Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Polette. I'm
Speaker 1: an editor at how stuff works dot com, and as usual,
Speaker 1: sitting across from me, I have senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: We're on a road to nowhere, which just goes to
Speaker 1: show you that we're not a couple of talking heads.
Speaker 1: That's right, Before we get into this topic, we have
Speaker 1: actually it's a two fur First, we have a little
Speaker 1: listener mail. This listener mail comes from Sam, and Sam says, Hello,
Speaker 1: John and Chris. I really enjoy your show and I
Speaker 1: appreciate all the wonderful information you provide about various tech
Speaker 1: Keep up the good work, could you, guys, perhaps to
Speaker 1: a podcast that covers how network routers such as links
Speaker 1: Us and other's work for and their role in office
Speaker 1: and home networks. That'd be swell if you did. Thank
Speaker 1: you guys for making such entertaining yet informative podcast. Cheers. PS.
Speaker 1: Is there any chance that the old listener mail audio
Speaker 1: clip might be played again? You know, the one with
Speaker 1: the annoying alarm. I like the new one, and I
Speaker 1: know it is stuck, but there are times where I
Speaker 1: yearned to hear the old one. Sam. This is for you.
Speaker 1: Everyone else, please turn down the volume on your your
Speaker 1: various playback devices. You have been warned, and now that
Speaker 1: I have warned you, here comes a little old school
Speaker 1: sound effect for listener. But on top of the listener
Speaker 1: mail that we just read from Sam from Austin, Texas,
Speaker 1: we also had a little Facebook feedback you be This
Speaker 1: comes from Scott, who says, Hey, I was wondering if
Speaker 1: you guys could do a podcast about routers, the different
Speaker 1: uses for them and which is best for gaming, streaming, video, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much. Your episode on I p V six
Speaker 1: was great and the number of IP address as was nuts.
Speaker 1: You're telling me, Scott, I'm still trying to get my
Speaker 1: breath back. So we are going to talk about routers.
Speaker 1: And before we get too far into this, I want
Speaker 1: to say we have some great articles on how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot Com about routers, so if you want to
Speaker 1: get more information, I recommend checking out how routers work,
Speaker 1: also how network address translation works. Both of those are
Speaker 1: going to be important in this discussion. Um, so let's
Speaker 1: talk about what a roller is and what it does
Speaker 1: and why it's important, yes, and talking about what value
Speaker 1: it has to the Internet. Let's just say there wouldn't
Speaker 1: be one without routers because you know, of course, the
Speaker 1: Internet is a network of computers. It's just networks. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's exactly. It's a it's a basically, it's a vast
Speaker 1: system of computers talking to one another via multiple networks
Speaker 1: and protocols. So yes, well yeah, they use the protocols
Speaker 1: to talk to us. But yeah, I mean you have
Speaker 1: you might have only one computer in your house and
Speaker 1: it hooks up to you know, the networks at the
Speaker 1: Internet service provider, and then those go to other networks
Speaker 1: and it just goes on and on and on. Or
Speaker 1: you might even have multiple computers in your house running
Speaker 1: on another network which is attached to the other networks.
Speaker 1: That's why they call it a cloud, because there's no
Speaker 1: definite shape to the Internet. It all. It all depends
Speaker 1: on what's on and what's off at any given time,
Speaker 1: and these routers make it possible, especially when you do
Speaker 1: have one line coming into your house and you have
Speaker 1: multiple computers. Yeah, So what routers allow is the transfer
Speaker 1: of information across different layers of communication. Now, what I
Speaker 1: mean by that is that the Open Systems inter Connection
Speaker 1: or os I model of communication divides up communication into
Speaker 1: seven layers. And uh, really we're just going to be
Speaker 1: thinking about the first three layers here. Actually now I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about seven layer bars. Yeah, I'm thinking about seven
Speaker 1: layer dip so um dip so. The the the seven
Speaker 1: layers are. This was a system that was proposed by
Speaker 1: Charles Bachman of a Honeywell Information Services. Honeywell, of course,
Speaker 1: is one of those big names that's important in uh
Speaker 1: in computer science. Yeah, they they've done all kinds of
Speaker 1: technological things. Yes, So the seven layers are sort of
Speaker 1: as a concepts so that you can break down what
Speaker 1: sort of communication happens between various components within a communication system.
