TechStuff Classics: The types of WiFi

tech interests begin to grow. I was hoping you could do an episode on WiFi versus Y Max would be great to learn about that. Well, Troy, way back in the day, I'm talking November of two thousand nine, Chris Pallette, my original co host, and I talked about WiFi and the different types of WiFi, and we also talked about Wi Max, which is not a type of WiFi. We grouped it under there because it was the easiest way to explain it to people who are unfamiliar with it.

But I regret actually calling the episode the different types of WiFi, because why that's that's that's misleading. Why Max and WiFi are two different things. There are actually two different communications standards designed to transmit data wirelessly, So you can think of it as two different approaches to accomplish

similar goals. Now, why MAX can transmit up to about a gigabit per second for fixed stations, in other words, a station that is in a fixed location, it's not moving around, and it can also transmit this at a much wider area than say WiFi could. Uh. That is why why Max is really being used in municipal wireless data. So in other words, it's it's kind of a a

replacement for wired connections. You wouldn't use cables instead, you would have these towers that would transmit why MAX signals using this specific standard, and you could then provide internet connectivity to different to a large area, whereas WiFi tends to be much more localized, it doesn't have as broad a transmission range, but it can also go really fast.

In fact, the the eight O two dot eleven a C standard is on the five giga Hurts band of frequencies, because WiFi uses two different frequency bands depending upon the standard you're using, and can also reach a gigabit per second or even theoretically faster than that. So the two are able to transmit data at similar speeds, but doing so in a different way, and I will now transfer this over to the episode where Chris and I talked

more about these different types. Keeping in mind this goes back to two thousand nine and the standards have evolved considerably since then, So enjoy this episode. We thought we'd talked a little bit about the different kinds of wireless networks out there are the ones that use the various standards set out by our good friends at the Triple E, or as I always like to call them, a yeah right, Yeah, you know, early early networks were sort of like tin

cans with the string between them. This sort of makes this string virtual. Yeah, there you go. That's all you need to know. There's the whole we're gonna alright, So anyway, uh, we're talking about a set of standards that in general fall under the designation eight zero two point one one. Doesn't that easy? Yeah, well it's it's the most those are the most common frequency variations of wireless networking. So the way you h you'll see on things like outers

and modems and stuff. You'll see this number followed by a letter, and that tells you which of the specific sets of standards you're working with. Now you've got to understand what I was getting ready to correct myself because I said, and that's not a frequency, no, No, it's just a designation. Is a designation? Yes, so so the

I triple ey. They work on various designations for different UM networking solutions, and with the eight to two point one one, you have different working groups all working on different sets of standards to try and create the most stable and reliable form of wireless networking in this case

wireless networking UM. And it's it's a little confusing because you have all these different groups working on working from the same basic set of standards, but they're all tweaking them in different ways to try and get different kinds of performance out of them. So let's try and go through some of these. It's really kind of complex, but

um yeah. One of the things to uh that's kind of interesting about these different standards is, UH, as we start going through them, if we are going through them in alphabetical order, you will find that they do not necessarily uh go start from the bottom up, like if we start with eight eight O two dot eleven A. UH. This actually operates on the five gigga hurts frequency and can carry up to fifty four megabets of data per second. Uh, in contrast at two dot eleven B you'd figure to

be faster. No, actually it's not. It operates at the two point four gigga hurts frequency and only can handle eleven megabits of data per second. And that's just one of those things that makes it so confusing is you you'd figure there would be a logical progression there, and there's not necessarily one. Yeah, so what do you think should we go by just by letter even though it's not logical progression necessarily, but just to make it easier

to move from one to the other. Those two, those two do fit well together because they were the first two very common standards, at least in my experience. Well. ATO two point eleven B uses UH unregulated radio signal frequencies in the two point four gigga hurts range. So uh, here's something. Here's some things about the ATO two point

one one B set standards. It's single ranges is pretty good, um in the two point four gigga Hurts range, and it's not going to have problems with obstructions that some other frequencies do. So, in other words, you might be able to use this kind of signal through walls things like that, you don't have to worry about losing signal as soon as you turn a corner some UH from the source of the the frequency UM, and it's not

very expensive. The range is pretty good, UM, but it's not a very it's not very fast, as you pointed out, you know, compared to eight to two point eleven A.

