0:00

Brad, I saw somebody using an E-ink

0:03

reader yesterday. So

0:05

unusual about that. It was the size of a phone.

0:08

So it was like he held the person was holding it

0:10

like a phone reading a book. And I walked up to

0:12

them and asked them what it was because I'd never seen

0:14

one before. And they, we talked about it and it looked

0:17

fabulous. Is it just an E-read? It's not actually

0:19

a phone. So they make phones too, but

0:21

the one he has is just an E-reader. Wait, they

0:23

do make phones with E-ink screens? They're

0:25

for people who have distraction problems. Are they as

0:27

slow to refresh as, for example, a Kindle? Depends

0:30

on how old it, so they're faster than the

0:32

old Kindles are. I would say now, like if

0:34

you, if you have like an old first gen

0:36

paperwhite or something, probably faster than you're thinking, but

0:38

they're still not, you're not going to watch a

0:41

video on these. Okay. I guess the better question

0:43

to ask is like people who have used Kindles,

0:45

like that's quite slow when you turn a page,

0:47

you know, it's a good second. As it kind

0:49

of slowly refreshes screen. It's faster than that,

0:51

but it's like, it's like hundreds of milliseconds.

0:53

It's not like 60 frames a second. Yeah.

0:56

My question is, is that due to the

0:59

slow processing of a Kindle or is that

1:01

a feature? Is that a limitation of an

1:03

E-ink screen? Oh, it's because

1:05

the E-ink screens are mechanical.

1:08

So there's little balls inside them that

1:10

float from the bottom to the top

1:12

of a liquid. There's locomotion

1:15

in there. Yeah. Things are moving. Oh, wow.

1:17

They're very small things. Okay. Well,

1:19

with that established then, yeah, I guess you wouldn't

1:21

be able to be distracted much by an E-ink

1:23

phone because it would take forever to do anything.

1:25

Well, you say that, but like, I'm just as

1:28

easy to do. Like I can distract myself just

1:30

as effectively with a book as I can with,

1:32

say, a

1:36

video, probably more so. So, yeah, I guess,

1:38

you know, I guess you could scroll Twitter.

1:40

Yeah. Are there color E-ink screens that are

1:42

ubiquitous at this point? You can get color

1:44

E-ink, but you lose a lot of the

1:46

benefits and they're still slow. And

1:49

they don't, it's not like they're vibrant and

1:51

look good. I bet an E-ink phone lasts

1:53

forever. Battery wise. Yeah. I'm,

1:55

I'm, I'm looking at some right now.

1:58

There's the books, poke five. the

2:00

what? The books, book five books, B

2:03

O O X. I think that's how you say it.

2:05

Boox books. Oh, so there's the

2:07

books. Palma might just be

2:09

books. Well, why would they have two O's

2:11

if it's just one, they spell it B O O K

2:14

S then said B O X. It's

2:16

not boo. It's, it's not something you can

2:18

trade. I mean,

2:20

you think it's just

2:23

books. I'm sad now. Books, books, books,

2:25

I'm going with books. Palma. I suppose

2:27

books is a bit more memorable books.

2:29

Palma might be the name of my

2:31

dog's dragon's dogma character. That's a, that's

2:33

a good one right there. Okay. Sorry.

2:36

Not to I didn't

2:38

realize that the character that I made testing out

2:40

dragons Dama dogma last night was to be the

2:42

character that I had forever. Cause you can't delete

2:44

and change your characters. That's weird. You me and

2:47

I think Vinny all have made characters in dragon's

2:49

dogma. Initially that we did not intend to keep

2:51

as our characters. My guy. I

2:53

always do that. That's like my MO for really?

2:55

Yeah. I usually start and play like just a

2:57

little bit of these games to try the different

3:00

classes. And I realized that there's multi-classing, but I

3:02

also usually monster factory up the first one

3:04

just on general principle. So now

3:06

I'm going to go and tell you,

3:08

my guy has an enormous body and a very,

3:10

very, very small head and a very long neck.

3:12

And it's not, now I have to

3:14

look at it for a long, long time. And I'm like,

3:17

I think they might get $2 out of me to

3:19

add another character, which also feels kind of icky. Wait,

3:21

do I have that? You can pay two

3:23

bucks and get another character. That's not great. It's

3:26

not good. That's not great. I thought that you can also

3:28

spend $3 for a fast travel crystal,

3:30

which I believe is single use. What?

3:32

Yeah. I mean, to be fair, I think it's part of

3:34

the philosophy of this game that you should not fast travel.

3:36

Like they want you to travel and run

3:38

everywhere. So you can like run into situations

3:41

and find things. I like that. I'm into

3:43

that. You can find those crystals

3:45

in the game, but I think I read like

3:47

one reviewer found three fast travel crystals, their entire

3:49

play through or something, or you could just spend

3:51

money if you want to fast travel more. Time

3:54

matters in that game in a weird way,

3:56

right? Like Your quest can expire. Your Food

3:58

goes out of date. Like. On things

4:00

I think you can only do a nice

4:02

etc etc as is yeah gotta be save

4:04

files you can just delete and start over

4:07

there stored on the server I already looking

4:09

up please he up. Ah,

4:11

I'm not super into the i'm

4:13

less enthusiastic that I was expecting.

4:16

Ah, so this boost Palmer is two

4:18

hundred and seventy nine bucks. Time.

4:21

I and can try to interested

4:23

to explore. It's basically an Android

4:25

tablet. It's own size.

4:28

And sits in your head of a list a

4:30

battery life they'd do not because I think that

4:33

I think L and him Siebel don't put a

4:35

number on that. Because. If you're

4:37

a small company that causes you some. Some

4:39

problems in the you if you're saying

4:42

doesn't live up to it in there.

4:44

Real people complain. Oh man, the thing

4:46

was cool. I'm

4:48

sure it's good. Noi me now or something

4:50

ruin the looking about this interface. I mean

4:52

it looks candlelight, a smart phone home screen.

4:55

but in eating yeah, there's something very like

4:57

original Macintosh about it and it's you know

4:59

it's a it's a gooey but black and

5:01

white. Yeah. It has it has.

5:04

Split The whole thing has good vibes and

5:06

minister know what I could use more times

5:08

and months. ruins. welcome

5:40

to brad will made it's a

5:42

pod i'm well eyebrows horse a

5:44

voice and high with for a

5:47

slightly more theatrical presentations we it

5:49

was pretty times high energy for

5:51

for morning as i am suppressed

5:53

ah this week eyes cdc week

5:55

fill up how did how was

5:58

she sees i am it's It's

6:00

seems like things may be changing getting, getting,

6:02

I mean, it's

6:04

part like developer rage fest and part,

6:06

everybody's like doing business again. I don't

6:09

know. I

6:11

don't know how many people are doing business,

6:13

but I did hear people say that they

6:15

were doing business. So, I mean, it's been

6:17

like what? Not six weeks since dice and

6:20

things were very dire, a dire dice. It's

6:22

definitely quieter than previous, uh,

6:24

GD like, I don't know, like, the

6:27

GDC is always weird cause there's like three

6:29

GDCs, right? There's like the trade show floor

6:31

where everybody's down trying to sell you middleware

6:33

and crap. There's all the, the, the, the

6:35

different tracks where you go to learn stuff,

6:38

whether it's business stuff or developing stuff. Or

6:40

like, there was a thing

6:42

about new DirectX, like DirectX

6:44

12 API features. And

6:47

like the whole brunt of that was, yo,

6:51

the GPU could do a bunch of stuff

6:53

without the CPU now. Like what? Like, like

6:55

access memory. And, um, like, it

6:57

was like, you don't need the CPU to set up

6:59

a bunch of stuff now in the indirect x

7:02

12.2, six 2.6 or something. I guess the

7:05

one that dropped like last week, are they ever

7:07

going to rev the major DirectX number again? I

7:09

don't know that. I don't know that it makes

7:12

sense to like, I

7:14

feel like maybe, I don't know, maybe,

7:16

maybe next, maybe next Xbox. Um,

7:19

so, uh, and

7:21

then there's also the year, but

7:23

Buena gardens GDC,

7:26

which is like all of like people

7:28

just chilling in the, like, can

7:30

people come up after they've been locked in the downstairs for

7:32

a long time. And they lay down on the grass and

7:35

or sit on the benches. Like, there's a lot of oddly,

7:38

a lot of business that happens

7:40

around the fountains. And like,

7:42

if you sit down there long enough, you just hear people talking

7:44

about all sorts of secret shit. So

7:46

it's a, yeah, really, you don't have to hate people.

7:48

I saw a friend of the show, Danny, Baronowski, but

7:50

I bumped into a bunch of friends. It was lovely

7:53

walking around. So yeah, could you,

7:55

could you surreptitiously hang out out there with one of

7:57

those directed long

7:59

range listening? devices. I'm not saying you should actually listen.

8:01

I'm going to go ahead and tell you, you wouldn't

8:03

have to do that. You just have to sit down

8:05

on a bench and listen. Because people will sit down

8:07

three feet away from you and immediately start talking about

8:10

super proprietary shit all day long. Ooh. Yeah.

8:13

Anyway, this week, we're not talking about GDC.

8:15

We are going to talk about kind of

8:18

home networking basics. We realized we hadn't really dug

8:20

into this. We've talked about networking stuff. We've talked

8:22

about like difference in Wi-Fi standards.

8:24

We've talked about routers and

8:27

modems and all this stuff individually. But we had

8:29

a question in the

8:31

Discord that was, hey, I

8:33

just got a house and I don't know how

8:35

to do the networking stuff. And I'd like to

8:37

know, like I don't understand a lot of these

8:39

terms and I don't understand what the strategy should

8:41

be. So yeah, if anything, I

8:43

would say that this is one of the

8:46

probably the most asked question on the Discord.

