00:00SPEAKERHow's your sleep pattern at this point?
00:03SPEAKER- It's pretty normal.
00:04SPEAKER- I mean, you're older than I am.
00:05SPEAKERHow do you handle staying up for,
00:06SPEAKERwhat was it, 30 hours or something like that?
00:08SPEAKER- 26 hours was how long the stream was.
00:11SPEAKER- Jeez.
00:12SPEAKER- We, I have a kid, so my sleep patterns have been destroyed
00:16SPEAKERfor like seven years now and I'm fine.
00:17SPEAKER- Oh, okay, sure.
00:20SPEAKER- My strategy is get up right before the stream starts,
00:23SPEAKERgo until the stream is over,
00:25SPEAKERtake like a two to four hour nap at most,
00:28SPEAKERjust enough that I'm functional,
00:30SPEAKERand then try desperately to stay awake
00:32SPEAKERuntil like 10 o'clock the next night
00:33SPEAKERso I can go to sleep and have a normal sleep schedule.
00:35SPEAKER- Yeah, that sounds good.
00:36SPEAKER- Yeah, it works.
00:36SPEAKER- Do you have a midstream kind of revitalization strategy?
00:40SPEAKERLike I would, when I was doing the 24 at home,
00:43SPEAKERI had like a 2 a.m. to kind of combo,
00:46SPEAKERstand outside for five minutes,
00:48SPEAKERand like look at the moon and breathe in the cold night air
00:51SPEAKERand then take like a fast, like two minute cold,
00:54SPEAKERcold lukewarm shower and then make a pot of coffee.
00:56SPEAKERLike that was my,
00:57SPEAKERI'm gonna get through the rest of this
00:59SPEAKERby doing these three things.
01:00SPEAKER- That's a good one.
01:01SPEAKERSo let's see, usually I ate a bunch of junk food,
01:04SPEAKERwhich is bad.
01:05SPEAKERYeah, this time I,
01:08SPEAKERevery time I got up, I did some jumping jacks
01:10SPEAKERor like jogged in place for a few minutes.
01:13SPEAKERI had to go out and leave the house
01:14SPEAKERlike five hours in for a soccer game, which was awesome.
01:18SPEAKER'Cause I realized that the world's still out there.
01:20SPEAKER- Absorb some daylight, some blue wavelength.
01:22SPEAKER- Yeah, vitamin D load.
01:24SPEAKERAnd then like, instead of eating garbage,
01:27SPEAKERI got some cut fruit from the grocery store
01:29SPEAKERand ate like some cut pineapple and watermelon
01:31SPEAKERand stuff like that.
01:32SPEAKERI had some salami and cheese
01:34SPEAKERwhen I wanted a little protein bump.
01:36SPEAKERAnd then I had a giant cheese pizza
01:38SPEAKERthat I kind of munched on the whole time.
01:39SPEAKER- Wow, huh, that's a real turn.
01:41SPEAKER- And no Red Bull.
01:42SPEAKER- Yeah, wow.
01:43SPEAKER- I skipped the Red Bull entirely.
01:44SPEAKERYeah, I did, I just did cold brew coffee this year.
01:46SPEAKER- Yeah, these lunatics at work
01:47SPEAKERevery time we stream there for this thing,
01:49SPEAKERthey just want to do like pizza and booze.
01:51SPEAKERAnd I just can't comprehend
01:53SPEAKERwhy you would do that to yourself.
01:54SPEAKERLike I was always like,
01:55SPEAKERI would stock the fridge with like yogurt
01:58SPEAKERand like kale salad and beef jerky
02:01SPEAKERand just real light like energy food.
02:03SPEAKERAnd that would get me through.
02:04SPEAKERBut you know, it's different strokes.
02:06SPEAKER- I like a scrambled egg.
02:08SPEAKERScrambled egg in there is good.
02:09SPEAKER'Cause you can eat that
02:10SPEAKERand then you don't have to go to the bathroom afterwards.
02:12SPEAKERSo that's nice.
02:13SPEAKER- Just a protein blast.
02:14SPEAKER- Yeah, but you know, it's all for the kids, Brad.
02:16SPEAKER- For the kids.
02:17SPEAKER- #BeatDaveLang.
02:18SPEAKER- Was that a real hashtag?
02:19SPEAKER- We were trying.
02:21SPEAKERI mean, the goal is always to be Dave Lang, no matter what.
02:23SPEAKER- In any and all things.
02:25SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, look,
02:26SPEAKERwe were the grassroots Bernie campaign
02:28SPEAKERto Dave Lang's Hillary juggernaut.
02:30SPEAKERAnd he had all of his big money game industry friends.
02:34SPEAKERWhereas we had, you know, 700 small time donors.
02:37SPEAKER- He's always feasting,
02:38SPEAKERleaving no table scraps for the rest of us.
02:41SPEAKER- Yeah, no, no, it's not okay.
02:43SPEAKERIt's not okay.
02:43SPEAKER(upbeat music)
02:55SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)
03:04SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Make a Tech Pod.
03:06SPEAKERI'm Will.
03:06SPEAKER- Hello, hi, I'm Brad.
03:07SPEAKER- Hello. - It's Tech.
03:08SPEAKER- Hi, how's it going, Brad?
03:09SPEAKER- It's Tech time in Tech town.
03:10SPEAKER- I'm not wearing sweat pants today,
03:12SPEAKERbut I am wearing pajama bottoms.
03:13SPEAKERI feel like it's basically the same thing.
03:15SPEAKER- Got some good gym shorts going on over here.
03:17SPEAKERI didn't do my hair.
03:18SPEAKERI never do my hair for this podcast.
03:19SPEAKERThat's a little behind the scenes secret
03:21SPEAKERthat people can get on.
03:22SPEAKERFeel like you're on the inside.
03:23SPEAKER- I see natural Brad Shoemaker hair,
03:25SPEAKERwhich I haven't seen in five years, I think at this point.
03:27SPEAKER- Really don't want to see what my hair looks like
03:29SPEAKERwithout anything in it.
03:30SPEAKER- Mine is very floppy, it turns out.
03:32SPEAKER- Bed head, bed head Tech.
03:34SPEAKER- Yeah, there we go.
03:35SPEAKERThat's the name of our followup podcast.
03:37SPEAKERThat's the after show.
03:38SPEAKER- We come up with a new name for this podcast every week.
03:40SPEAKER- What do you think about new names for wifi, Brad?
03:44SPEAKER- Yeah, that's kind of my first question
03:45SPEAKERabout today's topic, which is wifi six.
03:48SPEAKER- Yes.
03:49SPEAKER- Is it just the sequel to 802.11 AC?
03:53SPEAKER- So yes, it is the sixth generation of wifi
03:55SPEAKERif you begin counting with B, I believe.
03:58SPEAKER- So in other words, the consortium, the wifi.
04:01SPEAKER- The wifi alliance, yeah.
04:03SPEAKER- The steering committee for wifi realized that 802.11 AC
04:08SPEAKERis not a good example of a marketable name
04:10SPEAKERfor their technology.
04:11SPEAKER- It turns out that, yeah, it's a little confusing
04:14SPEAKERfor the normal consumers, especially when you realize
04:17SPEAKERthat wifi six would be called AX, I believe.
04:21SPEAKER- Yeah, wow, that's kind of worse
04:23SPEAKERbecause you've already got an A in the previous one.
04:25SPEAKER- Well, but the X is cool.
04:26SPEAKERThe X is the coolest number, coolest letter, right?
04:29SPEAKER- X does sound very edgy and futuristic for sure,
04:32SPEAKERbut okay, so hang on, there was--
04:34SPEAKER- Name 'em all.
04:34SPEAKER- There's B, G, N, and AC, which I assume are two through five.
04:38SPEAKERWhat was the first one?
04:38SPEAKERWas there just 802.11?
04:40SPEAKER- B is the first one, B is wifi one.
04:43SPEAKERA, which everybody forgets, the 5.4 gigahertz version
04:47SPEAKERof what became G.
04:48SPEAKERSo B came out in like 2003 or something,
04:52SPEAKER2000, somewhere around in there, right?
04:54SPEAKERA was developed simultaneously, but the chip sets lagged
04:56SPEAKERbecause it operated in the five gigahertz spectrum.
04:59SPEAKERSo there weren't, it had a faster theoretical maximum
05:02SPEAKER'cause there's more bandwidth in the higher spectrum.
05:04SPEAKERThey had manufacturing difficulties
05:06SPEAKERand actually ended up coming out after B
05:08SPEAKERfor all intents and purposes
05:10SPEAKERand had really, really low adoption.
05:12SPEAKER- So A just kind of never caught on?
05:14SPEAKER- I mean, it was used in like embedded systems
05:16SPEAKERand stuff like that.
05:17SPEAKERThe Sonos, I think, the early Sonos speakers used A
05:21SPEAKERbecause it was uncontested.
05:23SPEAKERWell, one of the benefits of using A instead of B
05:26SPEAKERwas that if you had 2.4 gigahertz interference,
05:30SPEAKERwhich was a big problem with B, if you can think back,
05:32SPEAKERyou might not have had wifi back then,
05:34SPEAKERbut when B was new, you'd turn on your microwave oven,
05:37SPEAKERwhich also operates at the 2.4 gigahertz range
05:40SPEAKERand it would crap out everybody's wifi in the neighborhood.
05:42SPEAKER- Wait a minute, I was under the impression
05:44SPEAKERthat the Faraday cage and the microwave
05:46SPEAKERwas protecting me from any emissions from that thing.
05:49SPEAKER- Well, it is, but the coil that makes the thing
05:53SPEAKERis a massive radio generator.
05:55SPEAKER- Ah, I see.
05:56SPEAKER- So the microwaves are blasting into the oven.
05:58SPEAKERThe EM is coming out the other end of that.
06:00SPEAKER- Oh, well, that would make sense.
06:01SPEAKERYeah, of course, 'cause microwaves and radio waves
06:03SPEAKERwouldn't interact with each other, right?
06:04SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, it's all just light at the end of the day.
06:06SPEAKER- Different shapes of light.
06:09SPEAKER- Exactly.
06:10SPEAKER- So like A came out after B, but before G, is that right?
06:13SPEAKER- A came out after B, but before G, so A.
06:16SPEAKER- But then G is also a 2.4 gigahertz, right?
06:19SPEAKER- So G basically takes the stuff that they did in B
06:23SPEAKERand puts it on the 2.4 gigahertz spectrum.
06:26SPEAKERSo they did, like they did the stuff that they did
06:28SPEAKERto get 54 megabits per second theoretical with A,
06:32SPEAKERthey moved over to G.
06:33SPEAKERSo it has like wider channels.
06:36SPEAKERSo I think A was, sorry, B was 10 megahertz channels.
06:40SPEAKERSo that's like the, how wide the frequency band was
06:43SPEAKERthat each channel used.
06:45SPEAKERG moved them to 20 megahertz,
06:47SPEAKERwhich doubles the speed immediately.