Speaker 1: And it's uh so that you can really figure out,
Speaker 1: all right, well, how do we have these various layers
Speaker 1: interact with one another, which ones need to be, you know,
Speaker 1: segregated from the rest and uh and just kind of
Speaker 1: a way of defining it, at least from an ideal
Speaker 1: perspective as opposed to necessarily a physical one. But layer
Speaker 1: one is what we call the bit layer it's the
Speaker 1: physical layer of data communication. So we're talking about physical
Speaker 1: elements such as pens and uh the voltage, it's act
Speaker 1: also electrical layout. It's the voltage that you need it
Speaker 1: transfer information. And really you're talking about a single device
Speaker 1: communicating through some sort of medium. So this is where
Speaker 1: we were talking about one device. We're not connecting it
Speaker 1: to anything else at on a layer one layer of communication.
Speaker 1: Layer two is where we start talking about communication between devices,
Speaker 1: and in this case we're talking about communication between devices
Speaker 1: within a local area network or land. All right, so
Speaker 1: a land you do not need a router. We actually
Speaker 1: had another fellow right in UM recently on on our
Speaker 1: Facebook page, I posted a quiz about routers, and he
Speaker 1: pointed out that actually this is Carl who said this
Speaker 1: is called me pedantic. But question one, A home network
Speaker 1: does not require a router to operate either. Carl is
Speaker 1: absolutely correct. You do not need a router to allow
Speaker 1: communication within a local area network. You need a switch
Speaker 1: that can switch the data back and forth, but you
Speaker 1: don't need a router. Right, So this is layer to
Speaker 1: all that all that communication within layer two within a
Speaker 1: local area network, a single network can be uh controlled
Speaker 1: through a switch. You don't have to worry about a
Speaker 1: router at that point. Now, if you want to communicate
Speaker 1: to a device, it's on another network. This is where
Speaker 1: the Internet comes in. The Internet is that network of networks.
Speaker 1: So let's say I want to visit a website and
Speaker 1: the server that has that websites information on it is
Speaker 1: not on my local area network, but is on some
Speaker 1: other network, possibly on the other side of the world.
Speaker 1: That's when you need a router, because what the router
Speaker 1: does is it controls the the information moving from your
Speaker 1: local area network to the Internet so that it will
Speaker 1: go to the proper place. And it also receives information
Speaker 1: from the Internet and transfers it to your local area
Speaker 1: network so that you can view it or interact with
Speaker 1: it in whatever way. So that's the basic purpose of
Speaker 1: a router, uh And it's you know, when you break
Speaker 1: it down that way, it kind of it makes it
Speaker 1: easier to understand why routers are important. Without a router,
Speaker 1: you would not be able to have this this data
Speaker 1: transfer between a larger network or or a computer on
Speaker 1: another network and your computer you would just have You'd
Speaker 1: be able to have communication through a local system, but
Speaker 1: not through a global system. Unless you have a really
Speaker 1: long cable. Yeah. That's especially important for the Internet because
Speaker 1: as as you will remember, or at least as a
Speaker 1: long time listeners will remember, Uh, traffic on the Internet
Speaker 1: goes in little uh pieces or packets. They're actually called packets, um,
Speaker 1: and they're sent uh redundantly. So you know, you might
Speaker 1: take a file, uh say, an email and break it
Speaker 1: down into a series of packets. Each of those has
Speaker 1: some information that tells where it's going, UM, where it's
Speaker 1: coming from, and what piece it is. It might be,
Speaker 1: you know, piece three of packet three of forty, let's say, um,
Speaker 1: so it tells uh the network where to send it
Speaker 1: and how to reassemble it when it gets there. On
Speaker 1: the other side, Well, the thing is, uh, it might say, okay, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going from uh computer A to computer B, to
Speaker 1: computer C to computer D. Well, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: there's a power failure at computer C, so it goes
Speaker 1: from A to B. Oh it's stuck. Well, in the Internet, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's set up where the packets can be sent and
Speaker 1: re routed around computer C. So you might go to
Speaker 1: computer F and then back to computer D. Because they
Speaker 1: can be sent at multiple directions. At the same time,
Speaker 1: and then you know with the idea that one set
Speaker 1: of packets will be reassembled into the file on the
Speaker 1: other end. And the router is crucial to making this happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Routers have this thing called a routing table, and routing
Speaker 1: table is essentially a guide saying this is where, this
Speaker 1: is the direction you need to send packets in order
Speaker 1: for information to come to go from to this machine
Speaker 1: and get to that machine. So machine A and machine
Speaker 1: beat will say, alright, So a routing table will in
Speaker 1: general give the fastest uh route. Now, the fastest route
Speaker 1: is not necessarily the shortest route, true, And it's the
Speaker 1: same as if you live in a city. All right,
Speaker 1: So let's say let's let's let's take the city as
Speaker 1: a kind of a metaphor here. We're gonna look at
Speaker 1: the city as an analog to the internet. It's not
Speaker 1: it's not entirely analogous, but we're going to kind of
Speaker 1: make some jumps here. So let's say you live in
Speaker 1: a city and the city tends to have a lot
Speaker 1: of traffic in it, and you may be at your
Speaker 1: house and you want to go eat at a popular
Speaker 1: restaurant that's across town. And so you know three different
Speaker 1: ways of getting to the place across town. One of
Speaker 1: them takes the least number of turns. It's it's the
Speaker 1: most direct route, but it's also the most heavily traffic route.