8:48

Like just if I had to pick one thing that people

8:50

show up saying like, hey, I could do some help with

8:52

blank. Yeah. Almost it's majority

8:55

of the time is some kind of home networking thing.

8:58

So this is a complicated topic in

9:00

that there are a lot of choices

9:02

to make and there's not necessarily

9:05

a right choice for everyone. Like

9:07

Brad's right choice and my right

9:09

choice and like your parents' right

9:11

choice and somebody living on a

9:13

farm's right choice are probably two, all

9:16

different. Yes. Yes. And I'll say there are

9:18

more choices since, you know, we may have

9:20

covered this as at least piecemeal in the

9:22

past, but since we did that last, there

9:24

are even more choices than there have ever

9:26

been before because like new categories

9:28

and segments of the market keep emerging that are,

9:30

you know, like things that you just

9:32

used to only see in data centers are now available

9:34

for 70 bucks in the home type stuff. So yeah,

9:36

there's more to cover than there has ever been before.

9:40

And it's also worth saying this isn't a

9:42

product recommendation show, right? So we're not, we

9:45

don't by nature of

9:47

our lives, we only test the stuff that we use.

9:50

So we're not in a position to try 12

9:52

different routers or anything. Yeah. I mean, look, we

9:54

could, but that's a, we have

9:56

to add a new patron tier for that probably a

9:58

very different show and lifestyle. at that point. Yeah,

10:01

my wife will be pretty upset if I start

10:03

bringing in a bazillion routers. So

10:06

with all that aside, let's

10:08

start with some definitions. So

10:12

there's a box that often your

10:14

ISP will give you, but sometimes you can

10:16

provide yourself. Yes, or in fact in the

10:18

early days, and by early, I mean like

10:20

in the 2000s, everybody kind of had to

10:22

provide for themselves, right? I think ISPs giving

10:24

routers is a somewhat more recent phenomenon, like

10:26

the classic Linksys WRT 54G,

10:29

you know, everybody bought one of

10:31

those. Yeah, so that's actually an

10:33

interesting example because this has become

10:36

a combo device. Like if you

10:38

subscribe to Comcast or AT, like

10:40

I have an AT&T fiber connection

10:43

and I get a box from AT&T that

10:45

has a router, a modem, a

10:48

firewall, and a Wi-Fi access point

10:50

all in it. And what those

10:52

different things are is the modem takes the signal from

10:54

the fiber network and

10:57

basically talks to this other box on the wall that

10:59

we'll talk about in a minute called

11:02

an ONT that you don't have to worry about because your

11:04

provider always gives you that if you need it or sometimes

11:06

you don't even need it. And

11:09

then that modem converts that into

11:11

just Ethernet. So there's like a one Ethernet

11:13

port usually coming out of your modem and

11:16

like a cable line or fiber

11:18

connection or something else comes into that

11:20

modem. I

11:22

assume that's common to all cable connections. I haven't been

11:24

on Comcast since 2016 and

11:26

even then I don't believe they were offering

11:29

all in one. Like you still would rent

11:31

a standalone modem from them and plug that

11:33

into a router. They've shifted to all in

11:35

one. So now you

11:37

get a box that gives you everything

11:39

and includes when they talk about the

11:41

10 gigabit Xfinity

11:44

network or whatever on their ads, they're talking

11:46

about an all in one router modem Wi-Fi

11:49

access point. I think there's Comcast actually

11:51

doing 10 gigabit these days. I find

11:53

that Wi-Fi I think. Yeah. Oh,

11:56

okay. Because they're doing Wi-Fi 7. So they

11:58

like anyway, it doesn't matter. Okay,

12:01

so along with that comes a firewall. So what that

12:03

router does is it takes one

12:05

IP address that your ISP gives you, and

12:07

that's basically one point on the internet that

12:09

everyone can access, right? And

12:11

then they spread that out across all

12:14

the devices that are inside your home

12:16

network. So your TV, your consoles, your

12:18

iPad, your phone, your watch, anything that

12:20

connects to Wi-Fi, your light bulbs, if

12:22

you have Wi-Fi light bulbs, all

12:25

get internal private IP addresses that are

12:27

assigned by that router, and

12:30

the router says the router knows which device

12:32

gets which traffic based on this thing called

12:34

network address translation we don't need to get

12:37

into. Yeah, yeah. An

12:39

easy way to think about it is the one

12:41

major piece of functionality in a router is it's

12:43

basically bridging two networks together. You're actually creating one

12:45

network in your home between all your devices, and

12:47

the entire internet is the other network. And

12:50

the entire public internet is being bridged

12:52

to your little private network at home

12:54

by the router. You can also

12:56

see the term gateway, which is basically what a gateway means.

12:59

It's just a device that bridges two networks

13:01

together, more or less. And typically

13:03

at home, you have a private network and

13:05

a public network. A gateway can do private

13:07

to private or public to public, as well

13:10

as private to public. So

13:12

okay, so we have modems, we have routers, we have

13:14

firewalls. The firewall is a thing

13:16

that basically controls access across and says,

13:18

hey, traffic can go out but it can't

13:20

come in for the most part unless it's requested. That's

13:23

a basic security thing. You want

13:26

to leave your firewall on your router. But this is generally

13:28

just a... In the old days, there might have

13:30

been a box there that was a firewall. You can do that if

13:32

you're in a corporate network. At

13:34

home, it's probably just a piece of software that runs

13:37

on your router. Yeah, and generally out of the box,

13:39

that's not something you're going to have to touch. And

13:41

if you need to touch it, you probably already know why

13:43

and what you need to do. If

13:46

you have to open a gap in it for some device to

13:48

get unsettered access to the internet, you're probably going to know why

13:50

you need to do that and how. But

13:52

firewall, not really something you have to

13:54

worry about. Yeah, generally these days, even

13:56

games which were the last firewall thing

13:59

are a little bit more forgiving. Yeah, I

14:01

always find it funny if you ever get down in

14:03

the weeds with firewalls though and like look at how

14:05

the rules are defined or like configuring one manually or

14:07

whatever like how simple it is. Not simple to set

14:09

up like the rules every time I've like tried to

14:12

write firewall rules it's very complicated there's a lot of

14:14

syntax depending on what kind of firewall. But I

14:16

guess what I'm saying is like how

14:19

fundamental or rudimentary it is for the thing

14:21

to just say nah when a packet comes

14:23

in from an outside source that is like

14:25

potentially doing something nefarious or not it could

14:27

be totally benign but like all it is

14:29

is dropping packets all it is that the

14:31

firewall is like all the packets are running

14:34

through the firewall and if it

14:36

comes from anywhere that it shouldn't the firewall

14:38

just says nah and then it doesn't go

14:40

through you know what I mean there's not like some there's

14:42

not some like advanced hardened technology going on there it's literally

14:44

just saying like yeah you can come in no you can

14:46

and that's it and there's nothing anybody can

14:48

do about it. It's well I mean and and

14:51

that's the beauty of the firewall is it's stupid right

14:53

it just says hey don't accept any traffic on this

14:55

port from anywhere. Access

14:57

points this is the next thing the

15:00

access point typically is also built into this router

15:02

box it's the thing that

15:04

that turns your network wireless so where

15:06

you can plug an ethernet plug in on the

15:09

back of your on your on your firewall and

15:11

wire in this just basically says hey I'm gonna

15:13

let you set up a name and settings and

15:15

and and SSID which is the name of the

15:18

network and what WPA password which is

15:20

the kind of security thing you type in when you

15:22

try to log out on your phone or your laptop

15:24

or whatever and yeah

15:26

that's it it makes it makes

15:28

your network wireless. Generally speaking the the

15:31

network will be strongest next to your router or

15:34

your access point and it'll be weakest the furthest

15:36

away from your access point so if you have

15:38

one of these you want to put it in

15:40

the center of your house somewhere ideally. I

15:44

hope one of the things will demystify over

15:46

the course of this episode is that the

15:48

access point is technically like separate functionality and

15:50

in a lot of cases these days is

15:52

a separate device now like I say

15:54

that because a lot of people still just interchangeably

15:56

use the word router for all of these things.

16:00

I think in some cases, definitely not

16:02

all, but in some cases, it actually is

16:04

beneficial to buy a separate access point and

16:06

put it somewhere else than the router is.

16:08

So hopefully that's something more people will realize

16:11

is that the router is technically separate and

16:13

you can't separate those if necessary. Well, and

16:15

the other benefit to having separate routers and

16:17

access points, and again, this isn't for everyone,

16:20

but the other benefit is it's like when

16:22

you bought an old TV-VCR combo, right? If

16:25

the VCR and the TV-VCR combo broke, then

16:27

suddenly your TV was much less useful because

16:29

you probably didn't have the right plugs to

16:31

plug in another VCR on it. It's the

16:33

same situation with a router. If like once

16:35

the super VCR came out, you

16:37

couldn't upgrade to that as easily either and

16:40

Wi-Fi standards spin every three or four

16:42

years generally. So also if your VCR

16:45

broke, you're without a TV while your

16:47

TV is in the shop getting the

16:49

VCR. That is the exact example my

16:51

dad gave me to convince me not to buy

16:53

a TV-VCR combo in 1993 when

16:56

I went to college. I like

16:58

piecemeal or modular everything. I

17:00

think it's usually helpful to

17:02

separate stuff out as much as you can. Yeah.

17:06

So, okay. So we have that. There's a bunch of

17:08

different Wi-Fi standards. They used to have confusing, like they

17:10

weren't that confusing, but it was like numbers like 802.11b,

17:12

802.11g, 802.11n.

