What are all of these different boxes that Chorus and Spark Provide?

Education Post 2

Part 2 of our Educational Series on Tech questions that you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask and if you did ask you probably soon regretted, covers the various boxes and terms that relate to getting you “on-line”;

Modem, router, gateway, etc.

In the last Community Classroom Post we talked about what is WiFi and then wandered into various different media that could carry your signals; there was WiFi, Coax, twisted pair, Ethernet, Token Ring and so on.

The thing to remember is that Ethernet is a protocol (sort of), as is Token Ring (also sort of) whilst the cables are media for the transfer of Ethernet (or Token Ring). The media could be WiFI, twisted pair, Coax or other.

Here we have, at the top, a wobbly line, or box, which represents the Internet or other stuff that your PC uses to inform, entertain or educate you. This is supported by Ethernet which transfers it for you which in turn sits upon Wi-Fi or it could sit on twisted pair cables or even coaxial cable, but it is still Ethernet transferring your stuff.

SO for this lesson you need to realise that there are different types of media that can carry your signals using Ethernet as a transfer protocol (sort of).

When Chorus turn up to put fibre or DSL “internet” into your home they will supply some boxes, usually about 6’ by 4’ (I’m old enough to still work in Imperial but I think that equates to about 15cm x 10cm), although these sizes may vary.

Over the years there have been various different types of connexion to the Internet from dial-up over serial cables using RS232 (no that’s not the little robot thing that squeaks on Star War, it’s a connector standard, like Rj45 which we discussed previously, that transfers serial signals, analogue, from your computer to a device) through various renditions of ISDN, DSL and now fibre.

The first devices to connect were called ‘modems’ which was an early acronym for Modulator / Demodulator which converts analogue signal into digital signals.

An analogue signal is a continuous signal which represents physical measurements such as a voice or music. Analogue technology records signals as they are formed, naturally and are denoted by sine waves.

A digital signal is a discreet time signal generated by digital modulation in the form of binary 1 or 0, generally transmitted by an electric pulse of a defined duration denoting a 1 and absence denoting a 0. Digital is on or off and are denoted by square waves.

Basically the modem is the device that turns analogue signals into digital and back again.

The earliest version of modems would actually use sound to modulate and transfer digital signals. When one watches films from the 80s which have ‘hackers’ or computer users connecting to some mainframe somewhere they will undoubtedly play some sort of modem sound which is sort of wheee, grrr, grrr, blkip, blip etc. this is the sound that these things used to make when connecting with a remote device (handshaking). <click here for an example https://youtu.be/gsNaR6FRuO0 >.

The earliest ones actually used a telephone (yes kids I know that you connect your mobile phone to the Internet but we actually connected our landline ‘phones to the modem, as you would say these days ‘literally’. Alsom noite the round bit on top of the ’phone, a dial; we literally used to ‘dial-in’ to things)

That’s right, we actually placed the handset on top of the modem receiver, dialled the number of the remote computer (this could have been a modem bank in an ISP that then connected us to other computers through the early Internet, powered by steam).

Later on these improved and the modem could plug directly into the phone socket and the computer and make the calls without the need to use a combination as per the previous picture.

We really thought we were the bees’ knees when we had one of these in the mid-80s; ha, Ferris Bueller eat your heart out. These were in use right through until the mid to late 90s, at least I was using them for a corporate internet and PC to PC remote connexions for a medium sized business.

Later on a more robust system for corporates came out called ISDN and then ISDN2 (Integrated Services Digital Network). Notice the word ‘digital’ in the name? ISDN actually used ‘phone lines to transfer digital signals, rather than analogue, meaning that broadband was now available.

Sigh, I’m running low on tea and have just brought in a new term, ‘Broadband’. Right, one minute to pop the kettle on (thankfully this will be quick because, unlike USA we aren’t on 110v and kettles don’t take 10 or 15 minutes to reach optimum performance, boiling).

Right back now;

·         Broadband is what we use these days, it is digital and simply means that a cable can carry multiple messages at the same time in both directions; we can send voice, data, video etc over the same medium (cable, Wi-Fi etc.).

·         Baseband only allows a single transmission in one direction. Analogue is generally baseband as a single wire can only transmit in one direction and one signal at a time.

To summarise, the modem translates analogue data from the ISP over the lines to digital which your device will understand and back again.

SO what is a router and what is a gateway?