06:48SPEAKERAnd then they also use some signals,
06:50SPEAKERthe signal modulation from A
06:52SPEAKERthat gave them the higher speed there.
06:53SPEAKERAnd that helped reduce interference.
06:55SPEAKERSo it was a little bit more usable
06:56SPEAKERand like your cordless phones wouldn't knock.
06:58SPEAKERRemember cordless phones?
06:59SPEAKERThat was a thing.
07:00SPEAKER- Oh, yeah.
07:01SPEAKER- Yeah, they wouldn't knock the wifi off either.
07:03SPEAKER- So it was B, then A, then G, then N, then AC, and now six.
07:08SPEAKER- Yes, so B is one, A is two, G is three, N is four,
07:13SPEAKERAC is five, and AX is six.
07:16SPEAKER- This is a hard change to make midstream, I feel like,
07:18SPEAKERbecause as clunky as 802.11 blank is to say,
07:22SPEAKERlike that's kind of what I've gotten used to, so.
07:24SPEAKER- So my third day at Maximum PC,
07:26SPEAKERthe Wifi Alliance showed up and was like,
07:28SPEAKERhey, we would like to talk to you
07:30SPEAKERabout this thing that we're doing,
07:32SPEAKERbecause up until that point,
07:33SPEAKERall of the nascent wifi, like wireless networking stuff,
07:37SPEAKERyou had to buy within one hardware brand.
07:40SPEAKER- I can't believe you've met agents of the Wifi Alliance.
07:42SPEAKER- Oh, I met them multiple times over the years.
07:44SPEAKERThey were very, very available.
07:45SPEAKER- Were they wearing like trench coats and sunglasses
07:47SPEAKERand slick back hair and like an earpiece?
07:49SPEAKER- They were like normal suit wearing early 2000s PR types.
07:53SPEAKERThey were very affable.
07:55SPEAKERThey may have been Canadian.
07:56SPEAKER- Okay, but not the men in black or anything.
07:58SPEAKER- No, no, no, they didn't try to flashy.
08:00SPEAKERI don't remember them flashy thinking me.
08:01SPEAKERMaybe they did, who knows?
08:03SPEAKERLike we asked, I specifically was like,
08:05SPEAKERhey, do you think that this 802.11 stuff
08:08SPEAKERis a good branding thing for this?
08:12SPEAKERDo you think people are gonna understand this?
08:13SPEAKERThey're like, oh yeah, sure.
08:14SPEAKERIt's gonna be so ubiquitous that they understand it.
08:16SPEAKERThey'll have no choice but to understand.
08:17SPEAKERI was like, I don't know if that's how this works.
08:19SPEAKER- Consortiums have a sterling record
08:21SPEAKERof making accurate predictions
08:23SPEAKERabout what people will be able to understand
08:24SPEAKERand keep track of.
08:25SPEAKER- I mean, it worked out so far,
08:27SPEAKERand the generations are pretty long.
08:28SPEAKERSo it's like a four or five year generation
08:31SPEAKERon average for each one.
08:33SPEAKERSo like it's not, and kind of, it doesn't matter.
08:37SPEAKERAfter you got past G, it kind of doesn't matter
08:40SPEAKERwhether you have an N, A, C, A, X, whatever,
08:43SPEAKERunless you're doing something weird,
08:44SPEAKERlike using a Steam link to stream inside your house,
08:46SPEAKERstream video games inside your house,
08:48SPEAKERor something that requires actual performance.
08:50SPEAKER- Or if you have all of your bulk storage on the network,
08:52SPEAKERand need to move things around that way.
08:54SPEAKER- Fair, fair.
08:55SPEAKER- Let's say I was backing up all of my girlfriend's pictures
08:58SPEAKERfrom iCloud to my NAS the other day,
09:00SPEAKERand thinking, man, if I had faster Wi-Fi,
09:02SPEAKERall these gigabytes of pictures
09:03SPEAKERwould be copying a lot faster than they are.
09:05SPEAKER- Is it copying from her,
09:06SPEAKERwhy don't you plug the laptop in?
09:08SPEAKER- Well, I could have, but I don't got either,
09:10SPEAKERLucy ethernet cable just hanging around all over the place,
09:12SPEAKERman, that's unsightly.
09:13SPEAKER- Wow.
09:14SPEAKER- That's crass.
09:15SPEAKER- You gotta get a dangler, man.
09:16SPEAKERYou gotta have just one,
09:17SPEAKERyou gotta have one just hanging out of the router
09:18SPEAKERthat you can just plug in whatever you need to,
09:20SPEAKERand get your business in the port.
09:21SPEAKER- I mean, I don't have good access to my router,
09:23SPEAKERand switch, and stuff like that.
09:24SPEAKERI love hidden electronics.
09:25SPEAKERI've got that stuff all mounted behind my desk,
09:27SPEAKERso I have to lay down on my back on the floor,
09:29SPEAKERand crawl under my desk to plug in an ethernet cable,
09:32SPEAKERbecause I like not seeing things.
09:35SPEAKER- Brad.
09:36SPEAKER- You know what?
09:37SPEAKERI like not seeing things,
09:38SPEAKERand I mean, that explains the monitors, then.
09:41SPEAKER- The various--
09:41SPEAKER- This all comes around.
09:43SPEAKER- Very particular.
09:44SPEAKER(laughing)
09:47SPEAKERAnyway, yeah, Wi-Fi, it's fast in the home.
09:49SPEAKERIt's fine for the most part.
09:51SPEAKERI don't know.
09:51SPEAKERCertainly stuff that you could complain about,
09:53SPEAKERbut it's pretty good.
09:54SPEAKER- I was gonna say N was a real turning point.
09:56SPEAKERThis was probably the last time
09:57SPEAKERI talked to the Wi-Fi alliance people, for what it's worth,
10:00SPEAKERbut it is like you went from 54 megabits per second
10:03SPEAKERthroughput to 600 megabits per throughput,
10:06SPEAKERmegabits per second throughput.
10:07SPEAKER- On N?
10:08SPEAKER- With the jump from G to N, yeah.
10:09SPEAKER- Huh, I thought it was--
10:10SPEAKER- Depending on antenna configuration.
10:11SPEAKER- Okay, I was gonna,
10:12SPEAKER'cause I've traditionally always understood N
10:15SPEAKERto top out at 300, and I never even,
10:16SPEAKERI would rarely even connect at that.
10:18SPEAKERBut maybe that's being on a cheap consumer router.
10:21SPEAKERI don't know.
10:22SPEAKER- Well, it depends on how many antennas.
10:23SPEAKERIt literally is dependent on how many antennas you have,
10:25SPEAKER'cause N used a technology called MIMO,
10:28SPEAKERwhich is multiple in, multiple out.
10:31SPEAKERMultiple inputs, multiple outputs.
10:32SPEAKERAnd basically what it does is use multiple antennas
10:34SPEAKERto create multiple kind of radio pipes
10:37SPEAKERthrough the environment.
10:38SPEAKERSo it would look around and it would find reflections
10:40SPEAKERlike metal that causes reflections and things like that.
10:43SPEAKERAnd each of those reflections,
10:44SPEAKERit could create a different pipeline
10:46SPEAKERfrom the router to the endpoint and back.
10:50SPEAKERAnd so if you had two antennas on that router,
10:53SPEAKERthen you would get double the throughput to a single device,
10:55SPEAKERassuming the other end also had two antennas.
10:57SPEAKER- Do I understand correctly
10:58SPEAKERthat Wi-Fi is inherently asynchronous
11:00SPEAKERunless you employ workarounds like that?
11:03SPEAKERIs that correct?
11:03SPEAKERLike on a single channel or a single antenna or whatever,
11:06SPEAKERlike you're not able to send and receive
11:07SPEAKERat the same time, right?
11:09SPEAKER- I think it depends.
11:10SPEAKERThat's a good question.
11:10SPEAKERI don't know that actually.
11:11SPEAKER- This is where, you know, like, you know,
11:12SPEAKERit's easy to look at like, okay,
11:14SPEAKERN is equivalent to this throughput, you know, AC does this.
11:18SPEAKERBut when you get into like channel width
11:20SPEAKERand number of bonded channels
11:22SPEAKERand number of antennas and all that stuff,
11:24SPEAKERthat's where I feel like
11:25SPEAKEReven for somebody who's fairly technically minded,
11:27SPEAKERit can get really kind of lost in the weeds,
11:29SPEAKERunderstanding what your capabilities actually are.
11:31SPEAKER- Well, I mean, one of the things that's a problem with this
11:35SPEAKERis that the throughput is shared for every device
11:37SPEAKERthat's connected to the router
11:40SPEAKERat whatever spec you're using.
11:42SPEAKERSo like AC and N routers will step down
11:45SPEAKERand like use one of the radios in an N router
11:47SPEAKERas a G radio if it has to, if there's G devices connected.
11:52SPEAKERSo that will bring down the overall throughput
11:54SPEAKERon your entire network if you plug in one,
11:56SPEAKERsay Nintendo DS Lite.
11:57SPEAKER- Interesting, okay.
11:58SPEAKER- It'll bring down everything else that's on that node.
12:00SPEAKERYou won't have that second antenna available
12:02SPEAKERfor the N stuff until you get to later hardware,
12:04SPEAKERwhich can actually time slice the radio
12:06SPEAKERand that has some performance impact as well,
12:07SPEAKERbut it's less than just turning it all the way down.
12:10SPEAKER- Like that seems unavoidable right now
12:11SPEAKERbecause like we're still,
12:13SPEAKERI think we've probably bought devices in the last year
12:16SPEAKERthat still use G
12:17SPEAKERand that's just kind of the nature of things, right?
12:19SPEAKER- Wow, oh man, I haven't had G.
12:22SPEAKERI think my routers have been set to AC
12:24SPEAKERand N backwards compatibility for a couple of years
12:26SPEAKERand I haven't had any problems.
12:27SPEAKER- Well, like any high-end computing oriented device
12:31SPEAKERis probably gonna be at least N if not AC at this point,
12:33SPEAKERbut I'm talking stuff like little home automation
12:36SPEAKERenabled light strip that I got a few months ago
12:39SPEAKERand like we've got a, it's not a Roomba,
12:41SPEAKERbut we've got like a D-bot.
12:43SPEAKER- Robot vacuum.
12:44SPEAKER- Knockoff robot vacuum and I'm trying to think,
12:46SPEAKERI mean, we've got a couple of smart plugs
12:47SPEAKERand I think those are all G still
12:49SPEAKERand there's just not a lot.
12:50SPEAKERIf you're, unless you're buying super high-end everything,
12:52SPEAKERlike I feel like you're still kind of stuck with that.
12:54SPEAKER- Well, so one of the things you can do
12:55SPEAKERis set the router to time slice
12:58SPEAKERso you're not using the full amount of the antenna's time
13:02SPEAKERto serve your old hardware.