Speaker 1: So in other words, you could go that way and
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have to turn as frequently, but because of
Speaker 1: the the number of cars on that route, it will
Speaker 1: actually take you longer to get there than if you
Speaker 1: took a slightly more circuitous route that would have less
Speaker 1: traffic on it. So in that case, you say, you
Speaker 1: know what, I know that this is the direct path,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to take this more out of the
Speaker 1: way path. This it's it's a shortcut in time, but
Speaker 1: not in distance. And the same thing is true on
Speaker 1: the internet. You might be able to find a route
Speaker 1: to push traffic through that's going to be faster, even
Speaker 1: though it's not as direct. By the way, if you
Speaker 1: happen to live in Los Angeles, I understand that this
Speaker 1: is a sport that in Los Angeles, if you have
Speaker 1: a group of people and you have all decided to
Speaker 1: go someplace, the first hour of your travel time will
Speaker 1: actually be taken up spending time talking about the best
Speaker 1: way to get to where you're going. Okay, yeah, very
Speaker 1: little driving in LA so well that's it's. What's required
Speaker 1: is that you and at least one other person each
Speaker 1: in their own vehicles, have to be going to a
Speaker 1: specific place, leaving from the same location. And at that
Speaker 1: point you have launched into the game where then you
Speaker 1: say no, no, no, you don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: That's going to take you on the four oh five
Speaker 1: And haven't you heard of Carmageddon? And um so, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the same sort of thing. Now. Granted, if if
Speaker 1: the city were empty, then the direct route would be
Speaker 1: the shortest, but the city is never empty because the
Speaker 1: zombie apocalypse hasn't happened yet, at least at the time
Speaker 1: of the recording of this podcast. Yes so, and by
Speaker 1: the way, if by the zombie apocalypse has happened since
Speaker 1: we record this podcast, I would like to have a
Speaker 1: shout out to all of our new listeners with BRAT.
Speaker 1: We're great with the zombie demographic. Oh I'm a little
Speaker 1: loopy today, Yeah you know, I hadn't noticed. Yeah, so anyway,
Speaker 1: The routing table is this list of essentially rules that
Speaker 1: the router follows in order to send packets across the network.
Speaker 1: And you might say, well, that seems pretty um stiff
Speaker 1: and and and inflexible. What happens when things change, Well,
Speaker 1: routing tables are not static. They are dynamic. They change
Speaker 1: all the time. And what's happening is routers are actually
Speaker 1: communicating with each other across the Internet constantly updating this
Speaker 1: information and changing it so that the most uh, the
Speaker 1: most efficient route is constantly being adjusted. And they're doing
Speaker 1: this through various protocols. Routing Information Protocol or r I
Speaker 1: p RIP that would be the one of the common
Speaker 1: protocols used. Another one is the Open Shortest Path First
Speaker 1: or OSPF protocol. These protocols are what routers use in
Speaker 1: order to update these routing tables so that data will
Speaker 1: co go across the network, across the Internet in the
Speaker 1: most efficient way possible, the way that's got the best
Speaker 1: guarantee that your information is going to get to where
Speaker 1: it needs to be. And each packet that Chris was
Speaker 1: talking about earlier has data in it that allows it
Speaker 1: to um well, allows it to the system to keep
Speaker 1: track of it. So let's say that you've sent a
Speaker 1: file like let's say I'm sending a file to Chris
Speaker 1: and Chris is on one network and I'm on another network,
Speaker 1: and uh, some of my packets don't get through. Well,
Speaker 1: the system keeps track of that. The what will happen
Speaker 1: is the information will come back to my computer and
Speaker 1: it will say, hey, packets three, seven, and twelve out
Speaker 1: of the forty that you sent never made it to
Speaker 1: Chris's machine. Then my machine will automatically re send those
Speaker 1: packets so that they will hopefully get to Chris's machine. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: all this is happening at near the speed of light,
Speaker 1: so you don't really notice the delay unless something's really
Speaker 1: really bad has happened. Um. And so this is all
Speaker 1: happening in the blink of an eye, but it's happening
Speaker 1: over and over and over across the Internet, right, um
Speaker 1: and and yes it's um just to go back to
Speaker 1: protocols to the protocols are basically, uh, languages that the
Speaker 1: routers used to speak to one another. Um. It's it
Speaker 1: enables people multiple manufacturers to make devices that will communicate
Speaker 1: with one another and be interoperable, which is you know,
Speaker 1: we talked about that actually on our podcast about how
Speaker 1: the Internet works, and we mentioned on some of the others.