It's it's fairly slow. UM. And because it's an unregulated frequency, some other appliances that generate radio frequencies can cause interference within that wireless UH frequency because you have to remember the computer you're using whatever, Like if you have a wireless router that's broadcasting WiFi on this set of standards, if it's using unregulated radio frequencies, that means that it can fall within a wider range, and that things that

also generate radio frequencies within that range. When you're using your computer, your computer doesn't know which one of those which of those signals are coming from your router and which are coming from other devices. So that's where you get your your interference. If you're saying, what kind of

interference could you possibly be talking about? While we're talking about things like your cordless phone in your house, for example, or perhaps an alarm system where you have uh wireless UM the devices that go above your windows and doors, if you know, it uses radio frequencies to talk to the main box UM and baby monitors stuff like that. Those are all using you know, those radio frequencies in those ranges. And of course you can you can buy cordless phones and and not to over use that word

range of different frequencies. UM. So you could try to get to to get around that. But that's one of those things that I think they've been trying to improve is is cut down on some of the interference. And that's why um ATO two eleven A uses the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing. Basically, it's it's just a system of splitting down that signal into a group of sub signals to kind of make it less likely that you're going

to be interfered with. It breaks it down so that it's not all in one one signal, Right, so you're not gonna you're not gonna have the same interference issues. UM it's you shouldn't. And again, like we point out, it is faster. ATO two point eleven A is faster than NATO to a point eleven B. But it's also it's UM range is shorter, it's not it doesn't go as far, and because of the frequencies that uses UM, it's a little more easily obstructed, So you can't necessarily

broadcast through several walls. If you have a large house and you've got a wireless router in the middle, then you may notice that as you move away you start having problems getting a signal. I also suggested you don't make your walls out of lead. Yeah, I um, never again, never again. I tell you one thing. You know what, You make your walls out of lead, and you invite Superman over. The dude is just a total jerk face the entire time. He's just easy, right, He's just standing around,

staring at the walls and just mumbling hers. I can't even repeat the things that man says. He just a lot of mouth on that guy. At any rate. I had no idea that my little joke would turn so awry. No, but tell you what, green Lantern is awesome. You get a few drinks in him, so uh so, yeah, eight two point eleven. A faster, shorter range also was more expensive. Both A and B were being worked on at the

same time, UM B was. Even though B was slower, it was less expensive and had a greater range, so it it caught on a lot faster than A did. UM A was much more expensive, so you didn't really see that getting adopted in home networks as much. But that brings us up to eight to two point eleven G. Yes, we skipped a few letters and specifications, yes, UM not that. Yeah,

I mean you could. If you look up all these different numbers UH along with I E, you'll see that there are all these different working groups that are working on various projects that have different designations. But it gets way too complex to talk about all that, especially since it doesn't really relate to what we're talking about here with home networking. So ATO two yeah, that was A and B were popular together for a while, and then G was a good sized leap forward. I would say, yeah,

I agree, and it has been a standard. UM it's been widely adopted up until just recently, but we'll get into that in a moment. Um ATO two dot eleven G also uses the two point for giga hurts spectrum, just like ATO two dot eleven B. However, it is much faster band with up to fifty four megabits per second as I as I see before me, that's the figure I have. Yeah, that's the number I have as well. So yeah, that's really fast speed. And it's actually the

it has really much better range. It's not easily obstructed, so it's it's kind of taking the best of both worlds here. It's got the range and and uh and the penetration of ATO two point eleven B and the speed and um and and uh well, probably just the

speed of two point eleven eight UM. But it it was a little it's a little more expensive, or at least it was more expensive than NATO two point eleven B. It took a while for that too kind of become the standard and home networks, but that did become the standard after shortly after it was introduced, and uh so you would look on routers and you would see if we know which which standards it was compatible within eight or two point eleven G became more and more common

and uh yeah, again had another problem with the fact that it had the unregulated signal, just like eight O two point eleven B did. So again there were there was at least the potential for signals to have some interference issues if you had a lot of other wireless technologies running in the house, a lot of kids running around on walkie talkies or you know exactly, I'll never