13:05SPEAKERThe interesting side effect of having multiple antennas
13:08SPEAKERin the devices is that things like repeaters
13:10SPEAKERand those types of devices went from trying
13:12SPEAKERto time slice one radio to having three or four radios
13:15SPEAKERin the device so that your mesh networks
13:17SPEAKERand stuff like that actually work really well now
13:19SPEAKERversus in the G and even early N days
13:22SPEAKERwhen they did not work at all.
13:23SPEAKER- And the idea behind a mesh network
13:25SPEAKERis essentially just seamless handoff
13:26SPEAKERas you move around, is that right?
13:28SPEAKERLike you're always connected to the same SSID
13:30SPEAKERand just not worrying about physically
13:32SPEAKERwhere you are in the kind of coverage map?
13:34SPEAKER- That's definitely one of the benefits,
13:36SPEAKERbut the main thing is that having multiple radios
13:39SPEAKERlets the router and the other mesh network endpoints
13:43SPEAKERdedicate a radio to talking either upstream or downstream.
13:46SPEAKERSo for example, you have a router
13:48SPEAKERthat's plugged into your cable modem.
13:51SPEAKERThat router has, I mean, that device has multiple radios
13:55SPEAKERand it will pipe one to the mesh network
13:57SPEAKERthat's only plugged into power in your bedroom.
14:01SPEAKERAnd then there's a radio that, those radios can jump around
14:06SPEAKERand they pass the signal without having to have like the,
14:09SPEAKERthere's downtime when a radio connects.
14:10SPEAKERSo like, you know when you turn on your phone at the house
14:14SPEAKERand it connects to wifi when you get home
14:15SPEAKERand it takes a second or two for it to log in
14:17SPEAKERand grab an IP address and all that stuff.
14:20SPEAKERIf the mesh networks have to do that
14:21SPEAKERevery time they're passing a signal back and forth,
14:23SPEAKERit adds a massive amount of latency,
14:25SPEAKERwhich doesn't slow down the throughput at all really,
14:28SPEAKERit does a little bit, but it makes it feel really slow.
14:31SPEAKERSo having the dedicated radios
14:33SPEAKERto keep those connections live all the time
14:35SPEAKERmakes a big difference.
14:36SPEAKER- I assume it's not one radio, one device, right?
14:38SPEAKERLike a radio has to be up or down, it can't be both,
14:40SPEAKERbut whichever mode it's in,
14:42SPEAKERit can be talking to multiple clients at the same time,
14:44SPEAKERright?
14:45SPEAKER- Probably, it depends on the implementation, I'm sure.
14:47SPEAKER- It's incredibly complicated.
14:49SPEAKER- Well, this is why it took 15, 18, 17 years
14:53SPEAKERbefore we started seeing good mesh network implementations
14:56SPEAKERfor wifi.
14:57SPEAKERI mean, people were selling wifi range extenders
14:59SPEAKERfrom like 2004, it was the second thing
15:02SPEAKERthat they probably made for 802.11b,
15:05SPEAKERbut they were always bad or they required you
15:07SPEAKERto run an ethernet cable to the range extender.
15:10SPEAKER- Okay, so just to be clear,
15:11SPEAKER'cause I don't have any hands-on experience
15:12SPEAKERwith mesh networks,
15:13SPEAKERI've just got a single standalone access point,
15:16SPEAKERbut that is the biggest advantage, right,
15:17SPEAKERis there are no cables, there are no ethernet cables
15:20SPEAKERinvolved with the, whatever you wanna call them,
15:22SPEAKERthe repeaters or the kind of the nodes around the network,
15:25SPEAKERlike do they just plug into power and that's it?
15:26SPEAKER- Well, and yeah, in most cases, like the Google case,
15:29SPEAKERwhich is the one I've spent the most time with,
15:30SPEAKERmy parents have at their place, like their house is old,
15:35SPEAKERso it's not particularly big, but it's old,
15:37SPEAKERand the construction means that the wifi
15:39SPEAKERdoesn't go through the walls very well,
15:40SPEAKERso they have to have multiple access points
15:43SPEAKERon multiple floors,
15:44SPEAKERand each access point is like a bubble of wifi.
15:47SPEAKERWhat they did was buy a bunch of Google homes,
15:50SPEAKERand as long as you put them close enough
15:51SPEAKERthat they have good signal between each other,
15:53SPEAKERyou really can't tell that they're not wired in
15:57SPEAKERwhen they're on AC,
15:58SPEAKERand that also has the added benefit
16:00SPEAKERof letting them do things like put one in the barn outside,
16:03SPEAKERso there's a wifi hotspot around the barn.
16:05SPEAKER- Wifi in the barn.
16:07SPEAKER- Well, when you live out in the country
16:08SPEAKERand don't have cell service,
16:10SPEAKERit turns out barn wifi is really good.
16:11SPEAKER- Yeah, I guess so, just gonna go lay up in the hayloft
16:14SPEAKERwith my iPad and just kinda catch up on the news.
16:16SPEAKER- Look, when you're working on the tractor,
16:17SPEAKERyou wanna have Spotify, that's all I'm saying.
16:19SPEAKER- That's fair, I guess that makes sense.
16:21SPEAKERSo are most mesh networks modular in that you can,
16:25SPEAKERit sounds like, I mean, you mentioned this
16:26SPEAKERwith the Google stuff already,
16:27SPEAKERlike can you just add nodes at will,
16:29SPEAKERor do you hit a maximum?
16:31SPEAKER- I'm sure there's a theoretical maximum
16:32SPEAKERwhen you get far enough in,
16:34SPEAKERbut yeah, with the Google ones,
16:35SPEAKERlike you buy a three-pack and that covers most houses,
16:38SPEAKERand all of the units are the same.
16:39SPEAKERIt's not like you have to buy a router
16:41SPEAKERand then buy a different access point.
16:42SPEAKERFor those, you just plug them in,
16:44SPEAKERand then they configure as either access points,
16:46SPEAKERmesh nodes, wired mesh, wireless mesh nodes,
16:48SPEAKERwired mesh nodes, or the router,
16:50SPEAKERdepending on where they are in the topology of the network.
16:52SPEAKER- Oh, interesting, okay, I was envisioning
16:53SPEAKERlike some kind of master control node
16:56SPEAKERthat then spooled out to a bunch of like,
16:58SPEAKERyou know, repeaters or something,
16:59SPEAKERbut that sounds more elegant.
17:01SPEAKER- It seems like with the Orbi and the Google stuff
17:04SPEAKERthat they're smart enough to just know,
17:06SPEAKERand the cost of putting the router,
17:08SPEAKERlike this is another weird thing that's happened
17:10SPEAKERbecause the cost of those ARM chips
17:11SPEAKERthat drive these devices has gotten really inexpensive,
17:14SPEAKERbut it's no more cost for them,
17:17SPEAKERit's probably more expensive for them
17:18SPEAKERto make two different products
17:19SPEAKERthan it is just make the one product
17:21SPEAKERthat has the maximum capabilities across the board.
17:23SPEAKER- Yeah, that's cool, that's awesome.
17:24SPEAKERYeah, that's another one of the cases
17:25SPEAKERof just this like massive efficient compute power
17:28SPEAKERmaking everything better.
17:29SPEAKER- Yeah, so let's see, I think we talked about A, B, G, and N.
17:34SPEAKER- I was just gonna mention real fast,
17:36SPEAKERI mean, we touched on some of this stuff a little bit
17:38SPEAKERin that internet/networking episode we did a few weeks ago,
17:41SPEAKERand I was talking about how, remember how I said
17:43SPEAKERI couldn't remember, like I could remember pre-Wi-Fi
17:46SPEAKERand post-Wi-Fi, but not that transition.
17:48SPEAKER- Yeah.
17:48SPEAKER- Not that inflection point.
17:49SPEAKER- Yeah.
17:50SPEAKER- I think it was the Nintendo DS, actually.
17:52SPEAKER- Wow.
17:53SPEAKER- Like, I think that was my, I think the first DS,
17:54SPEAKERwhich was a B device that could only support web security,
17:57SPEAKERwhich just sounds like Stone Age technology at this point.
18:00SPEAKER- Pure Nintendo-esque Nintendo right there.
18:03SPEAKER- Yeah, but I mean, that was like 2004,
18:04SPEAKERso like, you know, there were no smartphones then,
18:06SPEAKERlike you didn't have much of a need for Wi-Fi at that point,
18:10SPEAKERand I'm pretty sure the DS was my first exposure
18:12SPEAKERto the very concept of Wi-Fi.
18:14SPEAKER- So I was reviewing laptops and stuff at Maximum PC,
18:17SPEAKERand I was the networking guy,
18:18SPEAKERso I had all of the Wi-Fis early on.
18:21SPEAKER- Yeah, so you had, I'm sure you had a much greater,
18:23SPEAKERlike, professional need for that stuff,
18:25SPEAKERbut like, thinking back on it,
18:26SPEAKERespecially like covering games professionally back then,
18:28SPEAKERlike, I really, I feel, I think my feeling was just like,
18:30SPEAKERoh, work has Wi-Fi, and I will download the DS games
18:33SPEAKERwhile I'm there, or we weren't even downloading games.
18:35SPEAKER- Yeah, you were getting cartridges.
18:36SPEAKER- We were still buying, still getting cartridges,
18:38SPEAKERbut whatever you needed to do on the Wi-Fi,
18:39SPEAKERit was like, oh, I'll do it when I'm in the office,
18:41SPEAKERand then who cares once I get home.
18:42SPEAKER- Did you, so I remember the first time,
18:45SPEAKERwhen I was writing for ours, still a little bit in Tennessee,
18:47SPEAKERI had gotten my wireless kit,
18:49SPEAKERand I was able to sit on the couch with the wireless kit
18:51SPEAKERand look stuff up on the internet very, very slowly
18:54SPEAKERwhile I was writing articles, which was incredible.
18:57SPEAKERLike, that was a real, that was a magical moment.
19:00SPEAKER- Just like the moment of getting information to a device
19:03SPEAKERwithout anything tethered to it?
19:04SPEAKER- Yeah. - For the first time?
19:05SPEAKER- Well, but then, but then I didn't have another laptop
19:08SPEAKERfor probably five years, like, I didn't get a laptop,
19:12SPEAKERI didn't have a work-issued laptop at Maximum PC until 2005
19:15SPEAKERor 2006 when they gave me a MacBook for,
19:18SPEAKERso I could look at proofs on my computer
19:20SPEAKERinstead of bothering one of the designers.
19:22SPEAKER- One more, one more little piece of old man reminiscing
19:25SPEAKERabout this stuff before we get into the hot news tech.
19:29SPEAKERAlso, this is dangerously far afield of Wi-Fi
19:31SPEAKER'cause it's not actually Wi-Fi,
19:32SPEAKERbut it's still fun to mention.
19:34SPEAKERWere you, did you have any exposure to,
19:36SPEAKERlike, EVDO stuff back around that time?