17:16

A few years ago, they retconned that

17:19

naming scheme to start with

17:21

Wi-Fi 1 and go up to I think we're

17:23

on Wi-Fi 7 now, which is not quite out

17:25

yet, but it's getting close. I think

17:27

there might be some Wi-Fi 7 stuff on

17:29

the market. I don't know if these are

17:31

that much less confusing because they also snuck

17:33

Wi-Fi 6E in there after 6 and I was

17:36

never clear what the difference was. It's extreme, Brad. Oh,

17:38

of course. The Wi-Fi standards, oftentimes

17:40

you'll see hardware shipping before the standards

17:42

are actually finalized. That means that the

17:44

hardware spec is finished, but the software

17:47

is still being locked down

17:49

and there'll be a software update that brings you

17:51

to final spec. I find that

17:53

to be a little riskier than I like to

17:55

live on my network infrastructure. Yeah, but the

17:57

basic gist is if you have Wi-Fi 6 or

17:59

newer. you're pretty good, the newer

18:02

standards get better in higher congestion

18:04

areas. So 6 and

18:06

6E are better than 5 for high congestion. Like

18:09

if you're... And by high congestion, I don't

18:11

mean, hey, you can see your neighbor on either side

18:13

of your house's Wi-Fi access points. I mean, you

18:16

live in an apartment in New York City or

18:18

Chicago or San Francisco where the density is really

18:20

high and you open up the Wi-Fi finder on

18:22

your laptop and there's a hundred things there. So...

18:26

Sounds very familiar to me. Yeah. I

18:28

mean, I live in that life. Okay. A couple

18:31

other things. Switches, network switches. Network

18:33

switch sometimes called a hub. Nobody

18:35

really makes hubs anymore. Yeah. I don't

18:38

think you can... Can you even buy a network hub

18:40

at this point? I'm like 100% sure you could buy

18:42

a hub still, but you absolutely should not. You should always

18:44

buy a switch. Switches are now very,

18:46

very cheap. Yeah. Basically,

18:48

a switch lets you turn one Ethernet port into

18:50

like up to 24 or 48 Ethernet ports if

18:54

you want. Yeah. Or,

18:56

you know, a lot of the common ones, like the cheaper

18:58

ones from TP-Link and Netgear you'll see are like four ports

19:00

or eight ports. Like I guess if you're really not super

19:02

familiar with networking stuff, it's basically like

19:04

an Ethernet switch box or switcher. Or not

19:06

switcher, there's like a multiplexer. It's basically you

19:09

plug one cable into it. It's like

19:11

a power strip for network. Yeah, kind of. Basically, you're

19:13

just adding a bunch of extra ports to an existing

19:15

network and then anything you plug in there is just

19:17

immediately on that network. People often

19:19

ask if there's a downside to using those.

19:21

There really isn't unless you're in some kind

19:24

of high, really high specific traffic.

19:27

High traffic networking situation.

19:29

Yeah. You're not losing any real

19:31

speed or latency. You know, they've got special hardware in

19:33

them that makes them, you know, route stuff back and

19:36

forth very quickly. Yeah. The only

19:38

place that there's a potential problem is if you're

19:40

putting enough traffic on that one cable

19:42

that goes to the next switch to

19:45

kind of clog up the infrastructure there. That

19:48

is something to think about, absolutely. Yeah. Like

19:50

the way I've got things run to the living room, like I have

19:52

one long cable run down the hall. And

19:55

now there's like, gosh, there's the switch. PS5,

19:58

Series X, like I don't even know what. on

20:00

the Roku, a bunch of stuff, you know. And

20:02

everything on the other end of that connection, everything

20:04

on that switch down there is all limited to

20:06

the speed of one cable going to it, right?

20:09

Like everything has to share bandwidth between the one

20:11

gigabit cable that's running to that switch. But

20:13

at the same time, the things

20:16

that you have at the other end of that, like

20:18

you're talking about consumer devices that are not going to

20:20

saturate a gigabit connection for the

20:22

most part, the consoles might now for a long time,

20:24

they wouldn't. Yeah, when you when you download the game,

20:26

you kind of you do get fairly close to that

20:29

these days, but not not enough to like, you know,

20:31

not enough that you can't also like stream YouTube or

20:33

Netflix at the same time you're downloading a game. The

20:37

last one we have on the list to define is power

20:39

over Ethernet. So this is a

20:41

high end, usually

20:44

more commercial install

20:46

setting, but it's coming to home

20:48

stuff now, or to prosumer home

20:50

stuff now, that basically lets

20:53

you from a switch from a

20:55

network switch and use

20:57

the network cable that's

20:59

used for Ethernet

21:02

is cat is called cat something usually, I think

21:04

goes up to eight now. Yeah,

21:06

there's four, four

21:09

cables in there that carry data, and then

21:11

there's four wires that just do nothing generally.

21:14

So you, you actually

21:16

can run power over some of the

21:18

extra cables. So you can run low

21:21

voltage or low power devices

21:23

like access points and switches and

21:25

stuff like that over that. Security

21:27

cameras in some cases. Yeah, security

21:29

cameras, doorbells, whatever, all sorts of

21:31

different kinds of things. And the

21:33

upshot is when you run say, a

21:35

access point to your

21:38

ceiling or security camera to your ceiling someplace, you

21:40

only have to run one cable so you can put

21:42

the power in at the switch end, and then

21:44

run everything else out over the over the Ethernet and

21:47

and it'll just work when you plug it in, which

21:49

is really nice. Yeah. And did you mount on if

21:51

you mentioned you have to get a switch that explicitly

21:54

supports PoE? You either need a switch that

21:56

supports PoE or you need what's called a

21:58

PoE injector that lives on the switch. side

22:00

that you plug in, you plug a wall wart

22:02

into the wall, and then you plug a short

22:04

Ethernet run from the switch into this, and then

22:06

the long one goes into the other end. If

22:10

you're looking, we'll talk about when this makes sense.

22:13

There's specific, really specific instances where

22:15

it does, and most people aren't going to have

22:18

to worry about it. One other quick thing to

22:20

mention about switches before we move on. If

22:22

you go to buy a switch, you might see what's called a

22:24

managed switch. Yes. You

22:26

probably don't need that unless you know you need

22:29

that. A regular unmanaged switch is perfectly

22:31

fine for most home applications if you just need

22:33

like ... If you just need, hey, I need

22:35

eight more ports in this room, a regular

22:37

$20, $30 TP link

22:40

or Netgear switch off of Amazon is perfectly

22:42

fine. Managed switches have a lot more capabilities,

22:45

but again, you know

22:47

if you need those already. I put managed switches

22:49

in. Often, if you're going to do PoE stuff

22:51

out of the switch, you're going to end up with managed switches, it

22:53

turns out. The managed switches

22:55

are nice because you can see what stuff is connected

22:57

to each port individually. You can turn things

22:59

off and on. You have

23:02

an app or a web interface or something like that

23:04

to configure and control them, which is convenient, it turns

23:06

out. Yes, but they are quite a bit more expensive.

23:08

They are a lot more expensive, especially at the high

23:10

port counts. Okay,

23:12

so starting with wired. If

23:15

you've bought a house and you

23:18

can knock holes in the walls

23:20

and you can do things like

23:22

access the crawl space or the

23:24

attic or whatever safely, then you

23:26

can pretty easily run Ethernet. That's

23:29

not particularly hard to run. A big spool

23:31

of CAT6 or CAT7 will cost $150, $200. If

23:38

you buy a... You

23:40

need a saw to cut holes in your drywall.

23:44

I wouldn't advise doing this if you have plaster and lathe

23:46

if you live in a really, really old house because it's

23:48

much harder to fix and make look right. Get

23:53

somebody who knows what they're doing to do that. Don't figure that

23:55

out because plaster is really a pain to fix. We

23:58

are... the

24:01

knocking, cutting a hole in the wall, and

24:03

then you can get a drill on a

24:05

big six-foot-long shaft,

24:08

bendy shaft, and

24:10

aim it down and shoot that drill down

24:12

into the crawl space. And then

24:14

ideally, you have two people working on this. So then the person

24:16

in the crawl space gets in there and ties a string up

24:19

to the bottom of the drill because there's always

24:21

a hole in the bottom of these fishing drill

24:23

bits. And you pull the string back

24:25

up, and then you just tie your cable up to the string,

24:28

and you can run cable all through

24:30

your house pretty easily. It's like,

24:32

it took me about six hours

24:34

to run Ethernet to every room

24:36

in my house. I don't know.

24:39

Small one-story with crawl space access,

24:41

like not a big crawl. It's a belly crawling

24:44

crawl space, but I still was able to get it done. The hardest

24:48

thing was actually drilling through the concrete

24:50

foundation, which involved some

24:52

rebar, and I burned out

24:54

a concrete bit doing that. But

24:57

I have a hole into the garage, so that's all that

24:59

mattered. Yes. Would

25:01

you say like cutting into that? I mean, I've never owned

25:03

a home maybe someday. Like just the

25:05

general, like the basic cutting into a wall

25:07

and installing a wall plate, is

25:10

that something that you would say kind of anybody can

25:12

do that has next to no experience with like construction

25:15

or home modification? Well,

25:17

so it's pretty easy. Yeah, like there's a bunch

25:19

of different kinds of mounts

25:21

that you can use to hook those wall plates into. You can

25:24

get cheap little, they're basically a plastic

25:26

ring. It's a rectangular ring that goes

25:28

into the wall and makes a wall

25:30

plate sized hole.