be over it. I'm never over kids over at my house walking is that is just the most distracting thing in the world, because especially because you don't have kids. Yeah that who are you people? How did you get into my house? Did Superman let you in? Has he not gotten over the lead walls thing yet? You know? Does that bring us up to two eleven N Yes? And up until very very recently, this was not an

approved standard. However, UM, you know I have seen from looking at the WiFi Alliances website, UM that at two dot eleven and is actually an accepted specification at this time, UM, which was supposed to happen this year. So you know that those of you who are going, you know, okay, so where's the surprise in that. No, that's that's uh, that's right on time. They're supposed to do that this year. UM. And uh, basically you're supposed to be able to get a lot better range with at two dot eleven N

and speed for that matter, Um. That was one of the things when I got UM. I got a new wireless access point UM a few months ago, and it had a proposed ATO two dot eleven and specification in it. Um. You know, since I am sitting right next to or almost right next to the the access point, I find the ranges great. Yeah, but yeah, you are right next to it as if you could actually plug your device into it with a physical wire. How great the range

of details details? Actually, Um, when I was down the hall, I actually moved the computer since then. UM, No, it was it was giving me a much better range than the old one. So UM, so you know it was it was an improvement. Um. But yeah, the ATO two dot eleven N is supposed to get you up to a hundred forty megabits per second, which is pretty speedy. Yeah that's considering I can't even get my my DSL connection near that fast. So you were asking Mark about

the difficulties and networking. If you have different machines running on different uh that require different standards, Yes, that will be a problem because you have to have the right It's it's like an antenna. You have to the right kind of antenna to pick up the right kind of frequency. And UM, it sort of depends on what kind of card you have. Sorry interrupt, No, no no, go ahead, You need to have something that will receive these signals in

your computer. UM and uh, you know, you can get cards that are built right in and there are also different kinds of cards that you can add on an aftermarket depending on what kind of computer you have. UM. And many of these cards can actually accept more than one standard, like they'll they'll say it'll be you know, you'll see like a B slash in or something like that,

or in slash G or Yeah. The chances are actually if you go out and buy whatever off the shelf, now it's going to be end compatible and backwards compatible with the other three standards, which is great. I mean if you don't have those compatible ones, then obviously if you were to get if you were to have an old eight O two point eleven G wireless card and a laptop and you get an ETO two point eleven

in router, it's not going to do any good. Yeah, you're not going to be able to access those faster speeds because you're limited by it's kind of the weakest link in the in the chain, kind of thing. Um, you're you're limited by whatever you are, Your least fast device is going to be uh in that in that chain from router to computer. So yeah, it can cause

a little issue. It's not not as bad as you might think because most things that most have routers and modems that have been sold in the last few years have really kind of ironed out a lot of the compatibility issues. Um. But that's and you know, again, it's kind of confusing because the standards do evolve over time and the group is always working on different projects. That mean that you know, within another five or six years

we may see something different. And not only that, but we have other networking technologies that also come into play that can be a little confusing. There's Bluetooth. Actually, it's funny you mentioned that. I was getting ready to mention. Please do um there are a couple different standards of Bluetooth technology now. Bluetooth UM in general has a shorter distance that you can use it a smaller range. Yes, that's what I meant. Thank you for fixing that. Um. Hey,

who's the editor here? Yeah, well that would be me, except when I'm talking this is why I add it. Um. Yeah, it actually operates on frequency of two point four five gigga hurts uh generally between two point four zero two and two point four eight zero. If you're you know split in hair for those notes. Yeah, yeah, and you can you know, connect up to eight devices, um you find I don't think a lot of people use Bluetooth

to connect a lot of devices to their computer. Maybe like a wireless keyboard, er mouse maybe maybe or or yeah, maybe a printer, sometimes your phone. I had a phone that used Bluetooth, and I could drag and drop files over like if I wanted to change ring tones, I make an MP three and and you know, connect with it.

The promise of Bluetooth is really really cool in the sense that you can have this personal area network and you know, you the network would constantly be changing depending on what devices you brought within the scope of that network. So you can bring two devices together and it creates one network. You bring those two devices toward a third device, and you've got a new network. You take one device away. I mean, it's a really flexible, uh and and dynamic system.