19:38SPEAKER- Oh. - Because I had
19:40SPEAKERa company-issued laptop with a PCMCIA slot on it,
19:44SPEAKERand an EVDO card which connected
19:46SPEAKERto whatever the contemporary cell data network was,
19:50SPEAKERwas that EDGE? - It was GPRS, probably.
19:51SPEAKERIt was pre-EDGE. - Really?
19:53SPEAKER- Yeah, it was probably-- - This would've been like 03, 04?
19:55SPEAKER- That was probably the 2G GPRS stuff, yeah.
19:58SPEAKER- I thought EDGE was 2G.
19:59SPEAKER- EDGE was-- - Is that not right?
20:00SPEAKER- Like, EDGE was like-- - Was it EDGE after?
20:01SPEAKER- It was like, it was like midway between, as I recall.
20:04SPEAKERI can't remember. - Oh, was that like,
20:05SPEAKERlike 2G+ or something?
20:07SPEAKERBut I would sit there, distinctly remember,
20:09SPEAKERsitting at a Microsoft press conference at E3 in, like, '04
20:13SPEAKERwith this giant laptop with this huge card
20:15SPEAKERsticking out of the side, loading our CMS
20:17SPEAKERat probably bytes per second, and trying to, like,
20:20SPEAKERlive-blog what was being announced by typing into a field
20:23SPEAKERin this thing over this garbage-ass cell card.
20:25SPEAKER- So, I did that once at QuakeCon,
20:29SPEAKERbut I think the time I, the Gizmodo and EdGadget folks
20:33SPEAKERkind of independently and simultaneously
20:36SPEAKERinvented the live blog.
20:37SPEAKERIf you remember back when, like, the iPhone was new,
20:40SPEAKERwhen iPhone keynotes would drive three months' worth
20:43SPEAKERof traffic in, like, five minutes to a tech blog,
20:47SPEAKERand my friend Brian, who was a former intern
20:50SPEAKERand was the editor of Gizmodo, had done one,
20:52SPEAKERbut he was like, "I wanna have pictures for this,"
20:55SPEAKERand I was credentialed for the Gizmodo keynote,
20:58SPEAKERI mean, for the Apple keynote as well,
21:00SPEAKERand he was like, "Hey, if we share this,
21:02SPEAKERcan you take pictures while I do the live blog?"
21:06SPEAKERSo, the first time we had pictures dumping into the feed
21:08SPEAKERfor the live blog, I was sitting there shooting
21:10SPEAKERwith a Canon D20, and we were uploading over one
21:12SPEAKERof those hotspots that was probably a 3G hotspot,
21:16SPEAKERit was probably one of the brand new 3G hotspots,
21:19SPEAKERand, like, we were, it was challenging because we needed
21:23SPEAKERsomething that was tethered to the laptop,
21:25SPEAKERlike, that you could plug in with a USB to the laptop,
21:28SPEAKERbut if the pictures were too big,
21:30SPEAKERthey just wouldn't upload, they'd fail.
21:32SPEAKERSo, we had to set the camera as low as it would go,
21:35SPEAKERand then I was only allowed to take one picture
21:37SPEAKERevery, like, two minutes or three minutes,
21:39SPEAKERor else we'd overload the connection.
21:41SPEAKERIt was a weird time.
21:41SPEAKER- Yeah, it was.
21:42SPEAKER- Those things were neat, but they weren't great,
21:44SPEAKERand they were almost always better than the event wifi.
21:47SPEAKERThat was the secret.
21:48SPEAKER- Yes, absolutely, that stuff would just get
21:49SPEAKERcompletely slammed and become utterly useless.
21:52SPEAKERThat, honestly, like, I mean, this is, I swear,
21:54SPEAKERlet's get back to topic, I'll stop digressing after this,
21:58SPEAKERbut, like, that was maybe the most rewarding
22:00SPEAKERor some of the most rewarding work I've done
22:02SPEAKERin that field because you were doing so much
22:04SPEAKERwith so little, like, you really had to get creative
22:06SPEAKERto come up with solutions to problems
22:08SPEAKERthat hadn't really been addressed yet, you know?
22:10SPEAKERLike, we, like, there was a time when,
22:11SPEAKERprobably before those EVDO cards became really available,
22:14SPEAKERor maybe around the same time, like, we would have somebody
22:16SPEAKERwith a phone that had an AIM client on it,
22:18SPEAKERsomething like a T-Mobile Sidekick, at the press conference,
22:20SPEAKERIMing, literally aiming the news to somebody
22:24SPEAKERback in a workroom somewhere, writing up the actual stories,
22:27SPEAKERbecause, you know, nothing was live streamed back then.
22:29SPEAKERNothing was getting out of those press conferences.
22:30SPEAKERLike, literally, we were getting, like, 20 to 30 minutes up
22:33SPEAKERon the competition by having somebody IM that stuff,
22:36SPEAKERas opposed to, like, running out
22:37SPEAKERand writing it up after the thing.
22:38SPEAKER- Well, and, like, figuring that,
22:40SPEAKERgetting to figure that stuff out was so fun.
22:42SPEAKER- Yeah, it really was.
22:43SPEAKER- It was like, here are the tools
22:44SPEAKERthat we have available to us.
22:46SPEAKERHow can we assemble these in a way
22:47SPEAKERthat's going to give us an edge
22:48SPEAKERover the other people doing the exact same thing?
22:50SPEAKER- It's always been more fun to solve problems
22:52SPEAKERwith very, like, primitive and limited tools
22:54SPEAKERthan it has been to really be flush with solutions
22:57SPEAKERand just kind of have everything work.
22:58SPEAKER- Well, and, like, in the old days, it was just hard.
23:03SPEAKERLike, it was, everything was limited.
23:04SPEAKERWi-Fi, I think the first time I went to a CES keynote
23:08SPEAKERwith a Wi-Fi laptop, it worked,
23:10SPEAKERand then the next year, too many people had them,
23:12SPEAKER'cause at the time, you could only put, like,
23:13SPEAKER256 people on a node or something like that,
23:16SPEAKERand there were 3,000 people in the theater,
23:17SPEAKERand they all had probably four nodes.
23:20SPEAKERSo, basically, you could connect,
23:21SPEAKERand then it would just stall out for the next hour,
23:23SPEAKERand, you know, when Bill Gates was doing his talk,
23:25SPEAKERyou would get a third of that uploaded.
23:28SPEAKERSo, it was, yeah.
23:29SPEAKER- Mainstream adoption ruins everything.
23:31SPEAKER- Yeah, it was all better.
23:32SPEAKERIt was just a bunch of nerds on the internet.
23:34SPEAKER- Speaking of mainstream adoption, Wi-Fi.
23:37SPEAKER- AC, so, prior to N, there was a question
23:41SPEAKERover whether Wi-Fi would ever be good enough
23:43SPEAKERto replace, like, wired networks,
23:45SPEAKERand there was other stuff.
23:46SPEAKERThere was, like, power line networks.
23:47SPEAKERThere were networks that operated over the cable coax
23:50SPEAKERin your house, and that stuff mostly has gone away
23:53SPEAKERfor consumers.
23:54SPEAKERYou can still buy power line stuff,
23:56SPEAKERand it turns out the cable stuff got mostly,
23:59SPEAKERis mostly used in, like, set-top boxes now
24:02SPEAKERby AT&T and Comcast and things like that to share,
24:05SPEAKERlike, to buy video around your house,
24:08SPEAKERif you have multiple cable boxes.
24:10SPEAKERBut AC took off and expanded the width of the channels
24:15SPEAKERbetween 80 to 160 megahertz.
24:17SPEAKERIt gave multiple, way more antennas than were available
24:22SPEAKERto the 802.11n spec, and they standardized beamforming,
24:27SPEAKERwhich was, like, an optional thing in N,
24:30SPEAKERand turns out it makes a big deal in how performance works.
24:33SPEAKER- Beamforming has always sounded
24:34SPEAKERlike the most futuristic high-tech shit to me.
24:37SPEAKER- It is, the math is terrifying,
24:39SPEAKERbut the basic gist is that if you have two antennas
24:42SPEAKERand you time the signals right,
24:45SPEAKERthen you can kind of direct which way
24:47SPEAKERthe fat part of the signal goes,
24:50SPEAKERand that's pretty much it.
24:51SPEAKERThat's all there is to it.
24:52SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I think the actual concept
24:54SPEAKERis pretty straightforward.
24:55SPEAKERIt's just it sounds like something
24:56SPEAKERout of, like, some kind of old sci-fi serial or something.
24:59SPEAKER- So it, yeah, definitely, it's Mr. Shoemaker
25:03SPEAKERand the beamformers at the Klingon ship,
25:05SPEAKERand yeah, here we go.
25:07SPEAKERIt's, 802.11ac is notable for a couple of reasons.
25:11SPEAKEROne is that throughput got really complicated
25:14SPEAKERbecause the cost of the radios went down enough
25:16SPEAKERthat even cheap routers have multiple antennas now,
25:19SPEAKERso you get the full benefit of the spec.
25:21SPEAKERThey, a lot of vendors will say, like,
25:23SPEAKER802.11ac 1500, which means,
25:28SPEAKERwhich that 1500 is the theoretical throughput
25:31SPEAKERin megabits per second across all the antennas,
25:34SPEAKERso, and both frequency ranges,
25:36SPEAKERso the 2.4 and five gigahertz bands.
25:41SPEAKER- Okay, so you're never gonna have a single client
25:42SPEAKERconnect at that speed. - Never.
25:43SPEAKERYeah, 'cause you generally,
25:45SPEAKERthe clients either connect to the 2.4 gigahertz range,
25:47SPEAKERwhich is gonna be slower,
25:49SPEAKERbut have better penetration through walls
25:52SPEAKERand stuff like that,
25:53SPEAKERor you'll connect to the 5.4 gigahertz bandwidth band,
25:57SPEAKERwhich has higher throughput and maybe less competition,
26:01SPEAKERbut doesn't penetrate walls and things like that as well.
26:04SPEAKERGenerally speaking, higher frequencies penetrate less well
26:06SPEAKERthan lower frequencies.
26:08SPEAKERSo yeah, the other thing is there are two generations of AC.
26:12SPEAKERSo wave one was the initial wave.
26:14SPEAKERWave two came out midway through 2016
26:17SPEAKERand increased the theoretical throughput
26:21SPEAKERfrom 1.3 gigabits per second to 2.34 gigabits per second,
26:25SPEAKERand also allowed for a lot more connected devices.
26:28SPEAKERSo that became important.
26:30SPEAKERIt was something we should note.
26:33SPEAKERTheoretical throughputs on Wi-Fi are usually,
26:36SPEAKERlike when you're doing a wired network,
26:38SPEAKERyou assume that the actual throughput
26:39SPEAKERis about 80% of the theoretical throughput.