25:33

And then it has flaps that when you

25:35

twist the screws in it, it pulls it

25:37

up against the backside of the drywall. If

25:40

you can find the studs easily, which is a

25:42

little fraught, because sometimes the studs have power running

25:44

next to them and you want to kind of

25:46

be aware of that. But if you can find

25:48

the studs easily, you cut your holes there and

25:50

you can even nail diagonally into the studs. So

25:52

you have a really nice secure thing. Basically what

25:54

you want is a gang box on the back

25:57

so that there's something for your stuff to...

26:00

of all into. I guess the

26:02

distinction I was wondering about is if this is something you

26:04

might need a professional for or if you could just watch

26:06

a YouTube video and make a quick trip to Home Depot

26:08

and be good to go. I mean,

26:10

I don't think you should buy your stuff at

26:12

Home Depot because it's pretty expensive there generally. Although,

26:14

actually, I say that it's a lot better now

26:16

than it used to be. You pay a little

26:18

bit of a premium now. It used to be

26:20

you paid two and a half times premium at

26:22

Home Depot for network stuff. Well, name your favorite

26:24

source of basic home construction goods or whatever. But

26:26

you know what I mean? Like if it's something

26:28

you can just get the stuff yourself and do

26:30

with a little bit of research online. I

26:33

think if the house is simple, it's relatively

26:35

easy. If you have easy crawl space access,

26:37

you have easy attic access. If

26:41

you don't need to take out big

26:43

chunks of the wall to home run

26:45

everything, then absolutely, you should be able

26:48

to do this yourself. Obviously,

26:50

look at your local code. Everywhere

26:52

is a little bit different. Some

26:54

places require different things. Some

26:57

places require conduit. Some places don't. Conduit

27:00

makes it a little bit more difficult. But

27:03

yeah, so the basic gist is you drop into your

27:05

crawl space, you lift into your attic. For

27:09

a wired network, you want what's called a star topology.

27:12

So everything starts at a home run,

27:14

a center place where your router and main switch and

27:16

all of your other stuff are. And

27:18

then you can then you branch out to the other rooms

27:20

from there. So everything comes back to this one place. But

27:23

then you can also add switches. So for

27:26

example, there's a switch in my entertainment center.

27:29

And that is where the

27:31

consoles and Apple TV and all the stuff

27:33

in there are plugged in. I

27:36

also, so I

27:38

have a big switch in the garage, and

27:41

then I have a smaller one in the hall closet

27:43

just because that's where my, like

27:46

there's a basically it was easier for me to run a

27:48

couple of cables out to the garage, which

27:51

is where the router and the fiber modem

27:54

and the O and T and all that stuff are. But

27:57

then it's actually

27:59

run everything out of that central closet

28:01

because that was way more central and it meant

28:03

I didn't have to crawl back and forth across

28:06

the house on my belly 50 times to get

28:08

the cables there. The

28:10

last thing is once you have the cables up, you do need

28:12

to secure them. You don't want to leave them just

28:14

flapping. And you don't

28:17

want to be aggressive about stapling because Cat5

28:20

or Ethernet cable is a little

28:22

delicate. So you want

28:24

to do... You

28:28

can buy, what do you order, cable clips

28:30

that are basically two nail clamps

28:33

that don't apply any pressure to the cable but will hold

28:35

it and keep it from falling from

28:37

being slack. You

28:41

can use zip ties on nails and just not

28:43

cinch the zip ties down super tight. There's a

28:45

bunch of different options but know that if you

28:49

actually crimp or do real hard bends or like

28:51

right angle bends or stuff like that in the

28:53

Cat5, you can impact your performance which

28:55

you don't want. And

28:58

then the last

29:01

thing is

29:04

you're going to have

29:06

to choose whether you want to crimp plugs on the ends

29:08

of the cables or you want to put the ends of

29:10

the cables into jacks and mount them in the wall. If

29:12

you've gone through the trouble of drilling holes,

29:15

it's better to put the jacks

29:17

on the wall so it's super easy to

29:19

do. You can like Leviton, a

29:22

bunch of different companies sell them. You can buy these

29:24

at Home Depot. They're a little bit more expensive there

29:26

than if you get them at an electronic supply place

29:28

but the ability to go out

29:30

and get new wall plates and stuff is probably

29:33

worth buying at Home Depot versus getting the cheaper

29:35

deal. And the

29:37

neat thing is they're coated. So when you're

29:39

doing the stamping to... Basically

29:42

when you open up the back of one of these

29:45

jacks, there's going to be eight slots that

29:47

have little cable grabbers on them and

29:49

you have a little push down tool

29:51

that you can

29:53

get a cheap plastic one that comes with every

29:55

one of the jacks. You can also buy one

29:57

for like 40 bucks that will apply the right

29:59

pressure. stamp it in place and lock the, chomp

30:02

the ends off and make it nice and tidy. Um,

30:05

it's called a punch down tool. And

30:07

as long as you do this, there's

30:10

two color schemes that are appropriate that are allowed

30:12

in, in ethernet, in the ethernet world, A and

30:14

B, just make sure you do the same one

30:16

on all of them. And, and the jacks are

30:18

color coded. So it'll be like, okay, the orange

30:20

cable goes in the first slot, the orange white

30:22

goes in the second slot, the green goes in

30:24

the third slot, the blue goes in

30:26

the fifth, fourth slot, the blue white goes in the

30:28

fifth slot, the green white goes in

30:30

the sixth, seventh slot, and so on and

30:32

so forth. Yeah. If you, if you Google

30:34

like ethernet, keystone, Jack, you'll see pictures of

30:36

exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. It's, it's

30:39

the nice thing about doing this is if you

30:41

mess up and like grab something

30:43

that's plugged in and yank the end of

30:46

the cable off, which, which can happen, especially

30:48

on home crimped cable, home crimped plugs, a

30:51

cable ends, you, it's not a huge pain

30:53

in the end. Like you just replace your

30:55

patch cable instead of having to like redo

30:58

this long run that every time it gets shorter,

31:00

you're a little, you know, your stuff has to

31:02

be a little bit closer to the wall. So

31:05

I always recommend doing plugs and like buying

31:08

patch cables because it's, it's while you

31:10

can get good at crimping cables, it's

31:12

much harder to do than doing the punch downs

31:14

on the, on the plugs, on the sockets. And

31:19

then, okay. So two other things. People

31:22

talk about plenum a lot. Plenum is a

31:24

special kind of cable that doesn't burn as

31:26

fast. So if you're in a

31:28

fire situation, yes, I've heard. Yes. Yeah.

31:31

Like the internet grognards like to complain about

31:33

people not putting plenum in the

31:35

rules, generally speaking, are that you have to

31:37

put plenum any place that there's return air

31:39

flow. So like in office

31:42

buildings where they're, where the, where the

31:44

return, where there's negative pressure and like

31:46

a drop ceiling so that

31:48

all, so that that sucks all the return air

31:50

in for the HVAC system. You have to run

31:52

plenum. A lot of commercial installations

31:55

just use plenum everywhere because it's easier to

31:57

keep track of. It's, it's

31:59

more expensive, but it's It's not that much more expensive and

32:01

it's easier to just run plenum everywhere

32:03

than to keep track of

32:05

what gets plenum and what doesn't. Most

32:09

places don't require plenum for home. My

32:13

understanding is that in the types of fires you're likely to

32:15

see in a home, plenum isn't going to make a difference

32:17

one way or the other. But

32:19

your mileage may vary. And like I said, it's not much

32:22

more expensive. It's not more difficult to run. There's nothing about

32:24

it that makes it harder. It's

32:26

just the casing is made of

32:28

different materials. It doesn't burn quite

32:31

as quickly and doesn't release toxic smoke. I was going

32:33

to ask what the end goal was there if it

32:35

was release of unpleasant substances was the

32:37

main one. I believe it's about the smoke, but

32:39

I'm not an expert in that space. All I

32:41

know is that when I looked at it, it

32:43

was like 10 bucks more, 20 bucks more for the plenum

32:46

spool of I guess 5E when I

32:48

was doing my house. I just put the plenum in.

32:52

The other

32:55

thing is about the number, which cat number

32:57

to buy. Five

33:00

was really, really popular for a long, long time

33:02

when I did my house. Six was just getting

33:04

to the point that it was a viable

33:07

price for a home install. But

33:10

I did 5E. It's been fine.

33:14

We've been on gigabit ethernet for 20

33:16

years now almost. Yeah, well, that's changing.

33:19

That's changing pretty rapidly. I believe regular

33:21

cat 5 will go up to 2.5

33:23

gigabit ethernet. If it's a

33:25

short enough run, I don't have the exact run

33:27

limitation in front of me right now. I

33:30

should test that because I have about a 40-foot cat 5E

33:32

run in my house. But 5E, I believe 5E will go

33:34

up to 10 gigabits. I think it's regular 5. Regular

33:37

5 will go up to 2.5, which even

33:39

that is fairly respectable. But also if you're

33:41

buying now, I mean cat 6 is dirt cheap. That's

33:43

the default thing you should get. Yeah,

33:45

I think the cat... What was the cat

33:47

8 story? Is that a real thing? I'm

33:49

not sure about 7 and 8. Every

33:52

time I've ever heard cat 7 or 8 refer to

33:54

people treat it like it's not a real thing or

33:56

it's like a mythical

33:59

non-standard... I don't know. I

34:02

kind of feel like if you're gonna my my

34:04

feeling and this is more of a vibe than anything

34:06

based on actual Data

34:09

is that if you're

34:12

Looking at better than cat six you probably should

34:14

just run fiber for those runs that you care

34:16

about Yeah, so we should talk about types of

34:18

cables here cat six will do 10 gigabits up

34:20

to 165 feet in which that's

34:22

pretty good That's I'm trying to think what an

34:24

average house looks like that probably should cover just

34:26

about I could wrap that around my house

34:29

all the way Yeah so so if If

34:31

you think 10 gigabits quite a bit like

34:33

if you if you think you're gonna be

34:35

good with that for from now on Then cat

34:38

six is perfectly fine I'm trying

34:40

to think what is the megabytes per second 10 gig

34:42

is like it's roughly a gigabyte a second I mean

34:44

the math doesn't quite work that way, but that's a

34:46

good ballpark way to think about it It's whatever 10

34:48

divided by 8 is yeah Yeah, so

34:50

it's it's but there's also network overhead to think

34:52

about so it's not quite exact but so it's

34:54

gonna be a gigabyte per second roughly

34:58

Yes, there's also fiber now, which is getting much

35:00

much cheaper and way more Reasonable

35:03

I would say I sort of say

35:05

practical but my understanding about running fiber is it's

35:07

quite delicate and You might

35:09

actually need help doing that correctly So

35:12

I I was at Central Computer the other

35:14

day and they have pre-terminated fiber

35:16

and the cables up to like 30

35:20

meters I think that were like 50 bucks. It was

35:22

pretty cheap. Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty cheap. There are

