know more, you know, selfishly, so that other people are. interesting to talk to. Uh, that's my opinion. I mean, they are, but… but let's get past all the stupid stuff. Anyway, um…

Jim McQuillan: 1:04:25

Yeah, that's true.

Wolf: 1:04:29

We are easy to reach. We have a website. Our website is http.com. no s, I'm sorry, colon slash slash runtime arguments dot fm.

Jim McQuillan: 1:04:40

Hosting issues.

Wolf: 1:04:44

You can reach us on Mastodon. There is a Mastodon account for runtime arguments itself. It's runtimearguments@hackyderm.io and you already know where Hackyderm is. Um, and Jim and I each have individual Hackaderm accounts, so if you want to talk to just one of us, you can. He is JamMQ. at hackyderm.io. Did I get that right?

Jim McQuillan: 1:05:13

It's J-A-M-M-C-Q. Let's jam MCQ.

Wolf: 1:05:17

Jam MCQ. So I didn't get it right. And yet we're best friends. I would leave me.

Jim McQuillan: 1:05:20

No. Close enough. You know what? If you want to know, look at our show notes, or look at our website.

Wolf: 1:05:28

Yeah, and I am.

Jim McQuillan: 1:05:28

That's, that's where you can find how to contact. Okay.

Wolf: 1:05:31

yesjustwolf at hackyderm.io, and if you want to send us email, it is feedback at runtimearguments.fm. There's going to be show notes. There's going to be a transcript.

Jim McQuillan: 1:05:49

Yeah. Okay.

Wolf: 1:05:49

Tell us what you think. If you liked it, if you didn't like it.

Jim McQuillan: 1:05:50

Yeah, yes, yes. And remember from the beginning, I asked for feedback on whether you use greater than filename, or colon greater than filename, or something else. Send us feedback, we'd like to know.

Wolf: 1:06:04

Yeah, we would like to know. I think that's it for me. I'm going to say goodbye. Jim?

Jim McQuillan: 1:06:09

All right. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. That's that's good for me. Thanks, everybody. Appreciate it and see you next time.

Wolf: 1:06:17

See ya.