26:42SPEAKERSo if you're talking about gigabit ethernet,
26:44SPEAKERyou're gonna get,
26:45SPEAKERyou know, it's a thousand megabits per second theoretical,
26:48SPEAKERand you'll get like 800 megabits to 900 megabits
26:51SPEAKERactual performance,
26:53SPEAKERbecause there's network overhead for like drop packets
26:55SPEAKERand, you know, lost data and stuff like that.
26:58SPEAKERError correction.
26:59SPEAKERWith Wi-Fi, you need a lot more error correction.
27:01SPEAKERSo the theoretical throughputs and the actual throughputs
27:05SPEAKERare sometimes as low as half, which is to be expected.
27:08SPEAKERLike that's, things are working properly.
27:10SPEAKERBut the neat thing about wave two
27:12SPEAKERis that that 2.34 gigabits per second theoretical throughput,
27:16SPEAKEReven if you're only working at half efficiency,
27:18SPEAKERyou're gonna get faster than gigabit
27:20SPEAKERif you have the right number of antennas on both ends.
27:23SPEAKER- This might be a level of minutia
27:24SPEAKERthat most people don't care about,
27:26SPEAKERbut does that overhead manifest at the stated speed
27:30SPEAKERthat you were connecting to the access point,
27:31SPEAKERor is that the actual, like the real world throughput
27:34SPEAKERwithin the connection, you know what I mean?
27:35SPEAKERLike, or to put it in more practical terms,
27:38SPEAKERlike, you know, you can hold option
27:39SPEAKERand click the little Wi-Fi icon on a MacBook
27:41SPEAKERand see the actual speed you're connected at.
27:42SPEAKER- That speed I think is the actual throughput
27:44SPEAKERthat you're getting.
27:45SPEAKER- So whatever number you see there,
27:46SPEAKERyou can expect that you're actually going
27:48SPEAKERto more or less saturate that.
27:49SPEAKER- Well, so there's two places that error correction happen.
27:52SPEAKEROne is on the physical layer of the network,
27:54SPEAKERwhich is like the actual, the network card handles
27:57SPEAKERbefore it sees the driver in Windows
27:59SPEAKERor OS 10 or whatever your OS is.
28:01SPEAKERSo the network card does a certain amount
28:03SPEAKERof error correction as it goes.
28:06SPEAKERInside that lay up a level from,
28:09SPEAKERlike if you think about network,
28:12SPEAKERI'm gonna mess this up, so please scream at your radio.
28:15SPEAKER- Proceed.
28:16SPEAKER- But yeah, if you think about like,
28:17SPEAKERthink about like a coax cable with multiple layers inside,
28:21SPEAKERthere's the outer insulation and then there's some
28:23SPEAKERlike braided wire and then there's a thick layer
28:25SPEAKERof insulation, then there's a little tiny copper wire
28:28SPEAKERthat runs right through the middle
28:29SPEAKERof the whole thing that's solid.
28:31SPEAKERThe outer layer is the network infrastructure
28:33SPEAKERand that handles things like keeping the water out
28:36SPEAKERand like big, big, it makes sure that it knows
28:39SPEAKERwhere to connect, you know, it has a Mac address
28:42SPEAKERand says here, this is me, raises his hand,
28:45SPEAKERthis is me and here's how to get to me.
28:48SPEAKERAnd then you go up a couple of layers
28:49SPEAKERand you get to the IP layer.
28:51SPEAKERThere's also error correction at the IP layer,
28:53SPEAKERso your actual Mac connected throughput
28:58SPEAKERwill still be a theoretical on that
29:00SPEAKERand like the efficiency of the UDP or TCP protocols
29:04SPEAKERwill take a little bit of bandwidth as well.
29:06SPEAKERSo bottlenecks all the way down.
29:07SPEAKER- Yeah, you get slices off every time you get
29:10SPEAKERto a new layer, basically.
29:12SPEAKERThe last interesting thing about AC
29:14SPEAKERis it reaches the Shannon limit.
29:15SPEAKERWe talked about this yesterday,
29:17SPEAKERbut the Shannon limit is the theoretical,
29:21SPEAKERit's the Shannon limit is the degree of noise contamination
29:26SPEAKERof a communications channel determines
29:29SPEAKERthe maximum theoretical data rate of that channel.
29:33SPEAKERAnd AC is efficient to the point that it approaches
29:36SPEAKERthe Shannon limit very closely.
29:37SPEAKER- So it has physically maximized its own throughput?
29:40SPEAKER- Yeah, for the channel widths, you know,
29:42SPEAKER80 to 60, 100 megahertz channels,
29:43SPEAKERyou can always add wider channels or add more channels,
29:46SPEAKERbut yeah.
29:47SPEAKER- So real quick before we move on from AC,
29:50SPEAKERand if I had maybe stuck with consumer Wi-Fi hardware,
29:53SPEAKERI would not be asking this question,
29:54SPEAKERbut since I bought that Ubiquiti access point,
29:56SPEAKERI'm in IT land and I'm sitting here looking at the interface
29:59SPEAKERand yeah, you can set channel widths
30:02SPEAKERfor both the 2.4 and 5 gigahertz radios.
30:05SPEAKERIs there any reason not to max those?
30:08SPEAKERLike I've fiddled around with that stuff
30:09SPEAKERand like, for instance,
30:10SPEAKERI found that my clients on the 5G or the 5 gigahertz
30:13SPEAKERwere connecting at higher speeds.
30:15SPEAKERBasically the options there are 20, 40, and 80,
30:17SPEAKERand I was getting better connection speeds
30:20SPEAKERat 40 than I was at 80.
30:21SPEAKERAnd I, maybe there are best practices out there
30:24SPEAKERfor stuff like that that I should just go read up on,
30:25SPEAKERbut that seems a little counterintuitive.
30:27SPEAKER- So there's two reasons.
30:28SPEAKEROne is if the clients that you're connecting
30:30SPEAKERdon't support the wider channels.
30:32SPEAKER- Okay.
30:33SPEAKER- Then there's no reason to turn on the wider channels.
30:36SPEAKER- And could that actually lead to slower speeds potentially?
30:39SPEAKER- Shouldn't lead to slower speeds.
30:40SPEAKER- But just be equivalent because it's a fallback?
30:42SPEAKER- Yeah, it'll just not use the top half of that channel.
30:44SPEAKER- It's basically you wasting that spectrum.
30:47SPEAKERThe other thing is you live in a really congested area
30:49SPEAKER'cause you're in a dense residential area
30:51SPEAKERand like, it's terrible.
30:52SPEAKERIt's like, when I opened my phone to connect to your wifi,
30:54SPEAKERI think there were 200 APs or something in range.
30:57SPEAKER- Yeah, so I can do a site scan off this access point
30:59SPEAKERand it maxes out the list of visible,
31:02SPEAKERlike it literally picks up like over 100,
31:05SPEAKER2.4 gigahertz networks.
31:06SPEAKER- Generally speaking, the AC stuff and both
31:10SPEAKERare much better at dealing with other wifi interference.
31:14SPEAKERI like, in my neighborhood,
31:16SPEAKERwhich is a dense suburban neighborhood,
31:18SPEAKERnot a dense urban neighborhood,
31:19SPEAKERI see 40 APs, probably 30 APs probably.
31:23SPEAKERI don't have any problem.
31:24SPEAKERI can run the full 80 megahertz channels.
31:26SPEAKERWith your, where you are,
31:29SPEAKERit may be that you're having interference
31:31SPEAKERwith other people who have similar networks.
31:32SPEAKER- So basically just a trial and error thing,
31:34SPEAKERjust try different settings and see what works.
31:36SPEAKER- It's kind of like placing the router, right?
31:38SPEAKERLike if you have the option of moving the router around
31:41SPEAKERor moving the mesh network endpoints around,
31:43SPEAKERthe way you find out if you have the mesh network
31:45SPEAKERis in a good spot is by plugging it in,
31:47SPEAKERgoing to the far extent of its range,
31:50SPEAKERtesting your throughput,
31:52SPEAKERand then moving it like 10 feet to the right or left
31:54SPEAKERand seeing if there's a better spot.
31:55SPEAKERUsually, most places you don't have to do that,
31:57SPEAKERbut if you want to like min-max your coverage, then you may.
32:01SPEAKERFor example, when my father did his
32:03SPEAKERin order to get the pole that the router
32:05SPEAKERthat covers the barn is covered,
32:08SPEAKERhe had to move his upstairs mesh endpoint
32:11SPEAKERcloser to a window, basically.
32:13SPEAKER- Yeah, all that min-maxing and trial and error
32:16SPEAKERis why I ended up just running ethernet cables
32:18SPEAKERacross the house transparently,
32:20SPEAKER'cause anything that I really care about
32:22SPEAKERin terms of download speeds and latency,
32:24SPEAKERI just want to be on a wire.
32:26SPEAKER- And this is why when you record a podcast with Zencastr,
32:30SPEAKERit says, "Hey, are you on a wired ethernet connection?"
32:33SPEAKER'Cause the latency is better.
32:35SPEAKERSame thing for games.
32:36SPEAKERYou add five or 10 milliseconds of latency
32:40SPEAKERjust by being on Wi-Fi with AC and then G.
32:43SPEAKER- That's why I don't consider Wi-Fi
32:45SPEAKERa viable option for consoles, 'cause--
32:47SPEAKER- Well, I mean, it's fine if you're just downloading games
32:49SPEAKERand playing single-player stuff, but if you're, yeah.
32:52SPEAKER- Downloads, yeah, downloads, fine, yeah.
32:54SPEAKER- And just to be clear, most of very relatively few people
32:58SPEAKERin the United States have internet connections
33:00SPEAKERthat are faster than AC.
33:02SPEAKER- Yeah, well, I am also in that tiny slice
33:04SPEAKERof the population, so that does matter for me, but anyway.
33:08SPEAKER- So Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi, oh, wait, there's one more.
33:12SPEAKER- Uh-oh.
33:13SPEAKER- There's one in between, there's a tweensie.
33:14SPEAKERHave you heard of YGIG?
33:16SPEAKER- I have, I think I've heard of that name,
33:18SPEAKERand it sounded so ridiculous that I just blocked it out.
33:20SPEAKER- So it is 802.11 AD and AY,
33:23SPEAKERmore extensions of the IEEE 802.11 spec.
33:27SPEAKERThey are, this operates in two gigahertz, five gigahertz,
33:31SPEAKERand 60 gigahertz bands, 60.
33:34SPEAKER- What, is that, that sounds like
33:36SPEAKERan illegal number of gigahertz.
33:37SPEAKER- It's a lot of gigahertz.
33:39SPEAKER- I mean, like, quite literally illegal,
33:41SPEAKERconsidering the spectrum is regulated, but I don't--
33:43SPEAKER- Well, so there's another unregulated area
33:44SPEAKERabove 60 gigahertz that is basically millimeter wave.
33:50SPEAKERYGIG gives you speeds of up to seven gigabits per second.
33:52SPEAKER- Wow.