35:26

Which I can I can throw out a bunch of

35:28

fiber terms I can't how I can't define them. Well,

35:30

like I think you want multi-mode fiber There's like oh

35:33

m3 and oh m4 are the standards you need to

35:35

look at for what you'd be putting in a home

35:37

I believe except for bi-directional by directionality or something. I

35:39

think it might pertain to Distance

35:41

or something. I forget exactly what the difference

35:43

is there. Well, the other thing is

35:45

there's different terminators, right? So there's like that long rectangular

35:47

one that's on most switches It seems like and then

35:49

I did some other stuff that I don't I don't

35:51

know about Yeah, it seems like to me

35:54

if you were into fiber Consider

35:56

like the other thing is when they have the

35:58

terminators on the end. It's gonna be hard to run them through small holes,

36:00

run the fiber through small holes, which is what you

36:02

need. You can get Keystone Jacks for fiber now. You

36:04

can just get straight up wall plates that you can

36:07

run one end of the fiber into the back of

36:09

the plate and do a little patch fiber out the

36:11

other end, which I assume those are fairly reliable. Yeah,

36:14

once it's the patches are fine,

36:16

I'm sure. Yeah. I feel like there's

36:18

a couple more terms we should throw out just because you might come across

36:20

them. Okay. RJ45

36:22

is the actual, like the specification or the

36:25

descriptor for the physical, like what you think

36:27

of as an ethernet cable. Or the plug

36:29

in the socket. It's for the connector. Yeah.

36:32

Like the connector, the port that you see on your motherboard or

36:34

the back of the PlayStation or whatever. That's RJ45.

36:37

Yeah. I meant to look this

36:39

up and I didn't quite get a proper sense.

36:41

I think ethernet is more a standard. Ethernet

36:43

is not a physical port because ethernet can also

36:45

run over other types of ports. It's not just

36:48

that particular plug that you see everywhere.

36:50

That's RJ45, just in case you hear

36:53

that said, that's describing that exact

36:55

plug. And twisted pair, I think is also

36:57

just kind of a generic term that you

36:59

might see for ethernet cable, for cat, whatever.

37:01

Well, the twisted pair, inside

37:03

the ethernet cable, there's four pairs

37:05

of wires and each pair is

37:07

twisted in a different amount

37:10

per foot. So

37:12

it minimizes interference across them or they cancel each

37:15

other out there. So there's some electrical engineering nonsense

37:17

in there that I don't really understand. You don't

37:19

have to worry about that. But the point is

37:21

though, sometimes just colloquially, especially like old network nurse,

37:24

full refer to cat five or cat six as

37:26

twisted pair. It is worth mentioning, if you untwist

37:28

the pairs inside an ethernet cable, they don't work

37:30

right. Yeah. I

37:32

believe that. Yeah. The other, just

37:34

because we'll address it later because this stuff is getting rapidly,

37:37

dramatically cheaper is SFP

37:39

is another, is the other big

37:41

form factor plug you're seeing in home

37:43

network these days. What is this? It's

37:47

the boxier looking plug. You've probably seen it on

37:49

some stuff. Trying to think how to

37:51

explain it. It stands for small form factor pluggable

37:53

and that's exactly what it is. It's a bigger

37:56

port that accepts what is called a transceiver that

37:58

gives you the actual port you're plugging. the

38:00

cable into? Oh, this is for fiber. Well,

38:02

not just fiber. So you can have an SFP

38:05

port that you plug an RJ45 transceiver into and

38:07

then plug any old Ethernet cable into that. Oh.

38:10

That's why it's pluggable in modular. It's a

38:12

port that you can turn into any other network port,

38:14

essentially. Oh, that's cool, which requires you, and that's what

38:17

I use here between my NAS and my PC, that

38:20

requires you to buy a transceiver on each end of each

38:22

cable you're going to run, so that does get a little

38:24

more expensive. But it gives you huge

38:26

flexibility, and it also goes up to way higher speeds,

38:28

which is where we're actually going with this. But it

38:31

gives you tons of flexibility. Like right

38:33

now, I'm running a direct-attached copper cable

38:35

between my PC and NAS, but

38:37

if I say moved into a house and I want to put the

38:39

NAS in the basement, I can keep

38:41

the same network cards with SFP plugs. In

38:44

this case, it's two SFP plus. SFP

38:46

does up to one gigabit. SFP

38:48

plus does up to 10 gigabits. SFP

38:50

plus does 40, and

38:53

it actually goes way higher than that. Fiber can

38:55

easily go up to 100 gigabits per second, like

38:57

it's kind of insane. But the

38:59

point I'm making is I can keep these same

39:01

network cards I have and just pull this direct-attached

39:04

copper cable out and buy fiber transceivers and just

39:06

plug those into these same ports, and

39:09

then I can run fiber over a much longer distance through the

39:11

house, through the walls, like up from the

39:13

basement to an office or something like that. And

39:16

again, all these SFP ports are something

39:18

that were only in data centers until

39:20

like five, six years ago, but if

39:23

you keep up with the kind of hardcore enthusiast

39:25

like home lab scene, you're starting to

39:28

see very cheap switches, mostly

39:30

coming out of places like Shenzhen that are

39:32

coming with both RJ45 and SFP

39:35

plus on them. We'll get into

39:37

that a little bit more later, but this stuff

39:39

is being democratized and made available for

39:41

the home in a way that it wasn't even

39:43

like three, four years ago. I was

39:45

going to say, yeah, the stuff is

39:47

getting... It's much

39:49

less expensive. The thing I'll say is I

39:52

don't think... Unless

39:55

you specifically need faster than gigabit,

39:58

like you have faster gigabit connection

40:00

coming into your house, which is still

40:02

pretty rare, at least in the U.S. I

40:05

don't, I don't, I think you're fine running Cat 6.

40:08

Yeah. Right? Like Cat 6, like we said,

40:10

we'll go up to 10 gigabits and even

40:12

that is pretty good. Even if you have

40:14

some like central file store, like an app

40:16

that you need to access things quickly on,

40:18

like roughly a gigabit, or sorry, a gigabyte

40:20

a second is still pretty good for that.

40:23

It's hard to build a NAS for your

40:25

house that's going to do, that's going to

40:27

saturate more than a gigabit next connection. Yeah.

40:30

At least until SSDs get a lot cheaper. Yeah. And

40:33

I think the stuff's gotten better for a while. 10

40:36

gigabit over RJ45 was like kind of problematic. Like

40:40

there were heat issues, like it used a ton

40:42

of electricity, but I'm guessing that stuff has gotten

40:44

better because you're starting to see it on like

40:46

just motherboards now, you know, like the high end

40:48

like workstation and creator motherboards are starting to ship

40:50

with 10 gigabit RJ45 ports.

40:54

So I think it's catching on in a way

40:56

that it has not for several years. And a

40:59

lot of boards are shipping with just 2.5 gig,

41:01

like high end boards are shipping with 2.5 gigabit

41:03

ports is standard now too. Yeah. So

41:06

yeah. Okay. So that's, I feel

41:08

like that's why that's kind of the state of wired. A

41:10

couple other wildcards here is that if you don't, if you

41:12

live in a position where you can't run the ethernet in

41:14

your house, or if you like,

41:17

the thing that you do is run it around

41:19

the trim of your house, like you run a

41:21

long run around like trim and wall trim and

41:23

stuff like that in your apartment. And it's

41:25

not destructive. Yeah. That's because A, there's

41:27

a absurd amount of Wi-Fi interference

41:29

in here. B, you know, like for my job,

41:31

it is good to have wired consoles that can

41:33

download games very quickly and like get the best

41:35

online play and stuff. Yeah. But

41:38

there's also Powerline and Mocha. So

41:41

Powerline and Mocha use existing cables that are

41:43

in a lot of houses. Mocha is for

41:45

cable, for like cable TV

41:47

cables. Powerline obviously runs across

41:49

the power wires. They're

41:52

varying levels of performance. There's

41:54

a bunch of wildcards about how they work.

41:57

Both go up to a gigabit theoretically.

42:00

In practice, that number varies wildly.

42:05

For example, if you have ground

42:07

fault circuits in your house or you don't

42:09

have control wires everywhere in your house or

42:11

neutral wires everywhere in your house, then

42:13

your power line network stuff is going to

42:16

be less effective. If

42:19

you have a lot of splitters

42:21

that potentially filter out

42:23

frequencies that the Mocha

42:26

adapters you're using in performance there will be

42:28

dramatically reduced. You might have to dig around

42:30

in walls or crawl spaces or

42:32

attics or garages or wherever and do

42:35

some rewiring for your cable network

42:38

if you're not getting Mocha speeds that you

42:40

would expect. It's a pretty

42:43

good alternative for stuff you don't want to

42:45

do on wireless basically. Yeah,

42:47

just one data point. This

42:49

is not universal. Like you said, everybody's set

42:51

up as subject to a bunch of different

42:53

variables, but just this very morning on the

42:55

Discord, Wildfire popped into the

42:57

network channel and posted some benchmarks. I

43:00

guess they had been using Powerline previously.

