Part 1 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; hopefully these posts will give you an insight into the devices you have invited into your home, how they work and how to talk to geeks about them.
The term “wi-fi” is bandied around quite a bit, along with “wireless” but what do we mean by this and is it in my home network.
In the old days radios were often called “the wireless”, as they communicated without a wire over radio waves, as opposed to telephones which were wired (remember in the days before mobile devices when you would never lose your ‘phone because it was secured to the wall by a cable? That’s right kids, we used to have to go into the hallway to ring someone and if we wanted to show anyone what we were having for lunch we’d have to carry it around the neighbourhood on our push bikes and knock on doors to show everyone).
Sorry, I digressed a bit there, but now that I’ve made a cuppa I can settle down and get on with the article.
Right, Wi-Fi…
Also called wireless as it allows our devices to connect without being secured to anything via a cable, generally what we would call an Ethernet cable, cat 5,6 or 7, or more confusingly an RJ45 cable.
Just to clarify, for those that are interested in cable terminology, the terms I listed above all refer, in layman’s terms, to the same thing. However, as always in the world of tech, we have to over-complicate things, so here are some brief explanations of terms which will hopefully bring enlightenment to you, or more likely cause you to doze off, or for our younger readers, pick up their un-cabled mobile (wireless) device and post a picture of whatever titbits they happen to have in front of them:
Ethernet – this refers to the underlying technology that runs over the cable; a series of messages called packets using a series of rules called protocols (IP is part of a protocol of the TCP/IP stack, more on this in a later post). In the “old days” there were other technologies that would be used to connect devices together, Token Ring being one of the main competitors, as well as some other proprietary ones. Token Ring and Ethernet could essentially run over the same types of cables, which in the old days were coaxial, generally 50ohm whereas television ran over 75ohm. Coaxial, was slowly replaced by twisted pair, which are the cables we use these days. Ethernet, and token ring, were the protocols (set of rules and messages) that sat on top of the cables. Token Ring and Ethernet, to use a simile, were like Beta Max compared to VHS, they did the same thing but one became popular, due to lower cost and higher efficiency rather than quality, and the other passed away into the realms of legend, only to be brought up by dusty old nerds when they get together over a pint of “Old Peculiar” and try to out-do each other by discussing the merits and infinitely fine details of the dear departed Token Ring. Essentially what we call an Ethernet Cable could just as easily be a Token Ring cable, or other, it just happens that Ethernet triumphed.
CAT 5, 6,7 – Cat is short for category and simply refers to the evolution, or releases, of the cables. It consists of a number of “pairs” of wires, twisted together to form multiple passages for data transfer. Unlike coax which has a single core element and shielding, CAT5, and above, allow for multiple streams of data. Data is in the form of electrical pulses, so it can be used for things other than IT / computer stuff, such as sound, vision and so on.
RJ45 – You might hear us types utter this term, which these days we tend to use interchangeably between CATx, Ethernet Cable, RJ45, Computer cable (only used by non-geeks). RJ45 actually refers to the connector which is on the end; that plastic thing with the knobbly bit you plug into the “modem” and into your PC.
RJ45 is a technical standard detailing the connectors.
So, back, once again, to the Wi-Fi in our homes.
In the early days of “The Internet” most homes and even some businesses only had a single computer, connectivity to the Internet, such as it was in those days, was achieved by using a modem directly attached to a single PC in the house and that PC would use the modem to ring, or dial, into a computer at their service provider and that would then connect them to the services which at that time constituted the Internet.
As time wore on, much to the surprise of IBM who, in the 1940s, stated that there would never be a worldwide need for more than about 5 computers, each house ended up with more than one device, much like in a business / office where multiple computers were already connected to one another by cables, see above, (Ethernet or possibly Token Ring, but let’s not go into that again as I’ve run out of tea and really need to finish this article) along with file storage devices, email servers and printers, amongst other things. This connectivity was called a LAN (Local Area Network). Later on we will go into more detail about these things and how they work and fit together, but not in this article.
It wasn’t really viable for home users requiring multiple devices to have multiple ‘phone lines so that each PC could dial into a provider, so some bright spark came up with the idea of taking the office LAN model and letting people use it in their homes, so people started to use CAT5 (or above) cables to link their home PCs together, same as in their work places, thus allowing them to share the dial-up link to the Internet but also to share printers, files and other items.
In order to enable these devices to share resources and get to the Internet another device, separate to the modem, was required; a router. A router does exactly what the name implies, or at least we can infer it from the name, it essentially routes the data from device to device and network to network, or LAN to LAN to WAN (Internet).
In the early days these were separate items, but these days they are now combined into what everyone, mistakenly, calls a “modem”. A later article will explain this in more detail.
Once the router was placed between the modem and the home devices it meant that everyone could share the dial up Internet connexion, as well as the other resources in the house. The router basically links everything together and ensures that the correct data / messages go to the right devices and back again. In a later article we will go into more depths about what a router does and how it works.
Over time the tech and business worlds realised that cabling was difficult and expensive and although necessary in places could be made defunct, the same as radios were wireless. A series of rules and standards developed, over time, to run Ethernet over radio waves as well as over cables, thereby removing the requirement for workers to be chained to their desk by the cables they required to use the shared resources, and, to a large fanfare of trumpets and heavenly choirs, Wi-Fi was released and adopted allowing home computers to talk to each other and to the Internet without cables, over Ethernet which ran over radio waves, i.e. Wi-Fi.
Here is a diagram that will, hopefully, clarify things a little but if not and if you are still interest, or by some miracle are still awake, or, for the youngsters, have beyond belief put down your mobile, it doesn’t then ask a question or pop in and see us and we will try to explain further.
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.
WiFi is simply a medium upon which Ethernet supports your “stuff”.
Hopefully that has helped clarify a few things for you, I think that’s all I will write now as the kettle has just boiled and tea awaits.
For now we'll be saying a big cheerio to all intelligent lifeforms everywhere and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys. – Borrowed from Douglas Adams, a truly hoopy frood who really knew where his towel was.
The next article will probably talk about routers and modems but might diverge into what IP is or something altogether similar, but not quite entirely unrelated to technology.
See our tips of the day for further discussions on:
https://www.islandtech.nz/post/suffering-from-poor-internet-access https://www.islandtech.nz/post/suffering-from-poor-internet-access-part-2-isps