33:53SPEAKER- It's mostly used for uncompressed,
33:56SPEAKERso for sending uncompressed video wirelessly.
33:58SPEAKER- Jeez.
33:59SPEAKER- So, for example, I have a Vive wireless kit
34:02SPEAKERthat you plug into a Vive or a Vive Pro,
34:04SPEAKERand it uses a battery pack with a VR headset,
34:07SPEAKERand it has enough bandwidth at seven gigabits per second
34:11SPEAKERto pipe uncompressed native resolution video per,
34:16SPEAKERor very lightly compressed native resolution video per eye
34:20SPEAKERto the VR headset from the computer.
34:22SPEAKER- With an acceptable amount of latency?
34:23SPEAKER- Yeah, you don't even notice.
34:25SPEAKERNext time you come over, you should try it.
34:26SPEAKER- Jeez, that's wild.
34:27SPEAKER- It's, the problem is I have an antenna
34:30SPEAKERthat hangs on the top of my monitor,
34:32SPEAKERand it has to have line of sight.
34:34SPEAKER- That was my question.
34:35SPEAKER- Yeah, so, if you try to put it on the other side of a wall
34:38SPEAKERor something like that, it just doesn't work.
34:39SPEAKERYeah, it's mostly for uncompressed video transport.
34:42SPEAKERIt requires a dedicated card.
34:44SPEAKERI don't think it's built into any motherboards.
34:47SPEAKERI would describe it as mostly moribund at this point.
34:49SPEAKER- And I'm guessing Wi-Fi 6 will make it 100% so.
34:52SPEAKER- Pretty much, it seems like.
34:54SPEAKERIt seems like the Y gig was maybe Intel trying to get out
34:58SPEAKERin front of the next generation of Wi-Fi
35:00SPEAKERand take it as their own, and then just nobody cared.
35:03SPEAKER- That never seems like a good idea to me.
35:06SPEAKERLike, you see it all the time with like,
35:08SPEAKERI feel like G-Sync is an example,
35:09SPEAKERand the current NVIDIA ray tracing RTX stuff
35:12SPEAKERis, it just looks like it's maybe going down a similar path,
35:14SPEAKERand like, here's another example of like,
35:16SPEAKERsingle corporations, usually the dominant ones,
35:19SPEAKERtrying to like, muscle their way in and take control
35:21SPEAKERor create a standard when nobody else has agreed to it,
35:24SPEAKERand it just seems like it never actually catches on.
35:25SPEAKER- Like, G-Sync has been pretty successful, I think,
35:28SPEAKERin the niche that it lives in.
35:29SPEAKER- Oh yeah, and we've talked about this before.
35:30SPEAKERLike, it obviously, it proved its worth.
35:32SPEAKERI mean, like, technically it is very impressive
35:34SPEAKERand does what it's supposed to.
35:35SPEAKERIt's just that like, FreeSync seems to be the, you know,
35:38SPEAKERthe open standard, unsurprisingly, seems to be the thing
35:40SPEAKERthat is actually really making its way
35:42SPEAKERinto the widest number of products.
35:43SPEAKER- I mean, the RTX thing is, we should talk,
35:45SPEAKERwe'll do an episode about ray tracing at some point
35:47SPEAKERin the not too distant future.
35:48SPEAKER- Yeah, I would love to do that.
35:49SPEAKER- But part of that, I think NVIDIA's strategy
35:53SPEAKERwith that stuff, 'cause they are famous for doing this
35:55SPEAKERwith PhysX and G-Sync and now RTX
35:59SPEAKERand like, hardware transform and lighting extensions
36:01SPEAKERway back in the old days.
36:03SPEAKER- Pixel shaders, all that stuff.
36:04SPEAKER- Yeah, their thing is the standards bodies move,
36:08SPEAKERthe standards committees move really slowly
36:10SPEAKERand often, like, they just want to get something
36:12SPEAKERout in market 'cause they want to sell video cards, so.
36:16SPEAKER- That makes sense.
36:17SPEAKER- And they have a good developer relations team.
36:18SPEAKERSo they can actually get people to use CUDA
36:21SPEAKERor get people to use RTX or whatever it is.
36:25SPEAKERUsually, I think, by writing marketing checks,
36:27SPEAKERbut you know, that's fine.
36:28SPEAKERThat's how the business works, I guess.
36:29SPEAKER- The open standards do seem to move
36:30SPEAKERlike remarkably slowly.
36:32SPEAKERLike, I was just reading about PCI Express this morning
36:34SPEAKERand the, apparently, the standard for PCI Express 5
36:38SPEAKERwas ratified before PCI Express 4 hardware,
36:41SPEAKERbefore there were CPUs on the market that supported 4.
36:43SPEAKER- Well, but that's because the pipeline on CPUs is so deep,
36:46SPEAKERright?
36:47SPEAKER- Well, yeah, that's fair.
36:48SPEAKER- Yeah, it takes, you're looking at like three years
36:50SPEAKERfrom the initial design to first tape out, probably.
36:53SPEAKER- Yeah, so yeah, maybe the new Wi-Fi standards
36:55SPEAKERwill come online in consumer products a lot faster than that.
36:58SPEAKER- And like, it's important, like, the thing that's important
37:00SPEAKERabout Wi-Fi to note is that, literally,
37:04SPEAKERwhen they came and talked to us in the early 2000s
37:07SPEAKERabout why Wi-Fi alliance was important,
37:10SPEAKERtheir pitch was, "We're not gonna make this faster or better
37:12SPEAKER"or anything like that.
37:13SPEAKER"We're just gonna make it so that if the box
37:16SPEAKER"has this sticker on it, you know it will work
37:19SPEAKER"with other devices that have this sticker on it."
37:21SPEAKERThat was their whole, like,
37:22SPEAKERit was all interoperability testing,
37:24SPEAKERand like, the IEEE drove the spec forward,
37:29SPEAKERbut the Wi-Fi alliance, the people that changed it
37:30SPEAKERfrom 802.11 whatever to Wi-Fi 6 were saying,
37:35SPEAKER"Hey, we just wanna make sure everything works together."
37:37SPEAKERSo like, you're talking about minimum viable versus,
37:40SPEAKERthen this is a market where there's 30 different vendors
37:43SPEAKERmaking products, or hundreds of vendors making products
37:45SPEAKERif you count all the endpoints, versus video cards
37:49SPEAKERwhere there's two companies, maybe three if you count Intel,
37:51SPEAKERmaking video cards, and I would feel weird about, say,
37:56SPEAKERBroadcom determining wide swaths of this spec
38:00SPEAKERand saying that that stuff's only gonna work
38:02SPEAKERon their hardware, which is 20% of the market or whatever.
38:05SPEAKERAnd whereas Nvidia, with half of the market,
38:08SPEAKERor probably more than half in the high-end space,
38:11SPEAKERit's a different situation.
38:13SPEAKER- Yeah, that's fair.
38:14SPEAKER- So yeah, Wi-Fi 6, this is the big business.
38:17SPEAKER45 minutes in, we're nailing it.
38:18SPEAKER- All right, lay it on me.
38:20SPEAKERI'm ready, it's been a long time.
38:21SPEAKERI'm ready to get excited about Wi-Fi again.
38:23SPEAKER- This is, it's 802.11 AX.
38:26SPEAKERWi-Fi alliance decided to retroactively rename
38:28SPEAKERevery generation previously based on the sixth generation
38:31SPEAKERWi-Fi, and the speeds are up to 9.6 gigabits per second.
38:35SPEAKER- Wow, okay.
38:36SPEAKER- Now that's using the 2.4 and five gigahertz band
38:39SPEAKERplus some newly available area that ranges
38:42SPEAKERbetween one and six gigahertz.
38:44SPEAKERSo basically--
38:46SPEAKER- Was that spectrum used for anything else previously
38:49SPEAKERand has it been freed up?
38:50SPEAKER- I think it's old phone spectrum, but I'm not sure.
38:52SPEAKER- Okay.
38:53SPEAKER- The upshot is it's gonna be four times faster
38:57SPEAKERin areas where AC had dense deployments
39:00SPEAKERthat were interfering with each other.
39:03SPEAKERSo for you, you might see a significant speed improvement.
39:07SPEAKERFor me, probably not, because we were already
39:10SPEAKERat the Shannon limit and it seems like they're not
39:12SPEAKERnecessarily increasing the width of the bands
39:15SPEAKERfor 802.11 AX.
39:18SPEAKER- Although all the spectrum stuff is hard
39:19SPEAKERto get your head around, but that extra gigahertz
39:22SPEAKERof spectrum, the up in the six gigahertz range,
39:25SPEAKERlike there's, is there anything inherently
39:27SPEAKERabout that range of the spectrum that is less interactive
39:30SPEAKERwith itself than the lower part of the range
39:33SPEAKERor is it just that fewer people will be using it
39:35SPEAKERand that's why it won't be as interfered with?
39:37SPEAKER- Because it's new, there will be fewer people using it.
39:39SPEAKER- Well, that goes without saying, I guess,
39:41SPEAKERbut what I mean is like once that part of the spectrum
39:43SPEAKERbecomes saturated or widely used,
39:45SPEAKERis it not going to have the same issues
39:47SPEAKERwith interference as everyone else?
39:48SPEAKER- No, they're just doing, they're doing more stuff
39:51SPEAKERthat makes it work better in all spectrums.
39:53SPEAKERSo even if you have a router that's only a five gigahertz
39:56SPEAKERand 2.4 gigahertz router, you'll still be fine.
39:58SPEAKERAnd part of it is also, remember,
40:01SPEAKERthis stuff has to work around the whole world.
40:03SPEAKERSo you're looking at, like there may be stuff
40:08SPEAKERthat's not licensed for public use here
40:11SPEAKERthat is in Japan or South Korea or Europe or wherever.
40:15SPEAKER- So looking at your notes here,
40:17SPEAKERanother peek behind the curtain.
40:20SPEAKERThis says speeds are 4X faster than AC
40:22SPEAKERand dense deployments because of better efficiency
40:24SPEAKERand spectrum utilization.
40:25SPEAKERSo like maybe to borrow analogy from the CPU world,
40:30SPEAKERthat sounds like the type of thing where like,
40:31SPEAKERclock speeds have remained relatively consistent
40:33SPEAKERin CPUs for ages, but instructions per clock
40:36SPEAKERhave gone up dramatically.
40:38SPEAKERThat sounds like a very similar thing, right?
40:39SPEAKEROf like, we have an established speed
40:41SPEAKERand we are just doing more with it per cycle.
40:43SPEAKERIs that basically what we're talking about?
40:44SPEAKER- That seems right.
40:45SPEAKERThey're using more, I think, bits for the quadrature
40:50SPEAKERand amplitude modulation. (laughs)
40:52SPEAKER- Of course.
40:53SPEAKER- QAM, it's used in a lot of telecommunication stuff and--
40:57SPEAKER- QAM? - QAM.
40:58SPEAKER- Okay, I have seen that acronym before.
