HN Gopher Feed (2017-07-23) - page 1 of 10 ___________________________________________________________________
How Wi-Fi Works
89 points by sharjeelsayed
http://www.verizoninternet.com/bookmark/how-wifi-works/___________________________________________________________________
sshanky - 2 hours ago
This is beautiful, but probably still too complex for most of their
customers. I wonder what their motive in putting this together was,
as it must have been very expensive.
Rjevski - 2 hours ago
Maybe the fact that as an internet provider it's their duty to
explain how what they're selling works? Granted, "internet"
doesn't mean Wi-Fi however their equipment includes a wireless
access point so it's fair for them to provide documentation about
how that works.
gist - 1 hours ago
> it's their dutyNot at all. No more than a car manufacturer
has a 'duty' to explain how a car or a car engine works.
crispyambulance - 58 minutes ago
Yeah, it is beautiful.Unlike their overcomplicated phone plans
and billing statements which are deliberately obscure and their
customer service which they run like a 2-bit boiler room
operation.
princekolt - 2 hours ago
"How Wi-Fi Works" --> 503 Service UnavailableSeems about right.
Kenji - 50 minutes ago
Hahaha, I was about to post just that. Made me laugh. Reminds me
of my time at university... during breaks and boring lectures,
WiFi was impossible to use because of the load. You could
probably measure how boring a lecture is by recording WiFi
latency and stability parameters.
bdcravens - 2 hours ago
Speaking of how wifi works, I learned something interesting about
wifi and Verizon's partner in many things, Comcast: Last night I
notified my home Internet acting funny, and learned that the admin
interface for my Comcast router had username "admin", password
"password". SMH.
JustSomeNobody - 1 hours ago
Why can't it be "admin", "
chars etc>". Could even print it in the bottom of the device.
peterwwillis - 3 minutes ago
It's bad practice to assume things are set up properly by someone
else. This applies to more than just computers, fwiw.
joshumax - 2 hours ago
If you want to hear something else scary, I dumped the firmware
on my modem a little while back and started exploring
it:https://twitter.com/joshumax/status/860712276717748225
[deleted]
mnm2 - 1 hours ago
... which is "okay", since you can only access it (the admin web
console) from within your wlan/lan (and not the internet) and ofc
you can/should change it during setup
bdcravens - 1 hours ago
Most people (esp non-HNers) don't, they just let Comcast set it
up. To make matters worse, they set the SSID to my last name,
and the password was my address. Maybe that's one-off, but if
standard, seems problematic.
fancy_pantser - 43 minutes ago
I can confirm that two different ISPs have done this with my
initial WiFi setup over the last few years. AT&T made it the
initials of everyone staying in that house with the password
set to their 800 number for service calls. Time Warner made
it one person's first name and the password was his cell
number.On the other hand, a Midcontinent Communications (aka
Midco) tech told me the password I wanted to use wasn't
secure enough and brainstormed with me for a couple minutes
on good SSIDs and passwords while he showed me the web admin
interface on my laptop. I was very pleased with his visit and
called the local office afterwards to pass along kudos!
fastball - 52 minutes ago
I haven't seen a telecom-provided wireless setup in forever
that didn't have the default password be fairly long and
random, printed on a sticker on the back of the router.Seems
fairly secure to me.
bdcravens - 2 minutes ago
When I had AT&T it was definitely a more secure setup.
mandeepj - 49 minutes ago
> ... which is "okay"Nope. Anyone within range of your wifi
router can connect to it and most possibly the first username
and password that they will try is admin\admin or
admin\password
rayiner - 1 hours ago
I mean, I just got a 10-gig router,[1] and the stock
username/password was "ubnt"/"ubnt." It's always the installer's
job to set up a new username/password.[1]
https://community.ubnt.com/t5/EdgeMAX-Stories/EdgeRouter-Inf...
hppycffee - 1 hours ago
ISP's like spectrum discourage dispatching techs and opt for
customer setup. And every model they give you has an
'admin/admin' or 'admin/password' setup.
plandis - 1 hours ago
I think the difference here is that someone buying Ubiquiti is
knowingly getting a slightly more in depth initial setup.Your
grandma is getting a Comcast router and probably doesn't know
it can be logged into and configured or how to do it.
fest - 1 hours ago
ER-XG is quite far from home WiFi router though :)UBNT's new-
ish home router series (AmpliFi) doesn't have default
username/password- it needs to be set-up before using. I do
think it's possible to have an open-network default
configuration, but the LCD will nag you to set-up the device,
and the first step of the setup is choosing a password (both
for management and WiFi).Disclaimer: I work at UBNT.
jstimpfle - 1 hours ago
Why not generate a long password and print it on the backside?
My DSL provider can do it (for my DSL router)
suprfnk - 1 hours ago
People might be less inclined to change it. And they should
change it, because some firm knowing your password isn't safe
either.
cbhl - 12 minutes ago
It's worth noting that all the ISPs that encourage you to
change your password have a separate maintenance account
("backdoor") with its own password.
oskenso - 1 hours ago
Also there was a time when Verizon's modem/router had generated
passwords based on the SSID https://aruljohn.com/fios/
jonathanbull - 3 hours ago
Mirror:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
dotancohen - 2 hours ago
These guys should do a followup "How Load Balancing Works".
gruez - 2 hours ago
google cache doesn't do the page justice. most of the value is in
its visualizations.
jonathanbull - 2 hours ago
True, but better than the 503 I was receiving.
hatsunearu - 1 hours ago
the radio stuff is pretty wrong; one glaring one is that PSK is
pretty much not used anymore, it's all OFDM.
rayiner - 1 hours ago
OFDM is orthogonal to PSK (hah). PSK is a modulation--a way of
representing bits on a carrier wave. Another type of modulation
is QAM. OFDM is a way of combining multiple sub-carriers (each
modulated with PSK or QAM) into one signal in order to deal with
multi-path distortion:
https://www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~hsinmu/courses/_media/wn_11fall....
tankenmate - 53 minutes ago
Some systems even combine PSK and ASK (like QAM) but
asymmetrically (called APSK), obviously though you start
getting into diminishing returns; noise limiting the gains. Of
course you are limited by Shannon's law. But depending on the
transmission medium lower energy signals can be more resistant
to noise, so you can use either probabilistic or dynamic symbol
selection to reduce the effect noise has on the signal and
hence increase the available error free bandwidth (error free
symbol rate)[0].[0]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_shaping ; check the
references and external links for more in depth explanations.
notgood - 1 hours ago
Just a reminder that Verizon its the biggest lobbyist against Net
Neutrality[0] and if you do support it then it's probably wise to
stay away from their services as far as possible.[0]
https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/lobbyists-net-neutrality-fcc...