Speaker 1: I think we probably did on IPv six that, uh,
Speaker 1: there are certain protocols that allow MC to talk to
Speaker 1: a Linux box and the Linux box to talk to
Speaker 1: a PC and etcetera. Right, they're all they're all using
Speaker 1: the computer equivalent of Esperanto. Yes, no, anyway, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's what that's what our protocol is. And route routers
Speaker 1: do have those, uh, protocols that are specific to routers,
Speaker 1: and that that does help them balance the load somewhat
Speaker 1: on the Internet. Yeah, we should should say, I guess
Speaker 1: that a router really is a very specific computer. It's
Speaker 1: not just this box that you buy and you know
Speaker 1: it's got lights on it and when it's lit up,
Speaker 1: you know that the information is going through it is
Speaker 1: actually a very specific type of computer. Yeah, very specialized device.
Speaker 1: And and a lot of the routers, like the home
Speaker 1: routers that you purchase for your your home network, whether
Speaker 1: it's wireless or wired, also tend to act as a switch.
Speaker 1: And what by by that, I mean that it allows
Speaker 1: you to have your computers talk to one another. So
Speaker 1: if you have multiple computers at your house, you can
Speaker 1: send files from one machine to another machine without having
Speaker 1: to set up like some weird email thing or whatever,
Speaker 1: you can actually send it directly through your home network
Speaker 1: because your router also can be a switch. It's not
Speaker 1: just a router that sends information from your network to
Speaker 1: the Internet and back. Um. Also, when we were talking
Speaker 1: about information going across the network and figuring out the
Speaker 1: most efficient way, in the sense of routers, what they
Speaker 1: do is they calculate the cost of a of any
Speaker 1: particular data transmission, and cost does not mean dollars. It
Speaker 1: means hops, alright, So when a router sends information across
Speaker 1: the network, information may go from one router to another
Speaker 1: router to another router until it finally gets to wherever
Speaker 1: it's going. All right, Each time that information goes from
Speaker 1: one route or to another, that's called a hop, right now. Protocols,
Speaker 1: certain protocols have a limited number of hops that are
Speaker 1: built into uh any sort of data transference, and that
Speaker 1: information is stored in the data packet. Okay, So it's
Speaker 1: almost like I'm passing a note in class, and the
Speaker 1: note can only pass through three other people before it
Speaker 1: gets to my destination. It's one of them, the teacher.
Speaker 1: The teacher accesses the the packet of information it gets discarded,
Speaker 1: which is very much like what happens on the internet. Actually, so,
Speaker 1: so let's say that again. But now we're talking about
Speaker 1: a classroom. So Chris is sitting across the class from
Speaker 1: from me. I'm on one side, he's on the other side.
Speaker 1: I want to pass him a note that says something like, uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know the didn't the teacher wear that same
Speaker 1: outfit yesterday? And so I'm trying to send the the
Speaker 1: note across the class and it can only pass through
Speaker 1: three other hands up before it hits Chris. If it
Speaker 1: passes through more than that, then whoever the fourth person
Speaker 1: is is like, this is not worthwhile and just tosses
Speaker 1: the note away. The same thing is happening with hop
Speaker 1: counts if I send a packet of information. If I'm
Speaker 1: sending a file to Chris and it's going across the Internet,
Speaker 1: there's a certain number of hops that packet will go
Speaker 1: through before it hits the maximum number of hop count.