43:02

They were getting about 130

43:04

megabits up and down through their Powerline

43:06

adapters. They just switched to Mocha over the

43:09

coax and that is now 800 down and 670 up. So

43:14

that's pretty good. Yeah, my general

43:17

impression is that Mocha is better

43:19

if you have the option. Meaning

43:22

you don't have cables from like

43:24

the 80s. Yeah, if you

43:26

have relatively modern coax

43:28

cables. There

43:33

are security issues for both of those because they do tend to

43:35

leak out of your house, especially

43:37

if you look really close to other people. So

43:39

pay attention to that when you're setting it up

43:41

and any of that stuff I would buy from

43:44

someplace you can return it. Generally

43:47

speaking, if you're concerned about latency, which is the amount

43:49

of time it takes stuff to traverse the network, not

43:51

the speed at which it goes, Mocha

43:54

and Powerline are both better than

43:56

Wi-Fi and worse than regular traditional

43:59

wired Ethernet. So, it

44:01

is nice if you play games and

44:03

care about stuff like that, then that matters. So

44:07

that's wired. Wireless

44:10

is, there's multiple editions options to add

44:12

wireless to your network. You could

44:15

take the box that your ISP provides and it's

44:17

probably going to be okay. They almost certainly charge

44:19

you per month for it. Although, actually

44:21

this is true, your cable provider almost certainly

44:23

charges you per month for it. Your

44:26

fiber provider may or may not charge you

44:28

per month. I have AT&T fiber, they provide

44:30

a box that I have to use. They don't charge me for

44:32

it because I have to use it. So that, I

44:34

think that's nice. Yeah,

44:36

when I, when I, Sonic gave me a router ages

44:38

ago and I had to, I actually have to like

44:41

call their support when I send it back to them

44:43

and get them to knock the whatever a month off.

44:45

Oh really, they were charging you? It

44:47

was not much. Okay. Yes. So,

44:50

when you're talking about adding wireless to your network, there's

44:52

a few different ways to do it. There's

44:55

using, the thing that your ISP provides,

44:57

there's using a single box that's

45:00

like the thing your ISP provides, but

45:02

is the wifi, the router and

45:04

the firewall and everything all in one box. This

45:06

is the classic Link-Sis. Yeah, the Link-Sis. All

45:09

on up to today. Yeah, if you, if you

45:11

look at the thing at Best Buy that has,

45:13

from ASUS that has 35 antennas on

45:15

the outside, that's what we're talking about. Yes,

45:17

the crown. The Sauron. Yeah.

45:20

The people in the Discord like TP-Link Archers a

45:22

lot. It's been the recommendation as

45:25

for years now from

45:27

everything from like Small Net Builder

45:29

to Wirecutter to you name

45:31

it. Like kind of always the

45:33

baseline that I see is the $85 TP-Link Archer. My

45:37

last non-ISP provided router

45:40

was a TP-Link router and

45:42

it was great. It was

45:44

really nice. Yeah. It was like 10 years

45:46

ago at this point. Yeah, you can spend dramatically more. I mean

45:48

like this category of router easily goes up to like $300, $400

45:50

now. Yeah,

45:53

so I think if you're buying entry level, this is a

45:55

good, this is a good place to be. I think if

45:57

you're going to spend more money, there's probably better options for

45:59

you. is where I end up. Yeah,

46:02

so this is going to lead me to a single radio

46:04

point. All your Wi-Fi is going to emanate

46:06

from this one box, and depending on the

46:08

layout of your house or interference or the

46:11

thickness of walls. Where the refrigerator is. Right.

46:13

That may not be ideal for signal strength

46:15

everywhere you need it. Think

46:17

about your Wi-Fi router as creating a donut

46:19

of good internet around it. And the further

46:21

you get from the center of the donut

46:23

from the hole, the worse your

46:25

internet's going to be. Yes. I think we can

46:28

all agree that several donuts is better than one

46:30

donut. I like having multiple donuts. OK, so the

46:32

one router is one option. Mesh

46:34

networks are a relatively

46:36

new addition. They've been

46:38

good for a good five years at this point. But

46:41

they are basically little boxes that you can

46:43

typically buy a three pack of them. You

46:45

plug one into your router, and

46:47

then the other two you put around the house in

46:50

different places. You can wire them in

46:52

if you have ethernet running in your house. So

46:54

like, for example, at my parents

46:56

house, they ran ethernet along

46:59

in their basement on

47:02

the exposed ceiling, and then just

47:04

tacked up mesh nodes

47:07

under the different areas of the house where they wanted better

47:09

internet. That worked great. So if you're wiring

47:12

every, I've never used a mesh. I'm

47:14

kind of been curious just like in the signal

47:16

sense, like what they're doing. If you're wiring every

47:19

mesh node, they're not talking to each

47:21

other wirelessly as well, right? No, they

47:23

do not. OK. I mean, you

47:26

want them to be close enough so that you

47:28

get a gentle handoff. You don't want there to

47:30

be a dead zone between them, ideally. Right. But

47:34

yeah, no, they basically like, and

47:36

the neat thing about this is, say, if you live on a farm,

47:38

you have a barn that you want to have internet in, and you

47:40

have ethernet running to it, and you only

47:42

need two mesh nodes to cover your house, you can

47:44

put the third one in the barn and you just

47:46

have the same Wi-Fi in your barn when you get

47:48

there, which is, it turns out pretty nice. Right. The reason

47:51

I ask about that distinction is because not everybody is going

47:53

to be able to or want to run an ethernet

47:55

cable to every little mesh thing that they've got around.

47:57

So I'm curious what's going on in a Wi-Fi. radio

48:00

sense once you have a bunch

48:02

of mesh nodes up that are all just wireless.

48:04

So the reason these mesh nodes got good five

48:06

years ago is that radios got cheap. And they

48:09

went, in the old days, a Wi-Fi to Wi-Fi

48:11

repeater would time slice the radio. So it would

48:13

say, OK, we have every

48:15

500 milliseconds we're going to

48:17

send on this channel, and

48:19

then we're going to switch to receive for 500 milliseconds. And

48:23

it would increase the latency dramatically, and it

48:25

would slow the throughput across each repeater that

48:28

you used. So they were bad. Old

48:30

Wi-Fi repeaters are bad. Mesh networks

48:32

have multiple radios in them. So

48:37

each node will maintain a dedicated

48:39

link to at least one other

48:41

node that's wireless, and

48:43

then have another radio for connecting devices that are

48:45

on that, connected to that particular node. Now, that

48:48

only works if you can get the mesh nodes

48:50

close enough to each other that they have good

48:52

signal strength, which is important. There's

48:54

tools that come with all of these mesh nodes that

48:56

help you figure out, like they'll say,

48:59

hey, mesh

49:01

router 3 is not in a good spot. You need to move

49:03

it and find a better spot for it. And

49:05

because all they need to connect is power,

49:08

you basically can just pick it up and move it to

49:10

another power plug, or even rotate it 90 degrees on the

49:12

shelf that it's on, or move it someplace else, see if

49:14

it gets a better signal. And

49:18

most of those come with software that will help

49:20

you work through that. They're

49:24

fine. All Wi-Fi stuff, the

49:26

latency isn't the best it

49:28

can be for games. But

49:30

I play competitive multiplayer games with people

49:32

that are on mesh Wi-Fi networks, and

49:34

it's fine. Yeah, it is

49:36

doable, although I find it funny. Do they

49:38

still do this in shooters? They definitely do

49:40

in the fighting game space. They generally will

49:43

expose what kind of connection each player is

49:45

on as you matchmake with them. So they

49:47

don't expose it, but Fortnite says, hey, your

49:49

network connection will be better if you're on

49:51

wired than Wi-Fi. Okay. There's

49:53

definitely a bit of a stigma in

49:55

some multiplayer communities when you're able to

49:58

see if your opponent is on Wi-Fi or not. Well,

50:00

so the other thing about meshes is

50:02

you don't necessarily

50:04

like, like there's an Ethernet port on each

50:07

of these mesh nodes. And if

50:09

you're on a Wi-Fi connected node and you plug a

50:11

switch into that Ethernet port, then

50:13

everything downstream of it's going to think it's on wired.

50:16

Even though it's on a Wi-Fi mesh that's kind

50:18

of permanently connected. So it's a little bit of

50:20

a weird situation. I

50:24

quite like mesh networks for people who

50:26

are non-technical especially. It seems like the

50:29

middle ground between just the one single

50:31

router access point box and the like going

50:34

nuts on hardcore network stuff which we're about

50:36

to get into. But like the you want

50:38

better and bigger Wi-Fi coverage but without having

50:40

to like do a bunch of

50:43

network topology and routing stuff yourself. Yeah,

50:46

if you don't want to have to

50:48

think about it too hard and you

50:50

don't do big file transfers or aren't

50:52

a competitive game player, yeah, there's nothing

50:54

wrong with mesh. And

50:58

by nothing wrong with mesh, I mean, hey, mesh

51:01

is good enough for like 95% of the market, right,

51:04

a massive percentage of the market. Yeah, it

51:06

seems very commonly used just anecdotally looking at

51:08

people talking about stuff. And there's also a

51:11

ton of brands doing pretty solid mesh stuff

51:13

from what I can tell. Yeah, Amazon does

51:15

Euro stuff. TP-Link has

51:17

a whole sub-brand that's mesh nodes.