41:00SPEAKERI have no idea what it meant.
41:01SPEAKERStill have no idea what it means.
41:03SPEAKER- Basically, it means that they modulate the wave form
41:06SPEAKERof these analog signals to contain a digital signal
41:09SPEAKERand it's more efficient and is less easily interfered with.
41:14SPEAKERIt also, there's better power control.
41:16SPEAKER- So that's potentially gonna cut down
41:17SPEAKERon the necessary error correction?
41:19SPEAKER- Yeah, so yeah, you'll have fewer drop packets
41:22SPEAKERbecause your neighbor's WiFi is annoying.
41:25SPEAKERThey also do orthogonal frequency division multiple access.
41:29SPEAKER- Of course they do.
41:30SPEAKER- Yeah, which it's a different kind
41:32SPEAKERof digital modulation scheme that just assigns subsets
41:37SPEAKERof the signal to individual users.
41:40SPEAKERAnd it seems like they may even be able
41:41SPEAKERto talk across routers.
41:43SPEAKERIt's unclear how that works to me.
41:45SPEAKERAnd then the other point is the MIMO,
41:47SPEAKERthe multiple input, multiple output.
41:50SPEAKERThere's a multi-user MIMO thing now
41:52SPEAKERthat I think has been around in some ACA deployments
41:55SPEAKERbut is required for the AX deployments.
41:58SPEAKERAnd what that means is that multiple users
42:01SPEAKERcan use the same antennas at the same time, I believe.
42:04SPEAKERThat one also is, some of these, the WiFi consortium,
42:08SPEAKERI feel like those people are probably writing
42:09SPEAKERthese Wikipedia articles and the white papers
42:11SPEAKERthat explain all this stuff.
42:12SPEAKERIt's a little thin on exactly what that does.
42:15SPEAKEROh, and then the other thing is WPA3 is coming,
42:17SPEAKERwhich is more efficient and more secure.
42:19SPEAKER- Oh, I don't think WPA2
42:23SPEAKERhas ever been a hundred percent compromised, right?
42:24SPEAKERLike I think there are some ways to access it
42:28SPEAKERor get into it in some like very specific scenarios, right?
42:31SPEAKERBut it's never become anywhere near
42:33SPEAKERas hideously insecure as WEP, right?
42:35SPEAKER- Yeah, it's not like WEP where now like an Android phone
42:39SPEAKERcan break WEP, I believe.
42:40SPEAKERBut yeah, I mean, WPA2 is a good example
42:43SPEAKERof like secure enough for most users.
42:47SPEAKERWPA3, there's overhead with WPA2,
42:50SPEAKERdepending on the type of encryption you use.
42:52SPEAKERIt's not a problem on modern routers, but on old hardware.
42:55SPEAKERWhat was the old Linksys G router that everybody had?
42:58SPEAKER- Oh, the WRT-54G.
43:00SPEAKER- Yeah, the WRT Classic.
43:01SPEAKERYeah, if you use the wrong type of encryption for that,
43:04SPEAKERit would chunk the thing 'cause it didn't have hardware
43:06SPEAKERsupport for AES encryption, I think.
43:08SPEAKER- Oh, wow.
43:09SPEAKER- But that stuff's not a problem anymore.
43:12SPEAKERAlso, the other thing about WPA3 is it requires,
43:16SPEAKERthe password requirements are higher
43:17SPEAKERso that bad passwords won't, like,
43:20SPEAKERmost of the people that I think have had WPA2 cracked
43:23SPEAKERare because of bad passwords.
43:25SPEAKERLike if you make your password A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A,
43:28SPEAKERyour WPA is gonna be pretty easy to figure out.
43:31SPEAKER- Just use a random number of A's and you'll be fine.
43:34SPEAKER- There you go, nailed it.
43:35SPEAKERIt's a one-bit password.
43:36SPEAKER- Let me see, I'm trying to think if I have
43:38SPEAKERany standout questions on this.
43:40SPEAKERSo on the one hand, you're saying the maximum throughput
43:43SPEAKERon this is 9.6 gigahertz, I mean gigabits per second?
43:45SPEAKER- Yes.
43:46SPEAKER- On the other hand, you're saying that it really
43:48SPEAKERonly makes sense in areas
43:50SPEAKERwith a lot of existing interference?
43:52SPEAKERSo where does that massive ceiling on throughput come in
43:55SPEAKERif this is not gonna make much difference for people
43:58SPEAKERthat don't already have a lot of overlapping network?
44:00SPEAKER- It's if you can use the wide 160 megahertz channels
44:04SPEAKERat the higher frequencies in your region.
44:07SPEAKER- Okay.
44:08SPEAKER- So it really depends on what part of the world
44:10SPEAKERyou live in.
44:11SPEAKER- Oh, okay, so we're just getting into regulation
44:12SPEAKERat this point?
44:13SPEAKER- Well, yeah, and how dense your deployment is.
44:15SPEAKERSo if you're only able to use 40 megahertz channels
44:18SPEAKERat your house now because your AC router is contested
44:22SPEAKERfrom everybody else around you,
44:24SPEAKERthen you may be in a situation
44:27SPEAKERwhere an AX deployment makes sense.
44:29SPEAKER- Oh, I see, so it's not a matter of which parts
44:32SPEAKERof the spectrum are sanctioned in your area,
44:34SPEAKERit's just physically what--
44:35SPEAKER- Well, it's both.
44:36SPEAKER- Interference you have?
44:37SPEAKER- It's both, so if you can tap into the above 5.4 gigahertz
44:40SPEAKERspectrum, that's great and will help you out, right?
44:44SPEAKER- The main thing is the more efficiency in the routers
44:48SPEAKERwith competition in the same space, it seems like to me.
44:50SPEAKERIt's not like they're using a microwave band
44:53SPEAKERlike the Y gig stuff is to get ridiculous bandwidth.
44:56SPEAKERThey're just saying, hey, we can do these big fat channels,
44:59SPEAKERwe can multiplex them.
45:00SPEAKER- Okay, so then that was another question I was gonna ask
45:02SPEAKERis it sounds like that would not create
45:05SPEAKERany kind of line of sight requirements,
45:06SPEAKERlike this will more or less penetrate
45:08SPEAKERin the same way as AC?
45:08SPEAKER- The six gigahertz is about the same as 5.4,
45:11SPEAKERlike it's close enough to 5.4 that it goes through walls
45:14SPEAKERin a house.
45:15SPEAKERIf you have concrete walls, you're gonna have problems,
45:18SPEAKERdepending on how much rebar and stone is in there.
45:20SPEAKER- Any sense of, even if you're a good candidate
45:22SPEAKERfor an AX upgrade in terms of like your,
45:25SPEAKERthe interference patterns around you and stuff like that,
45:28SPEAKERany sense of whether that's a worthwhile thing to do
45:30SPEAKERuntil like almost all of your clients also support it?
45:33SPEAKER- So in the old days, I always write like,
45:35SPEAKERwhen you were jumping from G to N,
45:36SPEAKERgetting an N router made a lot of sense
45:38SPEAKERbecause if you had one N device,
45:40SPEAKERthen it would split down and drop everything else to G,
45:44SPEAKERbut your N device would still run pretty fast.
45:47SPEAKERI don't know that it's worth upgrading immediately
45:51SPEAKERunless you have that really specific use case.
45:54SPEAKERLike you, you're in a dense congested urban area
45:58SPEAKERwith a lot of wifi and you actually have uses
46:01SPEAKERfor the high-speed wireless.
46:03SPEAKER- But even without any devices that specifically support AX?
46:07SPEAKER- I think without devices that support AX,
46:10SPEAKERit's a different situation.
46:11SPEAKERI think if you had an iPad or you had a MacBook
46:13SPEAKERthat supported AX, it would make a lot more sense.
46:16SPEAKER- I guess that brings me to my last major question
46:18SPEAKERof like, when is all this stuff happening?
46:20SPEAKER- So the hardware is shipping now.
46:22SPEAKERThe thing that always happens with wifi
46:24SPEAKERis that the hardware starts coming out
46:26SPEAKERbefore the spec is totally locked down and finalized
46:28SPEAKERonce they lock down the hardware.
46:29SPEAKER- Oh good, that sounds great.
46:31SPEAKER- It's, you know, it's not great, but it's fine.
46:35SPEAKERYou can buy a AX dual band 1500 AX router
46:40SPEAKERfrom Amazon today for $90.
46:43SPEAKER- Oh, that's okay, that's reasonable.
46:44SPEAKER- And if you want, that's an AX 1500,
46:47SPEAKERso that's across the 2.4 and five gigahertz,
46:51SPEAKERwhatever bands it's using.
46:52SPEAKERIf you want the TP-Link AX 6000 eight stream
46:57SPEAKERsmart wifi router, that's 300 bucks, $270.
47:00SPEAKER- Ah man, like feature creep and price creep
47:02SPEAKERon consumer routers is a whole separate topic, I feel like.
47:05SPEAKER- Yeah, exactly.
47:07SPEAKERI feel like, I mean, the thing is I feel like
47:10SPEAKERfor most people, the AX stuff is,
47:13SPEAKERlike if you're outfitting your house
47:15SPEAKERwith a mesh network right now,
47:17SPEAKERI think the Orbi one is available.
47:20SPEAKERIt's, they have a wifi six Orbi now with two nodes
47:26SPEAKERand that's tri-bands, so that's three ranges,
47:29SPEAKERthree, it's AX 6000 up to six gigahertz,
47:33SPEAKERgigabits per second rather.
47:35SPEAKERI feel like I wouldn't spend $500 on AC stuff at this point.
47:41SPEAKERI would buy, if you're gonna spend it,
47:44SPEAKEReither wait or get the wifi six stuff,
47:48SPEAKERjust so you have it in the future.
47:49SPEAKERLike this stuff lasts a long time.
47:50SPEAKER- Yeah, that's what I was gonna say.
47:51SPEAKERI mean, it sounds like if you're on an AC setup
47:53SPEAKERthat you're even relatively happy with right now,
47:55SPEAKERit'd be better to just sit tight for a little bit,
47:57SPEAKERwait for device adoption to catch up.
48:00SPEAKER- Absolutely, I'm looking to see when I bought my router.
48:03SPEAKERI bought my Netgear AC router in 2014.
48:06SPEAKERSo it's a four year old AC 1900 router.
48:09SPEAKER- Wow, okay.
48:10SPEAKER- So, yeah.
48:11SPEAKER- This is one of the biggest reasons I've been happy
48:13SPEAKERmoving to this modular approach
48:15SPEAKERwhere I've got the standalone router/gateway
48:18SPEAKERthat is just that for wired stuff
48:20SPEAKERand then having this external separate access point
48:22SPEAKERbecause now I can throw out the,
48:24SPEAKERI can throw this AC access point in the trash
48:26SPEAKERwhen I'm, or you know, whatever, sell it.