Speaker 1: Now that does not mean that the packet just automatically
Speaker 1: gets thrown away. It means that the system says, you
Speaker 1: know what, this packet has gone through this kind of
Speaker 1: serpentine pathway in order to get to where it's going.
Speaker 1: It's not getting there efficiently. Chances are this packet has
Speaker 1: already made it to the destination through a fewer number
Speaker 1: of hops. So I'm just going to toss the packet
Speaker 1: aside because otherwise, because the Internet is a redundant system,
Speaker 1: and because it's meant to be robust, and it's meant
Speaker 1: to get a packet of information to the destination through
Speaker 1: whatever means possible within the parameters of the Internet. If
Speaker 1: you didn't have these sort of uh discards them is
Speaker 1: put into place, the Internet would become overrun with packets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you know, if I'm sending that file to Chris
Speaker 1: and there's these duplicate packets going across the network, what
Speaker 1: happens when one packet gets to the destination and the
Speaker 1: other packets are still out there trying to trying to
Speaker 1: get to the destination. You're starting to clog up the
Speaker 1: Internet with all of this data. So these these fail
Speaker 1: safes are in place in order to prevent the Internet
Speaker 1: from just bogging down with too much data. And they
Speaker 1: didn't have to buy a like a digital router and
Speaker 1: go in and yeah, we've got we've got the routers,
Speaker 1: but not the routers router routers. I had to call
Speaker 1: them once it was did not go well, No, it's
Speaker 1: never anyway. Um. So in order to make all this work,
Speaker 1: in addition to your router and your network, you also
Speaker 1: have to have an address, a unique address for each
Speaker 1: item on the network. And this we've talked about in
Speaker 1: the I p V four versus I p V six podcast.
Speaker 1: Ideally you would have every single device that connects to
Speaker 1: the Internet would have its own unique address, so that
Speaker 1: whenever I want to send something to another device or
Speaker 1: receive information from another device, it would always go to
Speaker 1: the same address. And that way, it's just it's just efficient.
Speaker 1: It's a clean, efficient system. But we don't have enough
Speaker 1: addresses to do that, right. But each item and you
Speaker 1: may have actually seen this when you're going into your
Speaker 1: computer or you know, other devices like tablets and smartphones
Speaker 1: that use Internet networks, or video game systems, video game systems, uh,
Speaker 1: set top boxes, TVs. There's a lot of different devices
Speaker 1: that do it now, which is again part of the problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that this is called a MAC address. It's known as
Speaker 1: Media Access control and it doesn't look like well, actually,
Speaker 1: it kind of resembles an IP address because it has
Speaker 1: a series of letters and numbers separated by by colon's
Speaker 1: and that this is how you can identify I. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, say you have been foolish and have left
Speaker 1: your wireless network open to the public, and you have
Speaker 1: let's say a computer and a tablet and wait a minute,
Speaker 1: there are three things on your network. Well, then you
Speaker 1: can look at the MAC address on your computer, and
Speaker 1: you can look at the MAC address and your tablet
Speaker 1: and UH by process of elimination, figure out what the
Speaker 1: other device is and maybe even get an idea. If
Speaker 1: you can access the uh um the routers information page,
Speaker 1: you can you can see what what's going on, how
Speaker 1: much traffic it's using, and hopefully shut it down. You
Speaker 1: can even on on some uh probably on most of them,
Speaker 1: I would guess. I just don't want to be absolute um,
Speaker 1: you know, restricted to certain Mac addresses, so you can
Speaker 1: you can actually add you can on mind on the
Speaker 1: device I have at home. You can say, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm adding this tablet, I'm adding this game console, I'm
Speaker 1: adding this uh smartphone, I actually use WiFi calling on
Speaker 1: my smartphone, you know, and things like that, and say, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm only allowing MAC addresses that I know to join
Speaker 1: this network. But Basically, this is a way for um,
Speaker 1: you know, local networks to identify the devices and send
Speaker 1: the packets that go to that device, so they know,
Speaker 1: um that if you are reading how Stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: Com and your spouse is looking at a news network
Speaker 1: and you know you don't get the packets mixed up.
Speaker 1: It says, oh, well, these belong to this address, these
Speaker 1: belong to that address, and I'm going to be the
Speaker 1: traffic cop and send the right packets to the right place, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This this kind of ties into network address translation, which
Speaker 1: I referred to at the beginning of the podcast. We've
Speaker 1: also talked about that in the I p V four
Speaker 1: versus I p V six. Yes, it's one of the
Speaker 1: ways to address the problem of having more devices in
Speaker 1: the world than we have available IP addresses for those
Speaker 1: devices to connect to the Internet. Now, for information to
Speaker 1: travel across the Internet, it means that you have to
Speaker 1: have an Internet Protocol address. This allows the information to
Speaker 1: travel across it allows it allows other computers to find you,
Speaker 1: and allows your computer to send information to other computers. Uh.