It's really really cool. I don't think anyone uses it to the to its potential. Really, I mean, I don't know one I know of uses Bluetooth. Like the people who use Bluetooth that I know are using the very very basic. So it's normally the headset and the and

the phone the handset. Um, that's pretty much it. Or some of them are using some sort of handset and a car like the car that's Bluetooth enabled, so that the handset sinks with the car and they can listen to music, or they can use a EPs system something like that where or even use the cars sound system for a if they're taking on calls or things of that nature. But again it's still you're talking about a two device maximum there as opposed to what the real

potential or Bluetooth is. I know somebody else is going to write into now that I think about it. Another device that you might see people use with their Bluetooth enabled computer and be a set of headphones. Yeah, that's that's pretty common. That's true. That's true. That's another common one. Um. And another thing we're another kind of wireless standard. Was going to talk about y max. So y max and

WiFi are two different things. They are not the you often will see the media reference y max is saying something like WiFi on steroids, which is I mean it's an oversimplification. Yeah, it's definitely an oversimplification. Yes, y max has a greater range than WiFi standards because it can reach up to thirty miles right something like somewhere, and and so y max has a much larger ring change. And yes, you can get very fast uh down link and uplink speeds on y max are relatively fast in

the way, about seventy megabits per seconds. So yeah, that's pretty fast. I mean it's still not as fast, you know, eight two point eleven and but yes, but you're not going to get an eight or two down eleven and much past oh I don't know, like the street in front of your house. Yeah, you're not gonna That's the other thing is that when we talk about these speeds, we're talking about the maximum that those devices are capable of generating. That doesn't necessarily mean that's the speed you

will experience. I will experience it based upon what your I s P provides to you. Actually, when I was saying a few minutes ago that my DSL struggles to reach one point five megabits per second, you know, I have a my router now is an eight or two down eleven N I'm never gonna see anything faster than one point five megabits per second because that's as fast

as it's gonna go. Now, if I connect with another computer, if I have, you know, say my music library on one computer I want to move it to another, I can move it at that speed provided my cards in both computers will reach that speed. So data transfers within your network will go at at the ideal speed, right, But data coming into or moving out of your network to the outside world the Internet is going to move at whatever speed the Internet service provider has designated or

what your current technology is capable of delivering. Yeah, so the slowest point of connection in this case would be my you know, pipe to the outside world, and everything else is regulated by that, right, Everything inside super fast, everything outside not so fast. Still fast, just not nearly as fast as we sit there and think about how slow this is. But then we'd sit there and like, hey, do you remember that these bod modems. Okay, so it's very fast compared to dial up modems. So y max

getting back to wy max um. Yeah, it's a totally different set of standards. Uh to dot one six. I like to I like to describe wy max the way I tried to describe it to someone, uh, and how it works if you if you want to try and visualize it within an analogy is imagine a big circular building that has a set number of doors along the perimeter of the building. So we'll say forty forty doors

along the perimeter of the building. That means that forty people can walk in and out of that building, carrying stuff in and taking stuff out. So there's forty people that would be people connecting to the white Max tower to get data, so home networks necessary pretty much. Um and after the after those forty doors are taken up by the various people, that's it. It's not going to accept any more people on that tower, which means that every single person is going to still get the speeds

that they were promised. You know, there's no choking because there's no bottleneck there because the tower has cut off the number of people who can connect to it. WiFi is different. WiFi people just keep piling in and out. There's like one big set of doors, and everyone is trying to get in and out of that set of

doors at the same time. So the more people are trying to access a WiFi spot, the slower you're going to experience, the slower the data rates will be, slower data transfer rates will be because it does not limit the number like y MAX does, so it's a different approach really. UM and y max, of course, is just one of the four G solutions that we're looking at in the in the future. There are others as well,

such as LTE, which is long term evolution. Looks it looks like those two are going to be fighting it out to be that the four G standard. Depending on whom you ask and where and what what company you happen to be working for that is backing which standard. Right here in Atlanta we're actually seeing y max now UM and a few other cities in the United States also have y max now and more are expected to get it within the next year. Yeah, but LT is

on its way, I'm I'm pretty sure. Yeah. And it's also that's also being giving the UH the fast track and development. I do want to clarify though, just to make certain that everyone understand hands that if you have a Wi Fi card A to two down eleven, a b G or n UM, those may or may not be compatible with you know, a a particular card or you know, some plug in for your computer. But Bluetooth and Wi max are going to require their own separate thing.