51:19

That your ORDI I see talked

51:22

about a lot. Yeah, and

51:24

the nice thing about them is that they come with apps so that

51:26

you don't have to do like you don't have to understand how to

51:28

go to 192.168.0.1 to set the whole thing up.

51:32

You just kind of plug it into your network

51:35

and then the app says, hey, connect to this

51:37

AP and then you connect to this AP and

51:39

you go through the whole setup process. And it's

51:42

designed for people who don't

51:44

need to and don't know how networking stuff works, which

51:46

is good. Yeah, ASUS, Google

51:49

Nest, I'm just looking at lists. There

51:51

are a lot of options for mesh. Yeah,

51:53

the ones that I see recommended most often are

51:55

the TP-Link, the Google Nest, and The

51:58

Netgear Orbeez. Amazon

52:00

bought my favorite company and I wouldn't

52:02

recommend that you give Amazon access to

52:04

your Dns information and your network usage.

52:08

Personal choice either. Zero Zero For the

52:10

record, Okay, so the last one is

52:12

to separate out all these into separate

52:14

boxes, which seems like it's more expensive

52:17

at first, right? up until the point

52:19

that you get a new wife. I

52:21

said, you're right. Shoot, I went up

52:24

to my wife I and then instead

52:26

of replacing three boxes, you replace one

52:28

Gary or to yes it is basically

52:30

a slightly higher initial outlay of cash.

52:33

May be too low, not even that much. like

52:35

to gamble nicer hundred bucks or two. but and

52:38

down the line is going to save you. Yeah,

52:41

so I'm so in this case you would

52:43

that the upset. The nice thing about this

52:45

is you don't have to replace the router

52:47

all the time rates are you replacing the

52:49

revised least configurations when you update two and

52:51

a wife I specs and you leave the

52:53

router and place for years on m and

52:55

on end in some cases. com um. The.

52:58

I'm a lot of in the access points

53:00

will be exact amount high up on a

53:02

wall or in the seal your whatever. They

53:05

often are repower ovaries or net instead of a

53:07

thing the plug into the wall to the point

53:09

that I think Ubiquity does even ship power bricks

53:11

with their that he jumped by the power brick

53:13

separately. If you're not me his power return at

53:15

the one I'm the unify I got from in

53:17

this was six five six years ago came came

53:19

with a B O E injector on on of

53:21

they still packed them and arod. I think that's

53:23

an option when you buy them by with you

53:25

by the can you choose whether you want the

53:27

period Jack her wonder if you have if you

53:29

if you don't in the interests of reducing. anyways

53:31

if you have a purely so is he a

53:33

pure he switches and they just give. You the

53:35

the option to buy without than director photos

53:37

for people who are familiar with of category.

53:40

If you've worked in a big office you

53:42

might have seen these stuck to the ceiling

53:44

of your office. They're basically big white either

53:46

like discs or hot slink particular of the

53:48

outer to win a blue light. Novel

53:51

though often say Cisco or juniper or

53:53

a rubber on them or something. Until.

53:55

recently those really corporate level like

53:57

big area access points to serve.

54:00

Like big office type settings but they they have started

54:02

trickling like a lot of the stuff they they search

54:04

for going in alone. Yeah. And

54:06

and I think mean for me it

54:08

was about price is like I was

54:10

always interested in them days to be

54:12

very expensive and the last two five

54:14

six years they've gone from being a

54:16

three times multiplier on on price compared

54:18

to like had come from a commercial

54:20

consumer access points to being cheaper in

54:22

some cases like when I bought my

54:24

six he stuff wife i succeed south

54:27

it was it was one hundred and

54:29

twenty bucks per access point yes which

54:31

was cheaper than buying to mess nodes

54:33

to put in my else though. And

54:35

and again to reiterate, I mean the like In my

54:38

case, for example, my to access point is. Only

54:40

as a wife I his wife are five a

54:42

see that a lot of I've yeah yeah was

54:44

the point where they made the branding change. So

54:46

I've got. I've got a wife I fives

54:48

access point of here and not even like a high

54:51

and one it was can one mode, mid range or

54:53

lower end unifies at the time. I.

54:55

Could just get rid of that thing and

54:57

get a wife I seven access point. but

54:59

your where and few months am I not

55:01

even touch my router which is nice for

55:03

all kinds of reasons. Aid wants to replace

55:05

it from a monetary standpoint be to have

55:07

to reconfigure a new device just because you

55:09

wanted the wife. I write like you have

55:11

to reconfigure not and on having to reconfigure

55:13

the router as it turns out is an

55:15

important part of this whole thing. Dummy the

55:17

I'm done. Other nice thing about define the

55:19

separate access points as you can buy of

55:21

versions of the axis point that have antenna

55:23

infrastructure tuned for your use case. So. For

55:25

example, The either you don't need

55:27

these at home but they sell ones that are

55:29

designed for like conference center is that are designed

55:32

to have hundreds or thousands of people connected to

55:34

the meta at a time state they they do

55:36

sell in. This may be interesting for home with

55:38

you, especially fuel assemblies rural. who

55:40

antennas are designed for high coverage areas and

55:42

low congestion areas so that's like you can

55:44

put an access point up on the side

55:46

of house that will give you coverage over

55:49

your ios three acres or denigrate eight acres

55:51

or your farm or something salesman were designated

55:53

as like long range access points they will

55:55

sell you weatherproof once you can put up

55:57

outside if that's the thing that's of interest

56:00

to you. And

56:02

yeah, so like basically you have

56:05

more flexibility when you're setting

56:07

up your network to tune it for how you

56:09

use your stuff. You can

56:11

even buy, we talked about this on a Q&A episode

56:13

a few months ago, but you can buy point-to-point antennas

56:17

that will let you put a wireless downlink between like

56:19

a house and a barn or something like that if

56:21

you want to have like cameras set

56:23

up for your folding

56:25

shed or whatever. Yeah. I

56:28

don't think we mentioned this. You can also mount multiple

56:30

access points in a way that gives you somewhat of

56:32

a mesh-like setup except that they all

56:34

have to be on wired internet or wired network. Like

56:36

they have to run network cables to all of them.

56:38

They can't... You can get

56:40

mesh ones now, but yeah. But it's

56:42

kind of like the same concept where your

56:44

device would hopefully just gracefully hand off from

56:46

one access point to the next as you

56:49

move around. But that's device dependent, right?

56:51

Assuming you have... Assuming

56:53

you set up the same SSID and passwords

56:56

and the same basic configuration stuff like

56:59

which version of WPA use, how many

57:01

channels you're binding, like whether you're doing

57:03

dual channel or single channel, stuff like

57:05

that, it should just gracefully

57:07

hand off. And that's what I do in

57:09

my house. It works flawlessly

57:12

with everything all the way back to like a

57:14

3DS. Yeah. I

57:16

think that it does come down to the devices

57:18

internal logic for like detecting signal strength and deciding

57:20

which one it should be connected to, I believe.

57:23

Another thing to note here is that generally you

57:25

can't administrate these access points on the access point.

57:27

You usually have to run some

57:29

kind of software externally to

57:32

provision them, which is basically like sending settings

57:34

to them and telling them what to do.

57:36

Usually, like in the case of Ubiquities Unify

57:38

stuff, you can just run that software on

57:40

your PC if you want. Yeah. So I

57:42

actually have the software running on my NAS,

57:44

I think, in a Docker container or something.

57:47

But yeah, it is a little more involved

57:49

setting up and running. But

57:51

you can do things like, for example, I have

57:53

all the lights in my office, which are sitting

57:55

right next to an access point locked

57:58

in the software to only be able to connect to the software. access

58:00

point. The other access point, the garage will

58:02

reject them. Which is nice. Another

58:05

thing to note, the reason I bring up that central

58:07

controller software that you have to run is, for example,

58:09

if you bought like three access points that you want

58:11

to deploy around a larger house, like

58:13

you said, they all need to be on the same

58:15

SSID, same security and password stuff. Generally,

58:17

that central software will let you just deploy those

58:20

settings to all those access points with like one

58:22

click basically. Like say, hey, I want all of

58:24

these to be configured the same way and it'll

58:26

just do that. And

58:28

that is what I like, yeah, I

58:30

have multiple Wi-Fi configurations. I

58:32

have one for like guests like when we have

58:35

a babysitter or something. And then I have one

58:37

that's for everybody else to

58:39

use. And you

58:42

can deploy them, like you said, you can just say, hey,

58:44

put this on all the access points. Yeah. The last piece

58:46

of good news I'll throw out there if you're interested in

58:48

this separate access point setup is you don't even need to

58:50

buy a new router to do this. If you have a

58:52

router, even if it's like one of those CP links or

58:55

something low end that you're happy with. And

58:57

the one that came with my AT&T fiber connection. Right. Like all

58:59

you have to do is disable the Wi-Fi on your

59:01

integrated router and buy an access point and plug it

59:03

into your router and you're good. I mean, you still

59:05

have to set up the access point, of course, but

59:07

like, yeah, you can just turn off and

59:10

you should turn off the Wi-Fi. You don't want clashing

59:13

Wi-Fi networks with your old

59:15

router. But like, the point

59:17

is like a Wi-Fi router can still just be a wired

59:19

router without Wi-Fi. If you just want to turn that off

59:22

and buy a newer access point, you don't need to go get

59:24

some fancy Soho

59:26

or ProSumer router to run one of these

59:29

things. No, and it's

59:31

often overkill for home users. So

59:35

yeah, and then the, so okay, so that's that.

59:37

The last thing is

59:40

that routers are

59:42

more open now than they have been kind of ever

59:45

before. Yes.