Speaker 1: Without the IP addresses, you of course would have no
Speaker 1: way of knowing how to get information from one machine
Speaker 1: to another. It's kind of like in a sense, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like a physical address or phone number. If
Speaker 1: we didn't have phone numbers, if it was all a
Speaker 1: party line, you would just have to pick up the
Speaker 1: phone and hope that whomever you're trying to contact is
Speaker 1: also on the phone at that time, and everyone else
Speaker 1: will be able to hear your conversation at the same time.
Speaker 1: And but in just curious, have we ever talked about
Speaker 1: party lines? I don't think, so that might be fun.
Speaker 1: Then we can add that to the to do list.
Speaker 1: So the network address translation, this is a layer that,
Speaker 1: uh that could be very useful in this sense. You
Speaker 1: would have a router that would have a number of
Speaker 1: static IP addresses, or it possibly would have a number
Speaker 1: of addresses assigned to it by the whatever your Internet
Speaker 1: service provider is. Your devices would not have static IP addresses.
Speaker 1: They would have like some non unique IP address and
Speaker 1: dynamically assigned and and and because they are non unique,
Speaker 1: that means you can't just automatically tag into the Internet
Speaker 1: and send stuff because if it's a non unique address,
Speaker 1: I mean some other devices out there on the Internet
Speaker 1: may also have that same address, So anything you request
Speaker 1: would be sent to all of them. So what happens
Speaker 1: is your router acts as kind of a postmaster. You
Speaker 1: have this non unique address. You send information to the
Speaker 1: you're trying to get, uh, let's say again a website.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to visit a website. Uh. That request goes
Speaker 1: through to my router. My router then replaces my non
Speaker 1: unique address with a unique static IP address and keeps
Speaker 1: track of that relationship within the routing table. When it's
Speaker 1: own pro re calls, sends that request out to the internet.
Speaker 1: It eventually gets to the server that I want. The
Speaker 1: information comes back to the router. The routers says, all right,
Speaker 1: this information is meant for static IP address whatever. Now
Speaker 1: it has to refer to its table and see which
Speaker 1: of your devices on your home network, your local area
Speaker 1: network has temporarily been assigned that static address. It then
Speaker 1: sends the information to you. If if you are no
Speaker 1: longer part of that network, or if it can identify it,
Speaker 1: it gets dumped. It dumps that information so it goes nowhere. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: this is one of the things that kind of it
Speaker 1: depending on the type of engineer, it can really irritate
Speaker 1: engineers because it's a less efficient system and this is
Speaker 1: also one of the issues with gaming routers we talked about.
Speaker 1: You know, the request asked about what kind of routers
Speaker 1: are best for gaming. Well, because of the network address translation,
Speaker 1: this can slow down data trans mission a little bit.
Speaker 1: I mean, there can also be some compatibility issues, um,
Speaker 1: especially if the router has to change these the IP
Speaker 1: address for whatever the device is. Like, if you've got
Speaker 1: a lot of devices that are connecting to this router,
Speaker 1: there could be some complications and complications when you're gaming.
Speaker 1: That's a bad thing because it's going to affect how
Speaker 1: fast that information is traveling to whichever device you're using
Speaker 1: the game. It's complicated. Yeah, well that can that can
Speaker 1: mean that you will get lag in the game you're playing.
Speaker 1: It means that you might get artifacts. Uh, the game
Speaker 1: will not play as well as you would want it to.
Speaker 1: So any any device that's using that you're that's one
Speaker 1: of the things you gotta look at, like, well, how
Speaker 1: how well rated is this router for that particular function. Um.