They're not they're not related. You can't get one card, as far as I know, you can't get one card that will get all of those frequencies, you know, and one thing that you can plug into your machinery looking at probably three. Yeah, although I guess you could argue that y max could replace WiFi, except unless you're actually well, if you're doing home networking stuff, if you're trying to actually transfer data between machines in your home network, then

you will need something. Because wy max it's it's reporting back to the internet service provider. It's not it's not a home networking solution. Well, okay, that's actually a good point, because, um, the the particular y max provider that is advertising in the Atlanta area shows off that you can have your laptop with you and get access anywhere and you could be on the bus, you could be you know, at an sidewalk cafe, you could be at your home and

you're still going to get your winmax speed. Well that's great. However, if you're using basically what they're showing off as a as a dongle type card modem thing. Um, that's the scientific term for it, modem card thing. Yes, yes, I think it's on the box. Okay, okay, So anyway, you plug the thing in the side of your computer, you can get and you can go anywhere. What happens if you go home and you want to hook up, say your spouse is computer, Well, now you kind of need

the internet. We'll see that's what's she going to do with it? Okay, so then you're stuck. That's no, no more home networking if all you have is that one type of you know, connectivity. You know, they offer this The m X provider also offers a home modem and then you could plug that into wave WiFi connection. But if you want to get you know, the Wi Max all around town, you're going to have to have the portable. Yeah,

that's that's a difference. Does have night actually have a WiMAX and a WiFi Well, yeah, they Yeah, that's true, that's true. I've seen I've seen the packages I've seen usually involved you can get one of each. You can get one that's the home solution where you you hook that up to your router. So you have to buy both of them, Yes, but but there's some that's like a package deal though, so you're getting a discount as

opposed to if you were buying each separately. Yes, yes, so yes, you would still have to have your wireless router, which would that's working on the WiFi if you want to hook up all your computers, yes, exactly, and within your home, and then you would have the y max dongle for whichever computer you have designated as the the main one whenever you're heading outside the house and you want to be able to hook directly to your I s P. The nice thing about that is you don't

have to pay for any other like WiFi services, any hotspots or anything like that, and you don't have to you don't have to depend upon no yeah, because with the yeah, you're connecting right to the Wi max thing tower,

not not to WiFi UH networks. And so I know that's a big problem for us, us being me and my wife, we when we're traveling around UH town, we have to hope that wherever we're going has a WiFi network and that that hopefully it's a WiFi network where we don't have to pay extra to get attached to it, because when you're already paying uh an internet service provider to get access to the internet, you kind of hate the thought of having to pay again because you're like,

if we were home, we could access this based on our plan, we wouldn't have to pay extra. So yeah, we get a little yeah mightily miffed. Great was the message thereof all, Right, well, I think that that pretty much covers the whole WiFi angle. Yeah. I'm sure we've confused everyone by now. I know I'm more confused than when we started, so good job. Um, well, you know, I guess that means that it's time to wrap things up with a little a listener mail. This listener mail

comes from kse. Hey, guys, I love the podcast. I had a quick question for you. I've heard that Mac and Linux operating systems don't get viruses like Windows computers do. As far as I can tell, I haven't even heard of a virus protection software from my Leopard running operating system.

Is this because the Unix base that Mac and Lenox were built on is less susceptible, or because Windows is a little easier to target because of how mainstream they are operating system is keep up the good work, and I would love to hear the answer to this sometime. Okay, See, first of all, let's let's address a couple of things. Uh. Linux does not have a Unix base. Technically, it is not. It is it was inspired Lennox was inspired by Unix, or rather we should say Linus was inspired by Unix.