59:47

There's multiple competing operating systems

59:50

out there for router. There's a lot of stuff

59:52

you can do. Real quick, I'm just going to

59:54

rattle off as we move into rolling your own

59:56

router. Some of the big brands and access points

59:59

if you're just curious. like you both yes ubiquitous

1:00:01

unify is quite popular the

1:00:04

TP link of modda stuff seems to be pretty well

1:00:06

liked on our discord It

1:00:08

looks like like when you search for access point now

1:00:10

like netgear has some links this has some it seems

1:00:13

like companies are rapidly Getting into that space and rolling

1:00:15

their own out So if you have options if

1:00:18

you have a house was built in the last

1:00:20

20 years It probably has Ethernet in the walls

1:00:22

and then that's that puts you firmly in Maybe

1:00:25

I should just plug an access point and instead

1:00:27

of using these mesh networks The benefit of the

1:00:29

access point over the mesh network is

1:00:31

that the access points are generally way cheaper The

1:00:33

the mesh networks are three to five hundred dollars

1:00:35

for a three pack Depending

1:00:38

on which version of Wi-Fi you get the

1:00:40

access points will be a hundred bucks each for

1:00:42

the latest hot shit eat Wi-Fi So yeah, you

1:00:44

may not need more than one access point depending

1:00:46

on the size of your of your house So

1:00:50

yeah, you can also just kind of roll your own router

1:00:52

now and it's getting easier than it's ever been We

1:00:55

did we didn't episode ages ago with front of

1:00:57

the show West Finland remember he came on talk

1:00:59

about PF sense Yeah, that was one of the

1:01:01

first time I heard about PF sense. I think

1:01:03

probably yeah But so at the time

1:01:06

he was running that on if you remember like his

1:01:08

old PC like a full-size Box and

1:01:10

that's not great for me power consumption standpoint

1:01:12

obviously for something you're gonna leave running 24-7

1:01:14

hardware has never I mean Stop

1:01:17

me if you've heard this one before hardware has

1:01:19

never gotten smaller and cheaper and more power efficient

1:01:21

and faster than it is right now like

1:01:24

we're in like this kind of golden age of Tiny

1:01:27

little x86 boxes with a bunch of network ports

1:01:29

on them for cheap that are very fast and

1:01:31

actually don't use that much power At all. Yeah,

1:01:34

but you know, they're they're seller on and Pentium

1:01:36

options that have been out there for ages But

1:01:38

the the Alder Lake in 100 boxes in particular

1:01:40

in the last year or two are super popular

1:01:43

and incredibly fast You can get a you

1:01:45

can get a quad core in 100 and to

1:01:48

be clear the cores on these things. They're single core

1:01:50

They're not hyper threaded But

1:01:52

a quad core that is faster than like a 6700 K For

1:01:56

example, like the cores on these things are faster

1:01:58

than the the big CPU desktop CPUs of

1:02:00

eight years ago or whatever, they're very fast. And they

1:02:02

use 30 watts max, 20 watts, something like that. Well,

1:02:06

in most of the commercial routers you buy are

1:02:08

using ARM or even MIPS chips. So it's not

1:02:10

like routing is, until

1:02:12

you get above a gigabit, routing isn't

1:02:15

a massively CPU dependent kind of task.

1:02:17

Not hugely, no. But

1:02:19

these are pretty cheap. You can get an unconfigured one, like

1:02:21

$150 or something. You

1:02:23

might have to have RAM and storage. And

1:02:26

these little boxes, a lot of them are fanless. A

1:02:28

lot of them have, most of them have like 2.5

1:02:30

gig RJ45 ports on them. Some

1:02:35

of them are also starting to ship with SFP plus

1:02:37

ports. So you can do 10

1:02:39

gig and fiber and that sort of thing on them. There's

1:02:41

a lot of options out there. You can go to

1:02:43

Serve the Home. If you want to read more stuff

1:02:45

about this, servethehome.com is a good place to look at

1:02:47

reviews of a lot of this like commodity but high

1:02:49

end network hardware that's been hitting at like a very

1:02:52

rapid pace. And network switches are

1:02:54

also starting to show up with, you'll

1:02:56

see a lot of combo switches now that are like a bunch of

1:02:58

2.5 gig ports and like 2 to

1:03:00

4 SFP plus ports as well

1:03:02

for like a hundred bucks or less. Well,

1:03:04

yeah, I was going to say like if

1:03:06

you don't mind buying from AliExpress, you can

1:03:09

buy a N100

1:03:11

based built for PF Sense

1:03:14

computer with four 2.5 gigabit

1:03:16

LAN ports on it for

1:03:20

like 130 bucks. Yeah, it's crazy.

1:03:23

You can get slightly like more reputable

1:03:26

or like brand names you've heard of, boxes

1:03:28

domestically if you prefer. But yeah, a lot

1:03:30

of people just get stuff off of AliExpress

1:03:33

these days. And crucially, like

1:03:35

we said in that episode with Wes, you're

1:03:37

installing your own OS on it. You're

1:03:40

not dependent on some software that is shipped from a vendor

1:03:42

that you need to worry about being updated

1:03:44

regularly or secure or whatever. Probably

1:03:47

PF Sense or Open... I would lean toward OpenSense

1:03:49

these days, which is a fork of PF Sense

1:03:52

that I think is a little more modern and

1:03:54

also the people who run it are cooler. Some

1:03:57

of the PF Sense people we've talked about in the past

1:03:59

have not been great. the other drama

1:04:01

there. But

1:04:04

both of those give you a Web GUI just

1:04:06

like you would get on any traditional router. So

1:04:08

even if you don't have a lot of network

1:04:10

experience or even like experience messing

1:04:12

with little embedded devices like this, you

1:04:14

can get instructions quite easily to install

1:04:16

PSense or OpenSense on this box. And

1:04:19

once you've got that up and running, like I said, it's got a Web

1:04:21

GUI just like your integrated

1:04:24

consumer router would and then you log

1:04:26

into that and walk through the setup

1:04:28

steps in the same way that you

1:04:30

would anything else. So when you

1:04:32

do that, there's a responsibility

1:04:35

towards security that you don't have

1:04:37

necessarily with like your ISP provided

1:04:39

router? Yeah, I mean,

1:04:41

I'd say anything connected to the OpenNerf should

1:04:43

be updated regularly. Let's say. Right.

1:04:46

I guess what I'm saying is it's up

1:04:48

to you as a user to pay attention

1:04:50

to security updates and to patch frequently and

1:04:53

fast because often like an exploit

1:04:55

will land and you'll have

1:04:59

two weeks before something starts infecting

1:05:01

your router, which once

1:05:03

you've infected your router, it's bad news for everything

1:05:05

on your network. You don't want that. True. I

1:05:08

mean, I think out of the box, these are probably more

1:05:11

secure than what you would get from a

1:05:13

vendor that is not that aggressive

1:05:15

about patching stuff. Oh, no doubt.

1:05:18

But yeah, you would want to keep an eye on updates

1:05:20

for these. It's not a thing. I'm just saying it's not

1:05:22

a thing you want to set up in your closet and

1:05:24

then never look at the UI again. You

1:05:26

need to either set it to automatically update when

1:05:28

updates land or stay on top of

1:05:32

it. In, for

1:05:34

example, if you don't

1:05:36

update your home assistant install for two years,

1:05:38

probably not that big a deal. If you don't

1:05:41

update your open sense install for two years,

1:05:44

you're being a bad citizen of the internet. But again,

1:05:46

I'd say that for every router. Oh,

1:05:48

yeah. The thing that protects

1:05:50

you from any nefarious activity out there on the

1:05:53

internet, you should absolutely make sure you update on

1:05:55

a regular basis. Agreed. I'll

1:05:57

throw it out there. There's also VioS.

1:06:00

for people who really want to get nuts, which

1:06:02

is command line only. I want it as

1:06:04

VYOS. Oh, no, thank you. VYOS, it's Linux-based.

1:06:06

The other two are FreeBSD-based. So VYOS has

1:06:09

some more robust capabilities, let's say. But it

1:06:11

does not have a web GUI. So if

1:06:13

you really want to get nuts with

1:06:15

networking, it will do more. But you have to configure it

1:06:17

all from command line. Yeah, that sounds

1:06:19

like it's for people who really like pain and

1:06:21

suffering. Reporting for duty. Yeah, yeah. OK, I know

1:06:23

where you're going with this. Maybe I'll do a

1:06:25

PF Sense or an Open Sense one later this

1:06:27

year. To be clear, if I if the, and

1:06:29

this is where I intend to go, I'm

1:06:31

still on a Ubiquiti Edge router, which they

1:06:34

have basically unceremoniously dropped support

1:06:36

for. So at some point,

1:06:38

I'm going to have to get off that thing because it's

1:06:40

basically unmaintained now. And this is absolutely what I'm doing from

1:06:43

now on is rolling my own and running one of these

1:06:45

OSs, because these things get updated constantly. Well, I'll send you

1:06:47

a link to this Aliexpress

1:06:49

thing. You can put that on. I'm sure

1:06:51

it's probably fine. Yeah. It'll be fun. It'll

1:06:53

be an adventure. But I guess that's

1:06:55

as good a place as any to wrap it up for us

1:06:57

this week. Yeah, I think so. Thanks

1:07:00

to this. This was a fun

1:07:02

chat. If people have questions, please send them in.

1:07:05

We're doing a question episode next week. So it's

1:07:07

a good time for it. The email address is

1:07:09

techpod at content.town. It's techpod at content.town. And

1:07:12

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1:07:14

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1:07:16

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one day the week after so it'll probably be

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1:08:09

we talk about kind of projects we're working on,

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1:08:40

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we see you next week. Bye everybody.