48:28SPEAKEROr put it in a drawer most likely when I'm done with it
48:30SPEAKERand just get a new access point
48:31SPEAKERand this router is gonna be good for a very long time
48:34SPEAKERand I don't have to worry about replacing the entire thing.
48:36SPEAKER- And the router was what, like 100 bucks probably?
48:39SPEAKER- It retails for 200.
48:40SPEAKERI got it at 150 on sale.
48:42SPEAKERBut it's a good, it's a very fast capable router
48:45SPEAKERthat I've got, like I set up my own VPN on it.
48:48SPEAKERIt's doing a lot of stuff.
48:49SPEAKERI think I've talked about before,
48:50SPEAKERit's doing some DNS caching for me and stuff like that.
48:52SPEAKERLike it's a good piece of hardware
48:54SPEAKERand it's nice to configure that and have it just there
48:57SPEAKERand probably keep it for years and not worry about,
49:00SPEAKERlike a new Wi-Fi standard making that obsolete as well.
49:03SPEAKER- Well, I mean, that's absolutely, you're absolutely right.
49:04SPEAKERIt's like the router with the access point built in,
49:08SPEAKERlike as in all the mesh network stuff
49:10SPEAKERand all the standalone routers,
49:11SPEAKERis essentially like a TV with a VCR in the bottom, right?
49:14SPEAKERRemember those? - Yeah, totally.
49:16SPEAKER- So on one hand, on the other hand,
49:19SPEAKERthe pro stuff is really hard to configure
49:23SPEAKERif you don't understand basic networking stuff.
49:25SPEAKER- It's a hassle, it's a massive hassle.
49:27SPEAKER- I really, I've gone from being really wary
49:30SPEAKERof the mesh networking stuff
49:31SPEAKERto recommending it for everyone.
49:33SPEAKER- Oh, totally.
49:34SPEAKERI mean, it sounds like if you don't wanna fiddle with stuff
49:36SPEAKERand you just wanna plug things in and have it work.
49:37SPEAKER- Especially if you don't wanna have to run wires.
49:39SPEAKERLike running wires is still the best way
49:42SPEAKERto make that stuff work and be super reliable,
49:45SPEAKERbut not running wires is much better
49:47SPEAKERfor almost every human being I've ever met.
49:49SPEAKER- I have a dark secret.
49:49SPEAKER- What's your dark secret?
49:50SPEAKER- The biggest reason that I wish I could own a home
49:52SPEAKERin this area is so I could run wires everywhere.
49:55SPEAKER- Brad. - And I mean everywhere.
49:57SPEAKERBrad, when we bought this house 12 years ago,
50:01SPEAKERwe had it for a week before we got the floors done.
50:04SPEAKERAnd Gina and I came over here, we painted the whole thing.
50:07SPEAKERAnd then I had half a day left
50:09SPEAKERand I had bought 500 feet of ethernet.
50:11SPEAKER- Oh my God.
50:12SPEAKER- And a bunch of outlets.
50:13SPEAKERAnd I have at least one ethernet outlet in every room
50:16SPEAKERand some rooms have two to four.
50:18SPEAKERSo they're everywhere.
50:20SPEAKER- I'm so jealous.
50:21SPEAKER- They're only CAT5E though
50:23SPEAKER'cause CAT6 was really expensive back then, so.
50:27SPEAKERIt's more than good enough.
50:28SPEAKER- That'll be okay.
50:29SPEAKER- Yeah, I think that's a, unless you have other,
50:32SPEAKERso yeah, like the TLDR on should you get Wi-Fi 6
50:37SPEAKERis if you already have AC and it's good for you,
50:39SPEAKERdon't bother probably right now.
50:40SPEAKER- Yeah, just get a few years.
50:41SPEAKER- If you're building a house or something
50:43SPEAKERand like doing Wi-Fi installation,
50:45SPEAKERif you're moving into a new place
50:47SPEAKERand you like, probably I would not spend money on,
50:51SPEAKERif you need to spend money on Wi-Fi stuff,
50:53SPEAKERI probably would not spend money on Wi-Fi on AC
50:56SPEAKERat this point, I would probably go
50:57SPEAKERwith the full AX/Wi-Fi 6.
51:00SPEAKER- Yes, 'cause I think you mean Wi-Fi 6 as opposed to Wi-Fi 5.
51:03SPEAKER- I hate this, I hate this so much.
51:06SPEAKERHey, did you know that Facebook is all caps now?
51:08SPEAKERIt's F-A-C-E-B-O-O-K, all caps, they rebranded.
51:11SPEAKERWe have to change the way we say it.
51:12SPEAKER- Nope, nope, nope.
51:16SPEAKERLast, real fast, last question.
51:17SPEAKERLike, do you have any idea when like, let's say your,
51:20SPEAKERyou know, your iPhones, your flagship Android phones,
51:23SPEAKERyour iPads, surfaces, et cetera, et cetera,
51:26SPEAKERwill all start having 6 integrated?
51:28SPEAKERLike, that's probably what, a little ways off
51:29SPEAKERin terms of getting it like,
51:30SPEAKERefficiently integrated into SOCs.
51:33SPEAKER- So there's one thing that's important to note.
51:35SPEAKERWi-Fi 6, what are those NV,
51:40SPEAKERno, what are the little cards that go in the computer?
51:43SPEAKERIt's called, they're not NVMe, the other spec.
51:47SPEAKERI'll type PCIe card laptop and see if Google,
51:49SPEAKERokay, so you could buy Wi-Fi 6 adapters
51:51SPEAKERfor your laptop right now.
51:52SPEAKERThey are M2 cards, little tiny M2 cards.
51:56SPEAKERThey're like the size of a postage stamp,
51:58SPEAKERand they have antenna connectors on them.
52:01SPEAKERLike this, you can buy an Intel AX card right now.
52:05SPEAKERMy guess is it's an upgrade option on a lot of laptops
52:07SPEAKERif you're doing build to order.
52:08SPEAKERSo like, you can get those devices now,
52:11SPEAKERthey'll still be backwards compatible with AC
52:13SPEAKERand they'll work great with AC.
52:15SPEAKERSo yeah, like everything but Macs
52:17SPEAKERwhere stuff is soldered on and phones.
52:19SPEAKERMy guess is next year's phones support AC.
52:21SPEAKER- Okay, you mean in 6, AX.
52:23SPEAKER- AX, yeah, and across the board.
52:28SPEAKERI'm sure there's some Android devices
52:29SPEAKERthat support AX already.
52:30SPEAKER- Yeah, that would make sense.
52:31SPEAKERThose things come out all the time.
52:33SPEAKER- But in my experience, the cell phone processors
52:36SPEAKERare usually so slow that it doesn't matter.
52:39SPEAKERYou're not gonna see the maximum theoretical throughput
52:41SPEAKERof your Wi-Fi because the processor will choke.
52:44SPEAKER- Also, who needs multiple gigabits per second
52:46SPEAKERof throughput on a phone?
52:47SPEAKER- Look, man, I got-- - What are you gonna do
52:48SPEAKERwith that? - I got that 4K HDR video
52:50SPEAKERand it's uncompressed, so yeah.
52:54SPEAKER- I got that speed test app.
52:56SPEAKERJust wanna see that number go up.
52:57SPEAKER- Yeah, so that's Wi-Fi.
52:58SPEAKERIf you all have questions about Wi-Fi,
53:00SPEAKERI don't think we're gonna do questions this week
53:01SPEAKER'cause we did a big question episode last week.
53:04SPEAKERBut you can send them to techpod@content.town.
53:07SPEAKERWe will endeavor to answer them.
53:09SPEAKERSomebody asked me if I could come fix
53:11SPEAKERtheir computer last week.
53:12SPEAKER- Wow. - Which I thought was nice.
53:13SPEAKERYeah. - Did you agree?
53:15SPEAKER- I gave him a quote.
53:16SPEAKERMy normal rate plus travel plus expenses, the usual.
53:20SPEAKERNegotiations are ongoing.
53:22SPEAKER- Yeah, we'll see how it goes.
53:23SPEAKERLet's see, I guess that's it for us.
53:25SPEAKERYou can mash the review button on iTunes helps a lot.
53:28SPEAKERWe should read some reviews at some point
53:31SPEAKER'cause there's some pretty funny reviews in there.
53:33SPEAKER- Okay. - Yeah, everybody loves
53:34SPEAKERa good review read.
53:35SPEAKER- Is my fragile ego gonna be able to handle it?
53:38SPEAKER- Look, there has not been a more gratifying place
53:40SPEAKERfor your fragile ego than the iTunes review section
53:44SPEAKERfor this podcast.
53:45SPEAKER- Okay, I just wanna be wrapped in a warm,
53:47SPEAKERcomforting blanket.
53:48SPEAKER- It's a universal adoration for you.
53:50SPEAKEREverybody hates me, but that's fine.
53:51SPEAKERI'm used to that.
53:52SPEAKER- You're gonna be throwing roses at us.
53:53SPEAKER- Well, just you.
53:54SPEAKERYeah, exactly.
53:55SPEAKERAs long as you don't stand too close to me, you'll be fine.
53:58SPEAKERYeah, so mash the review button.
54:00SPEAKERThat helps get the word out.
54:01SPEAKERThe podcast is, I feel like this is our ninth episode now
54:04SPEAKERor 10th episode, depending on how you count it.
54:06SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
54:07SPEAKER- Trucking along.
54:08SPEAKER- So I'm enjoying it.
54:09SPEAKERIt's been fun.
54:10SPEAKERThe feedback has been really lovely.
54:12SPEAKERSo we appreciate that.
54:13SPEAKER- Highly informative.
54:15SPEAKER- You can follow the podcast at Sweatpants Tech
54:17SPEAKERon the Twitters.
54:19SPEAKERI think we have an Instagram,
54:20SPEAKERbut I don't expect to ever use that.
54:21SPEAKERI just reserved it just in case.
54:23SPEAKER- Good to know.
54:24SPEAKERI don't even have an Instagram,
54:25SPEAKERso maybe I'll just hijack that thing someday.
54:26SPEAKER- You don't have a gram?
54:27SPEAKER- Nope.
54:28SPEAKERSomebody had already gotten my name,
54:29SPEAKERso I was just like, ah, what do I need this for?
54:32SPEAKER- Like, I never do anything cool enough
54:33SPEAKERto take a picture of it.
54:34SPEAKERAnd I have plenty of venues for sharing pictures of my kid.
54:36SPEAKER- Yep, exactly.
54:37SPEAKER- So, Brad, where can people find you on the Internets?
54:42SPEAKER- @BradShumaker on Twitter, probably the best place.
54:44SPEAKER- I'm @WillSmith on the Twitters,
54:47SPEAKERalso probably my best place.
54:48SPEAKERAnd thanks everybody for listening.
54:50SPEAKERI guess we'll see you all next week.
54:51SPEAKER- Yeah.
54:52SPEAKER- Bye.
54:53SPEAKER(upbeat music)