Speaker 1: Also depending on well, if you are a serious gamer,
Speaker 1: you probably you probably want a wired router. Uh. A
Speaker 1: lot of the wireless routers also have wired connections to them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you probably want a wired connection, and the reason
Speaker 1: for that is that it's more reliable than wireless. You
Speaker 1: are less likely to have interference. Uh, you're not going
Speaker 1: to find a dead spot. Like you know, if you
Speaker 1: have your wireless network set up in one room and
Speaker 1: you tend to game in a different room and uh,
Speaker 1: and there are certain materials in your walls, it may
Speaker 1: end up blocking some of the signal, which means that
Speaker 1: you may not have a clear signal and that will
Speaker 1: affect your gaming. So a wired connection tends to be
Speaker 1: best if you want to go wireless. UH, the IN
Speaker 1: protocol tends to be the best. It's the fastest, and
Speaker 1: it has a really good penetration as far as various
Speaker 1: materials goes. So if you have a wireless or other
Speaker 1: set up, it's a it's a pretty good bet. G
Speaker 1: is the next step. I would go with either INN
Speaker 1: or G preferably. And now you have to make sure
Speaker 1: that whatever devices you're using are compatible with that particular protocol. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's the eight O, two dot eleven. Yes, proto a
Speaker 1: call with with the various flavors A, B, G and yeah.
Speaker 1: And so if you have a if you have a
Speaker 1: device that is running that it can accept G. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are all different kinds of radio frequencies, but it
Speaker 1: is designed for a G frequency then G rated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you have an N router, it's not gonna work.
Speaker 1: They are not compatible. You have to have one that
Speaker 1: can do I mean, they're great. There are plenty of
Speaker 1: routers out there that will do multiple frequencies, and there
Speaker 1: are plenty of of UH wireless chips out there that
Speaker 1: can do multiple frequencies as well, But you want to
Speaker 1: make sure that you do have that compatibility in there
Speaker 1: or else. You know, you might have the fastest connection
Speaker 1: with the router possible, but your device is not compatible.
Speaker 1: Also keep in mind this is also very heavily dependent
Speaker 1: upon what your internet service provider plan is, because if
Speaker 1: you're you can have the if you have the fastest router,
Speaker 1: and you think of it like a doorway, it could
Speaker 1: be a really really wide doorway, but the path is
Speaker 1: really narrow once you open the door, it doesn't help you.
Speaker 1: You have to have that broadband connection with a really
Speaker 1: good data transfer rate for the router to even make
Speaker 1: a difference. Um, if you don't have that high speed
Speaker 1: internet connection, if your cable modem or or however you're
Speaker 1: getting your your internet. If that is a bottleneck, the
Speaker 1: router is not gonna help. You have to have that too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind too that if your I s P
Speaker 1: caps data, you might keep an eye on that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, depending on what you're doing, it may not
Speaker 1: make a difference. Most people never reach their I s
Speaker 1: P S data cap, although that's that's changing as people
Speaker 1: are getting more into like consuming streaming video. You know.
Speaker 1: So if you are watching some streaming video service and
Speaker 1: you're perhaps you have it on a couple of different televisions.
Speaker 1: I mean it's not unusual now. You might have a
Speaker 1: Roku box on one machine one television. You might have
Speaker 1: a an Xbox three six yr ps three on another one.
Speaker 1: You could potentially have five or six different televisions all
Speaker 1: consuming streaming video. That's gonna that's gonna cause a pretty
Speaker 1: big bottleneck too. You've gotta have a really good Internet
Speaker 1: connection and a decent router for that to work. It's
Speaker 1: not impossible. Um, it's impossible with my setup, but because
Speaker 1: I have a I have a much slower home network. Uh.
Speaker 1: But yeah, if you don't, um, yeah, that's that's possible,
Speaker 1: and then that could very quickly run up against a
Speaker 1: data cap right. Uh, did you want to touch on
Speaker 1: There's one one issue I thought it might be interesting
Speaker 1: to touch on. UM. That's in the routers article on
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. And that's what happens when
Speaker 1: people intentionally try to clog a network hit me up
Speaker 1: with it. That would be a do OS denial of
Speaker 1: a denial of service attack. UM. And basically, in these attacks, UH,
Speaker 1: what happens is someone will intentionally send as many packets
Speaker 1: as possible to the same spot. So basically, remember we
Speaker 1: were talking just a few moments ago about how routers
Speaker 1: are aware of what else is going on in the network,
Speaker 1: and they talk to one another and they can they communicate. Well,
Speaker 1: if you know where there is a specific router, uh.