Actually he was inspired by Umnix Minix, which in turn was a a kind of open source alternative to Unix. Yes see, you have Unix, you have the open source alternative to Unix called Minix. You had Linus Torvalds, who was then inspired by Minix to create Linux. So let's get that all the way. Um As for are they

just naturally less susceptible? Not technically, I mean there, it's it's more challenging to create the uh something that exploits a vulnerability in Linux or Mac because you've got, within the case of Linux, you've got a community that is dedicated to finding these things out and fixing them before they become problems. It doesn't mean that it's impossible. It just means it's more challenging because you've you know, you've

got the entire worldwide Linux community working on this stuff. Um, even though there are various distributions and each distribution is slightly different from each other distribution Mac, you've got a closed system which is harder to get into and learn how that works because Apple controls the whole Mac situation from the hardware to the operating system. Even so, it is possible to create uh programs that exploit vulnerabilities. We've

seen that both in max and in Linux systems. Recently, we've seen some that went as that that even exploit vulnerabilities or could exploit vulnerability within the Linux kernel itself. Um, that doesn't mean that there as vulnerable as a Windows system. Your question of is Windows more vulnerable because it's more popular In a way, Yes, it's certainly more popular with

hackers for one thing. I mean it's it's more accessible. Also, more people are using Windows, So therefore your target is You've got a target rich environment is what our friends in the military would call it. It's it means that if you do write some malicious software, you're gonna hit way more victims. If you do it for Windows, then you're gonna hit if you use it for Macrolnox just because there are more people using Windows out there than the alternatives. But if you look at some of the

vulnerabilities that exploit servers off where that's all Linux based stuff. Yeah, I mean almost all of it, not not all of it, don't write me, I know, not all of it, but a great deal of it. So it is possible, it's just not as common. Yeah, And there are there are a couple of security providers who have written uh mac virus software and has been out for many many years now. Um. Actually I think snow Leppard came with some anti virus

in under the hood. Yeah, it's it's sort of invisible. Actually, not like I've actually noticed it, let me put it that way. Um, but but yeah, I mean, and and the one, the one I would say that is arguable, argue, I believe the largest. Um it's a company called Intigo.

And they're the ones who always draw attention to vulnerabilities when they are pointed out, and um, they usually get sort of picked on, uh and in some of the stuff that I've read because they go, oh, yeah, well you guys are the ones writing this saw where of course that's what happens when Symantec or or McAfee also points out that there are vulnerabilities out there. I mean, they have a vested interest in keeping that um in mind.

But a lot of and a lot of cases to the Mac stuff scans for Windows uh UM malware as well, which is useful if you're running an Intel MAAC and happen to be running and happen to have an installation of Windows and the Mac operating system on your Mac UM. So you know, it can be handy. But a lot of people in the Mac world still believe that their position is very secure and do not use any virus

software right now. That does not mean if you have a Mac or Linux machine that you should go clicking on every single link and and installing every single application you come across, because you never know when that that vulnerability will be discovered and exploited. Uh. Here's the tricky

thing about hackers who find vulnerabilities. Some of them don't make it public knowledge, and so it may be you know that it's constantly a game of let's catch up to what the hackers know and uh and then patch it. So just be careful. Uh yeah, Max and Lennox machines aren't gonna experience them as often as windows are uh, just in general, but it's it's not outside the realm of possibility. I hope you enjoyed that look back. I will remind you that things have changed quite a bit

since two thousand nine. We have seen improvements in both y Max and WiFi over that time, as well as improvements to Bluetooth and other wireless transmission technologies. No big surprise there. You would imagine that we would continue to improve on those. But I hope that gives you the basics that you needed to understand the differences and what

these things do and what they're intended for. And if you guys have any suggestions for future episodes, First of all, I'm gonna be back in the studio very soon, so definitely let me know what you want to hear about, because I'll be ready to record as soon as I get back. Whether that happens to be a specific technology, or it's a person or a company, or maybe you have a specific guest host in mind. You would love to have a guest host come in and talk about

a particular subject, let me know. Send me an email that addresses tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. Will draw me a line on Twitter, Facebook, for Tumbler. At all three, I am tech stuff hs W, and I'll talk to you again really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics, staff works dot com