These two are essentially different names for the same device. Traditionally they were always called routers but Microsoft started to call them gateways in their configurations, but the terms are interchangeable.,

A router connects networks of different types and passes the information from one of these networks to the others and ensures that the devices get the right messages; connecting a fibre network to a Wi-Fi network is done via a router which is simply connecting the two different types of media.

Your ISP will have provided a public facing IP address (which is how the outside world identifies your home) which will be something like 125.236.213.17.

However, when you look at the settings on your PC you will see that it has an IP address of something like 192.168.1.17. Your router has given you that number for your internal PC and most home networks will all have a range of 192.168.1.x and the router routes the messages from the external network (internet) to your home device (internal) and back again whilst routing it between your Wi-Fi and the ISPO’s DSL or Fibre. There will be a future lesson on IP, so for this lesson you just need to understand that the network in your home is a different network from the outside world and connected by your router.

Okay, so now we are talking about two devices, but if you are on DSL you will look and see that there is only one device. Not long ago, 2000s and thereabouts, the ISP would supply both a modem and a router to afford you the connexion to their Internet services.

It would have looked something like this, lots of cables, two power sockets required and two devices getting tangled up under your desk or on a shelf somewhere.

Over time, however, the manufactures combined the modem and routers into one device so that there became no need for separate boxes. Here are a couple of examples of a combo modem and router box.

These are the ones that we are now most familiar with. These connect us to our ISP, generally a type of DSL connexion (Digital Subscriber Line).

There are various types of DSL connexion; ADSL (Asynchronous DSL) and VDSL (Very High Speed DSL).

Phew, we have talked about early modems, then a modem router combination, now let’s bring fibre into the equation.

Fibre is a much faster medium than any of the others and uses optical cables to transfer data at massively high speeds. Fibre is quickly taking over from DSL but due to the cost of installation it isn’t yet available everywhere. In fact there are places in NZ where even DSL is not available and other solutions are required; we will talk about alternatives in another lesson or tip of the day entry.

The question I hear most is ‘now that I have fibre I have to have 2 boxes, why?’

With the advent of fibre we have sort of gone back in time to the days of separate modems and routers, see above. The new box, called an ONT (Optical Network Terminal) sort of does what the old modems used to do, i.e. connect your router to the medium suppled by your ISP / Chorus. It basically transfers fibre optical cable signals into an RJ45 jack which you can then plug into your router (WiFi router) and carry on doing whatever tickles your fancy on the Internet.

More recently the manufacturers of the ONTs have combined the ONT with a WiFi router which looks something like this. This combines the ONT, Modem and WiFi router all in one box; you can tell if you have one of these as it will have antenna (bunny ears) sticking out somewhere ready to broadcast your WiFi.

“In that case”, I hear someone at the back shout out “in that case why do I still have to have my Spark router / modem box as well as an ONT, if the ONT actually has a WiFi router built in?”.

Good question ! Essentially you don’t, it could perform everything. However, in many countries there are lines of separation when providing Internet services with demarcation between the infrastructure provider (Chorus) and the ISP (Spark, ICONZ, Orcon). This demarcation was introduced to prevent a monopoly for one or two companies forcing the end customers to use the infrastructure provided by an ISP, like in the old days of Telecom or BT. The functions, as well as business models, have been broken up which is essentially great for the consumer as the infrastructure is provided by one party and then you get the choice of ISPs, rather than be tied to a single company who owns the cables as well as your Internet service, thus allowing you shop around and change ISPs on a whim, forcing them to offer better services and better prices. The drawback here is that the ISPs tend to want to sell you their own devices, preconfigured to “make it easier for the customer” to use. This then results in your having two boxes, again, as the WiFi and routing functions of the ONT are disabled. The ONT with bunny ears is not transmitting anything unless you configure it to do so. That’s why you now have two boxes with Fibre, once again leading to tangles, multiple power sockets required and a mess.

To summarise:

·         Modem – device to modulate and demodulate analogue to digital signals

·         Router – connects and routes between different networks (WiFi, ISP – Ethernet, Token Ring)

·         Modem Router – combines the above into one box

·         ONT – Connects your Modem Router to the Fibre network and your ISP

·         ONT with Bunny Ears – all of the above, but not configured by default.

Please refer back to the previous lessons and to various Tips of the Day as they will shed more light on all of this stuff and hopefully will allow you to maximise your experience and understanding.

We will start to talk about the IP numbers you often come across and what they mean and how they work, at least to a degree that hopefully won’t bore you, the dear reader, to insensibility.