Speaker 1: And it leads to say, say you're some someone who
Speaker 1: is who has a grievance against the company, and you
Speaker 1: know where their their router is, you can send you know,
Speaker 1: billions of packets to it. Uh. Someone's going to correct
Speaker 1: me and say they can't be that many, but let's
Speaker 1: say lots and lots of packets to it in an
Speaker 1: attempt to overwhelm the router and give it so much
Speaker 1: traffic that it cannot UM handle it, and it will
Speaker 1: cause it to UH have errors. Basically, it will become
Speaker 1: really sluggish or possibly even have it just shut down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's certainly been known to happen in then variation of
Speaker 1: this which is becoming more common as the d d
Speaker 1: O S or distributed denial of service attack, which happens
Speaker 1: a lot in a lot of cases with UH bot
Speaker 1: nets where people have UM installed some kind of malware
Speaker 1: on their computer and someone is running this attack to
Speaker 1: UH you know, basically take over possibly thousands of computers
Speaker 1: and have all of them send an attack against one
Speaker 1: target at the same time. Which, as you might imagine,
Speaker 1: if you had thousands of computers working on this problem
Speaker 1: as it were sending sending requests at the speed of
Speaker 1: light all to a single target, it's it's very easy
Speaker 1: to overwhelm a single router with that kind of UH
Speaker 1: with that kind of traffic. So UM when you when
Speaker 1: you hear about these attacks, you can keep that in mind,
Speaker 1: that that there's some router somewhere that it's doing its
Speaker 1: level best to handle the traffic, but it is just
Speaker 1: not keeping up with a flood of UH packets swarming
Speaker 1: at it. And also on that same note, because a
Speaker 1: router is essentially a computer. You can install software on
Speaker 1: that router so that it has its own protections against
Speaker 1: such things. So when you hear about people talking about firewalls,
Speaker 1: there are various ways you can have a firewall. You
Speaker 1: can a computer firewall, you can have it as a
Speaker 1: software layer, you can have it as a hardware layer. Well,
Speaker 1: routers kind of a hardware layer level firewall. A lot
Speaker 1: of routers come with a firewall system in place that
Speaker 1: you can configure once you set up your router, and
Speaker 1: this will help protect your home network system from intrusions
Speaker 1: from malware coming in, uh, from unrequested data coming in,
Speaker 1: so sort sort of a spam protector as well. UM,
Speaker 1: and routers can also have other kinds of software programmed
Speaker 1: into them, things like encryption, UM, intrusion detection, that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. So, uh, depending on the model of router,
Speaker 1: that'll that'll tell you what kind of protection is built
Speaker 1: into the system. And uh, you know, it's not uncommon
Speaker 1: to find routers come with firewall software and pre installed
Speaker 1: in the router itself, which is also very useful. It
Speaker 1: do highly recommend that if you know, if you're setting
Speaker 1: up a home area network and you want to uh,
Speaker 1: you want to have a router there to connect to
Speaker 1: the internet. Setting up a firewall is a very good stuff.
Speaker 1: It's not just like any other security system on the Internet.
Speaker 1: I have to stress it's never full proof. You're never
Speaker 1: going to have the perfect security system because people are
Speaker 1: ingenious at getting around uh firewalls and other kind of barriers.
Speaker 1: But it does mean that you're going to prevent the
Speaker 1: overwhelming percentage of attacks from getting to you because most
Speaker 1: people are also lazy, so they're gonna aim for a
Speaker 1: wide array of targets and they're gonna be happy if
Speaker 1: they just hit a few of those targets. They're not
Speaker 1: necessarily aiming directly for you, unless you're some sort of
Speaker 1: important individual with like a government or perhaps a news
Speaker 1: agency or something like that. If you have like a
Speaker 1: high profile status, then you might have to worry about
Speaker 1: more stringent security. But for the average user, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: You know, a decent viral wall is enough. Yeah, Indecent
Speaker 1: fire walls are never enough. Well. I think that's a
Speaker 1: good discussion on routers. We really pretty much covered the
Speaker 1: basics there, and like I said, if you want to
Speaker 1: learn more, visit how stuff works dot com. Check out
Speaker 1: our articles on how routers work and how network address
Speaker 1: translation works. Um those those articles are very helpful to
Speaker 1: understand the ins and outs of how this data goes across.
Speaker 1: There's also some great animations and everything that show this
Speaker 1: in action. So if you have problems visualizing it, check
Speaker 1: out the website. It really does help. And guys, if
Speaker 1: you have any requests that you would like us to
Speaker 1: address uh huh, you can let us know via email
Speaker 1: our addresses, text stuff at how stuff Works dot com,
Speaker 1: or send us a little message on that Facebook or
Speaker 1: Twitter thing. Both of those places are handle is tech
Speaker 1: Stuff hs W and Chris and I will talk to
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